Friday, November 29, 2019

Battle of Stalingrad

    Following the Axis power's complete dominance which granted them complete control of most of Southern and Western Europe, Germany began to look East. While it would come as so surprise for Germany and Russia to go to war, as their political systems clashed in ideals, their non-aggression pact in 1939 seemingly eliminated that possibility. However, Stalin had been too trusting and in a surprise invasion the Nazis launched a campaign into Russia. While utter control was the hope, Germany's eyes were mainly on Stalingrad as it served as the capital of industry for Russia. If this fell under Nazi control, it would likely give their military the means to conquer the rest of Eurasia and the Middle East, propelling their odds of victory even further. However, Russia fought til the bitter end and came out with the biggest allied military victory to its date.
    Germany began their attack on Stalingrad with 330,000 soldiers but were quickly weakened by the red army of Russia. While they started their onslaught on the city the Luftwaffe threw incendiary bombs across every inch of the city, burning many structures. Despite this, the almost 500,000 residents of Stalingrad were not evacuated as it was thought the red army would fight better with these higher stakes.  With the red army not being allowed to evacuate and being outmatched completely they were at one point limited to 20,000 soldiers defending the entirety of the residents. However the Nazis made a strategic blunder, in which their flanks were exposed and all 300,000 soldiers were trapped in the city. Reinforcements took advantage of this and encircled them. The Russians waited out the Nazi's until they starved and weakened. Despite also suffering massive casualties this would prove as the first large defeat for the successful German army.Image result for battle of stalingrad
https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Stalingrad
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/battle-of-stalingrad
Posted by at

2 comments:

  1. AnonymousNovember 29, 2019 at 11:24 PM

    I found it really interesting that the failure of Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, which ended with this battle, can be largely attributed to the Russian Winter known as General Winter, which prevented several other invasions of Russia prior to this one. During this invasion, code-named "Operation Barbarossa", Hitler had originally planned to take Moscow before winter hit, but decided to instead take Stalingrad after the early coming of General Winter prevented him to do so.

    https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/operation-barbarossa

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousNovember 30, 2019 at 6:49 PM

    I found it really interesting how the Germans lost the battle due to their military blunder. The Soviet soldiers used the same scorched earth policy when they were retreating further east, burning villages, schools, and factories, so Germans could not use them. The same tactics were employed by Russian troops during Napoleon's attack in early 1800's, who was also hindered by the Russian cold winter much like Germany in the 1940s.

    https://www.britannica.com/event/Operation-Barbarossa#ref1119381

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)