Stalingrad defensive operation. Preparing Soviet troops for a counteroffensive

Introduction

On April 20, 1942, the battle for Moscow ended. The German army, whose advance seemed unstoppable, was not only stopped, but also pushed back 150-300 kilometers from the capital of the USSR. The Nazis suffered heavy losses, and although the Wehrmacht was still very strong, Germany no longer had the opportunity to attack simultaneously on all sectors of the Soviet-German front.

While the spring thaw lasted, the Germans developed a plan for the summer offensive of 1942, codenamed Fall Blau - “Blue Option”. The initial target of the German attack was the oil fields of Grozny and Baku with the possibility of further development of the offensive against Persia. Before the deployment of this offensive, the Germans were going to cut off the Barvenkovsky ledge - a large bridgehead captured by the Red Army on the western bank of the Seversky Donets River.

The Soviet command, in turn, also intended to conduct a summer offensive in the zone of the Bryansk, Southern and Southwestern fronts. Unfortunately, despite the fact that the Red Army was the first to strike and at first managed to push the German troops almost to Kharkov, the Germans managed to turn the situation in their favor and inflict a major defeat on the Soviet troops. On the sector of the Southern and Southwestern fronts, the defense was weakened to the limit, and on June 28, Hermann Hoth's 4th Panzer Army broke through between Kursk and Kharkov. The Germans reached the Don.

At this point, Hitler, by personal order, made a change to the Blue Option, which would later cost Nazi Germany dearly. He divided Army Group South into two parts. Army Group A was to continue the offensive into the Caucasus. Army Group B was to reach the Volga, cut off the strategic communications connecting the European part of the USSR with the Caucasus and Central Asia, and capture Stalingrad. For Hitler, this city was important not only from a practical point of view (as a large industrial center), but also for purely ideological reasons. The capture of the city, which bore the name of the main enemy of the Third Reich, would be the greatest propaganda achievement of the German army.

Balance of forces and the first stage of the battle

Army Group B, which advanced on Stalingrad, included the 6th Army of General Paulus. The army included 270 thousand soldiers and officers, about 2,200 guns and mortars, about 500 tanks. From the air, the 6th Army was supported by the 4th Air Fleet of General Wolfram von Richthofen, numbering about 1,200 aircraft. A little later, towards the end of July, Hermann Hoth's 4th Tank Army was transferred to Army Group B, which on July 1, 1942 included the 5th, 7th and 9th Army and the 46th Motorized housings. The latter included the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich.

The Southwestern Front, renamed Stalingrad on July 12, 1942, consisted of about 160 thousand personnel, 2,200 guns and mortars, and about 400 tanks. Of the 38 divisions that were part of the front, only 18 were fully equipped, while the others had from 300 to 4,000 people. The 8th Air Army, operating along with the front, was also significantly inferior in numbers to von Richthofen's fleet. With these forces, the Stalingrad Front was forced to defend an area more than 500 kilometers wide. A separate problem for the Soviet troops was the flat steppe terrain, where enemy tanks could operate at full strength. Taking into account the low level of anti-tank weapons in front units and formations, this made the tank threat critical.

The German offensive began on July 17, 1942. On this day, the vanguards of the 6th Army of the Wehrmacht entered into battle with units of the 62nd Army on the Chir River and in the area of ​​the Pronin farm. By July 22, the Germans had pushed Soviet troops back almost 70 kilometers, to the main line of defense of Stalingrad. The German command, hoping to take the city on the move, decided to encircle the Red Army units at the villages of Kletskaya and Suvorovskaya, seize the crossings across the Don and develop an attack on Stalingrad without stopping. For this purpose, two strike groups were created, attacking from the north and south. The northern group was formed from units of the 6th Army, the southern group from units of the 4th Tank Army.

The northern group, striking on July 23, broke through the defense front of the 62nd Army and surrounded its two rifle divisions and a tank brigade. By July 26, the advanced units of the Germans reached the Don. The command of the Stalingrad Front organized a counterattack, in which mobile formations of the front reserve took part, as well as the 1st and 4th Tank Armies, which had not yet completed their formation. Tank armies were a new regular structure within the Red Army. It is unclear who exactly put forward the idea of ​​their formation, but in the documents, the head of the Main Armored Directorate Ya. N. Fedorenko was the first to voice this idea to Stalin. In the form in which tank armies were conceived, they did not last long, subsequently undergoing a major restructuring. But the fact that it was near Stalingrad that such a staff unit appeared is a fact. The 1st Tank Army attacked from the Kalach area on July 25, and the 4th from the villages of Trekhostrovskaya and Kachalinskaya on July 27.

Fierce fighting in this area lasted until August 7-8. It was possible to release the encircled units, but it was not possible to defeat the advancing Germans. The development of events was also negatively affected by the fact that the level of training of the personnel of the armies of the Stalingrad Front was low, and a number of errors in the coordination of actions made by the unit commanders.

In the south, Soviet troops managed to stop the Germans at the settlements of Surovikino and Rychkovsky. Nevertheless, the Nazis were able to break through the front of the 64th Army. To eliminate this breakthrough, on July 28, the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command ordered, no later than the 30th, the forces of the 64th Army, as well as two infantry divisions and a tank corps, to strike and defeat the enemy in the area of ​​the village of Nizhne-Chirskaya.

Despite the fact that the new units entered the battle on the move and their combat capabilities suffered as a result, by the indicated date the Red Army managed to push back the Germans and even create a threat of their encirclement. Unfortunately, the Nazis managed to bring fresh forces into the battle and provide assistance to the group. After this, the fighting flared up even hotter.

On July 28, 1942, another event occurred that cannot be left behind the scenes. On this day, the famous Order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR No. 227, also known as “Not a step back!” was adopted. He significantly toughened penalties for unauthorized retreat from the battlefield, introduced penal units for offending soldiers and commanders, and also introduced barrage detachments - special units that were engaged in detaining deserters and returning them to duty. This document, for all its harshness, was received quite positively by the troops and actually reduced the number of disciplinary violations in military units.

At the end of July, the 64th Army was nevertheless forced to retreat beyond the Don. German troops captured a number of bridgeheads on the left bank of the river. In the area of ​​the village of Tsymlyanskaya, the Nazis concentrated very serious forces: two infantry, two motorized and one tank division. Headquarters ordered the Stalingrad Front to drive the Germans to the western (right) bank and restore the defense line along the Don, but it was not possible to eliminate the breakthrough. On July 30, the Germans went on the offensive from the village of Tsymlyanskaya and by August 3 had significantly advanced, capturing the Remontnaya station, the station and the city of Kotelnikovo, and the village of Zhutovo. On these same days, the enemy's 6th Romanian Corps reached the Don. In the zone of operation of the 62nd Army, the Germans went on the offensive on August 7 in the direction of Kalach. Soviet troops were forced to retreat to the left bank of the Don. On August 15, the 4th Soviet Tank Army had to do the same, because the Germans were able to break through its front in the center and split the defense in half.

By August 16, the troops of the Stalingrad Front retreated beyond the Don and took up defense on the outer line of the city fortifications. On August 17, the Germans resumed their attack and by the 20th they managed to capture the crossings, as well as a bridgehead in the area of ​​​​the village of Vertyachiy. Attempts to discard or destroy them were unsuccessful. On August 23, the German group, with the support of aviation, broke through the defense front of the 62nd and 4th tank armies and advanced units reached the Volga. On this day, German planes made about 2,000 sorties. Many blocks of the city were in ruins, oil storage facilities were on fire, and about 40 thousand civilians were killed. The enemy broke through to the line Rynok - Orlovka - Gumrak - Peschanka. The fight moved under the walls of Stalingrad.

Fighting in the city

Having forced the Soviet troops to retreat almost to the outskirts of Stalingrad, the enemy threw six German and one Romanian infantry divisions, two tank divisions and one motorized division against the 62nd Army. The number of tanks in this Nazi group was approximately 500. The enemy was supported from the air by at least 1000 aircraft. The threat of capturing the city became tangible. To eliminate it, the Supreme High Command Headquarters transferred two completed armies to the defenders (10 rifle divisions, 2 tank brigades), re-equipped the 1st Guards Army (6 rifle divisions, 2 guards rifle, 2 tank brigades), and also subordinated the 16th to the Stalingrad Front air army.

On September 5 and 18, the troops of the Stalingrad Front (September 30 it will be renamed Donskoy) carried out two major operations, thanks to which they managed to weaken the German pressure on the city, pulling about 8 infantry, two tank and two motorized divisions. It was again impossible to achieve the complete defeat of Hitler’s units. Fierce battles for the internal defensive line continued for a long time.

Urban fighting began on September 13, 1942 and continued until November 19, when the Red Army launched a counteroffensive as part of Operation Uranus. From September 12, the defense of Stalingrad was entrusted to the 62nd Army, which was placed under the command of Lieutenant General V.I. Chuikov. This man, who before the start of the Battle of Stalingrad was considered insufficiently experienced for combat command, created a real hell for the enemy in the city.

On September 13, six infantry, three tank and two motorized German divisions were in the immediate vicinity of the city. Until September 18, there were fierce battles in the central and southern parts of the city. To the south of the railway station, the enemy onslaught was contained, but in the center the Germans drove out the Soviet troops all the way to the Krutoy ravine.

The battles for the station on September 17 were extremely fierce. During the day it changed hands four times. Here the Germans left 8 burned tanks and about a hundred dead. On September 19, the left wing of the Stalingrad Front tried to strike in the direction of the station with a further attack on Gumrak and Gorodishche. The advance failed, but a large enemy group was pinned down by the fighting, which made things easier for the units fighting in the center of Stalingrad. In general, the defense here was so strong that the enemy never managed to reach the Volga.

Realizing that they could not achieve success in the center of the city, the Germans concentrated troops further south to strike in the eastern direction, towards Mamayev Kurgan and the village of Krasny Oktyabr. On September 27, Soviet troops launched a pre-emptive attack, working in small infantry groups armed with light machine guns, petrol bombs and anti-tank rifles. Fierce fighting continued from September 27 to October 4. These were the same Stalingrad city battles, the stories about which chill the blood in the veins of even a person with strong nerves. Here the battles took place not for streets and blocks, sometimes not even for entire houses, but for individual floors and rooms. The guns fired directly at almost point-blank range, using incendiary mixtures and fire from short distances. Hand-to-hand combat has become commonplace, as in the Middle Ages, when edged weapons ruled the battlefield. During a week of continuous fighting, the Germans advanced 400 meters. Even those who were not intended for this had to fight: builders, soldiers of pontoon units. The Nazis gradually began to run out of steam. The same desperate and bloody battles raged near the Barrikady plant, near the village of Orlovka, on the outskirts of the Silikat plant.

At the beginning of October, the territory occupied by the Red Army in Stalingrad was so reduced that it was completely covered by machine gun and artillery fire. The fighting troops were supplied from the opposite bank of the Volga with the help of literally everything that could float: boats, steamships, boats. German aircraft continuously bombed the crossings, making this task even more difficult.

And while the soldiers of the 62nd Army pinned down and crushed enemy troops in battles, the High Command was already preparing plans for a large offensive operation aimed at destroying the Stalingrad group of Nazis.

"Uranus" and the surrender of Paulus

By the time the Soviet counteroffensive began near Stalingrad, in addition to Paulus’s 6th Army, there were also von Salmuth’s 2nd Army, Hoth’s 4th Panzer Army, the Italian, Romanian and Hungarian armies.

On November 19, the Red Army launched a large-scale offensive operation on three fronts, codenamed “Uranus”. It was opened by about three and a half thousand guns and mortars. The artillery barrage lasted about two hours. Subsequently, it was in memory of this artillery preparation that November 19 became the professional holiday of artillerymen.

On November 23, an encirclement ring closed around the 6th Army and the main forces of Hoth's 4th Panzer Army. On November 24, about 30 thousand Italians capitulated near the village of Raspopinskaya. By November 24, the territory occupied by the encircled Nazi units occupied about 40 kilometers from west to east, and about 80 from north to south. Further “densification” progressed slowly, as the Germans organized a dense defense and clung to literally every piece of land. Paulus insisted on a breakthrough, but Hitler categorically forbade it. He had not yet lost hope that he would be able to help those around him from the outside.

The rescue mission was entrusted to Erich von Manstein. Army Group Don, which he commanded, was supposed to release the besieged army of Paulus in December 1942 with a blow from Kotelnikovsky and Tormosin. On December 12, Operation Winter Storm began. Moreover, the Germans did not go on the offensive with full strength - in fact, by the time the offensive began, they were only able to field one Wehrmacht tank division and a Romanian infantry division. Subsequently, two more incomplete tank divisions and a number of infantry joined the offensive. On December 19, Manstein's troops clashed with Rodion Malinovsky's 2nd Guards Army, and by December 25, the "Winter Storm" had died down in the snowy Don steppes. The Germans rolled back to their original positions, suffering heavy losses.

Paulus's group was doomed. It seemed that the only person who refused to admit this was Hitler. He was categorically against retreat when it was still possible, and did not want to hear about capitulation when the mousetrap was finally and irrevocably slammed shut. Even when the Soviet troops captured the last airfield from which Luftwaffe aircraft supplied the army (extremely weak and unstable), he continued to demand resistance from Paulus and his men.

On January 10, 1943, the final operation of the Red Army to eliminate the Stalingrad group of Nazis began. It was called "The Ring". On January 9, the day before it began, the Soviet command presented Friedrich Paulus with an ultimatum, demanding to surrender. On the same day, by chance, the commander of the 14th Panzer Corps, General Hube, arrived in the cauldron. He conveyed that Hitler demanded that resistance continue until a new attempt was made to break through the encirclement from the outside. Paulus carried out the order and rejected the ultimatum.

The Germans resisted as best they could. The Soviet offensive was even stopped from January 17 to 22. After the regrouping, parts of the Red Army again went on the attack and on January 26, Hitler’s forces were split into two parts. The northern group was located in the area of ​​the Barricades plant, and the southern group, which included Paulus himself, was located in the city center. Paulus's command post was located in the basement of the central department store.

On January 30, 1943, Hitler awarded Friedrich Paulus the rank of field marshal. According to the unwritten Prussian military tradition, field marshals never surrendered. So, on the part of the Fuhrer, this was a hint at how the commander of the encircled army should have ended his military career. However, Paulus decided that it was better not to understand some hints. On January 31 at noon, Paulus surrendered. It took two more days to eliminate the remnants of Hitler's troops in Stalingrad. On February 2 it was all over. The Battle of Stalingrad is over.

About 90 thousand German soldiers and officers were captured. The Germans lost about 800 thousand killed, 160 tanks and about 200 aircraft were captured.

The Battle of Stalingrad is one of the largest battles of the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War, which marked the beginning of a radical change in the course of the war. The battle was the first large-scale defeat of the Wehrmacht, accompanied by the surrender of a large military group.

After the counter-offensive of Soviet troops near Moscow in the winter of 1941/42. the front has stabilized. When developing the plan for the new campaign, A. Hitler decided to abandon the new offensive near Moscow, which the General Staff insisted on, and concentrate his main efforts on the southern direction. The Wehrmacht was tasked with defeating Soviet troops in the Donbass and Don, breaking through to the North Caucasus and capturing the oil fields of the North Caucasus and Azerbaijan. Hitler insisted that, having lost its source of oil, the Red Army would not be able to wage an active fight due to lack of fuel, and for its part, the Wehrmacht, for a successful offensive in the center, needed additional fuel, which Hitler expected to receive from the Caucasus.

However, after the offensive near Kharkov was unsuccessful for the Red Army and, as a consequence, the improvement of the strategic situation for the Wehrmacht, Hitler in July 1942 ordered Army Group South to be divided into two parts, assigning each of them an independent task. Army Group "A" of Field Marshal Wilhelm List (1st Panzer, 11th and 17th armies) continued to develop the offensive in the North Caucasus, and Army Group "B" of Colonel General Baron Maximilian von Weichs (2nd, The 6th Army, later the 4th Tank Army, as well as the 2nd Hungarian and 8th Italian armies) received orders to break through to the Volga, take Stalingrad and cut off the lines of communication between the southern flank of the Soviet front and the center, thereby isolating it from the main group (if successful, Army Group B was supposed to strike along the Volga towards Astrakhan). As a result, from that moment on, Army Groups A and B advanced in divergent directions, with the gap between them constantly widening.

The task of directly capturing Stalingrad was assigned to the 6th Army, which was considered the best in the Wehrmacht (commander - Lieutenant General F. Paulus), whose actions were supported from the air by the 4th Air Fleet. Initially, it was opposed by the troops of the 62nd (commanders: Major General V.Ya. Kolpakchi, from August 3 - Lieutenant General A.I. Lopatin, from September 9 - Lieutenant General V.I. Chuikov) and 64th ( commanders: Lieutenant General V.I. Chuikov, from July 23 - Major General M.S. Shumilov) armies, which, together with the 63rd, 21st, 28th, 38th, 57th and 8th 1st Air Army on July 12, 1942 formed a new Stalingrad Front (commander: Marshal of the Soviet Union S.K. Timoshenko, from July 23 - Lieutenant General V.N. Gordov, from August 10 - Colonel General A.I. Eremenko ).

The first day of the Battle of Stalingrad is considered to be July 17, when those advanced to the river line. Then the advanced detachments of the Soviet troops came into contact with German units, which, however, did not show much activity, since in those days preparations for the offensive were just being completed. (The first combat contact took place on July 16 - at the positions of the 147th Infantry Division of the 62nd Army.) On July 18-19, units of the 62nd and 64th armies reached the front lines. For five days there were local battles, although German troops reached the main line of defense of the Stalingrad Front.

At the same time, the Soviet command used the lull at the front to speed up the preparation of Stalingrad for the defense: the local population was mobilized, sent to build field fortifications (four defensive lines were equipped), and the formation of militia units was deployed.

On July 23, the German offensive began: parts of the northern flank were the first to attack, and two days later they were joined by the southern flank. The defense of the 62nd Army was broken through, several divisions were surrounded, the army and the entire Stalingrad Front found themselves in an extremely difficult situation. Under these conditions, on July 28, People's Commissar of Defense Order No. 227 was issued - “Not a step back!”, prohibiting the withdrawal of troops without an order. In accordance with this order, the formation of penal companies and battalions, as well as barrage detachments, began at the front. At the same time, the Soviet command strengthened the Stalingrad group by all possible means: during a week of fighting, 11 rifle divisions, 4 tank corps, 8 separate tank brigades were sent here, and on July 31, the 51st Army, Major General T.K., was also transferred to the Stalingrad Front. Kolomiets. On the same day, the German command also strengthened its group by deploying the 4th Panzer Army of Colonel General G. Hoth, which was advancing to the south, to Stalingrad. Already from this moment, the German command declared the task of capturing Stalingrad a priority and crucial for the success of the entire offensive on the southern sector of the Soviet-German front.

Although success on the whole was on the side of the Wehrmacht and the Soviet troops, suffering heavy losses, were forced to retreat, nevertheless, thanks to the resistance, the plan to break through to the city on the move through Kalach-on-Don was thwarted, as well as the plan to encircle the Soviet group in the bend Don. The pace of the offensive - by August 10, the Germans had advanced only 60-80 km - did not suit Hitler, who stopped the offensive on August 17, ordering the start of preparations for a new operation. The most combat-ready German units, primarily tank and motorized formations, were concentrated in the directions of the main attack; the flanks were weakened by the transfer of them to Allied troops.

On August 19, German troops again went on the offensive and resumed their offensive. On the 22nd they crossed the Don, gaining a foothold on a 45-km bridgehead. For the next XIV Tank Corps, General. G. von Withersheim to the Volga on the Latoshinka-Market section, finding himself only 3 km from the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, and cut off parts of the 62nd Army from the main Red Army. At the same time, at 16:18, a massive air strike was launched on the city itself; the bombing continued on August 24, 25, 26. The city was almost completely destroyed.

The Germans' attempts to take the city from the north in the following days were stopped thanks to the stubborn resistance of Soviet troops, who, despite the enemy's superiority in manpower and equipment, managed to launch a series of counterattacks and stop the offensive on August 28. After this, the next day the German command attacked the city from the southwest. Here the offensive developed successfully: German troops broke through the defensive line and began to enter the rear of the Soviet group. To avoid inevitable encirclement, Eremenko withdrew his troops to the internal line of defense on September 2. On September 12, the defense of Stalingrad was officially entrusted to the 62nd (operating in the northern and central parts of the city) and 64th (in the southern part of Stalingrad) armies. Now the battles were going on directly for Stalingrad.

On September 13, the 6th German Army struck a new blow - now the troops were tasked with breaking through to the central part of the city. By the evening of the 14th, the Germans captured the ruins of the railway station and, at the junction of the 62nd and 64th armies in the Kuporosny area, broke through to the Volga. By September 26, the German troops entrenched in the occupied bridgeheads completely swept the Volga, which remained the only route for delivering reinforcements and ammunition to the units of the 62nd and 64th armies defending in the city.

The fighting in the city entered a protracted phase. There was a fierce struggle for Mamayev Kurgan, the Red October plant, the tractor plant, the Barrikady artillery plant, and individual houses and buildings. The ruins changed hands several times; in such conditions, the use of small arms was limited, and soldiers often engaged in hand-to-hand combat. The advance of the German troops, who had to overcome the heroic resistance of Soviet soldiers, developed extremely slowly: from September 27 to October 8, despite all the efforts, the German strike group managed to advance only 400-600 m. In order to turn the situation around, Gen. Paulus pulled additional forces into this area, increasing the number of his troops in the main direction to 90 thousand people, whose actions were supported by up to 2.3 thousand guns and mortars, about 300 tanks and about thousand aircraft. The Germans outnumbered the 62nd Army in personnel and artillery by 1:1.65, in tanks by 1:3.75, and in aviation by 1:5.2.

German troops launched a decisive offensive on the morning of October 14. The German 6th Army launched a decisive offensive against the Soviet bridgeheads near the Volga. On October 15, the Germans captured the tractor plant and broke through to the Volga, cutting off the 62nd Army group that was fighting north of the plant. However, the Soviet soldiers did not lay down their arms, but continued to resist, creating another hotbed of fighting. The position of the city’s defenders was complicated by a lack of food and ammunition: with the onset of cold weather, transportation across the Volga under constant enemy fire became even more difficult

The last decisive attempt to take control of the right bank of Stalingrad was made by Paulus on November 11. The Germans managed to capture the southern part of the Barrikady plant and take a 500-meter section of the Volga bank. After this, the German troops were completely exhausted and the fighting moved into a positional stage. By this time, Chuikov’s 62nd Army held three bridgeheads: in the area of ​​the village of Rynok; the eastern part of the Red October plant (700 by 400 m), which was held by the 138th Infantry Division of Colonel I.I. Lyudnikova; 8 km along the Volga bank from the Red October plant to 9 January Square, incl. northern and eastern slopes of Mamayev Kurgan. (The southern part of the city continued to be controlled by units of the 64th Army.)

Stalingrad strategic offensive operation (November 19, 1942 - February 2, 1943)

The plan for encircling the Stalingrad enemy group - Operation Uranus - was approved by I.V. Stalin on November 13, 1942. It envisaged attacks from bridgeheads north (on the Don) and south (Sarpinsky Lakes region) of Stalingrad, where a significant part of the defending forces were Germany's allies, to break through the defenses and envelop the enemy in converging directions to Kalach-on-Don - Soviet. The 2nd stage of the operation provided for the sequential compression of the ring and the destruction of the encircled group. The operation was to be carried out by the forces of three fronts: Southwestern (General N.F. Vatutin), Don (General K.K. Rokossovsky) and Stalingrad (General A.I. Eremenko) - 9 field, 1 tank and 4 air armies. Fresh reinforcements were poured into the front units, as well as divisions transferred from the reserve of the Supreme High Command, large reserves of weapons and ammunition were created (even to the detriment of the supply of the group defending in Stalingrad), regroupings and the formation of strike groups in the directions of the main attack were carried out secretly from the enemy.

On November 19, as envisaged by the plan, after powerful artillery barrage, the troops of the Southwestern and Don Fronts went on the offensive, and on November 20, the troops of the Stalingrad Front. The battle developed rapidly: the Romanian troops occupying areas located in the direction of the main attacks could not stand it and fled. The Soviet command, introducing pre-prepared mobile groups into the breakthrough, developed an offensive. On the morning of November 23, troops of the Stalingrad Front took Kalach-on-Don; on the same day, units of the 4th Tank Corps of the Southwestern Front and the 4th Mechanized Corps of the Stalingrad Front met in the area of ​​the Sovetsky farm. The encirclement ring was closed. Then an internal encirclement front was formed from rifle units, and tank and motorized rifle units began to push back the few German units on the flanks, forming an external front. The German group was surrounded - parts of the 6th and 4th tank armies - under the command of General F. Paulus: 7 corps, 22 divisions, 284 thousand people.

On November 24, the Soviet Headquarters gave the order to the Southwestern, Don and Stalingrad fronts to destroy the Stalingrad group of Germans. On the same day, Paulus approached Hitler with a proposal to begin a breakthrough from Stalingrad in a southeast direction. However, Hitler categorically prohibited a breakthrough, saying that by fighting surrounded by the 6th Army, it was drawing large enemy forces onto itself, and ordered the defense to continue, waiting for the encircled group to be released. Then all German troops in this area (both inside and outside the ring) were united into the new Army Group Don, headed by Field Marshal E. von Manstein.

The attempt of the Soviet troops to quickly eliminate the encircled group, squeezing it from all sides, failed, and therefore military operations were suspended and the General Staff began the systematic development of a new operation, codenamed “Ring”.

For its part, the German command forced the implementation of Operation Winter Thunderstorm (Wintergewitter) to relieve the blockade of the 6th Army. For this, Manstein formed a strong group in the area of ​​​​the village of Kotelnikovsky under the command of General G. Hoth, the main striking force of which was the LVII Tank Corps of General of the Tank Forces F. Kirchner. The breakthrough was to be carried out in the area occupied by the 51st Army, whose troops were exhausted by battles and were severely short-staffed. Having gone on the offensive on December 12, the Goth group failed the Soviet defense and crossed the river on the 13th. Aksai, however, then got bogged down in battles near the village of Verkhne-Kumsky. Only on December 19, the Germans, having brought up reinforcements, managed to push back the Soviet troops to the river. Myshkova. In connection with the emerging threatening situation, the Soviet command transferred part of the forces from the reserve, weakening other sectors of the front, and was forced to reconsider the plans for Operation Saturn in terms of their limitations. However, by this time the Hoth group, which had lost more than half of its armored vehicles, was exhausted. Hitler refused to give the order for a counter breakthrough of the Stalingrad group, which was 35-40 km away, continuing to demand that Stalingrad be held to the last soldier.

On December 16, Soviet troops with the forces of the Southwestern and Voronezh fronts began carrying out Operation Little Saturn. The enemy's defenses were broken through and mobile units were introduced into the breakthrough. Manstein was forced to urgently begin transferring troops to the Middle Don, weakening, among other things. and the group of G. Goth, which was finally stopped on December 22. Following this, the troops of the Southwestern Front expanded the breakthrough zone and threw the enemy back 150-200 km and reached the Novaya Kalitva - Millerovo - Morozovsk line. As a result of the operation, the danger of releasing the blockade of the encircled Stalingrad enemy group was completely eliminated

The implementation of the Operation Ring plan was entrusted to the troops of the Don Front. On January 8, 1943, the commander of the 6th Army, General Paulus, was presented with an ultimatum: if the German troops did not lay down their arms by 10 o’clock on January 9, then all those surrounded would be destroyed. Paulus ignored the ultimatum. On January 10, after a powerful artillery barrage, the Don Front went on the offensive; the main blow was delivered by the 65th Army of Lieutenant General P.I. Batova. However, the Soviet command underestimated the possibility of resistance from the encircled group: the Germans, relying on a deeply echeloned defense, put up desperate resistance. Due to new circumstances, on January 17, the Soviet offensive was suspended and a regrouping of troops and preparations for a new strike began, which followed on January 22. On this day, the last airfield was taken, through which the 6th Army communicated with the outside world. After this, the situation with the supply of the Stalingrad group, which, on Hitler’s orders, was carried out by air by the Luftwaffe, became even more complicated: if before it was also completely insufficient, now the situation has become critical. On January 26, in the area of ​​Mamayev Kurgan, the troops of the 62nd and 65th armies, advancing towards each other, united. The Stalingrad group of Germans was cut into two parts, which, in accordance with the operation plan, were to be destroyed in parts. On January 31, the southern group capitulated, along with Paulus, who was promoted to field marshal general on January 30. On February 2, the northern group, commanded by General K. Strecker, laid down its arms. This ended the Battle of Stalingrad. 24 generals, 2,500 officers, more than 91 thousand soldiers were captured, more than 7 thousand guns and mortars, 744 aircraft, 166 tanks, 261 armored vehicles, more than 80 thousand cars, etc. were captured.

Results

As a result of the victory of the Red Army in the Battle of Stalingrad, it managed to seize the strategic initiative from the enemy, which created the preconditions for preparing a new large-scale offensive and, in the future, the complete defeat of the aggressor. The battle marked the beginning of a radical turning point in the war, and also contributed to the strengthening of the international authority of the USSR. In addition, such a serious defeat undermined the authority of Germany and its armed forces and contributed to increased resistance on the part of the enslaved peoples of Europe.

Dates: 17.07.1942 - 2.02.1943

Place: USSR, Stalingrad region

Results: Victory of the USSR

Opponents: USSR, Germany and its allies

Commanders: A.M. Vasilevsky, N.F. Vatutin, A.I. Eremenko, K.K. Rokossovsky, V.I. Chuikov, E. von Manstein, M. von Weichs, F. Paulus, G. Goth.

Red Army: 187 thousand people, 2.2 thousand guns and mortars, 230 tanks, 454 aircraft

Germany and allies: 270 thousand people, approx. 3000 guns and mortars, 250 tanks and self-propelled guns, 1200 aircraft

Strengths of the parties(at the start of the counteroffensive):

Red Army: 1,103,000 people, 15,501 guns and mortars, 1,463 tanks, 1,350 aircraft

Germany and its allies: approx. 1,012,000 people (including approximately 400 thousand Germans, 143 thousand Romanians, 220 Italians, 200 Hungarians, 52 thousand Hiwis), 10,290 guns and mortars, 675 tanks, 1,216 aircraft

Losses:

USSR: 1,129,619 people. (including 478,741 irrevocable people, 650,878 ambulances), 15,728 guns and mortars, 4,341 tanks and self-propelled guns, 2,769 aircraft

Germany and its allies: 1,078,775 people. (including 841 thousand people - irrevocable and sanitary, 237,775 people - prisoners)

Of course, 1 German soldier can kill 10 Soviet ones. But when the 11th comes, what will he do?

Franz Halder

The main goal of Germany's summer offensive campaign was Stalingrad. However, on the way to the city it was necessary to overcome the Crimean defense. And here the Soviet command unwittingly, of course, made life easier for the enemy. In May 1942, a massive Soviet offensive began in the Kharkov area. The problem is that this attack was unprepared and turned into a terrible disaster. More than 200 thousand people were killed, 775 tanks and 5,000 guns were lost. As a result, complete strategic advantage in the southern sector of hostilities was in the hands of Germany. The 6th and 4th German tank armies crossed the Don and began to advance deeper into the country. The Soviet army retreated, not having time to cling to advantageous defense lines. Surprisingly, for the second year in a row, the German offensive was completely unexpected by the Soviet command. The only advantage of 1942 was that now the Soviet units did not allow themselves to be easily surrounded.

Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad

On July 17, 1942, troops of the 62nd and 64th Soviet armies entered battle on the Chir River. In the future, historians will call this battle the beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad. For a correct understanding of further events, it is necessary to note that the successes of the German army in the offensive campaign of 1942 were so amazing that Hitler decided, simultaneously with the offensive in the South, to intensify the offensive in the North, capturing Leningrad. This is not just a historical retreat, because as a result of this decision, the 11th German Army under the command of Manstein was transferred from Sevastopol to Leningrad. Manstein himself, as well as Halder, opposed this decision, arguing that the German army might not have enough reserves on the southern front. But this was very important, since Germany was simultaneously solving several problems in the south:

• The capture of Stalingrad as a symbol of the fall of the leaders of the Soviet people.
• Capture of the southern regions with oil. This was a more important and more mundane task.

July 23, Hitler signs directive number 45, in which he indicates the main goal of the German offensive: Leningrad, Stalingrad, the Caucasus.

On July 24, Wehrmacht troops captured Rostov-on-Don and Novocherkassk. Now the gates to the Caucasus were completely open, and for the first time there was a threat of losing the entire Soviet South. The German 6th Army continued its movement towards Stalingrad. Panic was noticeable among the Soviet troops. In some sectors of the front, troops of the 51st, 62nd, 64th armies withdrew and retreated even when enemy reconnaissance groups approached. And these are only those cases that are documented. This forced Stalin to begin shuffling the generals in this sector of the front and to undertake a general change in the structure. Instead of the Bryansk Front, the Voronezh and Bryansk Fronts were formed. Vatutin and Rokossovsky were appointed commanders, respectively. But even these decisions could not stop the panic and retreat of the Red Army. The Germans were advancing towards the Volga. As a result, on July 28, 1942, Stalin issued order No. 227, which was called “not a step back.”

At the end of July, General Jodl announced that the key to the Caucasus was in Stalingrad. This was enough for Hitler to make the most important decision of the entire offensive summer campaign on July 31, 1942. According to this decision, the 4th Tank Army was transferred to Stalingrad.

Map of the Battle of Stalingrad

The order “Not a step back!”

The peculiarity of the order was to combat alarmism. Anyone who retreated without orders was to be shot on the spot. In fact, it was an element of regression, but this repression justified itself in terms of being able to instill fear and force Soviet soldiers to fight even more courageously. The only problem was that Order 227 did not analyze the reasons for the defeat of the Red Army during the summer of 1942, but simply carried out repressions against ordinary soldiers. This order emphasizes the hopelessness of the situation that developed at that point in time. The order itself emphasizes:

• Despair. The Soviet command now realized that the failure of the summer of 1942 threatened the existence of the entire USSR. Just a few jerks and Germany will win.
• Contradiction. This order simply shifted all responsibility from Soviet generals to ordinary officers and soldiers. However, the reasons for the failures of the summer of 1942 lie precisely in the miscalculations of the command, which was unable to foresee the direction of the enemy’s main attack and made significant mistakes.
• Cruelty. According to this order, everyone was shot, indiscriminately. Now any retreat of the army was punishable by execution. And no one understood why the soldier fell asleep - they shot everyone.

Today, many historians say that Stalin’s order No. 227 became the basis for victory in the Battle of Stalingrad. In fact, it is impossible to answer this question unequivocally. History, as we know, does not tolerate the subjunctive mood, but it is important to understand that Germany by that time was at war with almost the entire world, and its advance towards Stalingrad was extremely difficult, during which the Wehrmacht troops lost about half of their regular strength. To this we must also add that the Soviet soldier knew how to die, which is repeatedly emphasized in the memoirs of Wehrmacht generals.

Progress of the battle

In August 1942, it became absolutely clear that the main target of the German attack was Stalingrad. The city began to prepare for defense.

In the second half of August, reinforced troops of the 6th German Army under the command of Friedrich Paulus (then just a general) and troops of the 4th Panzer Army under the command of Hermann Gott moved to Stalingrad. On the part of the Soviet Union, armies took part in the defense of Stalingrad: the 62nd Army under the command of Anton Lopatin and the 64th Army under the command of Mikhail Shumilov. In the south of Stalingrad there was the 51st Army of General Kolomiets and the 57th Army of General Tolbukhin.

August 23, 1942 became the most terrible day of the first part of the defense of Stalingrad. On this day, the German Luftwaffe launched a powerful airstrike on the city. Historical documents indicate that more than 2,000 sorties were flown on that day alone. The next day, the evacuation of civilians across the Volga began. It should be noted that on August 23, German troops managed to reach the Volga in a number of sectors of the front. It was a narrow strip of land north of Stalingrad, but Hitler was delighted with the success. These successes were achieved by the 14th Tank Corps of the Wehrmacht.

Despite this, the commander of the 14th Panzer Corps, von Wittersghen, addressed General Paulus with a report in which he said that it was better for German troops to leave this city, since it was impossible to achieve success with such enemy resistance. Von Wittersghen was so impressed by the courage of the defenders of Stalingrad. For this, the general was immediately removed from command and put on trial.

On August 25, 1942, fighting began in the vicinity of Stalingrad. In fact, the Battle of Stalingrad, which we are briefly reviewing today, began on this very day. The battles were fought not only for every house, but literally for every floor. Situations were often observed where “layer pies” were formed: there were German troops on one floor of the house, and Soviet troops on the other floor. Thus began the urban battle, where German tanks no longer had their decisive advantage.

On September 14, the troops of the 71st German Infantry Division, commanded by General Hartmann, managed to reach the Volga along a narrow corridor. If we remember what Hitler said about the reasons for the offensive campaign of 1942, then the main goal was achieved - shipping on the Volga was stopped. However, the Fuhrer, influenced by the successes during the offensive campaign, demanded that the Battle of Stalingrad be completed with the complete defeat of the Soviet troops. As a result, a situation arose where Soviet troops could not retreat due to Stalin’s order 227, and German troops were forced to attack because Hitler maniacally wanted it.

It became obvious that the Battle of Stalingrad would become the place where one of the army completely died. The general balance of forces was clearly not in favor of the German side, since General Paulus’s army had 7 divisions, the number of which was decreasing every day. At the same time, the Soviet command transferred 6 fresh divisions here, fully equipped. By the end of September 1942, in the Stalingrad area, 7 divisions of General Paulus were opposed by about 15 Soviet divisions. And these are only official army units, which do not take into account the militias, of which there were a lot in the city.

On September 13, 1942, the battle for the center of Stalingrad began. Fights were fought for every street, for every house, for every floor. There were no more buildings left in the city that were not destroyed. To demonstrate the events of those days, it is necessary to mention the reports for September 14:

• 7 hours 30 minutes. German troops reached Akademicheskaya Street.
• 7 hours 40 minutes. The first battalion of mechanized forces is completely cut off from the main forces.
• 7 hours 50 minutes. Fierce fighting is taking place in the area of ​​Mamayev Kurgan and the station.
• 8 ocloc'k. The station was taken by German troops.
• 8 hours 40 minutes. We managed to recapture the station.
• 9 hours 40 minutes. The station was recaptured by the Germans.
• 10 hours 40 minutes. The enemy is half a kilometer from the command post.
• 13 hours 20 minutes. The station is ours again.

And this is only half of one typical day in the battles for Stalingrad. It was an urban war, for which Paulus’ troops were not prepared for all the horrors. In total, between September and November, more than 700 attacks by German troops were repelled!

On the night of September 15, the 13th Guards Rifle Division, commanded by General Rodimtsev, was transported to Stalingrad. On the first day of fighting of this division alone, it lost more than 500 people. At this time, the Germans managed to make significant progress towards the city center, and also captured height “102” or, more simply, Mamayev Kurgan. The 62nd Army, which conducted the main defensive battles, these days had a command post, which was located only 120 meters away from the enemy.

During the second half of September 1942, the Battle of Stalingrad continued with the same ferocity. At this time, many German generals were already perplexed why they were fighting for this city and for every street of it. At the same time, Halder had repeatedly emphasized by this time that the German army was in an extreme state of overwork. In particular, the general spoke about an inevitable crisis, including due to the weakness of the flanks, where the Italians were very reluctant to fight. Halder openly appealed to Hitler, saying that the German army did not have the reserves and resources for a simultaneous offensive campaign in Stalingrad and the northern Caucasus. By a decision of September 24, Franz Halder was removed from his post as Chief of the General Staff of the German Army. Kurt Zeisler took his place.

During September and October, there was no significant change in the situation at the front. Likewise, the Battle of Stalingrad was one huge cauldron in which Soviet and German troops destroyed each other. The confrontation reached its climax, when the troops were only a few meters away from each other, and the battles were literally point-blank. Many historians note the irrationality of the conduct of military operations during the Battle of Stalingrad. In fact, this was the moment when it was no longer the art of war that came to the fore, but human qualities, the desire to survive and the desire to win.

During the entire defensive phase of the Battle of Stalingrad, the troops of the 62nd and 64th armies almost completely changed their composition. The only things that did not change were the name of the army, as well as the composition of the headquarters. As for ordinary soldiers, it was later calculated that the life of one soldier during the Battle of Stalingrad was 7.5 hours.

Start of offensive actions

At the beginning of November 1942, the Soviet command already understood that the German offensive on Stalingrad had exhausted itself. The Wehrmacht troops no longer had the same power, and were pretty battered in battle. Therefore, more and more reserves began to flock to the city in order to conduct a counter-offensive operation. These reserves began to secretly accumulate in the northern and southern outskirts of the city.

On November 11, 1942, Wehrmacht troops consisting of 5 divisions, led by General Paulus, made the last attempt at a decisive assault on Stalingrad. It is important to note that this offensive was very close to victory. In almost all sectors of the front, the Germans managed to advance to such a stage that no more than 100 meters remained to the Volga. But the Soviet troops managed to hold back the offensive, and in the middle of November 12 it became clear that the offensive had exhausted itself.

Preparations for the counter-offensive of the Red Army were carried out in the strictest secrecy. This is quite understandable, and it can be clearly demonstrated using one very simple example. It is still absolutely unknown who is the author of the outline of the offensive operation at Stalingrad, but it is known for certain that the map of the transition of Soviet troops to the offensive existed in a single copy. Also noteworthy is the fact that literally 2 weeks before the start of the Soviet offensive, postal communications between families and fighters were completely suspended.

On November 19, 1942, at 6:30 a.m. in the morning, artillery preparation began. After this, Soviet troops went on the offensive. Thus began the famous Operation Uranus. And here it is important to note that this development of events was completely unexpected for the Germans. At this point the disposition was as follows:

• 90% of the territory of Stalingrad was under the control of Paulus' troops.
• Soviet troops controlled only 10% of the cities located near the Volga.

General Paulus stated later that on the morning of November 19, the German headquarters was confident that the Russian offensive was purely tactical in nature. And only in the evening of that day the general realized that his entire army was under threat of encirclement. The response was lightning fast. An order was given to the 48th Tank Corps, which was in the German reserve, to immediately move into battle. And here, Soviet historians say that the late entry of the 48th Army into battle was due to the fact that field mice chewed through the electronics in the tanks, and precious time was lost while repairing them.

On November 20, a massive offensive began in the south of the Stalingrad Front. The front line of the German defense was almost completely destroyed thanks to a powerful artillery strike, but in the depths of the defense General Eremenko’s troops encountered terrible resistance.

On November 23, near the city of Kalach, a German group of troops totaling about 320 people was surrounded. Subsequently, within a few days, it was possible to completely encircle the entire German group located in the Stalingrad area. It was initially assumed that about 90,000 Germans were surrounded, but it soon became obvious that this number was disproportionately larger. The total encirclement was about 300 thousand people, 2000 guns, 100 tanks, 9000 trucks.

Hitler had an important task ahead of him. It was necessary to determine what to do with the army: leave it surrounded or make attempts to get out of it. At this time, Albert Speer assured Hitler that he could easily provide the troops surrounded by Stalingrad with everything they needed through aviation. Hitler was just waiting for such a message, because he still believed that the Battle of Stalingrad could be won. As a result, General Paulus's 6th Army was forced to take up a perimeter defense. In fact, this strangled the outcome of the battle. After all, the main trump cards of the German army were on the offensive, and not on defense. However, the German group that went on the defensive was very strong. But at this time it became clear that Albert Speer’s promise to equip the 6th Army with everything necessary was impossible to fulfill.

It turned out to be impossible to immediately capture the positions of the 6th German Army, which was on the defensive. The Soviet command realized that a long and difficult assault lay ahead. At the beginning of December, it became obvious that a huge number of troops were surrounded and had enormous strength. It was possible to win in such a situation only by attracting no less force. Moreover, very good planning was necessary to achieve success against an organized German army.

At this point, in early December 1942, the German command created the Don Army Group. Erich von Manstein took command of this army. The army's task was simple - to break through to the troops who were surrounded in order to help them get out of it. 13 tank divisions moved to help Paulus' troops. Operation Winter Storm began on December 12, 1942. Additional tasks of the troops that moved in the direction of the 6th Army were: defense of Rostov-on-Don. After all, the fall of this city would indicate a complete and decisive failure on the entire southern front. The first 4 days of this offensive by German troops were successful.

Stalin, after the successful implementation of Operation Uranus, demanded that his generals develop a new plan for encircling the entire German group located in the Rostov-on-Don area. As a result, on December 16, a new offensive of the Soviet army began, during which the 8th Italian Army was defeated in the first days. However, the troops failed to reach Rostov, since the movement of German tanks towards Stalingrad forced the Soviet command to change their plans. At this time, the 2nd Infantry Army of General Malinovsky was removed from its positions and was concentrated in the area of ​​the Meshkova River, where one of the decisive events of December 1942 took place. It was here that Malinovsky's troops managed to stop German tank units. By December 23, the thinned tank corps could no longer move forward, and it became obvious that it would not reach Paulus’s troops.

Surrender of German troops

On January 10, 1943, a decisive operation began to destroy German troops who were surrounded. One of the most important events of these days dates back to January 14, when the only German airfield that was still operational at that time was captured. After this, it became obvious that General Paulus’s army did not even have a theoretical chance of escaping the encirclement. After this, it became absolutely obvious to everyone that the Battle of Stalingrad was won by the Soviet Union. These days, Hitler, speaking on German radio, declared that Germany needed general mobilization.

On January 24, Paulus sent a telegram to German headquarters, saying that the catastrophe at Stalingrad was inevitable. He literally demanded permission to surrender in order to save those German soldiers who were still alive. Hitler forbade surrender.

On February 2, 1943, the Battle of Stalingrad was completed. More than 91,000 German soldiers surrendered. 147,000 dead Germans lay on the battlefield. Stalingrad was completely destroyed. As a result, in early February, the Soviet command was forced to create a special Stalingrad group of troops, which was engaged in clearing the city of corpses, as well as demining.

We briefly reviewed the Battle of Stalingrad, which brought a radical turning point in the course of the Second World War. The Germans had not only suffered a crushing defeat, but they were now required to make incredible efforts in order to maintain the strategic initiative on their side. But this no longer happened.

The Battle of Stalingrad is a battle of the Second World War, an important episode of the Great Patriotic War between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht with its allies. Occurred on the territory of modern Voronezh, Rostov, Volgograd regions and the Republic of Kalmykia of the Russian Federation from July 17, 1942 to February 2, 1943. The German offensive lasted from July 17 to November 18, 1942, its goal was to capture the Great Bend of the Don, the Volgodonsk Isthmus and Stalingrad (modern Volgograd). The implementation of this plan would block transport links between the central regions of the USSR and the Caucasus, creating a springboard for a further offensive to seize the Caucasian oil fields. During July-November, the Soviet army managed to force the Germans to get bogged down in defensive battles, during November-January they encircled a group of German troops as a result of Operation Uranus, repelled the unblocking German strike "Wintergewitter" and tightened the encirclement ring to the ruins of Stalingrad. Those surrounded capitulated on February 2, 1943, including 24 generals and Field Marshal Paulus.

This victory, after a series of defeats in 1941-1942, became a turning point in the war. In terms of the number of total irretrievable losses (killed, died from wounds in hospitals, missing) of the warring parties, the Battle of Stalingrad became one of the bloodiest in the history of mankind: Soviet soldiers - 478,741 (323,856 in the defensive phase of the battle and 154,885 in the offensive phase), German - about 300,000, German allies (Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, Croats) - about 200,000 people, the number of dead citizens cannot be determined even approximately, but the count is no less than tens of thousands. The military significance of the victory was the removal of the threat of the Wehrmacht seizing the Lower Volga region and the Caucasus, especially oil from the Baku fields. The political significance was the sobering of Germany's allies and their understanding of the fact that the war could not be won. Turkey abandoned the invasion of the USSR in the spring of 1943, Japan did not begin the planned Siberian Campaign, Romania (Mihai I), Italy (Badoglio), Hungary (Kallai) began to look for opportunities to exit the war and conclude a separate peace with Great Britain and the USA.

Previous Events

On June 22, 1941, Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union, quickly moving inland. Having been defeated during the battles in the summer and autumn of 1941, Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive during the Battle of Moscow in December 1941. German troops, exhausted by the stubborn resistance of the defenders of Moscow, not ready to wage a winter campaign, having an extensive and not completely controlled rear, were stopped on the approaches to the city and, during the counter-offensive of the Red Army, were thrown back 150-300 km to the west.

In the winter of 1941-1942, the Soviet-German front stabilized. Plans for a new offensive on Moscow were rejected by Adolf Hitler, despite the fact that German generals insisted on this option. However, Hitler believed that an attack on Moscow would be too predictable. For these reasons, the German command was considering plans for new operations in the north and south. An offensive to the south of the USSR would ensure control over the oil fields of the Caucasus (the area of ​​Grozny and Baku), as well as over the Volga River, the main artery connecting the European part of the country with the Transcaucasus and Central Asia. A German victory in the south of the Soviet Union could seriously undermine Soviet industry.

The Soviet leadership, encouraged by the successes near Moscow, tried to seize the strategic initiative and in May 1942 sent large forces to attack the Kharkov region. The offensive began from the Barvenkovsky ledge south of the city, which was formed as a result of the winter offensive of the Southwestern Front. A feature of this offensive was the use of a new Soviet mobile formation - a tank corps, which in terms of the number of tanks and artillery was approximately equivalent to a German tank division, but was significantly inferior to it in terms of the number of motorized infantry. Meanwhile, the Axis forces were planning an operation to encircle the Barvenkovo ​​salient.

The Red Army's offensive was so unexpected for the Wehrmacht that it almost ended in disaster for Army Group South. However, they decided not to change their plans and, thanks to the concentration of troops on the flanks of the ledge, broke through the defenses of the enemy troops. Most of the Southwestern Front was surrounded. In the subsequent three-week battles, better known as the “second battle of Kharkov,” the advancing units of the Red Army suffered a heavy defeat. According to German data, more than 240 thousand people were captured alone; according to Soviet archival data, the irretrievable losses of the Red Army amounted to 170,958 people, and a large number of heavy weapons were also lost during the operation. After the defeat near Kharkov, the front south of Voronezh was practically open. As a result, the way to Rostov-on-Don and the lands of the Caucasus was opened for German troops. The city itself was held by the Red Army in November 1941 with heavy losses, but now it was lost.

After the Red Army's Kharkov disaster in May 1942, Hitler intervened in strategic planning by ordering Army Group South to split into two. Army Group A was to continue the offensive into the North Caucasus. Army Group B, including the 6th Army of Friedrich Paulus and the 4th Panzer Army of G. Hoth, was supposed to move east towards the Volga and Stalingrad.

The capture of Stalingrad was very important for Hitler for several reasons. One of the main ones was that Stalingrad was a large industrial city on the banks of the Volga, along which and along which strategically important routes ran, connecting the Center of Russia with the southern regions of the USSR, including the Caucasus and Transcaucasia. Thus, the capture of Stalingrad would allow Germany to cut off water and land communications vital for the USSR, reliably cover the left flank of the forces advancing in the Caucasus and create serious problems with supplies for the Red Army units opposing them. Finally, the very fact that the city bore the name of Stalin - Hitler's main enemy - made the capture of the city a victory in terms of ideology and the inspiration of the soldiers, as well as the population of the Reich.

All major Wehrmacht operations were usually given a color code: Fall Rot (red version) - the operation to capture France, Fall Gelb (yellow version) - the operation to capture Belgium and the Netherlands, Fall Grün (green version) - Czechoslovakia, etc. Summer offensive The Wehrmacht in the USSR was given the code name “Fall Blau” - the blue version.

Operation Blue Option began with the offensive of Army Group South against the troops of the Bryansk Front to the north and the troops of the Southwestern Front to the south of Voronezh. The 6th and 17th armies of the Wehrmacht, as well as the 1st and 4th tank armies, took part in it.

It is worth noting that despite a two-month break in active hostilities, for the troops of the Bryansk Front the result was no less catastrophic than for the troops of the Southwestern Front, battered by the May battles. On the very first day of the operation, both Soviet fronts were broken through tens of kilometers in depth, and the enemy rushed to the Don. The Red Army in the vast desert steppes could oppose only small forces, and then a chaotic withdrawal of forces to the east began. Attempts to re-form the defense also ended in complete failure when German units entered the Soviet defensive positions from the flank. In mid-July, several divisions of the Red Army fell into a pocket in the south of the Voronezh region, near the city of Millerovo in the north of the Rostov region.

One of the important factors that thwarted the German plans was the failure of the offensive operation on Voronezh. Having easily captured the right bank part of the city, the Wehrmacht was unable to build on its success, and the front line aligned with the Voronezh River. The left bank remained with the Soviet troops, and repeated attempts by the Germans to dislodge the Red Army from the left bank were unsuccessful. The Axis forces ran out of resources to continue offensive operations, and the battle for Voronezh entered the positional phase. Due to the fact that the main forces were sent to Stalingrad, the offensive on Voronezh was suspended, and the most combat-ready units from the front were removed and transferred to the 6th Army of Paulus. Subsequently, this factor played an important role in the defeat of German troops at Stalingrad.

After the capture of Rostov-on-Don, Hitler transferred the 4th Panzer Army from Group A (attacking the Caucasus) to Group B, aimed east towards the Volga and Stalingrad. The 6th Army's initial offensive was so successful that Hitler intervened again, ordering the 4th Panzer Army to join Army Group South (A). As a result, a huge traffic jam developed when the 4th and 6th armies needed several roads in the area of ​​​​operation. Both armies were stuck tightly, and the delay turned out to be quite long and slowed down the German advance by one week. With the advance slowing, Hitler changed his mind and reassigned the 4th Panzer Army's objective back to the Caucasus.

Disposition of forces before battle

Germany

Army Group B. The 6th Army (commander - F. Paulus) was allocated for the attack on Stalingrad. It included 14 divisions, which numbered about 270 thousand people, 3 thousand guns and mortars, and about 700 tanks. Intelligence activities in the interests of the 6th Army were carried out by Abwehrgruppe 104.

The army was supported by the 4th Air Fleet (commanded by Colonel General Wolfram von Richthofen), which had up to 1,200 aircraft (the fighter aircraft aimed at Stalingrad, in the initial stage of the battle for this city, consisted of about 120 Messerschmitt Bf.109F- fighter aircraft 4/G-2 (Soviet and Russian sources give figures ranging from 100 to 150), plus about 40 obsolete Romanian Bf.109E-3).

USSR

Stalingrad Front (commander - S.K. Timoshenko, from July 23 - V.N. Gordov, from August 13 - Colonel General A.I. Eremenko). It included the Stalingrad garrison (10th division of the NKVD), the 62nd, 63rd, 64th, 21st, 28th, 38th and 57th combined arms armies, the 8th air army (Soviet fighter aviation at the beginning of the battle here consisted of 230-240 fighters, mainly Yak-1) and the Volga military flotilla - 37 divisions, 3 tank corps, 22 brigades, which numbered 547 thousand people, 2200 guns and mortars, about 400 tanks, 454 aircraft, 150-200 long-range bombers and 60 air defense fighters.

On July 12, the Stalingrad Front was created, the commander was Marshal Timoshenko, and from July 23, Lieutenant General Gordov. It included the 62nd Army, promoted from the reserve under the command of Major General Kolpakchi, the 63rd, 64th Armies, as well as the 21st, 28th, 38th, 57th Combined Arms and 8th Air Armies of the former Southwestern Front, and with July 30 - 51st Army of the North Caucasus Front. The Stalingrad Front received the task of defending in a zone 530 km wide (along the Don River from Babka 250 km northwest of the city of Serafimovich to Kletskaya and further along the line Kletskaya, Surovikino, Suvorovsky, Verkhnekurmoyarskaya), to stop the further advance of the enemy and prevent him from reaching the Volga . The first stage of the defensive battle in the North Caucasus began on July 25, 1942 at the turn of the lower reaches of the Don in the strip from the village of Verkhne-Kurmoyarskaya to the mouth of the Don. The border of the junction - the closure of the Stalingrad and North Caucasus military fronts ran along the line Verkhne-Kurmanyarskaya - Gremyachaya station - Ketchenery, crossing the northern and eastern part of the Kotelnikovsky district of the Volgograd region. By July 17, the Stalingrad Front had 12 divisions (a total of 160 thousand people), 2,200 guns and mortars, about 400 tanks and over 450 aircraft. In addition, 150-200 long-range bombers and up to 60 fighters of the 102nd Air Defense Aviation Division (Colonel I. I. Krasnoyurchenko) operated in its zone. Thus, by the beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad, the enemy had superiority over the Soviet troops in tanks and artillery - by 1.3 times and in airplanes - by more than 2 times, and in people they were inferior by 2 times.

Start of the battle

In July, when German intentions became completely clear to the Soviet command, it developed plans for the defense of Stalingrad. To create a new defense front, Soviet troops, after advancing from the depths, had to immediately take positions on terrain where there were no pre-prepared defensive lines. Most of the formations of the Stalingrad Front were new formations that had not yet been properly put together and, as a rule, did not have combat experience. There was an acute shortage of fighter aircraft, anti-tank and anti-aircraft artillery. Many divisions lacked ammunition and vehicles.

The generally accepted date for the start of the battle is July 17. However, Alexey Isaev discovered in the combat log of the 62nd Army information about the first two clashes that occurred on July 16. The advance detachment of the 147th Infantry Division at 17:40 was fired upon by enemy anti-tank guns near the Morozov farm and destroyed them with return fire. Soon a more serious collision occurred:

“At 20:00, four German tanks secretly approached the Zolotoy village and opened fire on the detachment. The first battle of the Battle of Stalingrad lasted 20-30 minutes. Tankers of the 645th Tank Battalion stated that 2 German tanks were destroyed, 1 anti-tank gun and 1 more tank was knocked out. Apparently, the Germans did not expect to face two companies of tanks at once and sent only four vehicles forward. The detachment's losses were one T-34 burned out and two T-34s shot down. The first battle of the bloody months-long battle was not marked by anyone's death - the casualties of two tank companies amounted to 11 people wounded. Dragging two damaged tanks behind them, the detachment returned.” - Isaev A.V. Stalingrad. There is no land for us beyond the Volga. - Moscow: Yauza, Eksmo, 2008. - 448 p. - ISBN 978–5–699–26236–6.

On July 17, at the turn of the Chir and Tsimla rivers, the forward detachments of the 62nd and 64th armies of the Stalingrad Front met with the vanguards of the 6th German Army. Interacting with the aviation of the 8th Air Army (Major General of Aviation T.T. Khryukin), they put up stubborn resistance to the enemy, who, in order to break their resistance, had to deploy 5 divisions out of 13 and spend 5 days fighting them. In the end, German troops knocked down the advanced detachments from their positions and approached the main defense line of the troops of the Stalingrad Front. The resistance of the Soviet troops forced the Nazi command to strengthen the 6th Army. By July 22, it already had 18 divisions, numbering 250 thousand combat personnel, about 740 tanks, 7.5 thousand guns and mortars. The troops of the 6th Army supported up to 1,200 aircraft. As a result, the balance of forces increased even more in favor of the enemy. For example, in tanks he now had a twofold superiority. By July 22, the troops of the Stalingrad Front had 16 divisions (187 thousand people, 360 tanks, 7.9 thousand guns and mortars, about 340 aircraft).

At dawn on July 23, the enemy’s northern and, on July 25, southern strike groups went on the offensive. Using superiority in forces and air supremacy, the Germans broke through the defenses on the right flank of the 62nd Army and by the end of the day on July 24 reached the Don in the Golubinsky area. As a result, up to three Soviet divisions were surrounded. The enemy also managed to push back the troops of the right flank of the 64th Army. A critical situation developed for the troops of the Stalingrad Front. Both flanks of the 62nd Army were deeply engulfed by the enemy, and its exit to the Don created a real threat of a breakthrough of Nazi troops to Stalingrad.

By the end of July, the Germans pushed the Soviet troops behind the Don. The defense line stretched for hundreds of kilometers from north to south along the Don. To break through the defenses along the river, the Germans had to use, in addition to their 2nd Army, the armies of their Italian, Hungarian and Romanian allies. The 6th Army was only a few dozen kilometers from Stalingrad, and the 4th Panzer, located south of it, turned north to help take the city. To the south, Army Group South (A) continued to push further into the Caucasus, but its advance slowed. Army Group South A was too far to the south to provide support to Army Group South B in the north.

On July 28, 1942, People's Commissar of Defense J.V. Stalin addressed the Red Army with order No. 227, in which he demanded to strengthen resistance and stop the enemy's advance at all costs. The strictest measures were envisaged against those who showed cowardice and cowardice in battle. Practical measures were outlined to strengthen morale and discipline among the troops. “It’s time to end the retreat,” the order noted. - No step back!" This slogan embodied the essence of order No. 227. Commanders and political workers were given the task of bringing to the consciousness of every soldier the requirements of this order.

The stubborn resistance of the Soviet troops forced the Nazi command on July 31 to turn the 4th Tank Army (Colonel General G. Hoth) from the Caucasus direction to Stalingrad. On August 2, its advanced units approached Kotelnikovsky. In this regard, there was a direct threat of an enemy breakthrough to the city from the southwest. Fighting broke out on the southwestern approaches to it. To strengthen the defense of Stalingrad, by decision of the front commander, the 57th Army was deployed on the southern front of the outer defensive perimeter. The 51st Army was transferred to the Stalingrad Front (Major General T.K. Kolomiets, from October 7 - Major General N.I. Trufanov).

The situation in the 62nd Army zone was difficult. On August 7-9, the enemy pushed her troops beyond the Don River, and surrounded four divisions west of Kalach. Soviet soldiers fought in encirclement until August 14, and then in small groups they began to fight their way out of encirclement. Three divisions of the 1st Guards Army (Major General K. S. Moskalenko, from September 28 - Major General I. M. Chistyakov) arrived from the Headquarters Reserve and launched a counterattack on the enemy troops and stopped their further advance.

Thus, the German plan - to break through to Stalingrad with a swift blow on the move - was thwarted by the stubborn resistance of Soviet troops in the large bend of the Don and their active defense on the southwestern approaches to the city. During the three weeks of the offensive, the enemy was able to advance only 60-80 km. Based on an assessment of the situation, the Nazi command made significant adjustments to its plan.

On August 19, Nazi troops resumed their offensive, striking in the general direction of Stalingrad. On August 22, the 6th German Army crossed the Don and captured a 45 km wide bridgehead on its eastern bank, in the Peskovatka area, on which six divisions were concentrated. On August 23, the enemy's 14th Tank Corps broke through to the Volga north of Stalingrad, in the area of ​​the village of Rynok, and cut off the 62nd Army from the rest of the forces of the Stalingrad Front. The day before, enemy aircraft launched a massive air strike on Stalingrad, carrying out about 2 thousand sorties. As a result, the city suffered terrible destruction - entire neighborhoods were turned into ruins or simply wiped off the face of the earth.

On September 13, the enemy went on the offensive along the entire front, trying to capture Stalingrad by storm. Soviet troops failed to contain his powerful onslaught. They were forced to retreat to the city, where fierce fighting broke out on the streets.

At the end of August and September, Soviet troops carried out a series of counterattacks in the southwestern direction to cut off the formations of the enemy's 14th Tank Corps, which had broken through to the Volga. When launching counterattacks, Soviet troops had to close the German breakthrough in the Kotluban and Rossoshka station area and eliminate the so-called “land bridge”. At the cost of enormous losses, Soviet troops managed to advance only a few kilometers.

“In the tank formations of the 1st Guards Army, out of 340 tanks that were available at the start of the offensive on September 18, by September 20 only 183 serviceable tanks remained, taking into account replenishment.” - Zharkoy F.M.

Battle in the city

By August 23, 1942, out of 400 thousand residents of Stalingrad, about 100 thousand were evacuated. On August 24, the Stalingrad City Defense Committee adopted a belated resolution on the evacuation of women, children and the wounded to the left bank of the Volga. All citizens, including women and children, worked to build trenches and other fortifications.

On August 23, the 4th Air Fleet carried out its longest and most destructive bombardment of the city. German aircraft destroyed the city, killed more than 90 thousand people, destroyed more than half of the housing stock of pre-war Stalingrad, thereby turning the city into a huge territory covered with burning ruins. The situation was aggravated by the fact that after the high-explosive bombs, German bombers dropped incendiary bombs. A huge fire whirlwind formed, which burned the central part of the city and all its inhabitants to the ground. The fire spread to other areas of Stalingrad, since most of the buildings in the city were built of wood or had wooden elements. Temperatures in many parts of the city, especially in its center, reached 1000 C. This would later be repeated in Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo.

At 16:00 on August 23, 1942, the strike force of the 6th German Army broke through to the Volga near the northern outskirts of Stalingrad, in the area of ​​​​the villages of Latoshinka, Akatovka, and Rynok.

In the northern part of the city, near the village of Gumrak, the German 14th Tank Corps encountered resistance from Soviet anti-aircraft batteries of the 1077th regiment of Lieutenant Colonel V.S. German, whose gun crews included girls. The battle continued until the evening of August 23. By the evening of August 23, 1942, German tanks appeared in the area of ​​the tractor plant, 1-1.5 km from the factory workshops, and began shelling it. At this stage, Soviet defense relied heavily on the 10th Infantry Division of the NKVD and the people's militia, recruited from workers, firefighters, and policemen. The tractor plant continued to build tanks, which were manned by crews consisting of plant workers and immediately sent off the assembly lines into battle. A. S. Chuyanov told members of the film crew of the documentary “Pages of the Battle of Stalingrad” that when the enemy came to Mokraya Mechetka before organizing the defense line of Stalingrad, he was scared off by Soviet tanks that drove out of the gates of the tractor plant, and only drivers were sitting in them this plant without ammunition and crew. On August 23, the tank brigade named after the Stalingrad Proletariat advanced to the defense line north of the tractor plant in the area of ​​the Sukhaya Mechetka River. For about a week, the militia actively participated in defensive battles in the north of Stalingrad. Then gradually they began to be replaced by personnel units.

By September 1, 1942, the Soviet command could only provide its troops in Stalingrad with risky crossings across the Volga. In the midst of the ruins of the already destroyed city, the Soviet 62nd Army built defensive positions with firing points located in buildings and factories. Snipers and assault groups detained the enemy as best they could. The Germans, moving deeper into Stalingrad, suffered heavy losses. Soviet reinforcements were transported across the Volga from the eastern bank under constant bombardment and artillery fire.

From September 13 to 26, Wehrmacht units pushed back the troops of the 62nd Army and broke into the city center, and at the junction of the 62nd and 64th armies they broke through to the Volga. The river was completely under fire from German troops. Every ship and even a boat was hunted. Despite this, during the battle for the city, over 82 thousand soldiers and officers, a large amount of military equipment, food and other military cargo were transported from the left bank to the right bank, and about 52 thousand wounded and civilians were evacuated to the left bank.

The struggle for bridgeheads near the Volga, especially on Mamayev Kurgan and at factories in the northern part of the city, lasted more than two months. The battles for the Red October plant, the tractor plant and the Barrikady artillery plant became known throughout the world. While Soviet soldiers continued to defend their positions by firing at the Germans, factory workers repaired damaged Soviet tanks and weapons in the immediate vicinity of the battlefield, and sometimes on the battlefield itself. The specificity of battles at enterprises was the limited use of firearms due to the danger of ricocheting: battles were fought with the help of piercing, cutting and crushing objects, as well as hand-to-hand combat.

German military doctrine was based on the interaction of military branches in general and especially close interaction between infantry, sappers, artillery and dive bombers. In response, Soviet soldiers tried to position themselves tens of meters from enemy positions; in this case, German artillery and aviation could not operate without the risk of hitting their own. Often the opponents were separated by a wall, floor or landing. In this case, the German infantry had to fight on equal terms with the Soviet infantry - rifles, grenades, bayonets and knives. The fight was for every street, every factory, every house, basement or staircase. Even individual buildings were included on the maps and given names: Pavlov's House, the Mill, the Department Store, the prison, the Zabolotny House, the Dairy House, the House of Specialists, the L-shaped House and others. The Red Army constantly carried out counterattacks, trying to recapture previously lost positions. Mamaev Kurgan and the railway station changed hands several times. The assault groups of both sides tried to use any passages to the enemy - sewers, basements, tunnels.

Street fighting in Stalingrad.

On both sides, the combatants were supported by a large number of artillery batteries (Soviet large-caliber artillery operated from the eastern bank of the Volga), up to 600-mm mortars.

Soviet snipers, using the ruins as cover, also inflicted heavy losses on the Germans. Sniper Vasily Grigorievich Zaitsev during the battle destroyed 225 enemy soldiers and officers (including 11 snipers).

For both Stalin and Hitler, the battle for Stalingrad became a matter of prestige in addition to the strategic importance of the city. The Soviet command moved Red Army reserves from Moscow to the Volga, and also transferred air forces from almost the entire country to the Stalingrad area.

On the morning of October 14, the German 6th Army launched a decisive offensive against the Soviet bridgeheads near the Volga. It was supported by more than a thousand aircraft of the 4th Luftwaffe Air Fleet. The concentration of German troops was unprecedented - on a front of only about 4 km, three infantry and two tank divisions were advancing on the tractor plant and the Barricades plant. Soviet units stubbornly defended themselves, supported by artillery fire from the eastern bank of the Volga and from the ships of the Volga military flotilla. However, the artillery on the left bank of the Volga began to experience a shortage of ammunition in connection with the preparation of the Soviet counteroffensive. On November 9, the cold weather began, the air temperature dropped to minus 18 degrees. Crossing the Volga became extremely difficult due to ice floes floating on the river, and the troops of the 62nd Army experienced an acute shortage of ammunition and food. By the end of the day on November 11, German troops managed to capture the southern part of the Barricades plant and, in a 500 m wide area, break through to the Volga, the 62nd Army now held three small bridgeheads isolated from each other (the smallest of which was Lyudnikov Island). The divisions of the 62nd Army, after suffering losses, numbered only 500-700 people. But the German divisions also suffered huge losses, in many units more than 40% of their personnel were killed in battle.

Preparing Soviet troops for a counteroffensive

The Don Front was formed on September 30, 1942. It included: 1st Guards, 21st, 24th, 63rd and 66th Armies, 4th Tank Army, 16th Air Army. Lieutenant General K.K. Rokossovsky, who took command, actively began to fulfill the “old dream” of the right flank of the Stalingrad Front - to encircle the German 14th Tank Corps and connect with units of the 62nd Army.

Having taken command, Rokossovsky found the newly formed front on the offensive - following the order of the Headquarters, on September 30 at 5:00, after artillery preparation, units of the 1st Guards, 24th and 65th armies went on the offensive. Heavy fighting raged for two days. But, as noted in the TsAMO document, parts of the armies did not advance, and moreover, as a result of German counterattacks, several heights were abandoned. By October 2, the offensive had run out of steam.

But here, from the reserve of the Headquarters, the Don Front receives seven fully equipped rifle divisions (277, 62, 252, 212, 262, 331, 293 infantry divisions). The command of the Don Front decides to use fresh forces for a new offensive. On October 4, Rokossovsky ordered the development of a plan for an offensive operation, and on October 6 the plan was ready. The date of the operation was set for October 10. But by this time several events occur.

On October 5, 1942, Stalin, in a telephone conversation with A.I. Eremenko, sharply criticized the leadership of the Stalingrad Front and demanded that immediate measures be taken to stabilize the front and subsequently defeat the enemy. In response to this, on October 6, Eremenko made a report to Stalin about the situation and considerations for further actions of the front. The first part of this document is justification and blaming the Don Front (“they had high hopes for help from the north,” etc.). In the second part of the report, Eremenko proposes to conduct an operation to encircle and destroy German units near Stalingrad. There, for the first time, it was proposed to encircle the 6th Army with flank attacks on Romanian units and, after breaking through the fronts, to unite in the Kalach-on-Don area.

Headquarters considered Eremenko's plan, but then considered it impracticable (the depth of the operation was too great, etc.). In fact, the idea of ​​launching a counteroffensive was discussed as early as September 12 by Stalin, Zhukov and Vasilevsky, and by September 13 preliminary outlines of a plan were prepared and presented to Stalin, which included the creation of the Don Front. And Zhukov’s command of the 1st Guards, 24th and 66th armies was accepted on August 27, simultaneously with his appointment as Deputy Supreme Commander-in-Chief. The 1st Guards Army was part of the Southwestern Front at that time, and the 24th and 66th Armies, specifically for the operation entrusted to Zhukov to push the enemy away from the northern regions of Stalingrad, were withdrawn from the Headquarters reserve. After the creation of the front, its command was entrusted to Rokossovsky, and Zhukov was tasked with preparing the offensive of the Kalinin and Western Fronts in order to tie down the German forces so that they could not transfer them to support Army Group South.

As a result, the Headquarters proposed the following option for encircling and defeating German troops at Stalingrad: the Don Front was proposed to deliver the main blow in the direction of Kotluban, break through the front and reach the Gumrak region. At the same time, the Stalingrad Front is launching an offensive from the Gornaya Polyana area to Elshanka, and after breaking through the front, units move to the Gumrak area, where they join forces with units of the Don Front. In this operation, the front command was allowed to use fresh units: Don Front - 7 rifle divisions (277, 62, 252, 212, 262, 331, 293), Stalingrad Front - 7th Rifle Corps, 4th Cavalry Corps). On October 7, General Staff Directive No. 170644 was issued on conducting an offensive operation on two fronts to encircle the 6th Army; the start of the operation was scheduled for October 20.

Thus, it was planned to encircle and destroy only the German troops fighting directly in Stalingrad (14th Tank Corps, 51st and 4th Infantry Corps, about 12 divisions in total).

The command of the Don Front was dissatisfied with this directive. On October 9, Rokossovsky presented his plan for the offensive operation. He referred to the impossibility of breaking through the front in the Kotluban area. According to his calculations, 4 divisions were required for a breakthrough, 3 divisions to develop a breakthrough, and 3 more to cover from enemy attacks; thus, seven fresh divisions were clearly not enough. Rokossovsky proposed delivering the main blow in the Kuzmichi area (height 139.7), that is, according to the same old scheme: encircle units of the 14th Tank Corps, connect with the 62nd Army and only after that move to Gumrak to link up with units of 64 th army. The headquarters of the Don Front planned 4 days for this: from October 20 to 24. The “Oryol salient” of the Germans had haunted Rokossovsky since August 23, so he decided to first deal with this “callus” and then complete the complete encirclement of the enemy.

The Stavka did not accept Rokossovsky's proposal and recommended that he prepare the operation according to the Stavka plan; however, he was allowed to conduct a private operation against the Oryol group of Germans on October 10, without attracting fresh forces.

On October 9, units of the 1st Guards Army, as well as the 24th and 66th armies began an offensive in the direction of Orlovka. The advancing group was supported by 42 Il-2 attack aircraft, covered by 50 fighters of the 16th Air Army. The first day of the offensive ended in vain. The 1st Guards Army (298, 258, 207) had no advance, but the 24th Army advanced 300 meters. The 299th Infantry Division (66th Army), advancing to height 127.7, having suffered heavy losses, made no progress. On October 10, the offensive attempts continued, but by the evening they finally weakened and stopped. The next “operation to eliminate the Oryol group” failed. As a result of this offensive, the 1st Guards Army was disbanded due to losses incurred. Having transferred the remaining units of the 24th Army, the command was transferred to the reserve of Headquarters.

Soviet offensive (Operation Uranus)

On November 19, 1942, the Red Army began its offensive as part of Operation Uranus. On November 23, in the Kalach area, an encirclement ring closed around the 6th Army of the Wehrmacht. It was not possible to completely implement the Uranus plan, since it was not possible to split the 6th Army into two parts from the very beginning (with the attack of the 24th Army between the Volga and Don rivers). Attempts to liquidate those surrounded on the move under these conditions also failed, despite a significant superiority in forces - the superior tactical training of the Germans was telling. However, the 6th Army was isolated and its fuel, ammunition and food supplies were progressively dwindling, despite attempts to supply it by air by the 4th Air Fleet under the command of Wolfram von Richthofen.

Operation Wintergewitter

The newly formed Wehrmacht Army Group Don, under the command of Field Marshal Manstein, attempted to break through the blockade of the encircled troops (Operation Wintergewitter (German: Wintergewitter, Winter Storm). It was originally planned to begin on December 10, but the offensive actions of the Red Army on the outer front of the encirclement forced the start to be postponed operations on December 12. By this date, the Germans managed to present only one full-fledged tank formation - the 6th Panzer Division of the Wehrmacht and (from the infantry formations) the remnants of the defeated 4th Romanian Army.These units were subordinate to the control of the 4th Panzer Army under the command of G. Gotha During the offensive, the group was reinforced by the very battered 11th and 17th tank divisions and three air field divisions.

By December 19, units of the 4th Tank Army, which had actually broken through the defensive formations of the Soviet troops, encountered the 2nd Guards Army, which had just been transferred from the Headquarters reserve, under the command of R. Ya. Malinovsky, which included two rifle and one mechanized corps.

Operation Little Saturn

According to the plan of the Soviet command, after the defeat of the 6th Army, the forces involved in Operation Uranus turned west and advanced towards Rostov-on-Don as part of Operation Saturn. At the same time, the southern wing of the Voronezh Front attacked the 8th Italian Army north of Stalingrad and advanced directly west (towards the Donets) with an auxiliary attack to the southwest (towards Rostov-on-Don), covering the northern flank of the Southwestern front during a hypothetical offensive. However, due to the incomplete implementation of “Uranus”, “Saturn” was replaced by “Little Saturn”.

A breakthrough to Rostov-on-Don (due to Zhukov’s diversion of the bulk of the Red Army troops to carry out the unsuccessful offensive operation “Mars” near Rzhev, as well as due to the lack of seven armies pinned down by the 6th Army at Stalingrad) was no longer planned.

The Voronezh Front, together with the Southwestern Front and part of the forces of the Stalingrad Front, had the goal of pushing the enemy 100-150 km west of the encircled 6th Army and defeating the 8th Italian Army (Voronezh Front). The offensive was planned to begin on December 10, but problems associated with the delivery of new units necessary for the operation (those available on the site were tied up at Stalingrad) led to the fact that A. M. Vasilevsky authorized (with the knowledge of I. V. Stalin) a postponement of the start operations on December 16. On December 16-17, the German front on Chira and on the positions of the 8th Italian Army was broken through, and Soviet tank corps rushed into the operational depths. Manstein reports that of the Italian divisions, only one light and one or two infantry divisions offered any serious resistance; the headquarters of the 1st Romanian Corps fled in panic from their command post. By the end of December 24, Soviet troops reached the Millerovo, Tatsinskaya, Morozovsk line. In eight days of fighting, the front's mobile troops advanced 100-200 km. However, in the mid-20s of December, operational reserves (four well-equipped German tank divisions), initially intended to strike during Operation Wintergewitter, began to approach Army Group Don, which later became, according to Manstein himself, the reason for it failure.

By December 25, these reserves launched counterattacks, during which they cut off V. M. Badanov’s 24th Tank Corps, which had just broken into the airfield in Tatsinskaya (about 300 German aircraft were destroyed at the airfield and in trains at the station). By December 30, the corps broke out of the encirclement, refueling the tanks with a mixture of aviation gasoline captured at the airfield and motor oil. By the end of December, the advancing troops of the Southwestern Front reached the line of Novaya Kalitva, Markovka, Millerovo, Chernyshevskaya. As a result of the Middle Don operation, the main forces of the 8th Italian Army were defeated (with the exception of the Alpine Corps, which was not hit), the defeat of the 3rd Romanian Army was completed, and great damage was inflicted on the Hollidt task force. 17 divisions and three brigades of the fascist bloc were destroyed or suffered heavy damage. 60,000 enemy soldiers and officers were captured. The defeat of the Italian and Romanian troops created the preconditions for the Red Army to launch an offensive in the Kotelnikovsky direction, where the troops of the 2nd Guards and 51st Armies reached the Tormosin, Zhukovskaya, Kommisarovsky line by December 31, having advanced 100-150 km and completed the defeat of the 4th th Romanian Army and pushed back units of the newly formed 4th Tank Army 200 km from Stalingrad. After this, the front line temporarily stabilized, since neither the Soviet nor the German troops had enough forces to break through the enemy’s tactical defense zone.

Combat during Operation Ring

The commander of the 62nd Army V.I. Chuikov presents the guards banner to the commander of the 39th Guards. SD S.S. Guryev. Stalingrad, Red October plant, January 3, 1943

On December 27, N.N. Voronov sent the first version of the “Ring” plan to the Supreme Command Headquarters. Headquarters, in Directive No. 170718 of December 28, 1942 (signed by Stalin and Zhukov), demanded changes to the plan so that it would provide for the dismemberment of the 6th Army into two parts before its destruction. Corresponding changes have been made to the plan. On January 10, the offensive of the Soviet troops began, the main blow was delivered in the zone of the 65th Army of General Batov. However, German resistance turned out to be so serious that the offensive had to be temporarily stopped. From January 17 to 22, the offensive was suspended for regrouping, new attacks on January 22-26 led to the dismemberment of the 6th Army into two groups (Soviet troops united in the Mamayev Kurgan area), by January 31 the southern group was eliminated (the command and headquarters of the 6th was captured 1st Army led by Paulus), by February 2 the northern group of those surrounded under the command of the commander of the 11th Army Corps, Colonel General Karl Strecker, capitulated. Shooting in the city continued until February 3 - the Hiwis resisted even after the German surrender on February 2, 1943, since they were not in danger of being captured. The liquidation of the 6th Army, according to the “Ring” plan, was supposed to be completed in a week, but in reality it lasted 23 days. (The 24th Army withdrew from the front on January 26 and was sent to the General Headquarters reserve).

In total, more than 2,500 officers and 24 generals of the 6th Army were captured during Operation Ring. In total, over 91 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers and officers were captured, of which no more than 20% returned to Germany at the end of the war - the majority died of exhaustion, dysentery and other diseases. According to the Don Front headquarters, the trophies of the Soviet troops from January 10 to February 2, 1943 were 5,762 guns, 1,312 mortars, 12,701 machine guns, 156,987 rifles, 10,722 machine guns, 744 aircraft, 166 tanks, 261 armored vehicles, 80,438 cars, 10,679 motorcycles ov , 240 tractors, 571 tractors, 3 armored trains and other military equipment.

A total of twenty German divisions capitulated: 14th, 16th and 24th Panzer, 3rd, 29th and 60th Motorized Infantry, 100th Jäger, 44th, 71st, 76th I, 79th, 94th, 113th, 295th, 297th, 305th, 371st, 376th, 384th, 389th infantry divisions. In addition, the Romanian 1st Cavalry and 20th Infantry Divisions surrendered. The Croatian regiment surrendered as part of the 100th Jaeger. The 91st air defense regiment, the 243rd and 245th separate assault gun battalions, and the 2nd and 51st rocket mortar regiments also capitulated.

Air supply to the encircled group

Hitler, after consulting with the leadership of the Luftwaffe, decided to arrange air transport for the encircled troops. A similar operation had already been carried out by German aviators who supplied troops in the Demyansk cauldron. To maintain acceptable combat effectiveness of the encircled units, daily deliveries of 700 tons of cargo were required. The Luftwaffe promised to provide daily supplies of 300 tons. Cargo was delivered to the airfields: Bolshaya Rossoshka, Basargino, Gumrak, Voroponovo and Pitomnik - the largest in the ring. The seriously wounded were taken out on return flights. Under successful circumstances, the Germans managed to make more than 100 flights per day to the encircled troops. The main bases for supplying the blocked troops were Tatsinskaya, Morozovsk, Tormosin and Bogoyavlenskaya. But as the Soviet troops advanced westward, the Germans had to move their supply bases further and further from Paulus’s troops: to Zverevo, Shakhty, Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, Novocherkassk, Mechetinskaya and Salsk. At the last stage, airfields in Artyomovsk, Gorlovka, Makeevka and Stalino were used.

Soviet troops actively fought against air traffic. Both supply airfields and others located in the surrounded territory were subjected to bombing and attack. To combat enemy aircraft, Soviet aviation used patrolling, airfield duty, and free hunting. At the beginning of December, the system of combating enemy air transport organized by Soviet troops was based on division into zones of responsibility. The first zone included the territories from which the encircled group was supplied; units of the 17th and 8th VA operated here. The second zone was located around Paulus' troops over territory controlled by the Red Army. Two belts of guidance radio stations were created in it; the zone itself was divided into 5 sectors, one fighter air division in each (102 IAD air defense and divisions of the 8th and 16th VA). The third zone, where anti-aircraft artillery was located, also surrounded the blocked group. It was 15-30 km deep, and at the end of December it contained 235 small and medium caliber guns and 241 anti-aircraft machine guns. The area occupied by the encircled group belonged to the fourth zone, where units of the 8th, 16th VA and the night regiment of the air defense division operated. To counter night flights near Stalingrad, one of the first Soviet aircraft with an airborne radar was used, which was subsequently put into mass production.

Due to increasing opposition from the Soviet Air Force, the Germans had to switch from flying during the day to flying in difficult weather conditions and at night, when there was a greater chance of flying undetected. On January 10, 1943, an operation began to destroy the encircled group, as a result of which on January 14, the defenders abandoned the main airfield of Pitomnik, and on the 21st and last airfield - Gumrak, after which the cargo was dropped by parachute. A landing site near the village of Stalingradsky operated for a few more days, but it was accessible only to small aircraft; On the 26th, landing on it became impossible. During the period of air supply to the encircled troops, an average of 94 tons of cargo was delivered per day. On the most successful days, the value reached 150 tons of cargo. Hans Doerr estimates the Luftwaffe's losses in this operation at 488 aircraft and 1,000 flight personnel and believes that these were the largest losses since the air operation against England.

Results of the battle

The victory of Soviet troops in the Battle of Stalingrad is the largest military-political event during the Second World War. The Great Battle, which ended in the encirclement, defeat and capture of a selected enemy group, made a huge contribution to achieving a radical turning point during the Great Patriotic War and had a serious impact on the further course of the entire Second World War.

In the Battle of Stalingrad, new features of the military art of the USSR Armed Forces manifested themselves with all their might. Soviet operational art was enriched by the experience of encircling and destroying the enemy.

An important component of the success of the Red Army was the set of measures for the military-economic support of the troops.

The victory at Stalingrad had a decisive influence on the further course of the Second World War. As a result of the battle, the Red Army firmly seized the strategic initiative and now dictated its will to the enemy. This changed the nature of the actions of German troops in the Caucasus, in the areas of Rzhev and Demyansk. The attacks of the Soviet troops forced the Wehrmacht to give the order to prepare the Eastern Wall, which was supposed to stop the advance of the Soviet Army.

During the Battle of Stalingrad, the 3rd and 4th Romanian armies (22 divisions), the 8th Italian army and the Italian Alpine Corps (10 divisions), the 2nd Hungarian army (10 divisions), and the Croatian regiment were defeated. The 6th and 7th Romanian Army Corps, part of the 4th Panzer Army, which were not destroyed, were completely demoralized. As Manstein notes: “Dimitrescu was powerless alone to fight the demoralization of his troops. There was nothing left to do but take them off and send them to the rear, to their homeland.” In the future, Germany could not count on new conscription contingents from Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia. She had to use the remaining Allied divisions only for rear service, fighting partisans and in some secondary sectors of the front.

The following were destroyed in the Stalingrad cauldron:

As part of the 6th German Army: the headquarters of the 8th, 11th, 51st Army and 14th Tank Corps; 44, 71, 76, 113, 295, 305, 376, 384, 389, 394 infantry divisions, 100th mountain rifle, 14, 16 and 24 tank, 3rd and 60th motorized, 1st Romanian cavalry, 9 1st Air Defense Division.

As part of the 4th Tank Army, the headquarters of the 4th Army Corps; 297 and 371 infantry, 29 motorized, 1st and 20th Romanian infantry divisions. Most of the artillery of the RGK, units of the Todt organization, large forces of the engineering units of the RGK.

Also the 48th Tank Corps (first composition) - 22nd Tank, Romanian tank division.

Outside the cauldron, 5 divisions of the 2nd Army and the 24th Tank Corps were destroyed (lost 50-70% of their strength). The 57th Tank Corps from Army Group A, the 48th Tank Corps (second-strength), and the divisions of the Gollidt, Kempff, and Fretter-Picot groups suffered enormous losses. Several airfield divisions and a large number of individual units and formations were destroyed.

In March 1943, in Army Group South, in a sector of 700 km from Rostov-on-Don to Kharkov, taking into account the reinforcements received, only 32 divisions remained.

As a result of actions to supply the troops encircled at Stalingrad and several smaller pockets, German aviation was greatly weakened.

The outcome of the Battle of Stalingrad caused confusion and confusion in the Axis countries. A crisis began in the pro-fascist regimes in Italy, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia. Germany's influence on its allies sharply weakened, and disagreements between them noticeably worsened. The desire to maintain neutrality has intensified in Turkish political circles. Elements of restraint and alienation began to prevail in the relations of neutral countries towards Germany.

As a result of the defeat, Germany faced the problem of restoring the losses incurred in equipment and people. The head of the economic department of the OKW, General G. Thomas, stated that the losses in equipment were equivalent to the amount of military equipment of 45 divisions from all branches of the military and were equal to the losses for the entire previous period of fighting on the Soviet-German front. Goebbels declared at the end of January 1943, “Germany will be able to withstand Russian attacks only if it manages to mobilize its last human reserves.” Losses in tanks and vehicles amounted to six months of the country's production, in artillery - three months, in small arms and mortars - two months.

The Soviet Union established the medal “For the Defense of Stalingrad”; as of January 1, 1995, it had been awarded to 759,561 people. In Germany, after the defeat in Stalingrad, three days of mourning were declared.

German general Kurt von Tipelskirch in his book “History of the Second World War” assesses the defeat at Stalingrad as follows:

“The result of the offensive was stunning: one German and three allied armies were destroyed, three other German armies suffered heavy losses. At least fifty German and Allied divisions no longer existed. The remaining losses amounted to a total of another twenty-five divisions. A large amount of equipment was lost - tanks, self-propelled guns, light and heavy artillery and heavy infantry weapons. Losses in equipment were, of course, significantly greater than those of the enemy. The losses in personnel should have been considered very heavy, especially since the enemy, even if he suffered serious losses, still had significantly larger human reserves. Germany's prestige in the eyes of its allies was greatly shaken. Since an irreparable defeat was inflicted at the same time in North Africa, the hope for a general victory collapsed. The morale of the Russians has risen high."

Reaction in the world

Many statesmen and politicians highly praised the victory of the Soviet troops. In a message to J.V. Stalin (February 5, 1943), F. Roosevelt called the Battle of Stalingrad an epic struggle, the decisive result of which is celebrated by all Americans. On May 17, 1944, Roosevelt sent Stalingrad a letter:

“On behalf of the people of the United States of America, I present this certificate to the city of Stalingrad to commemorate our admiration for its valiant defenders, whose courage, fortitude and selflessness during the siege from September 13, 1942 to January 31, 1943 will forever inspire the hearts of all free people. Their glorious victory stopped the tide of invasion and became a turning point in the war of the allied nations against the forces of aggression.”

British Prime Minister W. Churchill, in a message to J.V. Stalin on February 1, 1943, called the victory of the Soviet Army at Stalingrad amazing. King George VI of Great Britain sent Stalingrad a dedicatory sword, on the blade of which the inscription was engraved in Russian and English:

"To the citizens of Stalingrad, strong as steel, from King George VI as a sign of the deep admiration of the British people."

At a conference in Tehran, Churchill presented the Sword of Stalingrad to the Soviet delegation. The blade was engraved with the inscription: "A gift from King George VI to the staunch defenders of Stalingrad as a sign of respect from the British people." Presenting the gift, Churchill made a heartfelt speech. Stalin took the sword with both hands, raised it to his lips and kissed the scabbard. When the Soviet leader handed over the relic to Marshal Voroshilov, the sword fell out of its sheath and fell to the floor with a crash. This unfortunate incident somewhat overshadowed the triumph of the moment.

During the battle, and especially after its end, the activity of public organizations in the USA, England, and Canada intensified, advocating more effective assistance to the Soviet Union. For example, New York union members raised $250,000 to build a hospital in Stalingrad. The Chairman of the United Garment Workers Union said:

“We are proud that the workers of New York will establish a connection with Stalingrad, which will live in history as a symbol of the immortal courage of a great people and whose defense was a turning point in the struggle of mankind against oppression ... Every Red Army soldier who defends his Soviet land by killing a Nazi saves the lives of American soldiers. We will remember this when calculating our debt to the Soviet ally.”

American astronaut Donald Slayton, a participant in World War II, recalled:

“When the Nazis surrendered, our jubilation knew no bounds. Everyone understood that this was a turning point in the war, this was the beginning of the end of fascism.”

The victory at Stalingrad had a significant impact on the lives of the occupied peoples and instilled hope for liberation. A drawing appeared on the walls of many Warsaw houses - a heart pierced by a large dagger. On the heart is the inscription “Great Germany”, and on the blade is “Stalingrad”.

Speaking on February 9, 1943, the famous French anti-fascist writer Jean-Richard Bloch said:

“...listen, Parisians! The first three divisions that invaded Paris in June 1940, the three divisions that, at the invitation of the French General Denz, desecrated our capital, these three divisions - the hundredth, one hundred and thirteenth and two hundred and ninety-fifth - no longer exist! They were destroyed at Stalingrad: the Russians avenged Paris. The Russians are taking revenge for France!

The victory of the Soviet Army highly raised the political and military prestige of the Soviet Union. Former Nazi generals in their memoirs recognized the enormous military-political significance of this victory. G. Doerr wrote:

“For Germany, the battle of Stalingrad was the worst defeat in its history, for Russia - its greatest victory. At Poltava (1709), Russia achieved the right to be called a great European power; Stalingrad was the beginning of its transformation into one of the two greatest world powers.”

Prisoners

Soviet: The total number of captured Soviet soldiers for the period July 1942 - February 1943 is unknown, but due to the difficult retreat after the lost battles in the Don bend and on the Volgodonsk isthmus, the count is no less than tens of thousands. The fate of these soldiers is different depending on whether they found themselves outside or inside the Stalingrad “cauldron”. The prisoners who were inside the cauldron were kept in the Rossoshki, Pitomnik, and Dulag-205 camps. After the encirclement of the Wehrmacht, due to a lack of food, on December 5, 1942, the prisoners were no longer fed and almost all of them died within three months from hunger and cold. During the liberation of the territory, the Soviet army managed to save only a few hundred people who were in a dying state of exhaustion.

Wehrmacht and allies: The total number of captured soldiers of the Wehrmacht and their allies for the period July 1942 - February 1943 is unknown, so the prisoners were taken on different fronts and were held according to different accounting documents. The exact number of those captured at the final stage of the battle in the city of Stalingrad from January 10 to February 22, 1943 is precisely known - 91,545 people, of which about 2,500 officers, 24 generals and Field Marshal Paulus. This figure includes military personnel from European countries and labor organizations of Todt who took part in the battle on the side of Germany. Citizens of the USSR who went over to serve the enemy and served the Wehrmacht as “hiwis” are not included in this figure, as they were considered criminals. The number of captured Hiwis out of 20,880 who were in the 6th Army on October 24, 1942 is unknown.

To hold prisoners, Camp No. 108 was urgently created with its center in the Stalingrad workers' village of Beketovka. Almost all the prisoners were in an extremely exhausted state; they had been receiving rations on the verge of starvation for 3 months, since the November encirclement. Therefore, the mortality rate among them was extremely high - by June 1943, 27,078 of them had died, 35,099 were being treated in Stalingrad camp hospitals, and 28,098 people were sent to hospitals in other camps. Only about 20 thousand people were able to work in construction due to health reasons; these people were divided into construction teams and distributed among construction sites. After the peak of the first 3 months, mortality returned to normal, and 1,777 people died between July 10, 1943 and January 1, 1949. The prisoners worked a regular working day and received a salary for their work (until 1949, 8,976,304 man-days were worked, a salary of 10,797,011 rubles was issued), for which they bought food and household essentials in camp stores. The last prisoners of war were released to Germany in 1949, except for those who received criminal sentences for personally committed war crimes.

Memory

The Battle of Stalingrad, as a turning point in World War II, had a great influence on world history. In cinema, literature, and music, the theme of Stalingrad is constantly addressed; the word “Stalingrad” itself has acquired numerous meanings. In many cities around the world there are streets, avenues, and squares associated with the memory of the battle. Stalingrad and Coventry became the first sister cities in 1943, giving birth to this international movement. One of the elements of the linkage of sister cities is the name of the streets with the name of the city, therefore in the sister cities of Volgograd there are Stalingradskaya streets (some of them were renamed Volgogradskaya as part of de-Stalinization). Names associated with Stalingrad were given to: the Parisian metro station "Stalingrad", the asteroid "Stalingrad", the type of cruiser Stalingrad.

Most of the monuments to the Battle of Stalingrad are located in Volgograd, the most famous of them are part of the Battle of Stalingrad Museum-Reserve: “The Motherland Calls!” on Mamayev Kurgan, panorama “The defeat of the Nazi troops at Stalingrad”, Gerhardt’s mill. In 1995, in the Gorodishchensky district of the Volgograd region, the Rossoshki soldiers’ cemetery was created, where there is a German section with a memorial sign and the graves of German soldiers.

The Battle of Stalingrad left a significant number of documentary literary works. On the Soviet side, there are memoirs of the First Deputy Supreme Commander-in-Chief Zhukov, the commander of the 62nd Army Chuikov, the head of the Stalingrad region Chuyanov, the commander of the 13th Guards Rifle Division Rodimtsev. “Soldier's” memories are presented by Afanasyev, Pavlov, Nekrasov. Stalingrad resident Yuri Panchenko, who survived the battle as a teenager, wrote the book “163 days on the streets of Stalingrad.” On the German side, the memories of the commanders are presented in the memoirs of the commander of the 6th Army, Paulus, and the head of the personnel department of the 6th Army, Adam; the soldier’s vision of the battle is presented in the books of Wehrmacht fighters Edelbert Holl and Hans Doerr. After the war, historians from different countries published documentary literature on the study of the battle; among Russian writers, the topic was studied by Alexey Isaev, Alexander Samsonov, and in foreign literature they often refer to the writer-historian Beevor.

The day of February 2, 1943, when Soviet troops defeated the fascist invaders near the great Volga River, is a very memorable date. The Battle of Stalingrad is one of the turning points in World War II. Such as the Battle of Moscow or the Battle of Kursk. It gave a significant advantage to our army on its path to victory over the invaders.

Losses in the battle

According to official figures, the Battle of Stalingrad claimed the lives of two million people. According to unofficial estimates - about three. It was this battle that became the reason for mourning in Nazi Germany, declared by Adolf Hitler. And it was precisely this that, figuratively speaking, inflicted a mortal wound on the army of the Third Reich.

The Battle of Stalingrad lasted about two hundred days and turned the once thriving peaceful city into smoking ruins. Of the half a million civilian population listed before the start of hostilities, by the end of the battle only about ten thousand people remained. It cannot be said that the arrival of the Germans was a surprise to the city residents. The authorities hoped that the situation would be resolved and did not pay due attention to the evacuation. However, it was possible to remove most of the children before the aircraft razed the orphanages and schools to the ground.

The battle for Stalingrad began on July 17, and already on the first day of battle colossal losses were noted both among the fascist invaders and in the ranks of the valiant defenders of the city.

German intentions

As was typical for Hitler, his plan was to take the city as quickly as possible. Having learned nothing from previous battles, the German command was inspired by the victories won before coming to Russia. No more than two weeks were allotted for the capture of Stalingrad.

For this purpose the 6th Army of the Wehrmacht was assigned. In theory, it should have been enough to suppress the actions of Soviet defensive detachments, subjugate the civilian population and introduce their own regime in the city. This is how the battle for Stalingrad seemed to the Germans. The summary of Hitler's plan was to seize the industries in which the city was rich, as well as crossings on the Volga River, which gave him access to the Caspian Sea. And from there a direct path to the Caucasus was open for him. In other words, to rich oil deposits. If Hitler had succeeded in his plans, the results of the war could have been completely different.

Approaches to the city, or "Not a step back!"

The Barbarossa plan was a fiasco, and after the defeat near Moscow, Hitler was forced to reconsider all his ideas. Abandoning previous goals, the German command took a different path, deciding to seize the Caucasus oil field. Following the established route, the Germans take Donbass, Voronezh and Rostov. The final stage was Stalingrad.

General Paulus, commander of the 6th Army, led his forces to the city, but on the approaches his movement was blocked by the Stalingrad Front in the person of General Timoshenko and his 62nd Army. Thus began fierce fighting that lasted about two months. It was during this period of the battle that order No. 227 was issued, known in history as “Not a step back!” And this played a role. No matter how hard the Germans tried and threw in more and more forces to penetrate the city, they only moved 60 kilometers from their starting point.

The Battle of Stalingrad became more desperate as General Paulus's army increased in numbers. The tank component doubled, and aviation quadrupled. To contain such an onslaught from our side, the South-Eastern Front was formed, led by General Eremenko. In addition to the fact that the ranks of the fascists were significantly replenished, they resorted to roundabout maneuvers. Thus, the enemy movement was actively carried out from the Caucasian direction, but due to the actions of our army, it was of no significant use.

Civilians

According to Stalin's cunning order, only children were evacuated from the city. The rest fell under the order “Not a step back.” In addition, until the last day the people remained confident that everything would work out. However, an order was given to dig trenches near his house. This was the beginning of unrest among civilians. People without permission (and it was given only to the families of officials and other prominent figures) began to leave the city.

Nevertheless, many of the male component volunteered for the front. The rest worked in factories. And it was very useful, since there was a catastrophic lack of ammunition even in repelling the enemy on the approaches to the city. The machines did not stop day and night. Civilians did not indulge themselves in rest either. They did not spare themselves - everything for the front, everything for Victory!

Paulus's breakthrough into the city

Ordinary people remember August 23, 1942 as an unexpected solar eclipse. It was still early before sunset, but the sun was suddenly covered with a black curtain. Numerous aircraft released black smoke in order to confuse the Soviet artillery. The roar of hundreds of engines tore the sky, and the waves emanating from it crushed the windows of buildings and threw civilians to the ground.

With the first bombing, the German squadron razed most of the city to the ground. People were forced to leave their homes and hide in the trenches they had dug earlier. It was either unsafe to be in the building or, due to the bombs that had hit it, it was simply impossible. So the battle for Stalingrad continued in the second stage. The photos that the German pilots managed to take show the whole picture of what was happening from the air.

Fight for every meter

Army Group B, completely strengthened by arriving reinforcements, launched a major offensive. Thus, cutting off the 62nd Army from the main front. So the battle for Stalingrad moved to urban areas. No matter how hard the Red Army soldiers tried to neutralize the corridor for the Germans, nothing worked.

The Russian stronghold had no equal in its strength. The Germans simultaneously admired the heroism of the Red Army and hated it. But they were even more afraid. Paulus himself did not hide his fear of Soviet soldiers in his notes. As he claimed, several battalions were sent into battle every day and almost no one returned back. And this is not an isolated case. This happened every day. The Russians fought desperately and died desperately.

87th Division of the Red Army

An example of the courage and perseverance of the Russian soldiers who knew the Battle of Stalingrad is the 87th Division. Remaining with 33 people, the fighters continued to hold their positions, fortifying themselves at the height of Malye Rossoshki.

To break them, the German command threw 70 tanks and an entire battalion at them. As a result, the Nazis left 150 fallen soldiers and 27 damaged vehicles on the battlefield. But the 87th Division is only a small part of the city’s defense.

The fight continues

By the beginning of the second period of the battle, Army Group B had about 80 divisions. On our side, reinforcements were made up of the 66th Army, which was later joined by the 24th.

The breakthrough into the city center was carried out by two groups of German soldiers under the cover of 350 tanks. This stage, which included the Battle of Stalingrad, was the most terrible. The soldiers of the Red Army fought for every inch of land. There were battles everywhere. The roar of tank shots was heard in every point of the city. Aviation did not stop its raids. The planes stood in the sky as if they were never leaving.

There was no district, not even a house, where the battle for Stalingrad did not take place. The map of military operations covered the entire city with neighboring villages and hamlets.

Pavlov's House

The fighting took place both with weapons and hand-to-hand. According to the recollections of surviving German soldiers, the Russians, wearing only tunics, ran into the attack, exposing the already exhausted enemy to horror.

The fighting took place both on the streets and in buildings. And it was even harder for the warriors. Every turn, every corner could hide the enemy. If the first floor was occupied by the Germans, then the Russians could gain a foothold on the second and third. While on the fourth the Germans were again based. Residential buildings could change hands several times. One of these houses holding the enemy was the Pavlovs' house. A group of scouts led by commander Pavlov entrenched themselves in a residential building and, having knocked out the enemy from all four floors, turned the house into an impregnable citadel.

Operation Ural

Most of the city was taken by the Germans. Only along its edges were the forces of the Red Army based, forming three fronts:

1. Stalingradsky.
2. Southwestern.
3. Donskoy.

The total strength of all three fronts had a slight advantage over the Germans in technology and aviation. But this was not enough. And in order to defeat the Nazis, true military art was necessary. This is how Operation Ural was developed. An operation more successful than the Battle of Stalingrad had ever seen. Briefly, it consisted of all three fronts attacking the enemy, cutting him off from his main forces and encircling him. Which soon happened.

The Nazis took measures to free the army of General Paulus, who was encircled. But operations “Thunder” and “Thunderstorm” developed for this purpose did not bring any success.

Operation Ring

The final stage of the defeat of Nazi troops in the Battle of Stalingrad was Operation Ring. Its essence was to eliminate the encircled German troops. The latter were not going to give up. With about 350 thousand personnel (which was sharply reduced to 250 thousand), the Germans planned to hold out until reinforcements arrived. However, this was not allowed either by the rapidly attacking soldiers of the Red Army, smashing the enemy, or by the condition of the troops, which had significantly deteriorated during the time that the battle for Stalingrad lasted.

As a result of the final stage of Operation Ring, the Nazis were cut into two camps, which were soon forced to surrender due to the onslaught of the Russians. General Paulus himself was captured.

Consequences

The significance of the Battle of Stalingrad in the history of World War II is colossal. Having suffered such huge losses, the Nazis lost their advantage in the war. In addition, the success of the Red Army inspired the armies of other states fighting Hitler. As for the fascists themselves, to say that their fighting spirit has weakened is to say nothing.

Hitler himself emphasized the significance of the Battle of Stalingrad and the defeat of the German army in it. According to him, on February 1, 1943, the offensive in the East no longer made any sense.