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Stalingrad, Battle of (September 5, 1942–January 31, 1943)

well-concealed counteroffensive pincers that cut off and surrounded German 6th
Army at Stalingrad.
The road to Stalingrad for General Friedrich von Paulus and German 6th Army,
and for General Hermann Hoth with German-Rumanian 4th Panzer Army, began
with a catastrophic Soviet defeat in the First Battle of Kharkov (May 12–29, 1942),
which left a gaping hole in the Soviet line that Hitler could not resist entering.
There followed the complex set of operations originally code named BLAU, which
brought Army Group South to the Don at Voronezh and across the Donbass region
to encircle Rostov. Then Hitler and the OKW fatally divided Army Group South
into Army Group A and B, to advance simultaneous offensives. Army Group A
pressed into the Caucasus in EDELWEISS, aiming for the oil fields of Baku. Army
Group B, with German 6th Army to the fore, pushed back the Soviets in front of
the middle Don, destroying much of Soviet 62nd Army. Then 6th Army struck out
over the Don and reached for another distant goal: Stalingrad on the Volga, 250
miles east of Rostov. There was heavy fighting along the Don barrier in August, but
6th Army breached the Soviet lines and crossed on August 21. As 6th Army and 4th
Panzer Army pushed east, Army Group A advanced into the North Caucasus. In
retrospect, the Wehrmacht was entering a great and vulnerable cul de sac of its own
making: an auxiliary operation toward the Volga had morphed into a simultaneous strategic operation for which the requisite forces were just not available. The
shift was reflected in a change in nomenclature: the thrust to the Volga had been
coded BLAU III, indicating its subsidiary nature. It was renamed FISCHREIHER
(Heron), as it turned into a separate strategic operation with overweening aims.
The first narrow Panzer column reached the Volga north of Stalingrad at
Rynok on August 23, separating 62nd Army from Soviet forces farther north. The
Luftwaffe bombed Stalingrad for the first time that day, killing many thousands
(though widely reported claims of 40,000 deaths seem grossly exaggerated, given
the limited bombing capacity of the Luftwaffe). Panic and mass flight of civilians
from the city occurred on August 28, a fact suppressed by Soviet censors for several
decades. The men of 62nd Army were the most famous defenders of the city; few of

them who began the battle survived to see its end. They were led from September
12 by General Vasily Chuikov. Soviet 64th Army also fought to defend Stalingrad,
but it was separated from the 62nd in the southern suburbs after September 8,
the day the Germans broke the left flank of 62nd Army and reached the Volga at
Kuporosnoye. The first of two crises of the battle inside the city came on September
14, as the Germans penetrated the western suburbs and took the main railway station and the Mamaev Kurgan. Several units of 62nd Army refused orders and the
battle looked lost at midday. Survivors of a deadly and desperate daylight crossing
of the Volga by elements of 13th Guards Division stabilized the defense; the rest
of the division crossed that night, the first critical reinforcements to arrive. From
September 18–21 a terrible fight took place over and inside the Grain Elevator, a
huge concrete structure in southern Stalingrad.
September 22 came to be called the “day of death” by 62nd Army, as a determined German push nearly reached the river. Reinforcements did not arrive for
four days. Defenders experimented with newly aggressive “storm group” tactics; the

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