Germany’s Sixth Army in Stalingrad in World War II

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The arrogance of Adolf Hitler and the German high command was heightened by the enemy’s stupendous losses in Operation Barbarossa. The great offensive of 1941 might not have destroyed the Soviet Union, but more than 3 million Russians were dead. Three million more were in German prison camps. Add to those grim statistics the tens of thousands murdered, or dead from deliberate starvation and mistreatment at the hands of the Wehrmacht and the SS. German flags flew over the Ukraine, Russia’s granary, and over the Donbas, industrial heartland of the Soviet Union. A third of the country’s rail network was in German hands; its heavy industrial production was down by three-fourths. The Red Army had become a blunted instrument, its tanks and aircraft destroyed, its best divisions chewed up and spat out by the blitzkrieg, its winter 1941 counterattack met, then checked, by a German army at the very nadir of its own resources and fortunes.

German damage to the Soviets, however, had not been achieved without cost. More than 900,000 Germans were dead, wounded or missing — almost a third of the invasion force. As late as May 1942, some German infantry formations were at little more than a third of their authorized strength. More than 4,200 tanks had been destroyed or damaged, and an overburdened industrial system no longer had any hope of replacing all of them. Roughly 100,000 trucks and other motor vehicles were gone, as were more than 200,000 horses — the latter arguably more important than the lost machines.

Since June 1941, Nazi Germany had been at war with both the world’s largest land power, the Soviet Union, and its greatest mercantile empire, Great Britain. In December it added the biggest industrial power, the United States, to its list of enemies. Hitler understood that his Third Reich did not possess anything like the resources to match such a coalition. He did not intend to try. On December 10, 1941, he had assumed personal command of the Eastern Front. Many of the key figures of Operation Barbarossa, such as Heinz Guderian, Gerd von Rundstedt and Fedor von Bock, were relieved of command or transferred. In their places stood new men, with reputations and careers to make. Like Hitler, they viewed the winter setbacks as temporary. And in many ways he was right. A hundred thousand men, cut off in the Demyansk pocket south of Leningrad, had been supplied by air from January to the end of April 1942, and were then relieved. A month later, German and Romanian troops under Erich von Manstein completed the conquest of the Crimea, driving its last Soviet defenders literally into the sea in a series of frontal attacks. Even when they operated on a shoestring, nothing seemed beyond the German Landser — the infantry in worn field-gray uniforms, the men who crewed the tanks and manned the guns, and the junior officers and NCOs who led them.

The German army in the spring of 1942 remained a superbly tempered instrument, combining the best features of an ideologically motivated citizen army and a seasoned professionalized force. The months in Russia had pitilessly exposed weak human and materiel links. New tanks and weapons still existed mostly on drawing boards, but officers and men knew how to use what they had to best advantage. The 37mm anti-tank gun, so helpless against Russian armor that it was nicknamed the ‘army door-knocker,’ was giving way to a high-velocity 50mm piece. The Panzerkampfwagen (Pzkw.) Mk. III tank remained the mainstay of the armored divisions, but it too appeared in an upgunned version. Its longtime stablemate, the Pzkw. Mk. IV, was beginning to exchange its short-barreled 75mm gun for a high-velocity version that could match all but the heaviest Soviet armor. Nothing spectacular — but enough to enhance the conviction among the German soldiers that they had the measure of their enemies and were still able to defeat them. From highest to lowest, the German soldiers believed that their mobility, shock power, communications and above all disciplined initiative, resting on the base of comradeship and confidence fostered by the bitter fighting of 1941, would bring victory in 1942.

The losses suffered and the lessons learned during the previous year nevertheless structured planning for the next year’s campaign. Instead of three offensives moving in different directions, Hitler’s directive of April 5, 1942, projected only holding actions in the northern and central sectors. The focus for the spring campaign would be in the south, with a major drive toward the Caucasus. The objective would be the destruction of Soviet forces in the region and seizure of oil fields that were vital to the German war effort. A secondary objective was Stalingrad — not for its own sake, but in order to cut the Volga River and isolate the Russians south of the industrial city.

Despite its reduced scale, the proposed offensive was risky. It would be launched on a 500-mile front. If it gained the set objectives, it would create a salient of more than 1,300 miles. Hindering the drive was the fact that the road and rail networks would grow thinner the farther the Germans advanced. The main attack was scheduled to begin at the end of June — at best, four to five months before rain and snow would put an end to mobile operations. Even if the offensive succeeded, however, there was no guarantee that the Soviet Union would collapse. It had other major domestic sources of oil — not to mention the promise of support from its new ally, the United States, which was committed to keeping Russia in the fight at all costs.

Such wider issues were not raised among German officers, who were focusing their energy on preparations for the upcoming campaign, which was dubbed Operation Blue. German planning staffs focused on the war’s operational and tactical levels. The army’s rapid expansion since Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933 had left it so short of qualified staff officers that everybody was too immersed in details to have any energy left for evaluating the big picture.

For their part, Soviet concerns in early 1942 primarily involved buying time — time for American assistance to arrive, time to re-establish an industrial base physically transplanted east of the Ural Mountains, and time to reorganize and re-equip an army shaken by disaster. Stavka, the Soviet high command, advocated a defensive strategy. Soviet Premier Josef Stalin wanted to mount local offensives, designed in part to wear down the Germans and keep them off balance, and in part to restore Soviet domestic morale, which was far too low for the dictator’s peace of mind.

It was increasingly clear that the security and propaganda apparatus that had intimidated and inspired the Soviet people through the privations and purges of the preceding decades was by itself insufficient to counter the pressures presented by the German invasion. Only the Germans’ bestial behavior in territory they had conquered and their reluctance to consider mobilizing opponents of the Soviet regime under their flag had kept disaffection with the Soviet regime from reaching explosive proportions. Stalin expected the revitalized Red Army to provide a safety valve by winning small-scale victories. Instead, the Germans checked and threw back its ill-prepared efforts. In May, a Soviet attack briefly recaptured the city of Kharkov but collapsed when a German counterstrike surrounded and destroyed four entire armies. Then, on June 28, Germany’s Army Group South tore the Russian front wide open.

Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, who had led Army Group Center almost to within artillery range of Moscow before being relieved of command in 1941, was getting a second chance. He had 68 divisions, nine of them panzer and five more motorized. He possessed 750 tanks. The Luftwaffe provided more than 1,200 aircraft, including the close-support specialists of the VIII Air Corps under General Wolfram von Richthofen, a cousin of World War I’s ‘Red Baron.’

Bock’s order of battle included 25 divisions from German allies and client states as well. Mostly Italian and Romanian, those formations were not as well equipped, trained, led or motivated as their German counterparts. Aware of that, Bock intended that they would simply play screening roles, serving as flank guards, and occupy less vulnerable sectors. Nevertheless, their direct participation in the offensive indicated the weakness of the German army in 1942 relative to its responsibilities — and implied a promise of trouble should things not go according to plan.

For the first few weeks, the German offensive was a repeat of the lightning advances of Operation Barbarossa. German mechanized spearheads rolled forward across the steppe under an air umbrella impenetrable to a Red air force still woefully short of skilled pilots. But the ground gained was not matched by Soviet losses. Frustrated, Hitler fired Bock and split Army Group South in two. Army Group A, under Field Marshal Wilhelm List, was to turn south, take Rostov and drive into the Caucasus. Army Group B, commanded by Field Marshal Maximilian von Weichs, would thrust east and cut the Volga while screening the left wing of the offensive.

The new organization gained ground but produced no great tokens of victory. The Red Army’s abortive spring offensives had cost it more than a half-million casualties, which were suffered primarily among its best formations. Stavka’s officers argued that, temporarily at least, space must be exchanged for time. Stalin reluctantly concurred. Even after he authorized a strategic retreat on July 6, some Soviet formations were cut off by the successive German pincers. While some of the trapped Russians fought on, others surrendered with only token resistance. Enraged, Stalin issued Order Number 227 on July 28. Distributed to all fighting units, it called for an end to retreat and demanded that each yard of Soviet territory be defended. The penalty for failure to comply ranged from summary execution to service in a penal unit. During the course of the war, more than 400,000 Russians were sentenced to penal battalions and another 250,000 were sentenced to be shot for failure to obey 227.

Frustrated by a perceived lack of progress, Hitler became more deeply involved in the campaign’s operational aspects. On July 16, he diverted the Fourth Panzer Army, and with it the bulk of Army Group B’s mechanized forces, south to Rostov, hoping to encircle Soviet forces there. At the same time, he not only sustained Army Group B’s mission to drive toward the Volga but, on July 20, specifically ordered its Sixth Army to attack Stalingrad.

A week earlier, Stavka had established an independent Stalingrad Front, and on July 19 Stalin put the city on a war footing. At the time, both seemed little more than gestures. The Front’s three armies were an uneasy mixture of green troops and formations hammered in the earlier fighting. But Order 227 was more than a set of draconian threats. It was a reminder that there was nowhere else to go. The Russian people realized that not only the Soviet state was at stake. Despite the horrors of Stalin’s regime, the citizens responded, not merely by digging ditches and filling sandbags, but by reporting to work and finishing their shifts.

On August 9, German troops captured the oil producing center of Maikop but found it completely wrecked. As supplies ran low and the Red Army’s resistance stiffened, the German advance stalled on August 28 — well short of its objective, the Grozhny oil fields. Hitler dismissed the responsible commander at the end of August and began directing Army Group A himself.

Meanwhile, Army Group B found itself locked into increasingly bitter, close-quarters fighting as it clawed its way toward the Volga. Weichs initially intended to use the pincer movements that had served the Germans so well for a year. The Sixth Army from the north and the Fourth Panzer Army from the south were to break through the front and cut off the Soviet forces west of Stalingrad. Both met determined resistance in terrain that handicapped the small-unit tactical maneuvers that often gave the Germans an advantage over their numerically superior foes. When it was man to man and tank against tank, casualties were higher and advances shorter. Nevertheless, the little flags on the map tables of both sides kept moving in the same direction, toward the Volga and Stalingrad.

On August 21, the tide seemed suddenly to turn. German infantry crossed the Don River, the first waves in rubber boats. Pioneers built bridges under Luftwaffe air cover. The next day, a panzer corps moved through the breach, and on the 23rd the spearheads of the 16th Panzer Division reached the Volga. As they advanced, however, the Germans found themselves under counterattack by everything the Soviets could throw at them, including civilians with rifles and armbands, and tanks fresh off Stalingrad’s production lines. Most of them were T-34s, whose gunpower and mobility the Germans had learned to respect earlier in the summer. But the German crews were better trained and more experienced, and they picked off the green Russians by the dozens as the Luftwaffe set Stalingrad ablaze and German reinforcements pushed toward the river.

Still determined to complete his pincer movement, Weichs ordered both his armies forward, setting their junction point at the town of Pitomnik, 10 miles west of Stalingrad. Instead of staying in place to be destroyed, however, the Russians retreated into the city — whether on their own initiative or under German pressure depends on the nationality of the analyst. Convinced that this movement symbolized the end of significant resistance, Weichs ordered an advance into Stalingrad’s suburbs.

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, World War II