The Battle of Stalingrad was a crucial battle of the Second World War, and many articles have called it a turning point in World War II. After the battle, the Soviet Union sounded the clarion call for a counteroffensive. The impact of the Battle of Stalingrad is undeniable.
Some people say that if the German army won the Battle of Stalingrad, the Soviet army would no longer have the possibility of defeat and victory, the German army would completely occupy the Soviet Union, and the history of World War II would be completely rewritten. However, is this really the case? In fact, not necessarily, even if the German army won the Battle of Stalingrad, there is the next Stalingrad waiting, the German army may be defeated later, but in the end it is still difficult to escape the fate of defeat. The reason is nothing more than the following 5 points!
First, the soviet union still has the potential for war
In the war between the great powers, the competition is comprehensive national strength, to see who can withstand the protracted consumption. In the 1930s, the Soviet Union made construction achievements that shocked the world, and its gross industrial output value jumped to the first place in Europe, second only to the United States in the world. In 1940, the Soviet Union produced 18.3 million tons of steel, 14.9 million tons of pig iron, 13.1 million tons of steel, 48.3 billion kWh of electricity, 16.59 million tons of raw coal, and 23.1 million tons of crude oil. Thanks to the establishment of a strong industrial base, the military strength of the Soviet Union was greatly enhanced.
Although in the early stage of the Soviet-German war, the German army advanced all the way and occupied a large area of the Soviet Union, but the Soviet Union's war potential is still there, with the strength to compete with the German army. Throughout the Soviet-German war, the Soviet Union produced 134,000 aircraft, 104,000 tanks and self-propelled guns, 834,000 artillery and mortars during the wartime, while Germany produced only 80,000 aircraft, 42,000 tanks, 382,000 artillery and mortars during the war.
Second, the factory relocation was completed in a timely manner
After the German war against the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union entered the wartime orbit and set up the Sulphur Dispersion Committee, chaired by Shvelnik, and in just a few months transferred 1523 large industrial enterprises, 1.5 million wagons, and tens of millions of workers to the east. The Germans later failed to stop Soviet industry from retreating eastward as an important reason for their defeat in the war.
The Luftwaffe was busy attacking soviet forces on various battlefields, ignoring the bombing of trains loaded with industrial equipment moving eastward. When these eastward relocation factories were reopened in the eastern region, the Soviets quickly overwhelmed the Germans in the number of aircraft, tanks and artillery, and switched to defensive and offensive positions on the battlefield.
Third, the Soviet Reserve Army is well stocked
Although the Soviet Union had more than 3.2 million troops killed, disappeared and captured in the first year of the war, thanks to the implementation of its "invisible division" system, it was possible to turn one Soviet division into two in just a few days, doubling its strength in a very short period of time. As we all know, at the same time as the Soviet and German armies were fighting fiercely in Stalingrad, the newly formed powerful regiments of the Soviet army in the rear were marching west day and night, and the strength of these new campaign corps equipped with excellent T-34 tanks was not something that the German army on the southern front could resist.
So, by November 1942, more than four months after the Battle of Stalingrad, there were 6.6 million Soviet troops and more than 6.2 million German troops in the Soviet-German battlefield. The strength of the two sides is almost the same, and even if the Soviet army loses the Battle of Stalingrad, it is not the end of the world. And at that time, in addition to the Battle of Stalingrad, the Soviet army also counterattacked in other battlefields.
4. The heroic struggle and patriotism of Soviet soldiers
A large part of the officers and men of the Soviet army were members of the party, and the number of communists in the Soviet army reached about 3 million at the end of the war. The Soviets' opponents, the Germans and the Japanese, unanimously recognized that the more Communists and Komsomol members in the Soviet army, the stronger the combat effectiveness.
The high degree of patriotism and heroism of the Soviet people was also an important reason for the victory in the Great Patriotic War. During the war, 11,603 Soviet soldiers were awarded the title of "Hero of the Soviet Union" for their outstanding performance, and more than 7 million people were awarded various medals and medals.
5. Military assistance from the United States and Britain
The United States alone supplied the Soviet Union with 14,000 aircraft, 7,000 tanks, 22,000 armored vehicles and more than 400,000 trucks and jeeps, as well as a large number of wartime shortages, which played an important role in accelerating the Soviet Union's victory in the war during the war.
There were many factors in the Defeat of the Germans at The Battle of Stalingrad, and the mistake of tactical guidelines was a very fatal link. In the german attack on Stalingrad, it adopted a frontal assault, rather than trying to completely encircle the defenders and cut off contact with the rear. Stalingrad was a river-lined city backed by the Volga River, and the defenders were supported by a steady stream of soldiers and weapons and ammunition from the east bank, and a quick decisive battle was fought into a war of attrition.
It should be noted, however, that even if the Germans captured Stalingrad, they would not be able to change their fate of eventual defeat on the Soviet-German battlefield, because the Soviets had an overwhelming superiority in terms of entry, material resources, reserve resources and wartime production.
Ultimately, the Germans wanted to conquer the Vast, industrial base, and high morale of the Soviet Union, a task that, as German generals put it after the war, was "a task beyond the strength of the German armed forces."