German operational intent
The Battle of Stalingrad lasted seven months from July 17, 1942 to February 2, 1943.
At the beginning of the campaign, there were 270,000 German troops and 160,000 Russian troops.
Later in the campaign, German Manstein reinforcements and the Sixth Army totaled 400,000 men, and the Russian Reinforcements zhukov plus Stalingrad reinforcements totaled 1.4 million men.
Casualties, 240,000 Germans were killed, 30,000 were evacuated, 90,000 were captured, only 5,000 returned to East Germany alive after the war; 480,000 Russians were killed.
The Battle of Stalingrad, in which the Russian army guarded an ordinary dormitory building, the Pavlov Building, resisted for two months, Sergeant Pavlov and dozens of other soldiers and civilians, successfully repelled the German onslaught, and after the war were awarded medals.
In contrast, at the Battle of Berlin at the end of World War II, the German army was also fully defensive, but only held for three weeks, and Berlin fell.
why?
There is only one reason - the German army strength, weapons, are insufficient, and the Russian army is a steady stream of troops, and the manufacture of Russian weapons, with the steel assistance of the backstage American boss, is how much, so the same urban street battles, the results are completely different.
Stalingrad, a larger city with a population of 1.6 million before the war, is located on the west bank of the Volga River, from north to south, divided into four parts:
To the north, the factory area, to the west is the workers' residential area;
Central, Mamayev Hill,
South, downtown,
Further south, rural.
The Germans who attacked Stalingrad first took the countryside and the city center, but the Mamayev Hill, the commanding height of the city, was never able to take it, and then the attack on the factory area and the workers' residential area was also extremely difficult.
The reason for this is that Stalingrad is backed by the Volga River, the German army is insufficient to complete the siege of Stalingrad, while the Russian army in the east of the river can continuously provide reinforcements and ammunition supplies to the city, and there are a large number of Russian artillery in the east of the river, which can inflict heavy casualties on the German army besieging Stalingrad.
The German part, in charge of street fighting in the city, had eighty thousand men, and they were equipped with some tanks and some guns, but the total was only a few hundred, which was not enough for a large city. The Russian army in the city was more than 60,000 people, including infantry, anti-tank gunners and mortars, and their reinforcements were constantly crossing the river, and the Russian authorities did not allow the citizens to evacuate, so a large number of citizens mixed with the Russian army made it more difficult for the Germans to attack, and some of them participated in the blockade battle.
The Germans could not bombard the building with tank artillery, and had to fall into infantry-to-infantry street battles, because there were not enough tanks and guns, so a Pavlov building could not be attacked for two months, and from September 27 to November 25, 1942, the German army could not conquer it.
There is another reason, a german, when shooting, but also to distinguish between the other side's army or civilians, therefore, if you encounter a mixed situation between military and civilian, you can only use a gun, not a cannon, which undoubtedly increases the difficulty of the attack.
Eventually, 1.1 million Russian reinforcements arrived, of which 300,000 surrounded the remaining 90,000 German troops, and the Germans could not fly and eventually vanished.
In contrast, at the Battle of Berlin, the Russian army took Berlin in three weeks, and the Russian army totaled 2.6 million people, with 42,000 artillery, more than 6,000 tanks and self-propelled guns, and 7,500 aircraft used as auxiliary roles, and the enemy in front of them was the German Vistula Army Group and Army Group Center, less than a million people.
Berlin had a population of four million, and by comparison, some of the 1.6 million people before Stalingrad was besieged fled the city, but a considerable number did not, because russia forbade the evacuation of the inhabitants from the city to make it more difficult for the Germans to attack. Residents, including women and children, were sent by the organization to build fortifications.
That is to say, although Berlin is larger than Stalingrad, the number of tanks and self-propelled guns attacked by the Russian army is much larger, so the Russian army that attacked Berlin did this: divided into many combat groups, each group has tanks, as long as there is resistance in the building, it is directly leveled with artillery, the resisting German army is blown up, and then the Russian infantry goes up to clean the battlefield, who is still fighting with you gun to gun alley?
The Russians were able to do this because they had so many more tanks than the Germans.
Compare:
From 1934 to 1945, Germany produced a total of 50,000 chariots, of which more than 6,000 Leopard, more than 1,300 Tiger, and 490 Tiger King.
From 1939 to 1945, Russia produced a total of 120,000 tanks, of which nearly 60,000 were T34 T34.
From 1940 to 1945, the United States produced a total of 100,000 tanks, of which 70,000 were medium tanks, not to mention the more powerful weapon of the US military was the bomber of the air force.
The excellent performance of German tanks was based on their ingenious design: in order to improve the mobility of heavy fighting vehicles, complex staggered wheels were used; in order to enhance protection, hardened armor with more complicated processes was used; in order to strengthen battlefield observation and communication capabilities, optical equipment and communication equipment required precision machining were used. All of this invisibly increases the difficulty of manufacturing and prolongs the production time.
The Russian tank, on the other hand, is much simpler in technology and the performance is inferior, but the manufacturing time is short, and the number is huge.
The Formation of the German Sixth Army, 330,000 men, including five corps, a total of eighteen divisions, of which two armored divisions, a motorized infantry division, elite equipment are concentrated here, while most of the others are ordinary infantry, equipment is backward.
The elitization of equipment is due to the fact that there are not enough resources and can only be concentrated in elite troops, in fact, it is not possible on the whole.
Ordinary German infantry attacking Stalingrad
In contrast to the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Berlin, it is important that Stalingrad was never completely encircled, and reinforcements and supplies continued to flow, on the contrary, Berlin was completely encircled, just an isolated city, isolated and ran out of food, coupled with the Russian army's use of artillery bombardment tactics, resulting in the rapid fall of Berlin.
The death of the old commander of the German Sixth Army, the fierce general Reichenau, put Yongcai Paulus in charge of the Sixth Army, which was also an important reason for the defeat of the German army at Stalingrad.
Marshal Trikov of the Russian army who guarded Stalingrad was very fierce, and in 1969, the Sino-Russian treasure island conflict, Trikov advocated nuclear strikes against China, and the United States, out of the consideration of the Three Kingdoms, in order to win Over China's anti-Russian and express opposition, Russia gave up. Since then, China and the United States have engaged in secret exchanges. Nixon visited China in 1972, and on February 28, the Sino-US Shanghai Joint Communiqué was published, announcing the normalization of Sino-US relations.