As I understand it, the strategic aim of Hitler’s push towards the Caucasus was to seize control of the oilfields there, thereby both denying petroleum supplies to the Soviets’ mechanized forces and securing them for his own. So, instead of getting bogged down in the interminable and ultimately disastrous Battle of Stalingrad, why didn’t he just leave enough forces there to hold it down and prevent a breakout, and send the rest past Stalingrad to the oilfields? It would not have required a great leap of imagination. The Germans had already taken France by the simple expedient of going around the Maginot Line.
I’m no war historian, but isn’t the conventional understanding that Hitler was at least partially motivated by a desire to bring down Stalin’s namesake city, whatever the cost? I mean, that he essentially wanted to rub it in Stalin’s face that he was in his country, killing his manz. It’s often cited as one more example that Hitler was an atrocious tactician and driven primarily by hubris, isn’t it?
I am no military strategist, but it occurs to me that a city like Stalingrad is a completely different beast than a string of discrete fortresses like the Maginot Line. I imagine it’s a lot more difficult to surround and control a very large, open city than it is to simply bypass a fort. In previous ages, even bypassing the Maginot Line would not have been possible, but the advent of the tank made it feasible.
The Maginot Line was a very long string of fortresses connected by underground tunnels. Going between the gun emplacements was not an option – there was no place along its length troops could cross without coming under heavy fire from fortified positions. So the Germans didn’t even try – they sent light tanks through the Ardennes Forest to the north of the Line’s terminus, a front the French had not fortified because they thought it naturally impassable. The Line never saw action. Stalingrad could have been bypassed in the same way. Hitler’s genius was for high-speed mobile war; he was only stymied when he got drawn into a static siege situation, as in Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad.
Yes, I know how the Line was bypassed. But it occurs to me that you’re missing a few things. One is the nature of a city as opposed to a string of forts. The forts, emplacements, and tunnels of the Maginot Line were glued in place. Major sorties pretty much could not be made to engage the fast-moving Germans, and the Germans were close enough to home to be able to defend their supply lines.
And that, I think, may be the other difference. The Blitzkrieg-style war was great, but requires precise planning of fuel lines, resupplies, etc. That sort of thing is feasible when you’re just crossing the border between Germany and France, but leaving a major city packed full of Russian troops in your rear as you try to attack a remote target may get your army cut off and destroyed piecemeal. Shrug
I think these were some reasons:
Hitler argued that they would secure his flanks as he moved to the Caucuses. Now some in the Wehrmacht argued that the city could be sealed off and the City itself didn’t need to be taken. Hitler’s Mileage Did Vary.
It was on the Volga and was an important transport route from the Caspian Sea.
Some say it was a vanity/symbolic fight - that Hitler wanted to take it because it had Stalin’s name and Stalin wanted to hold it for the same reason. I have seen no documentation of that claim - but given the egos involved - and the fact that Hitler continued to fight for it after the cause was clearly lost shows some level of irrational fixation with the City
Hitler had no genius for war at all. It wasn’t Adolf Hitler who came up with any of the military innovations that gave the Germans success between 1939 and 1941.
As has been pointed out, Stalingrad was an important target. It was (and is) a a major transportation hub. Leaving in in Soviet hands would have left the flank of Army Group South wide open to attack, when it was already stretched out and exposed to just such an attack.
There’s also a degree of knowledge we have the Germans didn’t, and we have the benefit of hindsight. The Soviets appeared ready to lose Stalingrad a dozen times, and the massive force used to envelop and destroy the Sixth Army was unknown to the Germans.
I don’t understand a whole lot about the German strategy in Russia. Why the push into the Caucusus region? Germany had all the oil it needed from Rumania. Hitler should have concentrated in capturing Moscow-and maybe knocking the communist government out of the war. And: Army Group North-why was its sitting around Leningrad? It wasn’t used to any extent.
I do think Hitler wanted to capture Stalingrad as a personal insult to Stalin. But losing all of those troops , and ignoring the danger of encirclement was foolish on his part.
The Germans did not intend to fight a major siege at Stalingrad. In fact, pinning it with a holding force and advancing on past toward the oilfields was the original plan.
When Hitler began to be seduced into actually committing major forces to take the city, everyone in the German general staff recognized it as a blunder and struggled to keep the original strategy on course, but were eventually overruled by Hitler. The German generals repeatedly argued for a mobile strategy. Hitler’s insistence was wrongheaded and the Germans paid a heavy price.
Hitler’s reputation, and will to overrule his generals, took a major blow. The next year, 1943, the German generals had much more freedom to conduct strategy. The strategy they chose (pinching off the largest salient on the front, Kursk) was theoretically fundamentally sound, but very conventional, perhaps in an overreaction to Hitler’s odd strategic quirks.
It was SO conventional and so typical of German strategy that the Soviets were able to predict it and make a major bet on it. Completely confident the Germans would attack there, the Sovs fortified Kursk for months, making a belt 100 miles deep in places, and the Germans impaled themselves on these defenses.
Stalingrad was an error, not a plan. Probably an error of egotism.
Sailboat
I think it is for the same reason that U.S. Civil War generals would charge against well-fortified positions instead of simply moving off and letting the enemy attack them on more favorable ground. The reason is that generals are always using tactics from the previous war. The idea that you could just leave a city the size of Stalingrad in your rear was unthinkable.
They wanted the extra oil, and they wanted to make sure the Soviets couldn’t use it.
Army Group North was besieging Leningrad.
Why do you think taking Moscow would have brought down the government?
The Russians aren’t the French. You threaten their capital, they’ll spit in your eye and burn it down themselves.
Germany in fact suffered from a lack of oil throughout the war, so clearly that’s not true. Armies can hardly EVER have enough oil. Oil was a constant concern for Germany.
The Soviet government had a fully formed plan for retreating from Moscow and would have gone right on fighting. Beyond Moscow there’s still four thousand miles of Russia to fight from.
The truth is that in late 1942 there’s NO strategic option for Germany that’s ideal. Strike south into the Caucasus and, well, you get overextended and an entire army is destroyed. Strike in the middle towards Moscow and you will probably be in the same mess as Stalingrad; why would attacking an even BIGGER city work out any better than Stalingrad did? Have Army Group North try to take Leningrad, and it’s just Stalingrad North, and you’ll have to commit resources to that fight that now can’t be used for Army Groups Central and South against a Soviet enemy that presumably isn’t just going to sit there. Either way, Germany is badly overextended against an enemy that - unbeknownst to the Germans - is bringing up a very large contingent of reserves from the East who can be used as a counterattacking force against whatever Germany attempts that winter.
I’m sorry. It’s Monday morning and I can’t read that without taking it in a way that’s very very wrong. And painful sounding.
After a certain point, Hitler must have felt the same way.
In the summer of '42 the Germans committed to Operation Blue, the goal of which was to regain the initiative in the south and ultimately gain control of Baku (the Russian oil fields in what is now Azerbaijan).
The city called Volgograd in southern Russia was a natural transportation hub for the entire region, even more so with advent of the rail system. Because of that in 1918 extreme efforts were made to take it from the revolutionary Josef Dzhugashvili. Josef succeeded in holding the city and when he later changed his name to Stalin the city was renamed in his honor.
I have no doubt of the fact that the city had increased importance to Hitler and Stalin because it was named for the later, but even if it was called Perriwinklegrad both sides would have bled for it.
I can understand surrounding a city (as ARMY GROUP NORTH did at Leningrad), and starving the city into surrender. But why send troops into urban combat? It made no sense to waste troops in this way. I have read accounts of the fighting-the Germans suffered horrible losses inside the city. This was NOT the way Blitzkrieg was supposed to be fought! Of course, had the germans bypassed the city, they might have been attacked in the rear. That makes me wonder-if (instead of sending the “Afrika Corps” into Egypt-Hitler should have sent them to the Easter Front!
The Afrikakorps (note that it is properly spelled as one word) was a very small force relative to the size of the war in Russia; it would have been of little consequence, a subgroup of a subgroup. At its peak it was smaller than the Sixth Army that was routed at Stalingrad (though the combined Axis force, including Italian troops, would have been larger in terms of the number of men than the Sixth.) Rommel was well used in Africa, where he could use his skills to hold down a larger force.
Yes, Stalingrad was a mistake, but you’re saying that now, in 2008. At the time, given the strategic difficulties of the German position, they didn’t have any better choices. The error was in starting the war; once that mistake was made, it was inevitable Germany would be strategically stretched beyond its capabilities, and some sort of military disaster would take place.
That being said, Germany did make some mistakes at Stalingrad that were clear at the time. First, because the waffling of the Fourth Panzer Army, the Germans were unable to take Stalingrad or Grozny. Also, the “stand in position” order made sure that the Germany Army couldn’t get out of Stalingrad before it was encircled, and also led to the failure of Operation Winter Storm.
But if you don’t leave Stalingrad in your rear, you might succumb to Operation Uranus.