The Enduring Relevance Of The Battle For Stalingrad
recallRussian soldier captures enemyGerman soldiers dash away after setting fire to barn outside StalingradTheEnduringRelevance of the BattleforStalingradBy B rian H anle yMore than six decades afterthe surrender of the SixthArmy and Fourth PanzerArmy, some 50 years afterthe last German prisoner of war was allowedto return to what had once been his homeland, and a couple of generations after theplace was renamed Volgograd, the mentionof Stalingrad brings distinct images, even tominds untaught in history and geography.In the months preceding the 2003 Iraqcampaign, we were warned that the battle forBaghdad would become “another Stalingrad.”There was no shortage of editorials that arguedthat the earlier battle might forecast the natureof the impending struggle for the Iraqi capital.Analogies of this kind express just how catastrophic the battle for Stalingrad was.In military circles, Stalingrad occupies asuitable place in officer development coursesthat focus on important battles. A campaignof Stalingrad’s proportions offers a multitudeof lessons for the military. But what has yet tobe touched on specifically is an appraisal ofthe Stalingrad campaign that speaks directlyto warfighters who value interservice comityand know-how above all else. To this end, thisarticle argues that the Germans could havesucceeded at Stalingrad if they had some ofour ideas of joint operations and, of equalimportance, our high standards in regard toprofessional integrity.A Flawed StrategyStalingrad was fought and lost by the finestcollection of divisions in an army that had notknown strategic defeat for a quarter of a century.Where did this collection go wrong? How couldtalented leaders blunder on such a massivescale? We study the battle for Stalingrad fromthe German point of view so that 50 years hence,students of military campaigns will not beasking similar questions about U.S. performancein whatever major clash of arms awaits us.The battle for Stalingrad really began inthe summer of 1940, when Adolf Hitler initiatedLieutenant Colonel Brian Hanley, USAF, is an Associate Professor of English at the U.S. Air Force Academy.88 JFQ/ issue 43, 4 th quarter 2006a plan to attack the Soviet Union (though hehad made up his mind that war with Russia wasinevitable nearly a year earlier). In the autumn of1940, Hitler’s intuition told him that the defeatof Great Britain could be accomplished only byconquering Russia. The German army, and to alesser extent the Luftwaffe, was as close to whatwe would understand as combat readiness as itever would be. Morale was at a peak, and therewas a core of combat-tested leaders at all levels,although the German equipment was wantingin major respects. In both numbers and qualityof weapons, the Russians had the upper hand.The Wehrmacht possessed no tank that couldgo head-to-head with the Russian T–34 andKV–1, and more than half of the 3,200 Panzersassembled at the eastern frontier in June 1941were thinly armored machines. The Mark I had7.62-mm machineguns, the Mark II had 20-mmguns, and the Czech tanks were armed with 37mm guns. The infantry was without a suitableassault weapon; the standard-issue K98 rifle, anold design but hardly obsolete, was of limitedvalue given the scale, intensity, and conditions ofcombat that would prevail on the eastern front.n d upress.ndu.edu
Form ApprovedOMB No. 0704-0188Report Documentation PagePublic reporting burden for the collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering andmaintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information,including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, ArlingtonVA 22202-4302. Respondents should be aware that notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall be subject to a penalty for failing to comply with a collection of information if itdoes not display a currently valid OMB control number.1. REPORT DATE3. DATES COVERED2. REPORT TYPE200600-00-2006 to 00-00-20064. TITLE AND SUBTITLE5a. CONTRACT NUMBERThe Enduring Relevance of the Battle for Stalingrad5b. GRANT NUMBER5c. PROGRAM ELEMENT NUMBER6. AUTHOR(S)5d. PROJECT NUMBER5e. TASK NUMBER5f. WORK UNIT NUMBER7. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES)National Defense University,Institute for National Strategic Studies,2605th Avenue SW Fort Lesley J. McNair,Washington,DC,203199. SPONSORING/MONITORING AGENCY NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES)8. PERFORMING ORGANIZATIONREPORT NUMBER10. SPONSOR/MONITOR’S ACRONYM(S)11. SPONSOR/MONITOR’S REPORTNUMBER(S)12. DISTRIBUTION/AVAILABILITY STATEMENTApproved for public release; distribution unlimited13. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES14. ABSTRACT15. SUBJECT TERMS16. SECURITY CLASSIFICATION OF:a. REPORTb. ABSTRACTc. THIS PAGEunclassifiedunclassifiedunclassified17. LIMITATION OFABSTRACT18. NUMBEROF PAGESSame asReport (SAR)519a. NAME OFRESPONSIBLE PERSONStandard Form 298 (Rev. 8-98)Prescribed by ANSI Std Z39-18
HanleyEven so, the operational and tactical excellenceof the soldiers who would employ that equipment was without equal.Irrespective of the valor and resourcefulness of the combat troops, the military strategythat governed Germany’s war on Russia andculminated in the Stalingrad disaster wasthe Germans were unprepared, which reflectsnot only a failure in planning but also a robustand invincible self-deception. As good as itwas, the German army that charged acrossthe River Bug in June 1941 in Operation Barbarossa was essentially an expeditionaryforce working to annihilate an enemy thatthe military strategy that governed Germany’s war on Russiaand culminated in the Stalingrad disaster was terribly flawedndupres s.ndu.educould be defeated only by a military establishment that was structured, provisioned, trained,and experienced in wars of attrition.Practical DifficultiesGermans find safety behind a wallForever Out of ReachTo begin with, the German economy wasnot geared to support an effort of this kind.Moreover, the army was deliberately deprivedof all supplies that would help the troopsfight or withstand the Russian winter on thegrounds that such items would demoralizethe soldiery who, it was assumed, would fightbetter if they believed the war would be won ina few weeks.In fact, the entire logistic system wasa mess. Supplies were expected to moveacross great distances, without a proper roadand rail network, to a front line constantlyin flux. Also, the Germans had far too fewtrucks. The Opel Blitzes and Mercedes L3000vehicles soon broke down under the strain ofbad roads, excessive cargo, and questionablemaintenance. The miscellany of capturedvehicles the Germans had to rely on could notOperation Blue, Hitler’s summeroffensive, largely duplicated the strategy of Barbarossa. The difference between the operations was one of scale. Directive 41 (April 5,1942) ordered the Wehrmacht to “destroythe active fighting strength remaining to theSoviets and to take away as far as possibletheir most important resources of war.” Hitlerno longer had the forces to do this along theentire line, so Operation Blue focused on thesouthern sector of the eastern front. In fourphases, the German army would destroySoviet forces in the Don River Bend, capturethe oil fields in the Caucasus, and shore up thefront elsewhere until offensive power could beconcentrated for further operations.These ends were not beyond reasongiven what Hitler assumed to be the threadbare forces opposing him. But even if theintelligence estimates had been accurate ratherthan terribly wrong regarding Soviet strengthand fighting spirit, Berlin’s armies would havestruggled to execute even this pared-downstrategy. Hitler turned a precarious situationinto a hopeless one by expanding the aimsissue 43, 4 th quarter 2006 / JFQ 89recallterribly flawed—a circumstance aggravatedby the moral feebleness of the operationalcommanders on the scene. Military plannerstoday would find the Wehrmacht’s originalobjectives of capturing major centers of gravityunexceptionable: the Ukraine (Soviet Russia’sindustrial and agricultural heartland); Moscow(the seat of Russia’s dictatorship and its industrial and communications nerve center); andLeningrad (a major port on the Baltic Sea andcradle of Bolshevism).Achieving these objectives would giveGermany mastery over Russia from Archangelto the banks of the Volga, isolating Stalinand the communist system that Hitler fearedand detested on the Asian steppe. But Hitleralso insisted that his armies destroy Russianforces in the field—a goal that could not besquared with the other objectives. The greatencirclement battles of 1941 have never beenmatched: 9 major pockets and more than adozen smaller ones yielded 3 million Russianprisoners, 14,000 tanks, and 25,000 guns, aswell as heaps of other equipment. But these victories, spectacular though they were, enfeebledthe Wehrmacht in such a way as to make itsmassive defeat before the gates of Moscow inDecember 1941 inevitable. In locking downRussian forces in positions called kessels (kettlesor cauldrons), rather than bypassing them, theGerman armored columns racked up miles ontheir tracks and engines they could ill spare.The infantry divisions tasked to liquidate thepockets suffered enormous losses in men andmaterial. Time was spent inefficiently in theseencirclement battles rather than in stormingMoscow before the autumn rains would holdup the mechanized spearheads, or at leastbefore the unimaginably brutal winter wouldparalyze and debilitate them.But even if the original objectives hadbeen doggedly pursued, in one decisive respectbe kept running without a proper inventory ofspare parts. Too late, German industry createdsemitracked trucks, but they were never produced in sufficient numbers and, evenif they had been, none were without majordesign shortcomings.The German planning system failedfrom the start to coordinate ways, ends, andmeans—a circumstance that had not been corrected when the summer offensive kicked offin June 1942. The decision to persist in executing a bad strategic plan thrust the Germanstoward a defeat at Stalingrad that led to SovietRussia’s triumph 2 years later. From February1943 onward, after the last German soldiersurrendered at Stalingrad, Germany could notexpect to regain the strategic initiative. Its onlyrealistic hope was to fight a defensive war thatwould prove so costly to the Soviet armies asto drive Stalin to the negotiating table.The great loss of men and materiel atStalingrad meant that the most importantstrategic objective, the capture of Moscow, fellforever out of reach. And so crippling was theStalingrad debacle that it removed the needfor a northern front, even though the armiesinvesting Leningrad in the spring of 1943could have mitigated, if not prevented, themassive defeats in the central and southernsectors in 1944.
recallthe battle F O R stalingradClockwise from left:Germans aim heavy artilleryat Stalingrad; Germans viewbattlefield; Map of Germancampaign for seizure ofStalingrad; Soldiers run forcover behind damagedPanzer tank.of his plan. On July 23, about a month afterOperation Blue got under way, he issued amajor revision: his armies were to destroySoviet forces in the Rostov area immediatelyto the east of where the German forward linewas held, push on to occupy the entire easterncoast of the Black Sea, and dispatch mobileforces to seize the main oil-producing areas, allin preparation for an offensive that would terminate at the north shore of the Persian Gulf.Maikop was the nearest objective at 200 milessoutheast of the German front line. Astrakhanlay some 350 miles distant, Grozny 500 miles,and Baku a further 300 miles to the southeastof Grozny.In addition, Hitler expected the SixthArmy—at 17 divisions, the largest and bestequipped formation of its kind on the easternfront—to deny Russian forces the great volumeof munitions, weapons, food, and oil produced insouthern Russia by cutting the supply line at theVolga, immediately north of Stalingrad, which90 JFQ/ issue 43, 4 th quarter 2006was more than 200 miles east of the Germanfront line in June 1942. According to Directive42, the Sixth Army and the Fourth Panzer Armywere “to attack Stalingrad, smash the enemy concentration there, take the town, and cut off theisthmus between the Don and the Volga.”These expanded strategic ends werebeyond the means of the German army—andgiven the indeterminate character of hisrevised plan, Hitler’s strategy in the southwas perhaps not attainable without greatrisk by any army any time. First, expectingarmored spearheads to plunge hundreds ofmiles further into enemy territory from a startpoint hundreds of miles from the Germanhomeland to seize towns and encircle andannihilate enemy forces is contrary to soundoperational and strategic judgment. Evenif the enemy puts up only feeble resistance,flanks are well guarded, and all attacks on theflanks fail immediately, embarking on such acourse would provoke one logistic crisis afteranother. Armored columns require massivequantities of supplies when the objectives areas expansive as Hitler’s, so it makes good sensefor them to advance at the head, or as part, of abroad offensive front. That allows these formations to remain within reach of supply dumpsand field repair shops.Hitler took no account of these practicaldifficulties, nor did he take notice of the additional psychological and physical strain hisrevised objectives would place on his troops.The Wehrmacht was already weakened byfighting the previous winter. German factoryproduction could not keep up with demandfor critical weapons systems—tanks andarmored personnel carriers, for instance—andthe Soviets were growing stronger and, asstrategists and tacticians, wiser by the day. TheRussians had every good reason to trade spacefor time, the objective being to lure Hitler’sarmies—his most capable formations in particular—into a trap from which they could notescape. Unintentionally, Hitler collaboratedwith the Russian High Command on its planof strategic retreat, to be followed by a series ofmassive counterstrokes.Running Out of OptionsThe Sixth Army began to engage Russianforces outside Stalingrad in late July 1942. ByAugust 23, advance elements had secured thewest bank of the Volga immediately north ofStalingrad. At that moment, it appeared thatHitler’s plan, reckless though it was, just mightwork. From a strategic standpoint, the missionof the Sixth Army and the Fourth PanzerArmy was successful. Soviet river traffic fellunder German artillery fire, the rail linerunning north from Stalingrad was in Germanhands, and the Luftwaffe had free play of theskies, allowing it to pummel the industrial andtransportation systems, as well as the civilianpopulation within the city. As a hub of armsproduction and the movement of raw materials, Stalingrad was knocked out of the war.Operationally, however, the situationwas much murkier for the Germans by lateSeptember. Unlike the preceding weekswhen the fighting took place on the steppesand in the suburbs, the Russians began toput up a stiff resistance within Stalingradproper—though German tactics made it easierfor the outnumbered and outgunned Sovietsto stall the German advance. Instead of seizingthe western bank of the Volga, which wouldhave isolated Russian forces in the city and cutoff the ferrying of troops and supplies acrossn d upress.ndu.edu
Hanleythe river each night, the Germans attackedthe city on a broad front: from the northwest,the west, and the southwest. Advances, alwayscostly in troops, quickly petered out because ofpockets of resistance behind the front line, orbecause the Germans absorbed a critical massof casualties in exchange for short and oftenevanescent gains.Scarcely less important, the Germanshad no choice but to use their primaryoffensive weapon, the Panzer force, entirelyin a support role as assault groups. WithinStalingrad, the Panzers were usually employedHitler turned a precarious situation into a hopeless one byexpanding the aims of his planndupres s.ndu.eduPrestige versus LivesThe operational and tactical aspectsof the battle are what most readily cometo mind when one thinks of Stalingrad. ByOctober 1942, after nearly 2 months of acontest marked by unprecedented brutality,the Germans were in charge of almost theentire city but without the strength to hold outshould something go wrong. By early November, after the final attempt to take the city hadrun its course, the Sixth Army was exhausted.Most formations were reduced to a fraction oftheir original complement of men and equipment. At both the operational and tacticallevels, the battle for Stalingrad was effectivelylost. The Germans had taken a mass of casualties and lost hundreds of tanks, vehicles, andweapons with nothing to show for it but gathering catastrophe.At the strategic level, chaos had begun toassert itself many weeks earlier. In late September, Hitler quarreled with and then dismissedhis chief of staff, General Franz Halder, whosewell-grounded misgivings about the Stalingradcampaign affronted Hilter’s understanding ofwhat was at stake. Halder argued for a strategicwithdrawal from the city not only because ofthe casualties and the attendant weaknessesof the extended flanks, but also because theoriginal strategic objective had since beenattained—a fact Hitler would concede in asituation briefing 12 days after firing Halder.As Hitler looked at the matter, however,seizing the city became above all else a matterof prestige—a word always fraught withmeaninglessness when a head of state balancesit against the lives of his soldiers. CapturingStalingrad would humiliate Stalin. Theworld would take note of communism beingsmashed under the boot of national socialismand marvel at Hitler’s strategic genius and theinvincibility of his armies.Russian armies, which had been assembling on the periphery of the Stalingradcombat zone since late summer, attacked thethinly held flanks of Friedrich von Paulus’army with overwhelming force on November 19. By November 23, the encirclementof the Sixth Army and parts of the FourthPanzer Army was complete. The Hungarian,Italian, and Romanian armies guarding theflanks and rear areas had been torn to pieces.Despite what was by any sensible reckoninga serious defeat that could only ripen into astrategic calamity if the trapped forces didnot break out immediately, Hitler ordered hisgenerals in the pocket to stand fast; he wouldsend forces under General Erich von Manstein to break in. A supply corridor would bemaintained until spring, when the offensivewas expected to resume.By Christmas Eve, however, the quixoticattempt by General von Manstein to relieve theSixth Army had failed 2 weeks after it began.In the meantime, Russian armies pushedthe German line some 200 miles west. TheRussians assaulted the kessel on January 10,1943. German troops fought valiantly but in ahopeless cause. On January 31, von Paulus surrendered, though remnants of the 11th Corps,isolated in the northern part of the city, didnot capitulate until February 2.For the Germans, it was a disasterbeyond imagination. Two German armiesissue 43, 4 th quarter 2006 / JFQ 91recallin small groups (three and four per engagement) and under conditions that favored thedefender. Fighting in the dust, darkness, andclutter of a bombed-out city gives prominenceto a tank’s weakness—a large, noisy, smokingtarget that does not offer its crew the agility onwhich its survival depends—while minimizingits strength.What made the Panzer arm effective was not its firepower, which wasalways second-rate compared with Russianmachines, but its maneuverability and mutualsupport in formation. The three Panzer divisions (14th, 16th, 24th) and the three motorizeddivisi
Army, some 50 years after the last German prisoner of war was allowed to return to what had once been his home-land, and a couple of generations after the place was renamed Volgograd, the mention of Stalingrad brings distinct images, even to minds untaught in history and geography. In the months preceding the 2003 Iraq
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