The battle for Stalingrad is part of an unfinished plan?

The battle for Stalingrad was one of the most important events of the 20th century. As a result, the Wehrmacht lost 16% of its personnel and a huge amount of military equipment. After this battle, it became clear to the whole world that Hitler would not win the war, and his collapse was only a matter of time.

However, today some historians argue that the victory of the Red Army could have caused the complete defeat of Nazism as early as 1943, and they have good reasons for this.

The Battle of Stalingrad became the fringe behind which the collapse of Hitlerism began. Conditionally it can be divided into two stages: defensive and offensive. Beginning from mid-July 1942 until November 18, the troops of General Weiss, commander of Army Group B, attacked the Stalingrad Front. The enemy had some preponderance in manpower and technology, and within a month he managed to squeeze the position of the defenders of the city. At this moment, namely July 31, Hitler made a strategic mistake that could lead the Wehrmacht to a complete military defeat. He transferred the fourth tank army to the Volga from the Caucasus direction in the hope of an additional effort to break the resistance.

The German command felt that the battle for Stalingrad was about to end with success. The city managed to break in, and even capture it most. After massive bombardments and stubborn attacks, the semi-circle attacking its edges rested against the river. The Ministry of Propaganda Goebbels boastfully stated that tankmen of the Fourth Army poured Volga water into the radiators of their cars, and this was true. Defenders of the city lost the ability of land supply, and the delivery of ammunition, medicines and food on the water was extremely difficult.

In the heat of victorious reports, only a few military specialists drew attention to the fact that the battle for Stalingrad took a positional character, and the German Sixth Army lost the ability to maneuver, mired in street fighting amidst the ruins of houses. Its forces were scattered in dozens and hundreds of directions. The huge human losses that the Wehrmacht carried during hundreds of attacks, exhausted the offensive potential.

At that moment, the Soviet General Staff developed a plan according to which the Paulus army was to be surrounded and destroyed, and the subsequent blow to Rostov all the Caucasian grouping was cut off and also blocked, which would mean the total collapse of the German military machine. In the strategically important region, the reserves were pulled up, the forces of the parties were million groups, and the preponderance was already on the Soviet side. To implement this large-scale plan, counter strikes had to be made by the Don Front of Rokossovsky and the South-Western Front of Vatutin. The main part of the plan was the battle for Stalingrad. The date of November 19 marked the beginning of an offensive operation to encircle the 6th German Army.

The weather conditions contributed to the success (frost combined with a small amount of snow), Hitler's next strategic errors that prevented Paulus from retreating, the weak fighting qualities of Romanian and Italian soldiers, allies of Germany, who defended the flanks. At the Kalach station on November 23, the oncoming strikes of the South-Western and Don Fronts closed the circle of encirclement. The tank army of Gotta, who tried to break through the blockade, "suffered a confusion."

The Soviet offensive against Rostov did not take place because of the stubborn and prolonged resistance of the encircled German troops. Soldiers of the Wehrmacht, and there were more than 300,000 of them, fought in a hopeless situation until February 1943, supplied only by air. To avoid huge losses, the Red Army did not storm the city, confining itself to shelling and bombing. Seven Soviet armies kept the Germans in the encirclement ring, not allowing it to escape.

The stubborn resistance of the Paulus army allowed the German command to maintain and withdraw from the Caucasus a grouping of troops, without which further hostilities would be doomed to an early defeat.

History does not tolerate a subjunctive mood. About what would have happened if Paulus capitulated before, today one can only build bold assumptions. The facts show that the battle for Stalingrad was the frontier, after which the Soviet people and their allies in the victory no longer doubted.