The German Air Force versus Russia, 1942 by Generalleutnant Hermann Plocher

Author:Generalleutnant Hermann Plocher [Plocher, Generalleutnant Hermann]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Eschenburg Press
Published: 2017-06-28T04:00:00+00:00

Inasmuch as the Wehrmacht’s intelligence interpretation indicates that its situation on the ground and its methods of attack cannot be considered adequate reasons for the failure to take Stalingrad, it is well to note Generaloberst von Richthofen’s commentary, which may help to explain how the failure came about by a faulty and impractical commitment of ground forces:

“If I have a small fire and five buckets of water, I throw all five buckets onto the fire. Then I have the assurance that it is out. But, if I try first with one bucket, then with the second bucket, and then with the third, I have used up all my water, but the fire is not extinguished.”

“...It is an actual fact that the efforts to liquidate strongpoints in Stalingrad were nothing but combat patrol operations on a somewhat larger scale.{585}“

German Army artillery often ceased firing by noon because of ammunition shortages, and it had become a standing joke in the Stalingrad area that “hundreds of batteries are in position before the city, but each of them has only one round of ammunition. “{586} Flak artillery units bore the brunt of the attacks, and the efforts made by the Army were never commensurate with the requirements in this brutal, close-combat action. Assault units were often depleted in short order after their commitment.

All of these armed patrol operations, quite apart from the locally superior tactics of the Russians, were doomed to failure from the outset because of the inadequate forces committed in the initial attacks, for the follow-up, and for the consolidation of gains.{587}

Much has been written about the bitter and arduous struggle for Stalingrad, some of it in voluminous epic form, and some of it clearly tendentious in intent. Few authors have presented a more logical, clear, and concise description of those events than General der Infanterie Kurt von Tippelskirch:

“And now, at the beginning of October, a battle commenced for the city which was to last two months, and which defies all attempts at description. During the battle the city was gradually reduced to a gigantic heap of rubble. Supported by tanks, assault guns, flame throwers, artillery, and dive-bombers, German infantrymen and engineers used hand grenades and knives to fight their way through this waste of rubble from house to house, cellar to cellar, and from one heap of debris to the next. The gigantic industrial works had been turned into forts. The more ruins were created, the more cover the defenders were able to find. The tenacious Russians succeeded time and again in repairing with ant-like industry-two ponton bridges across the Volga River each time the bridges were destroyed by German dive-bombers or artillery fire. On the eastern bank they moved exceptionally powerful artillery forces into positions from which the guns were able to support the desperately pressed [Soviet] defenders with their fire.”

“Repeated orders of the day by Stalin and Timoshenko fired the defenders to fanatical resistance....”

“In mid-October, a large-scale attempt was made to bring about the fall of the city. According to Hitler’s views, all that was needed was a gigantic armed patrol type of mop-ping-up operation.

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