[QUOTE=David Simmons]
In the same fashion, the Battle of Midway and all the battles for islands in the Pacific were not the cause of the Japanese defeat. That happened because Japan didn’t have the resources or population to combat the US even in their own back yard. Having superior resources is necessary but not sufficient. You must take advantage of those resources and exploit them properly. That’s where the actual action enters the picture.
I suppose in a cerebral analysis of the Soviet-German war in the east, the big battles were not crucial, an equivalent battle at any other place would have done just as well.
It doesn’t matter whether or not Stalingrad or Kursk were important places. The German losses at those places were outstanding features of that “wearing down” that you spoke of. As long as morale doesn’t crack to the point that one side gives up, all wars are wars of attrition.
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I don’t really disagree about much you have written, losses dont occur in a vacuum they occur at certain places and as a result of combinations of events. Men fought these battles, they didn’t just happen by themselves.
I’d quibble with your implication though that the German losses at Stalingrad and Kursk were somehow especially significant features of the ‘wearing down’. The frightening thing about the eastern front is that losses of this magnitude had already been repeatedly incurred, and would be again. There is nothing magical about the circa 400,000 men the Germans lost at Stalingrad (you earlier quoted 850,000 men which is roughly correct for the total axis losses including the Rumanians and Italians, the German component was a bit less then half this). There is no inherent quality making the significance of these men’s death and injuries more important then the 900,000 men the Germans lost in 1941 or the 300,000 men the Germans lost in the Rzhev salient in 1942 or the hundreds of thousands of men the Germans lost elsewhere in 1942 outside the Stalingrad campaign. The Germans were just relentlessly ground down and Stalingrad was part but only part of that.
Stalingrad was not even the biggest operation occurring on the Russian front at this time. The Soviet offensive strategy for 1942 consisted of two prongs, the Stalingrad counter-offensive (Operation Uranus) and another even larger counter-offensive (Operation Mars) launched at the same time in the north near Moscow, the latter operation led by Zhukov himself. The latter element is largely unknown in the west because it failed with massive losses to the Red Army (up to half a million men were lost in this operation alone) and the Russians have always downplayed it and prefer to celebrate their victory in the south.
From earlier posts:
Actually, highlighting the point that it was not particular operations but cumulative attrition that wrecked the Germans, the Wehrmacht did regain the initiative and was on the offensive again within 3 weeks of the surrender at Stalingrad. Manstein launched his famous backhand counter-offensive on February 21st, destroyed the Soviet offensive spearheads and the Germans advanced, recaptured Kharkov on March 14th and remained on the offensive until the spring thaw put an end to operations. This was what allowed the Germans to be in a position to launch their Kursk offensive in July.