Home » History » World War II » Prelude to Stalingrad

Prelude to Stalingrad

© Ralph Zuljan

The destruction of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad has traditionally been considered the turning point of the war in Europe. In order to appreciate how this defeat came about, an understanding of a number of seemingly unrelated events that occurred in the period between the failure of the battle for Moscow in December 1941 and the opening of Operation Blue - the campaign that led to Stalingrad - in June 1942 is required. These developments provided the basis for the erroneous choices that eventually produced the decisive German defeat at Stalingrad.

During the winter of 1941-42, the German army on the Eastern Front panicked. Numerous senior German commanders were dismissed during this period because of it. Among them was Field Marshal von Brauchitsch, Commander in Chief of the Army, who was formally removed by Hitler on December 19th, 1941. Rather than replace Brauchitsch, Hitler assumed the position of Comander in Chief of the Army. He proceeded to ruthlessly enforce the order to stand and fight. By the spring of 1942, the German army recovered from the shock of the Soviet winter counteroffensive and the front was stabilized. There could be no doubt that Hitler deserved some of the credit for saving the army from collapse during the critical winter months, but the success of his inflexibility in this situation clouded his judgement in later crises which called for quite different responses from a commander in chief.

Among the commands that required a replacement as a result of the winter crisis was that of the 6th Army. General Paulus, a staff officer at OKH - the German Army High Command, was given command of 6th Army on January 6th, 1942, on the recommendation of Field Marshal von Reichenau, the former commander of 6th Army and the newly appointed commander of Army Group South. Paulus had never commanded as much as a division or corps when he was given command. Even Hitler expressed reservations about the appointment. Paulus had a reputation as an exceptional operations officer which was enhanced while at OKH where he had been responsible for evaluating the merits of the options for Operation Barbarossa. However, as a commanding officer, he proved to be indecisive and lacking initiative. These character weaknesses would have serious repercussions during several critical moments in the battles that resulted in the encirclement of his army at Stalingrad.

Although the Stalingrad encirclement was the greatest encirclement suffered by the Germans up to that point in time, the previous winter had given the German army experience with sustaining relatively large units trapped behind enemy lines through air supply. The largest of these pockets was Demyansk, where approximately 100,000 German troops held out for seventy-two days. On April 21, 1942 the Demyansk Pocket was successfully relieved by a battle group under the command of General von Seydlitz-Kurzbach - who would eventually command 51st Army Corps in the Stalingrad pocket. The fact that this reinforced army corps survived Soviet encirclement with nothing but air supply was one of the considerations leading to the decision to attempt a similiar operation with the trapped 6th Army at Stalingrad.