How could Germany have won the Battle of Stalingrad?
I heard that they captured about 90% of the city but weren't able to take it.
Maybe if the city wasn't leveled by the Luftwaffe before invasion it would make combat and maneuvering easier.
Also is it only leftist shills who suggest that Stalingrad had no strategic importance, to paint Hitler as some rogue madman who didn't understand strategy? Obviously to secure the oil of the Caucuses it was needed...
Please armchair generals report in.
Should've just encircled, starved them and continued on their way.
I heard that the war was lost in 1942 when Stalingrad wasn't able to be taken. The remaining years were just a slow bloodbath of Germany being forced to retreat. Is that true?
>I heard that the war was lost in 1942
the war was lost in 1938 when the subhuman hitler started it
>How could Germany have won the Battle of Stalingrad?
By removing that hack Halder and setting most of the forces to take the oil fields in Baku. Thus removing any capability for Russian to use its armored forces freely
Yes Hitler had managed to lose the war by late 1942
It wasn't just Stalingrad, but the forces he diverted to assault it which were meant to secure the Baku oil fields
Of all the retarded 'blunders' agent Hitler made during Barbarossa (and outside it, eg Dunkirk, Egypt) directive 45 took the cake
You cant win. 1942 the Germans were outnumbered 2 to 1. I hear some armchair generals saying they shouldve attacked to Baku.. as if the British werent occupying Iran just over the border and would let it happen.
Important strong point on the lower Volga, yes.
Worth risking the war for it? No
The real issue was getting promises boosted with every exchange, and by the time the assessment reached Hitler from Goering it because from a 'maybe' into a 'sure a.f'
They successfully air supplied Demyansk shortly before, it wasn't something out of the ordinary
As for the supplies requested.. Paulus couldn't make up his mind and requested ammo. A fuckton of it for an eventual breakout, and no food at all.
Clusterfuck of incompetence
>1938
And hope for civilization was lost in 1789
Get itching asscancer surrendermonkey
The Germans tacticians couldn't fucking know how to win Battle of Stalingrad and you think some random pleb from a gook cartoon site would know?
They should have get rid of fucking halder early on but ewen then they had no sufficient logistics.
The war was already lost in 1871, when germany started existing
logistics that dont suck and adequate winter gear
This but unironically
Volga, idiot mutt, it's 2 km wide.
They had womans clothing sent to them because of some logistical fuckup.
If they (partially, as getting across the Volga wasn't realistic) encircled it and pushed on then it sits there as a bridgehead available to attack into the flank of the Caucasus grouping. Taking it makes it a strongpoint and secures the northern flank. Good chance it was impossible or wouldn't matter, but best chance was concentrating all of AGS on doing objectives consecutively, instead of the fiction of AGA+AGB and going for everything at once. But Hitler was desperate for oil and in the early weeks of Case Blue it really did look like the Red Army had disintegrated on contact and Germany could advance almost unopposed.
The whole offensive ground to a halt due to running out of fuel. Theres a direct correlation between fuel capacity and German advances. Stalingrad was seen as overly important for a morale victory due to it's name. There's no real garuantee that capturing Baku and the other oil fields would have changed anything though. Stalin understood the importance and was destroying oil infrastructure that was left behind. Plus he was recieving fuel from the allies already, albeit negligible amounts. Though it likely would have increased if the German army had taken the southern oil fields. Given the amount of losses the Red Army had managed to incur and continue fielding troops. There's absolutely no garuantee that having fuel from the Caucuses would have given the Germans the ability to suddenly take Stalingrad and beat the Soviets. It's all just armchair generals saying would've could've should've.
Maybe you have a point, I guess geography dictates they'd be perpetually doomed to be double teamed by a French-Russian axis.
>Stalingrad was seen as overly important for a morale victory due to it's name.
This seems to have been overblown after the fact. Even at the Goebbels was writing propaganda articles explaining that that was not the case, the Wehrmacht was not sacrificing men for some abstract "prestige" and Stalingrad was important to the push into the Caucasus.
Even at the time*
Whether or not they took the city is irrelevant, the truth is that the operation was doomed from the beginning, the flanks of the German troops were being covered by troops with light weapons and few anti-tank weapons. The Soviets took advantage of the weakness of the flanks and crushed the defending troops, leaving the German troops completely isolated.
On the other hand, "ensuring the oil of the Caucasus" was something impossible from the beginning. Even assuming that the Germans had managed to get to the oil fields, the Soviets had a "scorched earth" policy, so most likely they would have destroyed all the deposits and all the infrastructure of the fields before withdrawing, leaving said fields actually inoperable. getting them back up and running would have taken months if not years. And to all this we must add that the oil itself is not a good fuel, it would have been necessary to take all that oil by train to the refineries of the axis, which were THOUSANDS OF KILOMETERS AWAY, not to mention that any transport by train would have been a easy prey for bombers and partisans
I honestly think that the idea of using caucasus oil was doomed to fail
Finally, an educated comment.
Also, the Soviet ability to raise several more armies while Germans suffered from attrition ensured their victory.
In hindsight, Hitler should have prolonged the NAP with more oil shipment and follow Raeder's plan.
Eh, denying the oil in the Caucasus to Russia was almost as important as getting it for themselves. Germany didn't have an acute oil shortage until Romania fell, the problem was more getting the oil to where it needed to be. And while USSR was getting fuel from the west, losing almost all of their domestic production would have been crippling for months at least until the allies could massively step up fuel shipments.
>no garuantee that having fuel from the Caucuses would have given the Germans the ability to suddenly take Stalingrad and beat the Soviets.
Fall Blau said nothing about taking Stalingrad. Hitler made up its strategic importance when Fall Blau threatened to achieve its objectives by capturing the gateway to the Caucasus, Rostow-on-Don. On the very same day he issued Directive 45
All historical discussion on Barbarossa is essentially explaining away Hitler's obvious acts of sabotage
it was lost in 1941.
They lost at Moscow's gates. 1942 was the point where they were no longer able to advance. 1943 they lost initiative.
>Also, the Soviet ability to raise several more armies while Germans suffered from attrition ensured their victory.
Yeah that's a good point as well. For all that the Treaty of Versailles failed to prevent Germany from rebuilding its military, the years of no conscription were a massive problem for German reserves.
I meant from the soviet perspective. The reason they managed to hold it is because of the namesake. Many of their military officials wanted to abandon at the early stages of the battle for stalingrad. It was used heavily for propaganda purposes. Whilst capturing Stalingrad would protect the southern push, they managed to make it quite far into the Caucasuses without ever taking Stalingrad. So i don't see it as that essential.
>the operation was doomed from the beginning, the flanks of the German troops were being covered by troops with light weapons and few anti-tank weapons
Had the Germans been able to take Stalingrad quickly, they could have put the attacking troops in reserve to fight back any Soviet offensive. The Soviet knew that and relied heavily on Chuikov clinging to the city for the success of Saturn.
Rebuilding the oilfields and building ships for the transportation of fuel would have taken a year or two. Not great but good enough if the Wehrmacht had been put on defensive for this delay.
Well we have a powerful thing called hindsight. We KNOW that stalingrad didnt work the way those tacticians tried it so we're already better generals in a sense
I read that the USSR had ample reserves of oil. They may have not suffered from loosing the Caucasus before a year or two.
Germany did not have an acute oil shortage at this time but it is also had limitations, on the motorization of the army, on pilot training and on general transportation and agricultural mechanization.
Ah, I misunderstood. Yeah, from the Soviet perspective there was clearly a morale reason to hold on as fiercely as they did. And, yes, they made it quite far, but once the battle of Stalingrad was lost they had to retreat at top speed because the Stalingrad forces threatened to completely encircle them. Maybe you can make a case for alternate history where, if the city is taken under artillery fire and the forces that were committed to take it are instead spread along the front, the breakthrough and subsequent disaster don't happen, but that is quite a bit of speculation and you're still looking at trying to hold an increasingly long flank with no defensible terrain against an enemy who can attack almost anywhere along its length.
Not to mention, said troops poorly equiped to defend the flanks were also of poor fighting quality and with poor morale. Worse, the different units hated eachothers and would refuse to coordinate anything. Security duty shouldn't be the job of poor units that should have been tasked with other stuff or garrison lesser active fronts.
That could well be the case. Have a source? Either way I don't think even a completely successful Case Blue wins the war for Germany. Likely prolongs it for another few months.