The Sixth Army Sacrificed at Stalingrad?

Discussion in 'The Eastern Front' started by kfz, Nov 6, 2006.

  1. kfz

    kfz Very Senior Member

    Do you buy this, Did hitler abandon the Sixth Army ay Stalingrad. Even at the time is was marked as the turning point of the whole war.

    Did Hilter really believe that stopping the sixth army breaking out back to the front lines and believing Goering's claims to 500 tons a day or did he have some other plan in that sacrficing the southern front and the 6th Army he could draw the Soviets away from Moscow and win the war??

    I just cant beleive Hitler was a, stupid enough to beleive Goering and B preperarded to risk the whole war without a major prize. It really wasnt a major stroke of stagegic thinking by Stalin The Manstein new the pincer was comming, Why the Gemrans invented encirclement. Stalin was playing Hitler at his own game. Why didnt they do something??? I didnt know but the sixth Army waited patiently for order to break out that never came and the half hearted attempt to releive it never came to anything.

    It was a plot I tell you!!!

    Kev
     
  2. morse1001

    morse1001 Very Senior Member

    Hard to say if it was a plot or not. hitler gave the order for no retreat and therefore Paulus was put in a serious prediciment. Hitler put pressure on him by making him a field marshall, as no previous German field marshall had surrendered to the enemy.
     
  3. drgslyr

    drgslyr Senior Member

    Hitler was just a bad strategist. To him, losing ground meant losing the battle, and he maintained the view that holding ground to the end was the best means of holding back the enemy. None of his generals could convince him otherwise, and imho, I believe that had Hitler stopped interfering, Germany would have won the war.
     
  4. lancesergeant

    lancesergeant Senior Member

    Correct me if I am wrong I don't know if it was Stalingrad or Leningrad, but wasn't a general promised 500+tons supplies/a day. Goering's adjutant knew it couldn't be done, Goering in ga ga land promised these supplies, but knew he didn't have the planes. Goering's adjutant knew there was no way to supply the troops but said nothing. This must have been a major contributing factor to the fall of Leningrad/ Stalingrad. Neither of them had the balls or the conscience.
     
  5. lancesergeant

    lancesergeant Senior Member

    Hitler was just a bad strategist. To him, losing ground meant losing the battle, and he maintained the view that holding ground to the end was the best means of holding back the enemy. None of his generals could convince him otherwise, and imho, I believe that had Hitler stopped interfering, Germany would have won the war.
    He exposed his lack of strategem a number of times. I don't think with Hitler out of the way, that Germany would have won the war. If anything I think there would have been a hardcore wanting to fight on , but ultimately I think the old guard would have sued for peace, sooner rather than later.
     
  6. gotham

    gotham Junior Member

    Did Hilter really believe that stopping the sixth army breaking out back to the front lines and believing Goering's claims to 500 tons a day

    Göring apparently based his claim on similar encirclement and Luftwaffe resupply experiences during the end of the winter of '41 at Demyansk and Kholm. See:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demyansk_Pocket
     
  7. Gerard

    Gerard Seelow/Prora

    I dont buy that for one minute - It would be extremely unwise to sacrifice the Wehrmacht's biggest and possibly most prestigious formation simply to draw away Russians from Moscow. No-one on the Wehrmacht staff knew what was coming when the Russians encircled 6th Army. Many officers knew the line was overstretched but thought that the Russians were at the end of their tether just like the Germans.

    Goering's boast was pure bombast - whether he knew it or not is irrelevant. The Demyansk Pocket was completely different to Stalingrad in terms of number of men and size. also the distance the Luftwaffe had to travel, in the middle of a Russian winter with rudimentary navigational equipment and a huge amount of fighter cover to break through. They had to try of course and it goes without saying that the pilots were extremely courageous in making the journey but any sane person in OKH knew that the airlift would never work.

    In a sense the 6th Army was doomed from the time it was surrounded. In order that a breakout be a success it needed to happen ASAP otherwise lack of fuel and hunger would hinder any attempt at a breakout - indeed by the time that Manstein got within 40 miles of the Pocket, it was too late - the 6th Army would have been decimated on the Steppes as it tried to break out. Them men were too weak and there was no fuel.
     
  8. Kiwiwriter

    Kiwiwriter Very Senior Member

    Yes, Hitler was stupid enough to believe Goering.

    Hitler saw war as an extension of propaganda, and many of his decisions were based on their propaganda impact. He was not going to withdraw his biggest army (6th was the largest in the Wehrmacht inventory at the time) from a city that bore Stalin's name, especially as he had been fighting for it for months, and taken 90 percent of the place. Nor would he admit that German troops had to retreat...again...on the Russian Front. He had already ordered "no retreat" in front of Moscow.

    Hitler was obsessed with the minutiae of war and statistics, and kept such manuals and books by his bed. He could not see the bigger picture of maintaining an army via airlift without adequate resources in the harsh Russian winter. Nor did he pay much attention to the German Army's disdain for logistics. German planning simply required the quartermasters to support whatever the operations guys had in mind. This compares with the Americans, who based everything on logistics, as Richard Overy and Eric Bergerud have pointed out in their books. The latter notes that had Hitler asked American generals about the possibilities of invading Russia, they would have given him memos about high-viscosity motor oil and other tedious but critical logistics topics, instead of the arrow streaks that Paulus and Marcks dreamed up for Barbarossa.

    After Stalingrad, Hitler held Goering in disregard and increasing disrepute. The Luftwaffe's failure at Stalingrad was inevitable but catastrophic for his position. Things only got worse with Tunisia and the continued Allied bombing.

    Hitler also had no interest in the lives and fates of his common soldiers, despite his affinity for them and seeing himself as one of them. He did not visit wounded men, rarely conferred decorations, and would not even look at a passing train that was loaded with wounded men when his train paused next to it. He showed no interest in the horrible conditions described to him by an officer evacuated from the Kessel. German soldiers were expected to obey, achieve the impossible, and die for their Fuhrer. He treated them like clerks and expected them to perform as heroes, and right up to the battle for Berlin. 6th Army was expected to hold Stalingrad and if necessary, fight to the very last man. It nearly did.
     
  9. kfz

    kfz Very Senior Member

    A couple of points.

    I think Goering was out of favor well before Stalingrad. I dont beleive anyone would be taken in. I make no attempt to get inside Hitler's head and the man was obviously insane, but to believe Goering...

    Paulus new the encirlcement was coming so the breakout was moot point really either it shoul;d and could have happen staright away or the ^th was pulled back before it happened.

    Whole thing seems completly avoidable to me, I guess hindsight is a wonderfull thing...
     
  10. Gerard

    Gerard Seelow/Prora

    Note to file : Dont try and take the Caspian Oilfields whilst Taking Stalingrad
     
  11. jontegrabben

    jontegrabben Junior Member

    I think the battle was lost before the encirclement when the Stalingrad battle commenced. The germans knew that street fighting was veary costly indeed and doing so with your lines streatched, supply bases far away and with limited reinforcements was just a bad way of spending recourses(they learned it the hard way early in the war and tried to avoid it as much as possible there after). Stalingrad should have been encircled or at least been put in a bad strategic situation (in the Sovjet view of things). The encirclement could have been avoided if reserves had been available but every motorized/mechanized force had been committed and gravly depleted in Stalingrad.
     
  12. T-34

    T-34 Discharged - Nazi

    Correct me if I am wrong I don't know if it was Stalingrad or Leningrad...

    Stalingrad of course.
    Leningrad was the city germans took under siege for such a long period that 1/4 of city's population died of starvation.
     
  13. spidge

    spidge RAAF RESEARCHER

    Leningrad was the city germans took under siege for such a long period that 1/4 of city's population died of starvation.

    In 1942 alone, more than 650,000 citizens of Leningrad died of starvation, disease and shelling from German artillery. In total through the 900 day seige, there were in excess of 1,000,000 deaths and it was given the title "Hero City".
     
  14. Shörner

    Shörner Member

    I believe that reguardless the war in Russia was doomed from the beginning. There was not much thought as to the spread of forces over the amount of land they would be covering, and they did not pack winter gear for many of the troops.

    Stalingrad was crammed with soldiers, as well as many tanks, which were all sucked up in the quagmire. The tanks could not operate in the conditions of stalingrad, and were almost doomed from the start.
     
  15. drgslyr

    drgslyr Senior Member

    I believe that reguardless the war in Russia was doomed from the beginning. There was not much thought as to the spread of forces over the amount of land they would be covering, and they did not pack winter gear for many of the troops.

    Stalingrad was crammed with soldiers, as well as many tanks, which were all sucked up in the quagmire. The tanks could not operate in the conditions of stalingrad, and were almost doomed from the start.

    One interesting point about the Germans not being prepaired for the winter weather is that an order came down from Hitler that specifically forbid any plans for the preparation of winter gear and supplies. He had been preaching a short campaign and believed that the inclusion of winter supplies would lower troop morale because it would contradict his stated goal of defeating Russian in only a few months. Talk about over-thinking a problem!

    The SS units faired better because they weren't part of the Wehrmacht and therefore Himmler was able to plan for winter provisions.
     
  16. T-34

    T-34 Discharged - Nazi

    ... The (german) tanks could not operate in the conditions of stalingrad, and were almost doomed from the start.

    how did russian tanks operate then?
     
  17. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Hot air manufacturer

    One interesting point about the Germans not being prepaired for the winter weather is that an order came down from Hitler that specifically forbid any plans for the preparation of winter gear and supplies.
    Sorry, that is valid only for the winter of 1941, for the '42 winter the Germans were in no such delusions and had prepared accordingly in terms of winter clothing supplies, special lubricants, etc. Now, of course for that the siege the logistics broke down and then all kinds of problems developed, but at the local level.
     
  18. Gerard

    Gerard Seelow/Prora

    Indeed, Za, and this point about "General Winter" that gets brought up is that the Russians had to fight under the same conditions as the Germans. The fact that they were better prepared for Winter warfare is almost used as a stick to beat them with sometimes.

    Having said that and although the Germans were better prepared I'm sure conditions inside the Kessel were deplorable and I still say that once the Army was surrounded they either had to break out immediately or stay put. Attempting a breakout in December or January would have been suicide.
     
  19. Shörner

    Shörner Member

    how did russian tanks operate then?

    i may be wrong but i believe that for the most part stalingrad was an infantry war. T-34s were used in number once the 6th army was pushed out of the city itself
     
  20. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Hot air manufacturer

    The tanks could not operate in the conditions of stalingrad, and were almost doomed from the start.

    Hmm, I think you were the one who raised the tanks issue, Schörner...
     

Share This Page