Stalingrad Battle, the bloodiest war of the WW2

This savage confrontation between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which lasted from August 23, 1942, to February 2, 1943, took place on the banks of the Volga River and in the streets of Stalingrad, a city that had been completely destroyed by the fighting. 

The Stalingrad Battle is well known for its severity, with both sides engaged in a battle for survival over control of this vital city. Let’s dive into it.

The facts behind the Stalingrad Battle

Before moving on to seize its planned target, the Caucasus oil deposits, Nazi Germany’s Wehrmacht sought to conquer Stalingrad, an industrial metropolis named after the then-Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. 

Given the city’s name, both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin gave the Stalingrad Battle a powerful symbolic significance that went beyond its military significance.  

The German Sixth Army’s onslaught on Stalingrad was dangerous from the start due to the extremely long supply routes. The Wehrmacht assault, led by General Friedrich Paulus, started in the middle of August 1942, about a year after Nazi Germany first invaded the Soviet Union.

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By mid-November 1942, the Wehrmacht had finally succeeded in taking control of much of Stalingrad despite strong opposition. However, at this point, Soviet forces had begun a two-pronged assault to envelop the German forces.

A group of men moving by a landscape in ruins with angry expressions.A group of men moving by a landscape in ruins with angry expressions.

In late November, the Red Army had surrounded about 300,000 German forces from the whole Sixth Army and parts of the 4th Panzer Army. Hitler insisted that they maintain their posture. Stalin similarly instructed his troops in July “not to move an inch”.

Both sides held on to their stances obstinately. And soon the condition of the besieged German forces began to deteriorate. Germany’s Luftwaffe attempted —with no success— to provide supplies over a period of many weeks. It was just insufficient.

The Red Army’s advance caused supplies to run out even more quickly. Then winter arrived, with lows of -22 degrees Fahrenheit (-30 degrees Celsius). 

These temperature fluctuations and the poor supply, caused many German soldiers to pass away from malnutrition and freezing rather than from combat. 

After numerous delays, a German relief mission attempted to break the encirclement but was unsuccessful.

Stand and fight

Despite these severe conditions, General Paulus complied with Hitler’s command to “stand and fight”, turning down the Soviet Union’s offer of capitulation on January 8, 1943. 

However, Paulus was caught alive on January 31 when the Red Army attacked his headquarters, which were housed in a cellar beneath a department shop. In order for his officers to suffer the same fate as regular German soldiers, Paulus had also forbidden them from killing themselves in order to avoid arrest.

At this point, the encircled German forces had been divided into two camps, one in the north and one in the south of Stalingrad.

Late in January, the southern half’s forces submitted. People in the north did the same on February 2, 1943. When he learnt of the surrender, Hitler was indignant.

Thousands of deaths

The Stalingrad Battle resulted in the deaths of more than 500,000 Soviet soldiers, many of whom were civilians. 

This was a consequence of Stalin’s persistent refusal to evacuate civilians throughout the struggle. 

During the early stages of the Stalingrad Battle, German air strikes claimed more than 40,000 lives. Numerous people perished from famine and hypothermia among the 75,000 civilians who stayed in Stalingrad until the German surrender.

Estimates say between 150,000 and 250,000 Germans perished due to the Stalingrad Battle. Only around 6,000 of the 100,000 Germans taken as Soviet prisoners of war —among them General Paulus— returned to Germany up until 1956.

Although the Stalingrad Battle was neither the one with the most deaths nor had the biggest strategic implications for Germany’s Wehrmacht, its importance persists after decades.

According to Jochen Hellbeck, a historian at Rutgers University in New Jersey, “the psychological impact of Stalingrad was immense and in that sense, it played a decisive role in the war”. 

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Russian disinformation

The Soviet Union’s victory at the Stalingrad Battle was made into a legend. Nazi Germany’s army, which had previously been regarded as the world’s strongest army, suffered a crushing loss.

One could draw a parallel between the propaganda during the Stalingrad Battle and the current situation between Russia and Ukraine.

In current times, the Kremlin has been defending its invasion of Ukraine for months as a new campaign against “Nazis”. 

Putin has referred to the Ukrainian government as having this goal of eradicating the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine, and even declared he would “denazify” Ukraine as he gave the order to attack.

Furthermore, the comparisons he makes between the current situation and that of 80 years ago are historically flawed. Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, and the Soviet Union struggled to defend itself. 

In 2022, Russia, the state that succeeded the Soviet Union, attacked the neighboring country of Ukraine without cause.

Reevaluating Stalin

Present-day Stalingrad Museum Volgograd also features in Putin’s story. This is one of the most popular institutions in the country. Today, rituals are performed there for the families of Russian troops who lost their lives in Ukraine.

The Ministry of Defense-funded Patriotic Youth Army held a ceremony at the museum where young people were honored as “descendants of the victorious at Stalingrad”.

Russian soldiers congregate at the well-known military memorials in Volgograd as they travel to Ukraine.

The evaluation of Josef Stalin’s person also shows how differently the past is seen in Russia and Ukraine: A new bust of the former Soviet leader has now been revealed in Volgograd, as the 80th anniversary of the Stalingrad Battle arrives. 

After Stalin’s death in 1960, the city was renamed in honor of the millions of people who died as a result of his reign of terror. 

Stalin’s “Holodomor” (“murder by starvation”) is remembered in Ukraine. Up to four million people in Ukraine alone perished in a catastrophic famine in 1932 and 1933, which historians think was purposefully sparked to crush Ukrainian peasants’ resistance to their forced collectivization.

The Holodomor was recognized as a genocide in 2022 by both the European Parliament and the German Bundestag.

Moscow’s reaction was angry at the very least, claiming that the Bundestag members had “decided to defiantly support this political and ideological myth, which is cultivated by the Ukrainian authorities at the instigation of ultra-nationalist, Nazi, and Russophobic forces”. 

The Stalingrad Battle is remembered in history as a grim example of the atrocities of war and the tenacity of the human spirit. 

Beyond its strategic ramifications, the Stalingrad Battle is significant historically because it serves as a vivid reminder of the human cost of war and the long-lasting effects of one of its most bloody engagements.

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