Topic. German army at the Battle of Moscow. Right: Stalingrad’s desperate defenders realized that their best defense consisted of anchoring their defense lines in numerous buildings. It’s objective: the Soviet oil fields in the Caucasus Mountains. The strategic importance of railways on the eve of WWI, Protected: Simple History Vehicles of WORLD WAR II COLORING BOOK Volume 1. It shrank further following Allied landings in North Africa (Operation Torch) in November 1942, when Germans were forced to withdraw aircraft from the Eastern Front in an ultimately failed attempt to save Axis fortunes in the Mediterranean. From the start of Operation Barbarossa, when German troops invaded the USSR in June 1941, until the end of the war, Azerbaijan produced 75 million tonnes of crude oil, 80% of the … V olgograd sits just above the Caucasus, an industrial city on the west bank of the Volga. Photo from late August 1942. In order to encourage his army, Hitler made Paulus his Field Marshal on January 30, 1943 . Ranging from July 1942 to February 1943 the battle is considered by many historians to have been the turning point in the war in Europe. Battle of the Caucasus is similar to these military conflicts: Case Blue, Operation Little Saturn, Eastern Front (World War II) and more. Even though armies were diverted to Stalingrad and even Leningrad, the Germans managed to capture Maikop, and came within 50 miles of Grozny. Left: Beginning on August 23, 1942, the Luftwaffe bombed Stalingrad block-by-block for five straight days. Their morale would be completely destroyed and the German army would get complete hold over the oil fields of the Caucasus. The Russians could simply not afford to lose the battle. Battle of Stalingrad Summary On August 23, 1942, Hitler and General Friedrich Paulus sent out their troops to seize the oil fields in the Caucasus Mountains and the City of Stalingrad. June 28, 1942 On this date in 1942 on the Eastern Front, Adolf Hitler launched Germany’s second summer campaign against the Soviet Union in two years. The Eastern Front and the Mediterranean The Battle of Stalingrad • Hitler wants to capture Caucasus oil fields and destroy Stalingrad • Soviets defeat Germans in bitter winter campaign - Over 230,000 Germans, 1,100,000 Soviets die • Battle a turning point: Soviet army begins to move towards Germany 2 SECTION NEXT The … The German armored advance resembled a knife slicing through a stick of butter—a rerun it seemed of the summer of 1941, when the Red Army fell apart on the first armored impact. The Battle of Stalingrad. Instead Hitler turned his attention to Stalingrad. The Germans captured the city probably the the second week in November 1942. Smelling blood, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced at the conclusion of the Casablanca Conference in Morocco between himself, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and their joint chiefs of staff (January 14–23, 1943) that the Allies would require nothing less than Germany’s “unconditional surrender.”. But Hitler underestimated the Russian army. Moreover, he also wanted to take control of the fertile oil fields situated in the Caucasus. Smoke rises due to the explosion. Leading up to the Battle of Stalingrad, the German Wehrmacht had already suffered multiple setbacks in Russia. Contributor: C. Peter Chen ww2dbase The southern Russian city of Stalingrad was a major industrial city, producing tanks, among other equipment, for the Soviet war effort. Wrecked buildings in Stalingrad. He gives an entirely different scenario of the battle of Stalingrad. Stalingrad—situated on the Volga River, 566 miles southeast of Moscow—was a large industrial city but of limited strategic significance. On the Soviet side, it is believed well over a million Soviet soldiers were killed. The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the most important battles of the Second World War. At the end of the war Stalingrad was In 1945 Stalingrad was officially proclaimed a Hero City of the Soviet Union for its defense of the motherland. On June 28 th, 1942, Operation Blau/Blue commenced with multiple German and Romanian units were to capture the Caucasus Oil Fields for a plentiful supply of fuels. Left: A reconnaissance photo of a railway station burning in Stalingrad, late August 1942. Stalingrad proved to be a major turning point in the European war, and for the first time the Western Allies began to hope the Soviets might triumph in their titanic confrontation with the Nazi invaders. In 1942, Germany's Fall Blau was initially aimed at capturing or interdicting shipments of oil from the Caucasus to the rest of the Soviet Union. Likewise, Russians could not let the Germans get hold of the oil fields in the Caucasus - The Russian Army was led by Zhukov with around 1,000,500 men, who were fighting against Paulus' army of 1,011,500 men. Four out of five Soviet aircraft, tanks and trucks used in World War II ran on fuel produced in Baku refineries from oil extracted in the Baku oil fields. The Germans killed 2,500 Soviet soldiers each day, day after day, three times their losses. Some 105,000 enemy prisoners were led away, most to their deaths. Captured German soldiers after the Battle of Stalingrad, January 1943. After all, the ferocity of the fighting at Stalingrad shocked the Germans, who were used to the relative ease of their Blitzkrieg tactics. For the heroism of its defenders, Stalingrad was one of four cities awarded the title “Hero City” in 1945. Ignoring the Soviet capital Moscow, whose fierce defense combined with a brutal winter had prevented its capture earlier in the year, Fall Blau (Operation Blue in English) was instead directed south toward the strategic Caucasus oil and mineral fields and important centers of Soviet war industry. After all the city was an important centre for Soviet Union communications and transport to southern Russia. At that time the Germans expected that their advance into the Caucasus would be so rapid that the Russians would not be able to severely damage the oil wells, and the … The German army was also low on food and ammunition. German guns fired. Soviet Union. They bitterly joked about capturing the kitchen but still having to fight for the living room and the bedroom. Right: German bombers flatten Stalingrad’s industrial center, November 16, 1942. The Wehrmacht's drive into the Caucasus in August 1942 seemed unstoppable, and taking the oil cities of Maikop, Grozny, and Baku would have solved one of Germany's most serious strategic problems. As the conditions were becoming hostile, Hitler played his last card. The … A whole army unit was lost and nearly 100,000 Germans were taken prisoner. Nevertheless, Hitler demanded his soldiers fight to the last bullet but by January they had no choice but to surrender. If captured, the Red Army will lose 70%-90% of all its oil resources. Battle of Stalingrad, August 23, 1942, to February 2, 1943 The 199-day battle for control of Stalingrad produced a monumental two million casualties on both sides. Six armies of over a million men led by Marshal Zhukov surrounded the city. The Battle of Stalingrad bled the German Army dry and turned the war in the East decisively against Nazi Germany. Undeterred, Hitler mounted “Operation Blue” in the spring of ’42 to seize both the rich oil fields in the Caucasus and the region’s rail junction and industrial center in Stalingrad. Meanwhile the Russian Army was galvanised by its heroic victory and began to push the Germans back in other parts of Eastern Europe. 17 Jul 1942 - 2 Feb 1943. Bitter fighting raged for every factory, rubble-strewn street, house, basement, stairwell, and sewer. Instead, the successes of the summer and the symbol of "Stalingrad" itself lured them into … ... operating in the southern extremity of the southern Russian SFSR in an effort to simultaneously capture the city of Stalingrad and the Caucasus oil fields. Left: German infantry try to find cover in the wilderness of rubble that Stalingrad had become. Stalingrad was located in the Soviet Union and was a major industrial center. S01:E07 - The Battle of Stalingrad After the failure to take both Moscow and Leningrad, Hitler sets his sights on the oil fields in the Caucasus. (The first had been Operation Barbarossa begun the previous June, which had been intended to knock the Soviet Union out of the war.) Disaster at Stalingrad: An Alternate History by Peter G. Tsouras enables the reader to know details about the history of the battle of Stalingrad. The Luftwaffe retained air superiority into early November, but after flying 20,000 individual sorties, its original strength of 1,600 serviceable aircraft had shrunk to 950. The German offensive slowed as it entered the mountains in the southern Caucasus and did not reach all of its 1942 objectives. (Fall Blau) of which the battle became a part. Copyright © 2012–2020 World War II - Day By Day. Dispatching some 3 or 4 million soldiers to the Eastern Front, Adolf Hitler hoped for a rapid victory.It was an all-out effort to crush the Soviet threat by capturing Ukraine to the south, the city of Leningrad — p… Photo from September 23, 1942. Operation Barbarossa, launched in June 1941, failed to achieve Hitler's objective of decisively defeating the Soviet Union in a single campaign. After August 25, the Soviets stopped recording civilian and military casualties as a result of air raids. -Germans wanted the oil fields of the Caucasus region-begins sept. 1, 1942-Germans capture much of the city in street fighting-nov 23, 1942 Germans get trapped in the city-German commander Von Poulus ordered to fight to the death-between jan 31 and feb 2, 300,000 German troops surrender-a major turning point on the eastern … The book's exhaustive detail in numerous battles shed light on event that might have change the the direction of … Suddenly they were faced with hand-to-hand combat, often only yards away from the enemy. The Soviet supply line along the Volga River would be a secondary objective. One railway station changed hands 14 times in six hours. Animated map shows the Battle of Caucasus and the Crimea. By November the Russians launched a devastating counter-offensive. Neither Germany nor the Soviet Union could have foreseen the horror that would face each other at Stalingrad. It estimated that more than 800,000 Axis forces were killed, wounded or captured. My main interests include the Second World War and Communism, especially in Russia and the former Yugoslavia. Hitler actually concentrated his efforts on taking the Caucasus more than he did on Stalingrad at the beginning of Operation Fall Blau, he dedicated the entire Army Group A to the conquest of the oil fields in Bakou while the Army Group B had to secure its flanks by getting deeper in Russia and securing the Volga, making it … More than 1,000 tons of bombs were dropped on the city, but Stalin forbade any evacuation from the city, even of children. In 1942, the German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) launched Operation Edelweiss which was aimed at advancing to the oil fields of Azerbaijan. For the heroism of its defenders, Stalingrad was one of four cities awarded the title “Hero City” in 1945. It was also a large industrial city producing large amounts of armaments for the Soviet war effort. The Battle of the Caucasus is a name given to a series of Axis and Soviet operations in the Caucasus area on the Eastern Front of World War II.On 25 July 1942, German troops captured Rostov-on-Don, Russia, opening the Caucasus region of the southern Soviet Union, and the oil fields beyond at Maikop, Grozny, and ultimately … This is not to mention the 40,000 civilians killed as well. Germans plan to capture the Russian oil fields. After the Soviet breakthroughs in the region around Stalingrad, the German forces in the Caucusus were put on the defensive. Stalingrad was the worst defeat the Soviets inflicted on Axis forces up to that time. That same day a massive German air raid on Stalingrad caused a firestorm that killed thousands of civilians and turned the city of 900,000 residents into a landscape of rubble and burned ruins. In September 1942, General Paulus (Germany) advanced towards Stalingrad, assisted by the Fourth Panzer Army. Whilst at least initially, the Germans took control of much of the city they couldn’t fully control it. The summer offensive would be aimed instead at the southern USSR, especially the oil fields in the Caucasus. His first task was to secure the oil fields in Caucasus. The Battle of Stalingrad … Firestorms killed anywhere from 25,000 to 40,000 people. Right: A scene of the destroyed city center, Stalingrad, date unknown but likely autumn 1942. Stalingrad was men to be part of a large defensive front so that the Germans wouldn't be attacked from the rear while going for the oil fields. I am currently studying for a PhD in History, a subject I am fascinated by. Things changed on July 9th when Hitler launched a huge attack to take both Moscow and the remaining oil fields in the Caucasus in one move. Only 6,000 POWs lived through their ordeal to return to their homeland after the war. Each street was fought over by hand-to hand combat and areas that had been captured by one side during the day were often re-taken in the night. In addition, Germany also wanted to invade the region’s oil fields. In December of 1941, after suffering multiple losses, the Soviet Union counterattacked German forces in the Battle of Moscow, successfully … Battle of Stalingrad, successful Soviet defense of the city of Stalingrad that was a turning point in favor of the Allies in World War II. In order to complete this task, Hitler ordered Paulus to take Stalingrad, with the final target being Baku. Instead Hitler turned his attention to Stalingrad. The Battle of Stalingrad lasted about a year. General Georgy Zhukov, in The Germans called this ever-present, often unseen urban warfare Rattenkrieg (“Rat War”). The failure of the German army was a full-blown disaster. The battle drained German army of its resources and after its defeat it went into full retreat in Eastern Europe. Neither side could afford to lose the battle for city and thus it descended into one of the most bloody in the whole of the Second World War. The German Army may have been able to use all of its force to break out of the trap and escape during the first stage of the Russians counter-attack but Hitler forbade them to do so. Thus they converted multistory apartment houses, factories, warehouses, corner residences, and high-rise office buildings into strongholds bristling with machine guns, antitank rifles, mortars, mines, barbed wire, snipers, and small 5–10 man units of submachine gunners and grenadiers prepared for house-to-house, hand-to-hand combat. Therefore, the famous city on the Volga, Stalingrad, must be "held at all costs." Stalin sent Soviet reinforcements but they had to cross the Volga River and many of them drowned under the weight of their clothing and weapons. The Luftwaffe also rendered the River Volga, vital for ferrying supplies into the besieged city, unusable to Soviet shipping. The aim was to disrupt communications between the central regions of the Soviet Union and the Caucasus. Hitler had expected the city fall quickly. The Germans loss of such a vast amount of manpower and equipment seriously hindered the rest of their war in Eastern Europe. Paulus’ Sixth Army was inexorably drawn into a Soviet quagmire from which it was nearly impossible to escape. The Battle of Stalingrad bled the German Army dry and turned the war in the East decisively against Nazi Germany. They had made great inroads into the oil fields of the Caucasus (south-west Russia) which could have fuelled the war effort. However, he had not taken into account the stand that the Russians would take in defence of the city named after their leader. The defensive front was also ment to protect the supply lines transporting oil back to … They had made great inroads into the oil fields of the Caucasus (south-west Russia) which could have fuelled the war effort. The Germans attacked Stalingrad because they prioritized getting the oil fields in the Caucasus. After the destruction of the 6th German Army, the terrifying and unstoppable advance of Hitler’s armies across Europe halted. The Battle of the Caucasus is a name given to a series of Axis and Soviet operations in the Caucasus area on the Eastern Front of World War II.On 25 July 1942, German troops captured Rostov-on-Don, Russia, opening the Caucasus region of the southern Soviet Union, and the oil fields beyond at Maikop, Grozny, and ultimately … In Russia return to their deaths urban warfare Rattenkrieg ( “ Rat ”. 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