Stalingrad: Revisited

Here are a few thoughts.  They’ll focus mainly on your second, third and fourth points because I’ve never developed any clear opinion on whether or not the capture of Moscow would have been decisive.

As a general opening comment, I’d recommend that you have a look at Richard Overy’s book Why the Allies Won, which devotes an entire chapter to Stalingrad and Kursk.  If I’m not confusing my sources with another book, Overy’s chapter makes the interesting comment that Stalingrad, for all its importance, was only one part of Russia’s overall strategic plan for 1942-1943, and I think Overy also argues that Kursk was in fact far more strategically significant than Stalingrad (though I don’t recall his precise rationale for saying this).

Regarding your last three questions, my comments are mainly on issues that I think may need clarification before you get too deeply into your paper:

• You may want to clarify what you mean by a last stand.  To me, a last stand is an engagement in which a defender has been backed into a corner and will lose the war if he loses the engagement.  The siege of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 is, in my opinion, a classic example of such a “last stand.”  I don’t think Stalingrad qualifies: it only represented a small portion of an enormously long front, and frankly the USSR could have survived its conquest by Germany.  As a matter of fact, Germany did conquer about 90% of Stalingrad and held on to it for a couple of months, without Russia collapsing.

• If you compare Stalingrad with other major WWII campaigns, you’ll need to define on what basis you’re comparing them.  Just to pick two examples, the Battle of Britain and the Leyte Gulf operation were both major campaigns, but of fundamentally different types from Stalingrad: the Battle of Britain was the first major campaign fought entirely in the air, and Leyte Gulf – which actually comprised four separate naval engagements – was the largest naval battle in history.  They were all important, but important in very different ways.

• Your reference to “the tactical importance of Stalingrad” leaves me a bit perplexed.  If you’re thinking about the importance of Stalingrad to the course of WWII, this would actually be its strategic importance.  “Tactics” refers to the techniques of using military forces in actual combat, not to the overall plans for fighting and winning a war.  A paper could validly address Stalingrad from a tactical perspective, but to do so it would have to focus on how the Russians and the Germans used (or in some cases misused) their troops on the ground.  On the Russian side, one could argue that the Russians used Stalingrad in WWII in the same way as Germany used Verdun in WWI: as a place where (at enormous cost to themselves) they could try to “bleed the enemy white.”  On the German side, you could discuss how the Germans – and specifically Hitler – badly muddled the distinction between strategy and tactics.  Stalingrad was originally just meant to be isolated (not conquered) in order to protect the flank of Germany’s main thrust into the Caucasus (the strategic objective of that thrust being the oilfields there).  Hitler, however, got carried way when Paulus reached Stalingrad and ordered him to take the city rather than just isolating it.  And from that point onward Hitler became more and more focused on what was happening at Stalingrad, to the detriment of what was going on elsewhere.  John Keegan’s book The Mask of Command, whose chapter on Hitler focuses on Stalingrad, paints a picture of Hitler studying maps of the city, following with great interest the news that this particular German regiment had captured that particular neighborhood, while his exasperated generals stand around the map table rolling their eyes and wondering what the heck any of this has to do with the overall strategic direction of the war.

Germany’s prewar population was 69 million, as opposed to 169 million for the Soviet Union. It’s also worth bearing in mind that the Soviet Union expanded after the war began; and that many people in Soviet-occupied territories were coerced into fighting for the Soviet Union. For example, the Soviets convinced the people of Soviet-occupied east Poland to fight for them, by threatening to liquidate the family of any man who refused to fight. That didn’t necessarily result in very effective soldiers, but it swelled the Soviets’ numbers over and above what you’d expect from that 169 million. Germany added territory as well, but unlike the Soviets, it did not use coercion to force captured foreign populations to fight for it.

Neither the Soviet Union nor Germany could afford to devote its sole attention to the other. The Soviet Union had soldiers tied down near its border with Manchuria, to guard against a Japanese attack. (Most of those soldiers were released for duty on the Soviets’ western front after Pearl Harbor.) Germany had large forces tied down in Norway, France, and north Africa, to guard against the possibility of British (and later American) invasion. The Soviet Union could devote a greater portion of its military strength to Germany, than Germany could to the Soviet Union.

During 1942, the Soviets produced nearly twice as many military aircraft as Germany–not to mention the large numbers of planes they received through Lend-Lease. During 1942, the Soviets produced 3 - 4 times as much as Germany in nearly every major land weapons category (such as tanks and artillery). In 1942, Soviet tanks (such as the T-34) were better than their German counterparts. From 1941 until near the end of the war, the Red Army added men at the astounding rate of 500,000 per month. Germany could not come remotely close to matching that rate. By the summer of 1941, 80% of German men between the ages of 20 and 30 were already part of the German military. The other 20% performed vital industrial functions. Due to the Soviets’ far greater capacity to replenish losses, they were better positioned to win a long war than Germany.

In spring of 1941 the German Army consisted of 150 divisions–100 of which were used to invade the Soviet Union. In late '41 the Red Army’s size peaked at 600 divisions. Losses on the German front would later reduce that army to 450 divisions. It was more or less able to maintain a 450 division army for the rest of the war–using its 500,000 men/month recruiting to offset the men lost to Germany. While a Soviet division was somewhat smaller than a German division, those numbers nevertheless illustrate the numerical superiority the Soviets enjoyed.

A typical German soldier was about three times as combat-effective as his Soviet counterpart. It’s also worth noting that of the top 100 flying aces during WWII, all 100 came from Germany. The skill of German pilots allowed Germany to maintain air superiority on its eastern front in 1942, despite the production numbers I just mentioned. The Soviets did not achieve air superiority until (IIRC) 1944.

Despite the effectiveness of German infantry and German pilots, the overall strategic situation clearly favored the Soviet Union in 1942. However, there was an element of risk. The Soviets derived 80% of their oil from the Caucasus oilfields. If all of those oilfields were destroyed or conquered by Germany, a lack of oil would significantly alter the Soviets’ overall war effort. Of course, they could still achieve something with that remaining 20%. Also the United States had plenty of oil, and could have sent some of it to the Soviet Union. The loss of the Caucasus oilfields would not necessarily have been fatal to the Soviets’ war efforts. (Though the acquisition of those oilfields would have helped Germany solve its own oil-related problems.)

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Germans had succeeded in their objective of breaking through to von Paulus’s 6th Army at Stalingrad. Simply saving the 6th Army would have been a far, far cry from conquering all the Caucasus and its oilfields. The Caucasus is a vast area. The vast majority of the Caucasus area would have been unconquered, even if the Germans had gained complete control over everything within a 20 mile (~30 km) radius of Stalingrad.

The German summer offensive of 1942 had initially produced impressive gains. Stalin had expected the Germans to strike against Moscow, and has positioned the bulk of his forces in the center to guard against such an attack. Instead the Germans attacked in the south. But after the Soviets figured out what was going on, they transferred large forces south. Those forces would have been sufficient to prevent additional large German gains, even if the Germans had simply bypassed Stalingrad. Even if the Germans had captured some of the Caucasus oilfields, they had lost the chance to capture the entire Caucasus oil-producing region. (Assuming, of course, that there had ever been such a chance.) It is for these reasons that I do not see Stalingrad as a last stand. However, WWII was the largest and most important war in human history; and a case could be made that Stalingrad was the most important battle of that war. The Axis suffered 850,000 men killed, wounded, or captured during Stalingrad, as opposed to 1.1 million men for the Soviet Union. Given that Germany initially invaded the Soviet Union with only about 3 million men, Stalingrad represented a serious alteration in the strength of the German Army.

Sorry for voting you a dummy. Interesting responses!

I did too, Mallery, for the reasons Marc has outlined.
I really believe it cannot be regarded as  a Last Stand. If we have misunderstood your meaning, please explain what you meant.
Good luck with the paper.

Mallery29 wrote:

Second, I have to establish that this would fall under “last stand” conditions.

Stalingrad probably cannot be considered a last stand–at least not for the Soviet Union. But it can potentially be considered a last stand for Germany. (Albeit not a particularly successful last stand.)

Military aircraft production is a reasonably good proxy for overall military production. In 1942, the Allies produced about four times as many military aircraft as the Axis. While both sides increased production between '42 and '44, the Axis increased at a faster relative pace than the Allies. As a result of which, the Allied advantage in military aircraft production had been shaved to merely 2:1 by 1944. But even that represents an overwhelming advantage. Moreover, both Germany and Japan had severe oil problems in 1944, so neither nation got as much benefit out of that massive production increase as you might think.

In addition to the above-described industrial advantages the Allies enjoyed, they also had a very significant advantage in manpower (as I partially described in my earlier post). The German Army was not strong enough to fight a two front war against the Soviets in the east and the British/Americans in the west.

In order to prevent its own destruction, Germany needed to negotiate a peace treaty with at least one major Allied nation. Neither FDR nor Churchill showed any interest at all in negotiating; which means Hitler’s one real option was Stalin. If Hitler had been able to negotiate an end to hostilities against the Soviet Union, with German gains left intact, he would then have been in a reasonable position to wage a defensive war against Anglo-American air attacks. In such a defensive war he would have required the following:

1. Industrial capacity (to build the large numbers of German planes and Wasserfall rockets needed to counter Anglo-American aircraft production)
2. Manpower for his factories
3. Access to raw materials, such as metals
4. Access to food (most of Hitler’s portion of Europe ran at a food deficit)
5. Access to oil

Conquering a sufficient amount of Soviet territory would have given Hitler access to all five of those things. But the other, absolutely essential thing Hitler needed to accomplish in 1942 was to convince Stalin that he was better off with a peace treaty than he’d be without one. The more Soviet territory Hitler conquered, and the less strength he lost while conquering it, the more likely Stalin would have been to have accepted a peace agreement. Granted, that peace agreement almost certainly would have been violated eventually, by either Hitler or Stalin. But even a temporary cessation of hostilities would have worked to Hitler’s advantage.

The possibility of a negotiated settlement might or might not have existed earlier in 1942. But if it did, the Battle of Stalingrad took it off the table. The more Soviet soldiers got traded away for Germans, the more Stalin would want to keep trading; so that he could ultimately conquer Eastern and Central Europe. In order to maintain a strong bargaining position, Hitler needed to consistently inflict proportionally more harm on the Red Army than the Red Army inflicted on him. Which is not what happened at Stalingrad. (But that is what happened during the German summer offensive which preceded the Battle of Stalingrad.)

@Mallery29:

Even the most epic last stand is the Spartans against the Persians, but even then, it leaves off the naval battle, which was probably just as important, considering they were outgunned 20 to 1 if I remember correctly.

So the “last stand” item is going to be a hot item for me to contest, but the info thus far has been invaluable.

Depending on which sources one uses, the Persians at the Battle of Salamis had at most three times more ships than the Greeks and, at worst, approximate parity – and at any rate “outgunned” is perhaps not quite the right adjective for a battle that took place in 480 BC.  :-D  Anyway, I agree that “last stand” is a debatable concept.  Is the concept of last stands the focus of your paper, for which Stalingrad will serve as an illustration, or is your paper about Stalingrad, with last stands being just one facet of the subject?

Add that the last stand for the Russian troops in Stalingrad need not be the last stand for Stalin and almost certainly was not the last stand for Russia. The concept is relative depending on the view point.

@Private:

Add that the last stand for the Russian troops in Stalingrad need not be the last stand for Stalin and almost certainly was not the last stand for Russia.

Yes, and in fact the best example of a “last stand” that I can think of on the Eastern Front is the Battle of Berlin, in which Hitler rather than Stalin was the leader who’d been backed into a corner and who was facing defeat.