As a turning point in World War 2, do you know how tragic the Battle of Stalingrad was?
Some people say that the Battle of Stalingrad was a purgatory on earth, and some people say that if in the Battle of Stalingrad you can hold out for three days without dying, you are a senior general.
Is this true?
Yes, yes, let me give you a review of how the Battle of Stalingrad became a purgatory on earth. How did this war turn around World War 2?
Point 1: The Battle of Stalingrad was a battle that had to be fought
Opening the map of the world, without even our careful study, we can see that Stalingrad is a very, very, very important place.
Because Stalingrad at this time was the traffic choke point of the central region of the Soviet Union to the southern economic zone.
In other words, if the German army seizes Stalingrad, then the north can directly attack Moscow, and the south can directly attack the Persian Gulf.
The political significance of attacking Moscow from the north and the economic significance of attacking the Persian Gulf from the south has been achieved, and once either of these two objectives is achieved, then Germany will be even more invincible.
If the Battle of Stalingrad is really won by Germany, can Russia hold out any longer?
Everything is unknown.
Even if the strategic depth is strong, Moscow is gone, and the crowd is leaderless, it is difficult for Russia to organize an effective counterattack in the short term.
Because of this, the Battle of Stalingrad was very important for both Germany and Russia, a war between countries about the fortunes of nations.
In order to fight this war well, the Soviet side sent General Zhukov, and the German side sent General Hitler.
That's right, hitler's war.
The casualties of this war reached 1.5 million in Nazi Germany, 2 million on the Soviet side, 2 million in Nazi Germany and 3 million in the Soviet Union.
In a war, the number of people participating in the war has reached more than one million levels, which can be imagined.
In addition, Germany's ambitions are not as small as we think, and germany attacked Stalingrad because Stalingrad had a natural advantage such as an important port, a railway transportation hub and an important industry.
At that time, Germany could be said to lack oil and lack of industrial base, because the loss caused by the long years of war was too great, and if Germany captured Stalingrad, it could have the tractor factory in Stalingrad at that time.
Don't underestimate the tractor factory, which at its peak accounted for more than half of the Total Output of the Soviet Union every year.
The western south of Stalingrad is a completely vast and fertile downstream basin with little strategic depth to speak of, making it ideal for blitzkrieg attacks.
Once the Germans occupied this place, let's first say what the Soviet Union would lose?
The Soviet Union will lose the base of the oil and grain industry, and Germany will have the tendency brought about by these bases, and it is inevitable that Germany will be strong and the Soviet Union will be weak.
Point 2: The beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad
In 1942, the Battle of Stalingrad was officially fought, when the German 11th Army first launched an offensive in Crimea and occupied the Kerch Peninsula a week later.
The campaign directly captured 170,000 Men on the Red Army side, and the ensuing war was entirely beneficial to the German side, such as on July 4 of the same year, the Capture of nearly 100,000 Red Army Personnel and the complete occupation of Crimea.
The Battle of Stalingrad was very successful in the initial German offensive.
It was difficult for the Soviet army to carry out effective counterattacks and resistance in the steppe or open places, and could only carry out retreat tactics in desperation, and even retreated about 100 to 300 kilometers, and a large basin and rich areas all fell into the hands of the Germans.
However, at this time, Hitler thought that the Soviet army was too easy to fight, so he slowly withdrew some of his troops.
It was precisely because of this practice that the Red Army was given time to prepare and the Possibility of the Red Army to counterattack.
Point 2: The Stalemate of the Battle of Stalingrad
Because of a series of strategic mistakes by Germany and the death orders issued by the Soviet side, the Battle of Stalingrad slowly fell into a stalemate.
In the stalemate phase, almost no force can break through the stalemate and deal a fatal blow to the other side, so the anxiety of the war between the two sides is more and more protracted.
The main purpose of the Stalingrad Campaign was to obtain all the materials needed for the war in a short period of time through the blitzkrieg.
However, at this stage, the materials are not obtained, but a large number of manpower, material and financial resources and many resources are being lost at a rate visible to the naked eye.
Therefore, for Germany, the counterattack became crazy, the purpose was to do everything to win the war in the short term, and the purpose of the Soviet army was very simple, to do everything to resist the German attack.
For example, in 1942, Stalin issued Order No. 227 of the National Defense Council, directly requiring the defenders of the Battle of Stalingrad not to take a step back, and when the German army invaded the city, the Soviet army should be reduced to pieces for defense.
Immediately after that, the world's most classic and cruelest street battles began.
Countless Soviet Red Army marched into the streets, into houses large and small, and in these houses, stubbornly resisted the German attack.
If the Germans wanted to completely control the war, or to win the war completely, they needed to go from beginning to end, and demolish a house every time they went to a place, demolishing the people inside the house, otherwise they would face huge losses.
The Red Army also dragged the German troops to such a deathly pace that the German troops even needed to take out shells to blow up the house in order to deal with a small house, otherwise there was no way to advance half a step.
In the Battle of Stalingrad there was a very famous building, the Pavlov Building.
Point 3: A story that can be sung and wept
Some people say that in the Battle of Stalingrad, the Pavlov Building played the momentum of the Soviet Red Army, and this war created the international status of the Soviet Red Army and so on.
Others laughed and said that pavlov's counterattack this time was more glorious than france's surrender before the enemy had attacked its capital. And France is bound to go through the entire course of World War II with humiliation.
We will not discuss France, which in fact behaved very badly in World War 2, simply to speak of the Pavlov Building.
The building has no glamorous resume, and even before World War 2, the building was just a simple staff dormitory, but such a place actually broke out in the flashpoint of World War 2.
A Soviet sergeant, with 24 soldiers from different nationalities in the Soviet Union, and more than 30 ordinary citizens who were willing to resist the Germans here, such a lineup, not much luxury, did not even see the pace of progress in World War 2 for 58 days.
And this is just one of the many shining points in the Battle of Stalingrad.
A total of 1 million people died on both sides, including Soviets, Romanians and even Hungarians.
The worst was probably the German Sixth Army, with a total of 260,000 men, of whom 91,000 were besieged, and only 5,000 returned to Germany alive.
According to uncontrollable data at the time, the two sides invested more than 2 million troops at the most intense time of the war.
Among them, there are more than 2,000 tanks, 2,300 aircraft, and 25,000 long-range bombing weapons such as artillery and hundred cannons.
In this war, the Soviet Union also did its best to support the Battle of Stalingrad.
For example, in the course of the Battle of Stalingrad, 300,000 wagons of military equipment were transported, 9,568 wagons of ammunition consumed throughout the war, and 8,353 wagons of shells were exchanged.
The total ammunition data of the weapons consumed by the entire Battle of Stalingrad even exceeded more than 13% of the Battle of Berlin.
This war was brutal for both the Soviet Union and Germany, and it was a war made with blood.
The only difference was that the Soviet direction was a just war, while the German direction was an invasion war full of evil.
Judging from the overall outcome of the battle, the Battle of Stalingrad must have been good, because victory was won, but the process in between was unbearable.
Although the war ended in the victory of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union did make mistakes in its strategic command in the early stages, and the overall quality of the Soviet Red Army was still a part of the gap compared with the German troops in the early days.
It is precisely for this reason that in the early days the Loss and Casualty Rate of the Red Army was indeed large, and the Battle of Stalingrad the Soviet Union as a whole can be evaluated in one sentence, winning the entire battle, but the losses were greater than those of Germany.
At the very least, Germany's strategic objectives were not achieved, and the Soviet Union repulsed Germany's strategic demands in a timely manner, and slowly began to change from defense to offense.
The Battle of Stalingrad, as a turning point in World War 2, gave a direction to the end of World War II to a certain extent.