6.Armee der Wehrmacht and the Battle of Stalingrad 1942–1943

Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler in München 'No ships come up the Volga any more...
Helmstedt-born Bataillonskommandeur Hauptmann Wilhelm Traub
Battle of Stalingrad was fought in a pulverised urban landscape
Soviet infantry move among the rubble of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad took place between August 23 1942 to February 2 1943. Marked by fierce close-quarters combat it remains the largest and bloodiest battle in the history of warfare. The initial objectives in the region around Stalingrad were the destruction of the industrial capacity of the city and the deployment of forces to block the Volga River. The river was a key route from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea to central Russia. On November 8 1942, Adolf Hitler had his annual speech in München on the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. In the course of the speech he said that Stalingrad was an important point, there 30 million tons of traffic could be cut off including about nine million of oil shipments. Hitler mentioned that some say Stalingrad is a strategic mistake and that they will just wait and see whether it is or not. The overall tone was serious, although he did make a joke at some point in the speech. On November 19 1942, the Soviet Red Army launched Operation Uranus, a two-pronged attack targeting the weaker Romanian and Hungarian armies protecting the German 6.Armee's flanks. The Axis forces on the flanks were overrun and the 6.Armee was cut off and surrounded in the Stalingrad area. About 250,000 German and Romanian soldiers and other volunteer subsidiary troops including some 35,000 Soviet volunteers fighting for the Germans were surrounded. Inside the pocket, there were also several thousand Soviet soldiers the Germans had taken captive during the battle. The German 6.Armee and 24.Panzer-Division showed remarkable discipline after being surrounded. The Israeli historian Omer Bartov noted that of 11,237 letters sent by soldiers inside of Stalingrad between December 20 1942 and January 16 1943 to their families in Germany, almost every letter expressed belief in Germany's ultimate victory, and their willingness to fight and die at Stalingrad to achieve that victory. Bartov reported that a great many of the soldiers were well aware that they would not be able to escape from Stalingrad. Top image: local Münchners enthusiastically greet Hitler on his ride through München. Standing in the back seat of his Mercedes-Benz 770 is his personal adjutant SS-Untersturmführer Otto Günsche. The driver is Hitler's primary chauffeur SS-Obersturmbannführer Erich Kempka. Hitler's Stalingrad speech took place at the Löwenbräukeller at Stiglmaierplatz in the heart of München during the height of the battle of Stalingrad. Photo shot by German film producer Oberleutnant Walter Frentz. FU. Second image: Hauptmann Diplomingenieur Wilhelm Traub occupying a ramshackle fortified position among the rubble of the Barrikady Gun Factory in northern Stalingrad on October 19 1942. He is wearing a helmet cover made from a Hungarian camouflage cloth and armed with a Soviet PPSh-41 submachine gun, a robust weapon ideal for fighing in urban area. Traub was a highly respected commander of the Pionierebataillon 305 of 305.Infanterie-Division which he took command of on October 16 1942. Traub was declared missing in action during the winter battle of Stalingrad. The Wehrmacht offically listed him as dead by April 1943. Photo by KB Kurt Heine. Third image: photo believed to show soldiers of the 24.Panzer-Division on the southern flank of the Stalingrad sector in October 1942. Credit: Facundo Filipe. Commons: Bundesarchiv. Bottom image: Soviets fighting amid the rubble of Stalingrad in November 1942. Photo by Soviet Izvestia correspondent Georgi Zelma. Credit: Olga Shirnina. PD

3 comments:

  1. As far as Stalingrad and the invasion of the USSR, the problem was that Hitler depended too much on his ‘coalition of the willing’. Look at his allies! The Romanians - the total collapse of their Third Army north of Stalingrad and their Fourth Army south of Stalingrad provided Zhukov and Vasilevsky with the opportunity for their double envelopment to succeed beyond their wildest dreams. The Hungarian Second Army and Italian Eighth Army to the NW of the Romanian Third Army proved no better a month later when the Soviets took them down and exposed the flank of any German counteroffensive. The Hungarians suffered 84% casualties. The Italians just as bad, out of 12 Italian divisions in the Eighth Army only one Alpini division survived as an operationally capable unit.

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  2. Craig Willheim Irvine12/12/21

    Spreading too thinly and leaving Romanian and Italians to protect the flanks was understating the competency of Zhukov at the 6th armies peril, Goerings promised supply drops were few and far between and Paulus being the replacement commander of the 6th was a mistake due to his lack of autonomous thinking. The battle of Stalingrad will go down in history as one of the most tragic battles ever.

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  3. Hauptmann Wilhelm Traub schrieb noch im Dezember 1942 an seine Familie: „Wir müssen aushalten, sonst wird Deutschland ein schreckliches Desaster erleben. Hoffentlich werden es unsere Kinder besser haben als wir und ihr Leben gestalten können ohne Krieg.“. Traub starb in sowjetischer Kriegsgefangenschaft.

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