This is an extremely complete and full look at the fighting between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russian in Stalingrad and the buildup beforehand from the German invasion. The book is written very well, taking the story from Hitler's strategy sessions at the Berghof to the starving German soldiers decorating their bunkers for Christmas, to the Russian soldiers writing letters home, up to Stalin himself anxiously pushing his generals to launch a counterattack. The book is awesome, and classic dad-history that I am very glad I read.
Operation Barbarossa and Getting to Stalingrad
The Germans made two big pushes against Russia in World War Two. The first was a complete surprise in June 1941, when Hitler suddenly revoked the pact he made with Stalin and invaded Russia. In 1941, the Germans made huge advances, seizing all of the Baltic states and most of Ukraine advancing through Crimea. But they were too late in attacking. By launching their attack on June 22, 1941, they started too late and when the rains came in September, turning roads to mud, the attack stalled as they then waited out the rains and the winter. Below is a map of Operation Barbarossa as it played out:
So you can see that the Germans made it to Stalingrad (now Volgograd) on the Volga River, but no further. Critically, Stalingrad was not only the river connection to the Caspian Sea, but also the rail connection to the south of Russia. To take Stalingrad would be to cut the Soviet Union off from its south, and so it became a struggle of life and death for Russia. But problematically, Hitler launched his offensives towards the south (Caucasus) and towards the east (Stalingrad) simultaneously, weakening each one. On Sunday, August 23, 1942, German forces reached Stalingrad.
The First Attack
The Germans launched air attacks to destroy the defenses and morale of Russian soldiers charged with destroying the city. It worked. Soldiers deserted in whole groups from the front lines until commanders adopted policies of decimation, one commander shooting every tenth man at point-blank range until his magazine was empty.
The German commander was Friedrich Paulus, controlling the troops not just in Stalingrad but across 130 miles of front, from the Don to the Volga. Despite having the largest formation in the German Army with a third of a million men, Paulus could only keep one division in reserve while the rest were kept on the front lines.
Problematically for the Germans, when they reached Stalingrad they lost their blitzkrieg advantages of speed and maneuver. There, they were forced to adopt older techniques, resorting to trench warfare, as so many buildings had been destroyed by their air bombardment that even at the beginning there was little shelter for the large army. The combat at Stalingrad was in close quarters. Germans called the fighting "rattenkrieg" because they fought in cellars and sewers against constant ambushes from basements, wall remnants, ruins, and hidden bunkers. Because the German air attack had done such damage to the city, they couldn't move through it, facing huge obstacles from fallen and bombed out buildings blocking many streets. This slowed them down and aided the Russians in defense.
The Russians, commanded by Chuikov, funneled and fragmented German assaults by using strengthened positions with machine guns to channel Germans into alleyways and streets where camouflaged tanks were waiting, half-buried in rubble. The Russian sappers had the highest casualty rate of all, as they were the ones who had to crawl out at night to lay anti-tank mines, or sometimes run out in front of a tank to drop a mine as it advanced. Their motto was, "Make a mistake and no more dinners."
Fortress Stalingrad
Because the Germans reached Stalingrad at the end of August, there was some time to fight before cold set in, but not much. Germans became demoralized. From their letters home, we learn that they are often in disbelief at what was happening as their attack stalled in the city. Meanwhile, Russian soldiers were openly expressing their discontent in letters home and revealing state secrets. This greatly distressed the NKVD, the Russian intelligence service.
Luckily for the Russians, Hitler refused to believe that they had any more armies in reserve, and additionally, weak Russian tank attacks across the front lines made the Germans underestimate Russian capacities. Because of this, the Germans would fail to anticipate the Russian counterattack in November. During the summer of 1942, Hitler's generals had informed him that the Soviets were producing 1,200 tanks a month while the Germans only made 500, but Hitler did not believe it. In fact, the numbers were even higher, with the Soviets producing 2,200 a month. Aircraft production on the Russian side had also been increasing throughout 1942.
When the Russians counterattacked in November, the Germans were surprised. To prepare for a Russian counterattack, Paulus would have needed to withdraw tanks from the city to keep in reserve, but this preparation would have been a disobedience of Hitler's orders to through everything at the city. When the Russians finally did counter-attack, Paulus took almost no notice of it, and did nothing to respond. During the Russian encirclement, there was still time for the Germans on the outside to get between Russian armies if they had a strong mobile reserve, but they did not, and so Stalingrad became surrounded.
At first, the Russians were unaware how large a force they had surrounded, guessing around 86,000 German soldiers when in fact, including German allies, there were about 290,000 men. The suffering of these men would be enormous. One event that seemed all-consuming was the lice outbreak. The lice lived in clumps on the living men, and could be seen leaving the flesh of the recently deceased en masse.
With his soldiers trapped in Stalingrad, Hitler's mood changed. Rather than holding forth at his dinner table to give longwinded speeches to his sycophants, Hitler was silent. He trembled and stared down as his soup. However, he showed no regret for the lives lost, only thinking of ways to raise the stakes and win the war.
Civilians in Stalingrad
Unlike the soldiers, no one was giving civilians rations to keep them alive in the city. Despite that, after five months of battle, 10,000 civilians remained, with at least 1,000 of them being children. From the first air raids on August 24 to September 10, 300,000 civilians were evacuated to the east bank of the Volga while 50,000 remained on the west. The scenes of evacuation must have been horrible to witness. One ferry was packed with people desperate to leave at the end of evacuation and made it about 50 yards before being hit by a bomb and sunk in front of all those still waiting on the west bank to escape. For many civilians in the towns west of Stalingrad, no escape would be possible, as the Germans moved too quickly and cut them off.
The Germans mad use of the orphans of Stalingrad to do dangerous tasks such as filling water bottles in the river where they would be exposed to snipers. The orphans would do this in exchange for a crust of bread. However, then the Russian army realized what was happening, they issued the order to shoot any children seen on such missions. When the battle was over, only nine children were reunited with their parents. The rest were sent off to state orphanages or given work clearing the city. Most of them were swollen with hunger. One American aid worker wrote that the children "cringed in corners, afraid to speak, to even look people in the face."
After Stalingrad
Once Paulus' Sixth Army surrendered, the people of Russia had no doubt they would win the war. The morale boost was so great the Stalingrad veterans were divided as much as possible to influence other units. For the Germans who fought at Stalingrad, the suffering and starvation was not over. Of the 91,000 who surrendered, half would be dead by springtime, mostly from starvation. While the Soviets technically made allowance for food for the POWs, bureaucracy, corruption, and indifference meant that it would not arrive, or at least not enough. Very few of the German soldiers captured would return home.
Conclusion
This is honestly a really rough book to read. The talk of deserters, disease, and starvation is rampant and obviously this is just a tale of immense human suffering. That said, the book is excellent and very well-written. Definitely a classic read for anyone who wants to know more about World War Two and the Eastern Front.
Miscellaneous Facts:
- When the Russians struck out under Zhukov, the Axis divisions that bore the brunt of the attack were Romanians.
- Doctors and medical workers ran out of blood and gave so much of their own that they frequently collapsed.
- There is a weird quote from Hitler when he was railing against Paulus for not fighting to the last man and then killing himself: "When you consider that a woman has the pride to leave, to lock herself in, and to shoot herself right away just because she has heard a few insulting remarks, then I can't have any respect for a soldier who is afraid of that and prefers to go into captivity." Beevor doesn't remark on it, but I think Hitler was specifically remembering his niece, Geli Raubal, who lived with Hitler from 1929 to 1931. While unconfirmed, it seems that many historians suspect they had a sexual relationship, but that she killed herself, either because they were expecting a child or because Hitler kept her as a prisoner in his apartment. She died of a gunshot would through her lung in 1931. I cannot help but think Hitler is describing this event.
