Causes of the Battle of
Stalingrad
The Battle for Stalingrad is
considered by many historians to have been the turning point in
World War Two in Europe. After the German
defeat at Stalingrad the Germany Army was in full retreat.
It was a major battle of World War II in whicn Nazi Germany and its allies foughr the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in south - western Russia.
The battle took place between July 17, 1942 until February 2, 1943, and is often cited as one of the turning points of the war. The battle was among the bloodiest battle in the history of warfare, with the upper estimates of combined deaths coming to nearly two million.
It took place because Hitler was winning in Russia, but he wanted to take the oil fields in southern Russia. So he sent a massive force to seize them.
However, Hitler became impacient, so he diverted some of the force to seize the city on the river Volga, which was the chief way for the Russians to transport oil from the oilfields to other parts of the country. That city was called Stalingrad.
The plan of the battle was to concentrate all available forces in the southern flank of the long front, destroy the front line Russian forces there, and then advance in two directions to be primary and secondary objectives which were the two most important remaining industrial centers in South Russia.
Germany attacked and russia defended , pouring hundreds of thousands of troops into the fray.
Hitler's
intention was to make victory for Russia to great a price for them to continue
fighting. But he failed at all of it. If leaders of the world payed attention
in history, they would not make the same mistakes others have done.
However, some historians believe that Hitler ordered the taking of Stalingrad simply because of the name of the city and Hitler's hatred of Joseph Stalin. For the same reason Stalin ordered that the city had to be saved.
The failure of the German Army was nothing short of a
disaster. A complete army group was lost at Stalingrad and 91,000 Germans were
taken prisoner. With such a massive loss of manpower and equipment, the Germans
simply did not have enough manpower to cope with the Russian advance to Germany
when it came.
Despite resistance in parts – such as a Kursk – they were in retreat on the Eastern Front from February 1943 on.
References:
Francesca Montalbetti
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