190 The Allies Gain Ground
31.6: The Allies Gain Ground
31.6.1: The Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad has been described as the biggest defeat in the history of the German Army and a decisive turning point in the downfall of Hitler in World War II.
Learning Objective
Argue for or against the categorization of the Battle of Stalingrad as a turning point in the war
Key Points
- The Battle of Stalingrad was marked by constant close quarters combat and direct assaults on civilians by air raids, and it is often regarded as one of the single largest and bloodiest battles in the history of warfare.
- By mid-November, the Germans had nearly taken Stalingrad in bitter street fighting when the Soviets began their second winter counter-offensive, starting with an encirclement of German forces at Stalingrad and an assault on the Rzhev salient near Moscow.
- By early February 1943, the German Army had taken tremendous losses; German troops at Stalingrad were forced to surrender, and the front line had been pushed back beyond its position before the summer offensive.
- It was a turning point in the European theater of World War II; German forces never regained the initiative in the East and withdrew a vast military force from the West to replace their losses.
Key Terms
- Battle of Moscow
- The name given by Soviet historians to two periods of strategically significant fighting on a 600 km (370 mi) sector of the Eastern Front during World War II. It took place between October 1941 and January 1942 and was part of the German Operation Barbarossa.
- Operation Barbarossa
- The code name for Nazi Germany’s World War II invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on June 22, 1941.
Overview
The Battle of Stalingrad (August 23, 1942 – February 2, 1943) was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in Southern Russia, on the eastern boundary of Europe.
Marked by constant close-quarters combat and direct assaults on civilians by air raids, it is often regarded as one of the single largest (nearly 2.2 million personnel) and bloodiest (1.7–2 million wounded, killed, or captured) battles in the history of warfare. The heavy losses inflicted on the German Wehrmacht make it arguably the most strategically decisive battle of the whole war and a turning point in the European theater of World War II. German forces never regained the initiative in the East and withdrew a vast military force from the West to replace their losses.
The German offensive to capture Stalingrad began in late summer 1942, using the German 6th Army and elements of the 4th Panzer Army. The attack was supported by intensive Luftwaffe bombing that reduced much of the city to rubble. The fighting degenerated into house-to-house fighting, and both sides poured reinforcements into the city. By mid-November 1942, the Germans pushed the Soviet defenders back at great cost into na