Military Blunders by Saul David

Author:Saul David
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781780338613
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Stalingrad

On 31 January 1943, after a bitter siege of more than two months, Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus surrendered his encircled German Sixth Army to the Russians at Stalingrad. It was fitting that this catastrophic defeat marked the beginning of the end for Hitler because he had interfered with his generals’ running of the campaign from the outset.

Germany’s invasion of Russia – Operation Barbarossa – had begun on 21 June 1941. At first, the armoured spearheads carried all before them and hundreds of thousands of Russians were taken prisoner. Gradually, however, the Germans became the victims of their own success: the further they drove into Russia, the longer their lines of communication became, the worse the weather, the stiffer the resistance of the enemy. As winter set in, making further advances impossible, they had reached the Crimea in the south, Leningrad in the north and come within an ace of taking Moscow.

Yet, with unlimited space on which to fall back, the total defeat of the Russians was unlikely. The situation became even more ominous for the Germans in December 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and America entered the fray. Hitler was now faced with the spectre of a war on two fronts. To avoid this it was essential to undermine Russia’s fighting capability as quickly as possible. But how? The German High Command was all for occupying Moscow and establishing a defensive line along the upper and middle Volga. This would have had the effect of crippling Russian communications, blocking the ingress of Lend-Lease supplies from Archangel, and cutting off the Russian armies west of the Urals from the resources of Asiatic Russia.

But Hitler had other ideas. Ignoring his generals, he took the advice of his leading industrialists and economic advisers, who warned him that the Reich would collapse unless the oilfields of the Caucasus were seized (with no oil resources of its own. Shortage of fuel for military operations and for industry was a major problem for Germany throughout the war). He decided, therefore, to advance from Batum on the Black Sea to Baku on the Caspian. If successful, he would strengthen his own military potential whilst weakening that of the Russians. To cover such an operation, a defensive front would need to be established along the River Don from Voronezh to Stalingrad.

The plan, however, had serious drawbacks. With insufficient forces to carry out both operations, the 360-mile defensive front would be lightly held and vulnerable to counterattack. If the Russians broke through and took Rostov, the German forces in the Caucasus would be cut off from their base. Furthermore, since the Volga was ice-bound and therefore easily crossed for up to half the year, Stalingrad was of only minor strategic importance.

Hitler was unswayed by such arguments, preferring to exaggerate the capability of his own troops while underestimating that of the enemy. According to Colonel-General Franz Haider, his Chief of Staff, when it was pointed out to the Führer that Stalin still had 1,500,000 men in the

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