How many Germans were surrounded under Stalingrad. Day of the defeat of the Nazi troops in the Battle of Stalingrad

The significance of the Battle of Stalingrad in history is very great. Just after its completion The Red Army launched a full-scale offensive, which led to the complete expulsion of the enemy from the territory of the USSR, and the allies of the Wehrmacht abandoned their plans ( Turkey and Japan in 1943 planned a full-scale invasion into the territory of the USSR) and realized that it was almost impossible to win the war.

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The battle of Stalingrad can be briefly described if we consider the most important:

• history of events;
• a general picture of the balance of forces of opponents;
• the course of the defensive operation;
• the course of the offensive operation;
• results.

Brief background

German troops invaded the territory of the USSR and moving fast winter 1941 ended up near Moscow. However, it was during this period of time that the troops of the Red Army launched a counteroffensive.

In early 1942, Hitler's headquarters began to develop plans for the second wave of the offensive. The generals suggested continue the attack on Moscow, but the Fuhrer rejected this plan and proposed an alternative - an attack on Stalingrad (modern Volgograd). The advance to the south had its reasons. In case of luck:

• the Germans took control of oil fields Caucasus;
• Hitler would have gained access to the Volga(which would cut off the European part of the USSR from the Central Asian regions and Transcaucasia).

If the Germans captured Stalingrad, Soviet industry would have suffered serious damage from which it would hardly have recovered.

The plan to capture Stalingrad became even more realistic after the so-called Kharkov catastrophe (the complete encirclement of the Southwestern Front, the loss of Kharkov and Rostov-on-Don, the complete “opening” of the front south of Voronezh).

The offensive began with the defeat of the Bryansk Front and from the positional stop of the German forces on the Voronezh River. At the same time, Hitler could not decide on the 4th Panzer Army.

The transfer of tanks from the Caucasian direction to the Volga and back delayed the start of the Battle of Stalingrad for a whole week, which gave the opportunity for Soviet troops to better prepare for the defense of the city.

balance of power

Before the start of the offensive on Stalingrad, the balance of forces of the opponents looked as follows*:

*calculations taking into account all nearby enemy forces.

Beginning of the battle

The first clash between the troops of the Stalingrad Front and the 6th Army of Paulus took place July 17, 1942.

Attention! Russian historian A. Isaev found evidence in military journals that the first clash occurred a day earlier - on July 16th. One way or another, the beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad is the middle of the summer of 1942.

Already to July 22–25 German troops, having broken through the defenses of the Soviet forces, reached the Don, which created a real threat to Stalingrad. By the end of July, the Germans successfully crossed the Don. Further progress was very difficult. Paulus was forced to resort to the help of the allies (Italians, Hungarians, Romanians), who helped to surround the city.

It was at this very difficult time for the southern front that I. Stalin published order number 227, the essence of which was displayed in one brief slogan: “ Not one step back! He urged the soldiers to increase resistance and prevent the enemy from getting closer to the city.

In August Soviet troops saved three divisions of the 1st Guards Army from complete disaster who entered the battle. They launched a counterattack in a timely manner and slow down the advance of the enemy, thereby frustrating the Fuhrer's plan to rush to Stalingrad.

In September, after certain tactical adjustments, German troops went on the offensive trying to take the city by storm. The Red Army could not resist this onslaught. and was forced to retreat to the city.

Street fighting

August 23, 1942 Luftwaffe forces undertook a powerful pre-assault bombardment of the city. As a result of a massive attack, ¼ of the city's population was destroyed, its center was completely destroyed, and strong fires began. On the same day, shock the grouping of the 6th army reached the northern outskirts of the city. At this moment, the defense of the city was carried out by the militia and the forces of the Stalingrad air defense, despite this, the Germans advanced into the city very slowly and suffered heavy losses.

On September 1, the command of the 62nd army made a decision to force the Volga and entrance to the city. The forcing took place under constant air and artillery shelling. The Soviet command managed to transport 82 thousand soldiers to the city, who in mid-September offered stubborn resistance to the enemy in the city center, a fierce struggle to maintain bridgeheads near the Volga unfolded on Mamaev Kurgan.

The battles in Stalingrad went down in world military history as one of the most brutal. They fought literally for every street and for every house.

The city practically did not use firearms and artillery weapons (because of the fear of ricochet), only piercing and cutting, often went hand to hand.

The liberation of Stalingrad was accompanied by a real sniper war (the most famous sniper is V. Zaitsev; he won 11 sniper duels; the story of his exploits still inspires many).

By mid-October, the situation became extremely difficult, as the Germans launched an offensive against the Volga bridgehead. On November 11, Paulus' soldiers managed to reach the Volga. and force the 62nd army to take up a tough defense.

Attention! Most of the civilian population of the city did not have time to evacuate (100 thousand out of 400). As a result, women and children were taken out under shelling across the Volga, but many remained in the city and died (calculations of civilian casualties are still considered inaccurate).

counteroffensive

Such a goal as the liberation of Stalingrad became not only strategic, but also ideological. Neither Stalin nor Hitler wanted to retreat and could not afford defeat. The Soviet command, realizing the complexity of the situation, began to prepare a counteroffensive back in September.

Marshal Eremenko's plan

September 30, 1942 was the Don Front was formed under the command of K.K. Rokossovsky.

He attempted a counter-offensive, which by the beginning of October had completely failed.

At this time, A.I. Eremenko proposes to the Headquarters a plan to encircle the 6th Army. The plan was fully approved, received the code name "Uranus".

In the event of its 100% implementation, all enemy forces concentrated in the Stalingrad area would be surrounded.

Attention! A strategic mistake during the implementation of this plan at the initial stage was made by K.K. Rokossovsky, who tried to take the Oryol salient with the forces of the 1st Guards Army (which he saw as a threat to a future offensive operation). The operation ended in failure. 1st Guards Army was completely disbanded.

Chronology of operations (stages)

Hitler ordered the command of the Luftwaffe to carry out the transfer of goods to the Stalingrad ring in order to prevent the defeat of the German troops. The Germans coped with this task, but the fierce opposition of the Soviet air armies, which launched the "free hunting" regime, led to the fact that the German air traffic with the blockaded troops was interrupted on January 10, just before the start of Operation Ring, which ended the defeat of the German troops at Stalingrad.

Results

In the battle, the following main stages can be distinguished:

• strategic defensive operation (defense of Stalingrad) - from 17.06 to 18.11.1942;
• strategic offensive operation (liberation of Stalingrad) - from 11/19/42 to 02/02/43.

The Battle of Stalingrad lasted a total of 201 days. It is impossible to say exactly how long the further operation to clean up the city from the Khiva and scattered enemy groups took.

The victory in the battle was reflected both in the state of the fronts and in the geopolitical alignment of forces in the world. The liberation of the city was of great importance. Brief results of the Battle of Stalingrad:

• Soviet troops gained invaluable experience in encircling and destroying the enemy;
• have been established new schemes of military-economic supply of troops;
• Soviet troops actively impeded the advance of German groups in the Caucasus;
• the German command was forced to send additional forces to the implementation of the Eastern Wall project;
• Germany's influence on the allies was greatly weakened, neutral countries began to take the position of not accepting the actions of the Germans;
• The Luftwaffe was severely weakened after attempts to supply the 6th Army;
• Germany suffered significant (partly irreparable) losses.

Losses

Losses were significant for both Germany and the USSR.

The situation with prisoners

At the time of the end of Operation Kotel, 91.5 thousand people were in Soviet captivity, including:

• ordinary soldiers (including Europeans from among the German allies);
• officers (2.5 thousand);
• generals (24).

The German Field Marshal Paulus was also captured.

All prisoners were sent to a specially created camp number 108 near Stalingrad. For 6 years (until 1949) surviving prisoners worked on the construction sites of the city.

Attention! The captured Germans were treated quite humanely. After the first three months, when the death rate among the prisoners reached peak levels, they were all placed in camps near Stalingrad (part of the hospitals). The able-bodied worked a regular working day and received for work wages, which could be spent on food and household items. In 1949, all surviving prisoners, except for war criminals and traitors

Only 13 days elapsed between the publication of the "Oath of the Defenders of Stalingrad" and the start of the great counteroffensive, which ended two and a half months later with the Stalingrad victory. However, during these 13 days, the Germans managed to launch a new desperate offensive. The position of the defenders became even more difficult due to the appearance of ice on the Volga. Because of this, all transportation across the river practically stopped, and even the evacuation of the wounded became almost impossible. And yet, when this last German offensive was repulsed, the spirit of the defenders of Stalingrad rose higher than ever before, especially since they vaguely felt that something very important was about to happen.

Subsequently, the soldiers of Stalingrad told me with what insane joy, hope and excitement they listened to the thunder of the distant, but intense artillery cannonade, which resounded on November 19 between six and seven o'clock in the morning, at this quietest time of day on the Stalingrad front. They understood what this thunder of cannons meant. He meant that they would not have to defend Stalingrad throughout the winter. Sticking their heads out of the dugouts, in almost impenetrable darkness - the dim, damp and foggy dawn was just breaking - they listened.

No official reports were published either on November 19, when the troops of the Don Front under the command of Rokossovsky and the troops of the South-Western Front under the command of Vatutin moved south towards Kalach, nor on November 20, when the troops of the Stalingrad Front under the command of Eremenko moved from the area to the south from Stalingrad in a northwestern direction to join them. Nothing was reported about this in the November 21 report either. Pravda devoted its leading article that day to the "session of the Academy of Sciences in Sverdlovsk."

Only in the night at 22 November, a special message released the big news that a few days ago, Soviet troops concentrated northwest and south of Stalingrad went on the offensive, captured Kalach and cut two railway lines that delivered supplies for German troops in Stalingrad, in the area Krivomuzginskaya and Abganerov. This report did not yet directly say that the ring around the Germans in Stalingrad was closed, but cited figures of the enemy's enormous losses: 14,000 German soldiers were killed, 13,000 were taken prisoner, and so on.
Moscow was gripped by the strongest excitement, everyone had one word on their lips: “It has begun!” Everyone instinctively felt that some very great results could be expected from this offensive.

The main thing that should be said about this second, decisive stage of the Battle of Stalingrad, boils down to the following:
1. The troops of the three Soviet fronts had a total of 1005 thousand soldiers, who were opposed by an almost equal number of enemy troops; they had about 900 tanks against 700 German, 13 thousand artillery pieces against 10 thousand for the Germans and 1100 aircraft against 1200 for the enemy.

On the other hand, in the directions of the main attack, the Red Army had such overwhelming superiority, which, according to the "History of War", they had never been able to achieve in the entire war: a threefold superiority in manpower and a fourfold superiority in equipment - especially in artillery and mortars. Virtually all of these armaments were produced by Soviet industry during the summer and the first months of autumn; Soviet troops used only a small number of Western tanks, trucks and jeeps. By February 1943, a total of about 72,000 Western-made trucks had been delivered to the Soviet Union, but at the time when the offensive near Stalingrad began, the Russians had only a very small part of them.

2. The morale of the troops was exceptionally high.
3. The counteroffensive plan had been developed since August, mainly by Stalin, Zhukov and Vasilevsky in consultation with the front commanders - Vatutin, Rokossovsky and Eremenko. In October and November, Vasilevsky and Zhukov visited the area of ​​the forthcoming operations.

4. Preparations for the offensive required enormous organizational efforts and were carried out with the utmost secrecy. So, for several weeks before the offensive, all postal communication between the soldiers of those fronts and their families was stopped. Although the Germans bombed the railroads leading to the area north of the Don, they did not have a clear idea of ​​how much equipment and troops were being delivered (mostly at night) to the area north of the Don and to the two main Soviet bridgeheads in the bend of the Don. The Germans never imagined that the Soviet counter-offensive (if any) could take on such a large scale. Even more difficult was the task of transferring to the Stalingrad front, to the south, masses of troops and huge amount technology. To do this, it was necessary to use the railway that ran east of the Volga, which the Germans heavily bombed, as well as build pontoon bridges and arrange ferry crossings across the Volga, one might say, under the very noses of the Germans. Unlike the area north of the Don, where there were some forests, it was especially difficult to provide camouflage in the barren steppe south of Stalingrad.

And yet, despite all this, the Germans had no idea about the power of the impending strike.
5. The German command, and in particular Hitler himself, were so obsessed with the need to capture Stalingrad for reasons of prestige that they did not pay enough attention to strengthening both flanks of their disposition, which we can call the Stalingrad salient. Strictly speaking, it was not a ledge: on its northern side there was indeed a front, but in the south lay a kind of no man's land stretching across the Kalmyk steppes to the very North Caucasus; there were only a few weak lines, which were held mainly by the Romanian troops. In the north, Romanians also stood on some sectors of the front. The Romanian troops fought well near Odessa and in the Crimea, but at the beginning of winter, when they found themselves in the Don steppes, their morale dropped significantly. Here they were already clearly fighting not for the interests of royal Romania, but for the interests of Hitler, and their relations with the Germans were far from friendly. Further to the west, on the Don, Italian troops were operating, the morale of which was also not brilliant. The Soviet command was well aware of this and rightly considered the sectors of the front held by the Romanians and Italians to be the weakest.

The offensive began at 6:30 am on November 19 with artillery preparation on a broad front north of the Stalingrad salient; two hours later the infantry and tanks moved. Due to bad weather, little assistance was resorted to by aviation. In three days, the troops under the command of Vatutin advanced approximately 125 km, defeating the 3rd Romanian army and several German units hastily sent to save the allies during the offensive. Despite the strong resistance of the German, as well as some Romanian units, the troops of the Southwestern Front under the command of Vatutin reached Kalach on November 22 and there they met with the troops of Eremenko, who made a breakthrough from the south, where enemy resistance turned out to be less stubborn.
During the fighting, four Romanian divisions were surrounded and soon capitulated, led by their commander, General Laskar. The same fate befell another encircled Romanian group, commanded by General Stanescu. The defeat of the Romanian 3rd Army, as a result of which the Red Army captured about 30 thousand prisoners, had a considerable political impact on Hitler's relations with his allies. First of all, the Germans installed after that over Romanian troops much tighter and more direct control.

The troops of the Stalingrad Front under the command of Eremenko, who went on the offensive a day later, advanced to Kalach even faster and reached it in less than three days, thus ahead of the troops of the Southwestern Front and capturing 7 thousand Romanian soldiers. The troops of the right wing of the Don Front under the command of General Rokossovsky on November 19 also struck in a southerly direction; part of these troops broke through to the area of ​​defense of Colonel Gorokhov on the Volga, north of Stalingrad. The encirclement of the Germans in Stalingrad was completed in four and a half days. The ring was neither very wide - from 30 to 60 km - nor very strong, and the next task, obviously, was to strengthen and expand it. In the last days of November, the Germans made an attempt to break through the ring from the west, however, despite some initial successes, they did not succeed. The Soviet command was most afraid that the 6th Army of Paulus and parts of the 4th Panzer Army, which was in Stalingrad, would try to break through and leave Stalingrad. However, nothing of the kind happened, and, paradoxically, during the Soviet breakthrough on the Don, many Germans rushed to Stalingrad in search of "security".

Some interesting details the situation in which this great battle took place was reported to me by the correspondent of the United Press agency in Moscow, Henry Shapire, who received permission to visit these places a few days after the ring was closed. He traveled by rail to a point located about 150 kilometers northwest of Stalingrad, and from there he got by car to Serafimovich, located on the same bridgehead on the Don, which the Russians captured after fierce fighting in October and from where Vatutin abandoned his troops on November 19 in the attack on Kalach.
“The Germans heavily bombed the railway line near the front; all stations were destroyed, and military commandants and railway employees managed traffic from dugouts and destroyed buildings. A wide stream of weapons - "Katyushas", guns, tanks, ammunition and troops - continuously moved along the railway to the front. Traffic continued day and night, and the same thing happened on the highways. This movement was especially intense at night. There was very little English and American technology - except for some kind of jeep or tank; 90 percent of all this was weapons domestic production. But as far as the food supply was concerned, a fairly large part of it was made up of American products - especially lard, sugar and stewed pork.

By the time I got to Serafimovich, the Russians were busy not only consolidating the ring around Stalingrad, but building a second ring; the map clearly showed that the Germans in Stalingrad had completely fallen into a trap and could not escape from it in any way ... I found both soldiers and officers such a feeling of self-confidence that I had never seen before in the Red Army. During the battle for Moscow, nothing similar was observed(emphasis mine. - A.V.).
Far behind the front line, thousands of Romanians roamed the steppe, cursing the Germans, desperately looking for Russian feeding stations, and eager to be officially listed as prisoners of war. Some soldiers who had broken away from their unit surrendered to the mercy of the local peasants, who treated them mercifully, if only because they were not Germans. The Russians said that they were "the same poor peasants as we ourselves."
With the exception of small groups of Iron Guards, who in some places offered stubborn resistance, the Romanian soldiers were tired of the war, they were tired of it. All the prisoners I saw said about the same thing: Hitler needs this war, and the Romanians have nothing to do on the Don.
The closer I got to Stalingrad, the more captured Germans I met ... The steppe looked fantastic. Horse corpses lay everywhere. Some horses, still alive, standing on three stiff legs, pulled the fourth - broken. It was a heartbreaking sight. During the Soviet offensive, 10 thousand horses died. The whole steppe was literally littered with their corpses, broken by gun carriages, tanks and cannons - German, French, Czech and even English (probably captured in Dunkirk) ... - and countless corpses of Romanian and German soldiers. First of all, it was necessary to bury our own, Russians. Civilians returned to their villages, mostly destroyed... Kalach was a heap of ruins. Only one house survived...

General Chistyakov, whose command post I finally located in a village south of Kalach—a village that had come under artillery fire from time to time—said that a few days earlier the Germans could have escaped Stalingrad quite easily, but Hitler forbade them to do so. Now they have missed the opportunity. He expressed confidence that Stalingrad would be taken by the end of December.
The Russians, Chistyakov said, were shooting down German transport planes by the dozens, and the Germans in the Stalingrad pocket were already experiencing food shortages and eating horsemeat.
The German prisoners of war that I saw were mostly young guys and looked very miserable. I didn't see a single officer. Despite the thirty-degree frost, the Germans were dressed in ordinary overcoats and wrapped in blankets. They had virtually no winter uniforms. And the Russians were very well equipped - they were wearing felt boots, sheepskin coats, warm gloves and the like. In moral terms, the Germans, apparently, were completely stunned and could not understand what had happened all of a sudden.
On the way back at 4 o'clock in the morning I talked for several minutes with General Vatutin in some dilapidated school building in Serafimovich. He was terribly tired - for at least two weeks he did not manage to get a good night's sleep. He rubbed his eyes all the time and fell into a drowsiness every now and then. However, for all that, he looked very strong and resolute, and his mood was extremely optimistic. Vatutin showed me a map that clearly indicated the direction of the further advance of the Russians into the western part of the Don steppes.

I have the impression that, while the capture of Serafimovich in October cost the Russians heavy casualties, their losses in the current well-prepared breakthrough were much less than the losses of the Romanians and Germans.
At that time, the Germans and their allies still occupied vast territories in the southeastern part of Russia. The whole Kuban and some regions of the North Caucasus were in their hands; they still held out at Mozdok - on the way to Grozny - and the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. On November 2, they took Nalchik and almost captured Vladikavkaz, the northern end of the Georgian Military Highway. However, here the Soviet command achieved significant success on November 19, bringing large forces into action and throwing the Germans back to the outskirts of Nalchik. In the area of ​​Mozdok, the Germans have not been able to make any significant progress since the end of August. Like Stalingrad, Mozdok was invariably featured in military reports for several months. Having set as its goal to clear from the enemy all the territories adjacent to the Don to the west of Stalingrad - to Rostov itself and Sea of ​​Azov, - the Soviet command correctly calculated that if it succeeded, it would almost automatically force the Germans to get out of the Caucasus and Kuban.
An even more daring Saturn plan, adopted by the High Command on December 3, that is, two weeks after the start of the counteroffensive, was to eliminate the German troops locked in the Stalingrad cauldron, and then occupy the entire bend of the Don, including Rostov, and cut off the German troops in the Caucasus. As stated in the "History of War", on November 27, Stalin telephoned the Chief of the General Staff Vasilevsky, who was at that moment in the Stalingrad region, and demanded that priority be given to the elimination of German troops in Stalingrad, and the implementation of the remaining points of the Saturn plan was entrusted to the troops of the Southwestern Front under the command of Vatutin.
“In early December, the troops of the Don and Stalingrad fronts launched an offensive against the encircled enemy group. But it didn't give much results. Therefore, the Soviet command decided to significantly strengthen the troops and more carefully prepare the operation. New units and formations were transferred to the Stalingrad region, the 2nd Guards Army under the command of R.Ya. Malinovsky".

The Germans made their first attempt to break through to Stalingrad from the west in late November, but failed. After that, they reorganized their forces and formed a new army group "Don", whose task was to: a) stop the advance of Soviet troops in the Don basin and b) break through the ring around Stalingrad. This group included all the German and allied troops located in the area between the middle reaches of the Don and the Astrakhan steppes, and its two main fists were supposed to be concentrated in Tormosin, in the bend of the Don, and in Kotelnikovo - south of the bend of the Don, 90 kilometers south west of the Stalingrad cauldron. The operation was entrusted to Field Marshal von Manstein, the "conqueror of the Crimea", whose prestige in the German army was very high.
However, the creation of a powerful strike force, especially in Tormosin, took place with great delays due to huge transport difficulties. These difficulties were mainly the result of constant partisan raids on the railways, in connection with which reinforcements could only be delivered to the Don region from the west by roundabout routes. Since time did not wait, Manstein decided to attack with the forces of one strike group concentrated in Kotelnikovo. He subsequently explained his decision as follows:

“She was closer to Stalingrad, and on her way to it there was no need to force the Don. One could hope that the enemy was not waiting for a major offensive in this direction ... At first, only five Russian divisions opposed the group of our troops in Kotelnikov, while 15 divisions stood against the group concentrated in Tormosin, ”
On December 12, the Kotelnikovskaya group of troops of Manstein, which included several hundred tanks, went on the offensive on a narrow sector of the front in the direction of Stalingrad along the railway leading from the Caucasus. Despite the strong resistance of the Soviet troops, in three days she advanced 50 km. On December 15, the Germans managed to cross the Aksay River, but the Soviet units took up defensive positions north of the river and began to receive large reinforcements. The German advance slowed, but with the support of hundreds of bombers, by December 19 they managed to reach the Myshkova River, this was the last natural barrier between them and Stalingrad. They also crossed this river, after which, according to Manstein, the Germans "already saw a glow in the sky over Stalingrad." It all ended with a glow - Manstein himself did not have a chance to see Stalingrad. Postponing the implementation of Operation Saturn until the liquidation of the Stalingrad cauldron, the Soviet High Command gave priority to the defeat of the Manstein group advancing from Kotelnikov, as well as his troops in the Tormosin area.
In order to cope with the Kotelnikov group of Manstein, Russian reinforcements were urgently transferred to the Myshkova River, which was some 40 km from the Stalingrad cauldron, in exceptionally difficult conditions. The 2nd Guards Army of Malinovsky had to travel 200 km, crossing the Volga. The troops moved in a forced march of 40 km a day across the snow-covered steppe, into a terrible blizzard. When they approached the Myshkova River, which the Germans had already crossed in several places, they felt an acute shortage of fuel, and its delivery was delayed due to bad weather and poor road conditions. The Russians had to use only infantry and artillery in battle for several days, and it was not until December 24 that their tanks were also able to enter into action. However, the Germans were held back, and then, on December 24, the Soviet troops struck, already with the support of tanks and aircraft, and threw the enemy back to the Aksai River. Here the Germans decided to offer stubborn resistance, but the Russians delivered more and more powerful blows and pushed the Germans back to Kotelnikov. On December 29, they also left this point, and the remnants of Manstein's troops hastily retreated to the Zimovniki station, and from there even further, across the Manych River - on the way to the North Caucasus. This river flows 90 km southwest of Kotelnikov, from where on December 12 Manstein began his offensive.

Trying to break through to Stalingrad, the Germans (according to the Soviet command) lost only 16 thousand people killed, as well as a significant part of their tanks, artillery pieces and vehicles. A few days after it was all over, I happened to see this area of ​​​​an unprecedented German retreat - from the Myshkova River to Zimovniki.
The Russians, both then and for a long time after that, were perplexed why Paulus, knowing that the troops coming to his rescue were some 40 km from the Stalingrad cauldron, did not try to make a breakthrough to connect with them, did not even try to relieve them advancing towards Stalingrad with a counteroffensive that diverted at least part of the Soviet troops.
After the war, a lot was written about this very controversial operation - Manstein himself, and Walter Görlitz, and Filippi, and Game, and others wrote about it. First of all, it still remains a mystery what, in fact, Manstein (or the Goth group, as the Germans usually call this grouping of troops) hoped to achieve, if not to ensure a breakthrough from the encirclement of all German troops locked in Stalingrad. After all, it is very difficult to imagine that the Goth group could in any way long time hold narrow corridor, leading to Stalingrad, and not let the Soviet troops cut it. Apparently, Manstein began this operation with the idea that if he broke through to Stalingrad, or even got close enough to it, he could either convince Hitler of the need to order Paulus to withdraw his troops from the Stalingrad pocket, or present Hitler with a fait accompli, based on the indisputable argument that there was no other way out.

There was a period between December 19 and 23 - during these days the Goth group held bridgeheads north of the Myshkova River - when Paulus could try to make a breakthrough with some chance of success. Manstein contemplated two independent operations: firstly, Operation Wintergewitter (Winter Thunderstorm), which would result in the establishment of a link between the Goth group and the Paulus troops, mainly with the aim of ensuring the fastest delivery of supplies to the encircled group by land transport , since air communication with the encircled troops was actually interrupted; and, secondly, the operation "Donnershlag" ("Thunderbolt"), which provided for a breakthrough from the cauldron of the entire Stalingrad group. Paulus claimed that it took him several days to prepare for any of these operations; the physical condition of his troops was very bad, they needed food and other supplies (“required at least a ten-day supply of food for 270 thousand people”); there was also an acute shortage of fuel, and, among other things, it was necessary first of all to evacuate 8 thousand wounded. Ultimately, one can apparently draw the following conclusion: did the German troops at Stalingrad have a good chance of breaking out of encirclement, or not, but during these four decisive days - from December 19 to 23 - both Paulus and Manstein did not decided to act, because Hitler had not received permission to retreat from Stalingrad. Apparently, none of them dared to do anything without the express permission of Hitler, for such a serious act of disobedience to the Führer would set a dangerous "revolutionary" precedent, which could have a detrimental effect on the discipline of the Wehrmacht as a whole. In addition, Hitler, in their opinion, could cancel any order that did not come from him personally.

Another circumstance that made Paulus hesitate (unlike one of his generals, von Seydlitz, a strong supporter of a breakthrough), was the generous promises that Hitler bombarded him with: Göring "guaranteed" that the encircled troops could be provided with adequate air supplies, so that they can easily hold out until the spring of 1943, by which time the entire Don basin will in all probability have been recaptured by the Germans. After the failure of Manstein's attempt to break through to Stalingrad, Paulus (and Manstein) began to console himself with the fact that, despite the failure with the organization of air transportation, the German troops stationed in the Stalingrad cauldron are still doing a useful thing, holding down large Russian forces, and Manstein can now dedicate himself to an even more important task than saving the 6th Army, namely to keep an open gap between Rostov and Taman and thereby enable the much larger German forces in the Caucasus and Kuban to leave from there with minimal losses.
According to Walter Görlitz, Paulus was a fan of Hitler for many years, and therefore he dutifully obeyed Hitler's order to hold on at all costs. Only after the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944, Paulus was persuaded to join hundreds of other German officers and generals who decided to appeal to the German army and people with a call to overthrow Hitler. Thus, Görlitz destroys the legend according to which Paulus was a kind of noble anti-Nazi. True, he subsequently settled in the German Democratic Republic and until his death - he died in 1957 - stood up for the closest cooperation between Germany and the Soviet Union. (Despite this, he was one of the most zealous creators of Hitler's plans for the war with Poland and the invasion of the USSR in 1941.)

Lately it has been suggested by some German writers that all the controversy over how Manstein and Paulus should have acted between December 19 and 23 circumvents the main point that Manstein's offensive was simply badly planned and that Paulus did not could make a breakthrough. Here is what Filippi and Game write about this:
“There is, in fact, no evidence that at the end of December these troops, in such a pitiful state, were still capable of making a breakthrough, even if we assume that the prospect of breaking free should have inspired them to superhuman feats. The command of the 6th Army announced on December 21 that the proposed operation threatened a catastrophic denouement ... they were right: an attempt by a huge mass of people, extremely physically exhausted, to fight their way to the Myshkova River, for which they had to go 50 kilometers through the snow-covered steppes and to break the resistance of fresh, intact and well-armed enemy troops, could only be a gesture of desperation. Equally unfavorable were the conditions for Operations Winter Storm and Thunderbolt.
Whether such a view is correct or not is something military historians will no doubt continue to argue about. Judging by the Germans I saw in Stalingrad more than a month and a half later, on the twenties of December, they must have been still in fairly good condition. By that time, they had been surrounded for less than a month and did not experience real hunger at all. At the thought that von Manstein was about to make a breakthrough to Stalingrad, they said, they were seized by a "belligerent spirit." Even in January, during the liquidation of the Stalingrad cauldron, those German soldiers who were in a tolerable physical condition fought with the greatest tenacity.
While the 2nd Guards Army under the command of Malinovsky was preparing to push the Germans back from the Myshkov River, the troops of Vatutin and Golikov continued to successfully advance from the north into the depths of the Don basin.
Quickly advancing to the region of the middle reaches of the Don and further to the west - this time with significant air support (in the first few days of the offensive, Soviet aircraft made 4 thousand sorties), - they defeated the remnants of the 3rd Romanian Army, the 8th Italian armies and kicked out from their positions the Tormosinsky strike group of German troops, which intended to make a breakthrough to Stalingrad simultaneously with the offensive of the Kotelnikov group. At the same time, a huge territory was liberated. Here is what is said about this in the History of War.
The Soviet troops "inflicted a crushing defeat on the 8th Italian Army and the left wing of the Don Army Group." In the 8th Italian army, five infantry divisions were defeated ... and one brigade of "black shirts". This army, which by the autumn of 1942 had about 250 thousand soldiers and officers, lost half of its composition in killed, captured and wounded. Task Force Hollidt, on the left wing of Army Group Don, suffered heavy casualties. Five of its infantry and one tank divisions were destroyed.
After the unsuccessful attempt by Manstein's "Got" group to break through to Stalingrad and its retreat to Kotelnikov and beyond, Malinovsky's troops pushed it back across the Manych River and intended to break through to Rostov from the southeast. However, it was already certain that the Soviet offensive, which had given such amazing results in the Don basin from November 19 to the end of December, would inevitably run into much more stubborn enemy resistance at the beginning of the new year. It was extremely important for the Germans to keep the Rostov neck open as long as possible, because it remained the main way to save the German troops, who now - in early January - were hastily retreating from the Caucasus and Kuban. Thanks to the victory of the Red Army at Stalingrad, Hitler's attempt to conquer the Caucasus completely failed.

Alexander Werth/Russia in the war 1941-1945

Few people in our country and in the world will be able to challenge the significance of the victory at Stalingrad. The events that took place between July 17, 1942 and February 2, 1943 gave hope to the peoples who were still under occupation. Next, 10 facts from the history of the Battle of Stalingrad will be given, designed to reflect the severity of the conditions in which they fought. fighting, and, perhaps, tell something new that makes you take a different look at this event from the history of World War II

1. To say that the battle for Stalingrad took place in difficult conditions is like saying nothing. The Soviet troops in this area were in dire need of anti-tank guns and anti-aircraft artillery, and there was also not enough ammunition - some formations simply did not have them. The soldiers got what they needed as best they could, mostly taking it from their dead comrades. There were enough dead Soviet soldiers, since most of the divisions thrown to hold the city, named after the main man in the USSR, consisted either of unfired newcomers who arrived from the Stavka reserve, or of soldiers exhausted in previous battles. This situation was aggravated by the open steppe terrain in which the fighting took place. This factor allowed the enemies to regularly inflict heavy damage on Soviet troops in equipment and people. Young officers, who just yesterday left the walls of military schools, went into battle like ordinary soldiers and died one after another.

2. At the mention of the Battle of Stalingrad, images of street fighting, which are so often shown in documentaries and feature films, pop up in the minds of many. However, few people remember that although the Germans approached the city on August 23, they began the assault only on September 14, and far from the best Paulus divisions participated in the assault. If we develop this idea further, we can come to the conclusion that if the defense of Stalingrad had been concentrated only in the city, it would have fallen, and fallen quite quickly. So what saved the city and held back the enemy onslaught? The answer is continuous counterattacks. Only after repulsing the counterattack of the 1st Guards Army on September 3, the Germans were able to begin preparations for the assault. All offensives by Soviet troops were carried out from the northern direction and did not stop even after the start of the assault. So, on September 18, the Red Army, having received reinforcements, was able to launch another counterattack, because of which the enemy even had to transfer part of the forces from Stalingrad. The next blow was inflicted by the Soviet troops on September 24th. Such countermeasures did not allow the Wehrmacht to concentrate all its forces to attack the city and constantly kept the soldiers on their toes.

If you are wondering why this is so rarely mentioned, then everything is simple. The main task of all these counter-offensives was to reach the connection with the defenders of the city, and it was not possible to fulfill it, while colossal losses were incurred. This can be clearly seen in the fate of the 241st and 167th tank brigades. They had 48 and 50 tanks, respectively, which they pinned hopes on as the main striking force in the counteroffensive of the 24th Army. On the morning of September 30, during the offensive, the Soviet forces were covered by enemy fire, as a result of which the infantry fell behind the tanks, and both tank brigades hid behind a hill, and a few hours later, radio communications with the vehicles that broke deep into the enemy defenses were lost. By the end of the day, out of 98 vehicles, only four remained in service. Later, two more damaged tanks from these brigades were able to be evacuated from the battlefield. The reasons for this failure, like all the previous ones, were the well-built defense of the Germans and the poor training of the Soviet troops, for whom Stalingrad became a place of baptism of fire. The chief of staff of the Don Front, Major General Malinin himself, said that if he had at least one well-trained infantry regiment, he would march all the way to Stalingrad, and that it’s not the enemy’s artillery that does its job well and presses the soldiers to the ground, but in the fact that at this time they do not rise to the attack. It is for these reasons that most writers and historians of the post-war period were silent about such counterattacks. They did not want to darken the picture of the triumph of the Soviet people, or they were simply afraid that such facts would become an occasion for excessive attention to their person by the regime.

3. The soldiers of the Axis who survived the Battle of Stalingrad, later usually noted that it was a real bloody absurdity. They, being by that time already hardened soldiers in many battles, in Stalingrad felt like rookies who did not know what to do. The Wehrmacht command seems to have been subjected to the same sentiments, since during urban battles it sometimes gave orders to storm very insignificant areas, where sometimes up to several thousand soldiers died. Also, the fate of the Nazis locked in the Stalingrad cauldron was not facilitated by the air supply of troops organized by order of Hitler, since such aircraft were often shot down by Soviet forces, and the cargo that nevertheless reached the addressee sometimes did not satisfy the needs of the soldiers at all. So, for example, the Germans, who were in dire need of provisions and ammunition, received a parcel from the sky, consisting entirely of women's mink coats.

Tired and exhausted, the soldiers at that time could only rely on God, especially since the Octave of Christmas was approaching - one of the main Catholic holidays, which is celebrated from December 25 to January 1. There is a version that it was precisely because of the upcoming holiday that Paulus' army did not leave the encirclement of Soviet troops. Based on the analysis of the letters of the Germans and their allies home, they prepared provisions and gifts for friends and waited for these days as a miracle. There is even evidence that the German command turned to the Soviet generals with a request for a ceasefire on Christmas night. However, the USSR had its own plans, so on Christmas the artillery worked at full strength and made the night of December 24-25 the last in their lives for many German soldiers.

4. On August 30, 1942, a Messerschmitt was shot down over Sarepta. Its pilot, Count Heinrich von Einsiedel, managed to land the plane with the landing gear retracted and was taken prisoner. He was a famous Luftwaffe ace from the squadron JG 3 "Udet" and "concurrently" the great-grandson of the "Iron Chancellor" Otto von Bismarck. Such news, of course, immediately hit the propaganda leaflets, designed to raise the spirit of the Soviet fighters. Einsiedel himself was sent to an officer camp near Moscow, where he soon met with Paulus. Since Heinrich was never an ardent supporter of Hitler's theory of a superior race and purity of blood, he went to war with the belief that the Greater Reich was leading to Eastern Front war not with the Russian nation, but with Bolshevism. However, the captivity forced him to reconsider his views, and in 1944 he became a member of the anti-fascist committee "Free Germany", and then a member of the editorial board of the newspaper of the same name. Bismarck was not the only historical image that the Soviet propaganda machine exploited to boost the morale of soldiers. So, for example, propagandists started a rumor that in the 51st Army there was a detachment of submachine gunners commanded by Senior Lieutenant Alexander Nevsky - not just the full namesake of the prince who defeated the Germans under Lake Peipsi, but also his direct descendant. He was allegedly presented to the Order of the Red Banner, but such a person does not appear on the lists of holders of the order.

5. During the Battle of Stalingrad, Soviet commanders successfully used psychological pressure on the sore points of enemy soldiers. So, in rare moments, when hostilities subsided in certain areas, propagandists through speakers installed near enemy positions transmitted songs native to the Germans, which were interrupted by reports of breakthroughs by Soviet troops in one or another sector of the front. But the most cruel and therefore the most effective was considered a method called "Timer and Tango" or "Timer Tango". During this attack on the psyche, the Soviet troops transmitted through the loudspeakers the steady beat of a metronome, which, after the seventh stroke, was interrupted by a message in German: "Every seven seconds, one German soldier dies at the front." Then the metronome again counted seven seconds, and the message was repeated. This could go on 10 – 20 times, and then a tango melody sounded over the enemy positions. Therefore, it is not surprising that many of those who were locked in the “boiler”, after several such impacts, fell into hysterics and tried to escape, dooming themselves, and sometimes their colleagues, to certain death.

6. After the completion of the Soviet operation "Ring", 130 thousand enemy soldiers were captured by the Red Army, but only about 5,000 returned home after the war. Most of them died in the first year of their captivity from illness and hypothermia, which the prisoners had developed even before they were captured. But there was another reason: of the total number of prisoners, only 110 thousand turned out to be Germans, all the rest were from among the Khiva. They voluntarily went over to the side of the enemy and, according to the calculations of the Wehrmacht, had to faithfully serve Germany in its liberation struggle against Bolshevism. So, for example, one sixth of the total number of soldiers of the 6th army of Paulus (about 52 thousand people) consisted of such volunteers.

After being captured by the Red Army, such people were already considered not as prisoners of war, but as traitors to the motherland, which, according to the law of wartime, is punishable by death. However, there were cases when captured Germans became a kind of "Khivi" for the Red Army. bright volume an example is an incident that occurred in the platoon of Lieutenant Druz. Several of his fighters, who were sent in search of the "language", returned to the trenches with an exhausted and mortally frightened German. It soon became clear that he did not have any valuable information about the actions of the enemy, so he should have been sent to the rear, but due to heavy shelling, this promised losses. Most often, such prisoners were simply disposed of, but luck smiled at this. The fact is that the prisoner worked as a teacher before the war German language, therefore, on the personal order of the battalion commander, they saved his life and even put him on allowance, in exchange for the fact that the Fritz would train German intelligence officers from the battalion. True, according to Nikolai Viktorovich Druz himself, a month later the German was blown up by a German mine, but during this time he more or less taught the soldiers the language of the enemy at an accelerated pace.

7. On February 2, 1943, the last German soldiers laid down their arms in Stalingrad. Field Marshal Paulus himself surrendered even earlier, on January 31. Officially, the place of surrender of the commander of the 6th Army is his headquarters in the basement of a building that was once a department store. However, some researchers do not agree with this and believe that the documents indicate a different place. According to them, the headquarters of the German field marshal was located in the building of the Stalingrad executive committee. But such a "defilement" of the building of Soviet power, apparently, did not suit ruling regime, and the story has been slightly tweaked. True or not, perhaps it will never be established, but the theory itself has the right to life, because absolutely everything could happen.

8. On May 2, 1943, thanks to the joint initiative of the leadership of the NKVD and the city authorities, a football match took place at the Stalingrad Azot stadium, which became known as the “match on the ruins of Stalingrad”. The Dynamo team, which was assembled from local players, met on the field with the leading team of the USSR - Spartak Moscow. The friendly match ended with the score 1:0 in favor of Dynamo. Until today, it is not known whether the result was rigged, or whether the defenders of the city, hardened in battle, were simply used to fighting and winning. Be that as it may, the organizers of the match managed to do the most important thing - to unite the inhabitants of the city and give them hope that all the attributes of peaceful life are returning to Stalingrad.

9. On November 29, 1943, Winston Churchill, at a ceremony in honor of the opening of the Tehran Conference, solemnly presented Joseph Stalin with a sword forged by special decree of King George VI of Great Britain. This blade was given as a token of British admiration for the courage shown by the defenders of Stalingrad. Along the entire blade was an inscription in Russian and English: “To the inhabitants of Stalingrad, whose hearts are strong as steel. A gift from King George VI as a token of the great admiration of the entire British people."

The decoration of the sword was made of gold, silver, leather and crystal. It is rightfully considered a masterpiece of modern blacksmithing. Today, any visitor to the Museum of the Battle of Stalingrad in Volgograd can see it. In addition to the original, three copies were also released. One is in the Museum of Swords in London, the second is in the National Museum of Military History in South Africa, and the third is part of the collection of the head of the diplomatic mission of the United States of America in London.

10. An interesting fact is that after the end of the battle, Stalingrad could completely cease to exist. The fact is that in February 1943, almost immediately after the surrender of the Germans, the Soviet government faced an acute question: is it worth restoring the city, after all, after fierce fighting, Stalingrad lay in ruins? It was cheaper to build a new city. Nevertheless, Joseph Stalin insisted on restoration, and the city was resurrected from the ashes. However, the residents themselves say that after that, for a long time, some streets exuded a putrid smell, and Mamaev Kurgan, due to the large number of bombs dropped on it, did not grow grass for more than two years.

Volgograd. Mamaev kurgan. Monument "Motherland is calling!"

On February 2, 1943, the last Nazi grouping that fought in the north of Stalingrad laid down its arms. The Battle of Stalingrad ended with a brilliant victory for the Red Army. Hitler blamed the defeat on the Luftwaffe command. He yelled at Goering and promised to hand him over to be shot. Another "scapegoat" was Paulus. The Fuhrer promised after the end of the war to betray Paulus and his generals to a military tribunal, as he did not comply with his order to fight to the last bullet ...

“The troops of the Don Front have completely completed the liquidation of the Nazi troops surrounded in the Stalingrad region. On February 2, the last center of enemy resistance was crushed in the area north of Stalingrad. The historic battle of Stalingrad ended in a complete victory for our troops.

In the Svatovo region, our troops captured the regional centers of Pokrovskoye and Nizhnyaya Duvanka. In the Tikhoretsk region, our troops, continuing to develop the offensive, captured the regional centers of Pavlovskaya, Novo-Leushkovskaya, Korenovskaya. In other sectors of the front, our troops continued to conduct offensive battles in the same directions and occupied a number of settlements.

The German Empire declared three days of mourning for the dead. People wept in the streets when the radio announced that the 6th Army had been forced to surrender. On February 3, Tippelskirch noted that the Stalingrad catastrophe "shook the German army and the German people ... Something incomprehensible happened there, not experienced since 1806 - the death of an army surrounded by the enemy."

The Third Reich not only lost the most important battle, lost a battle-tested army, suffered huge casualties, but also lost the glory that it acquired at the beginning of the war and which began to fade during the battle for Moscow. It was a strategic turning point in the Great Patriotic War.

The best fighters of the 95th Rifle Division (62nd Army), after the liberation of the Krasny Oktyabr plant, were photographed near the workshop, which was still on fire. The soldiers rejoice at the gratitude received from the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, addressed to the units of the Don Front. In the front row on the right is the division commander, Colonel Vasily Akimovich Gorishny.

On November 19, 1942, the troops of the Southwestern and Don Fronts launched an offensive. On November 20, units of the Stalingrad Front went on the offensive. On November 23, units of the Southwestern and Stalingrad fronts joined in the Soviet area. Units of the 6th field army and the 4th tank army (22 divisions with a total number of 330 thousand people) were surrounded.

January 1943 Street fighting

On November 24, Adolf Hitler rejected the proposal of the commander of the 6th Army, Paulus, to go for a breakthrough before it was too late. The Fuhrer ordered to hold the city at all costs and wait for outside help. It was a fatal mistake. On December 12, the Kotelnikovskaya German group launched a counteroffensive in order to unblock the Paulus army. However, by December 15, the enemy offensive was stopped. On December 19, the Germans again tried to break through the corridor. By the end of December, the German troops, who were trying to unblock the Stalingrad group, were defeated and were driven back even further from Stalingrad.

The 6th German Army was surrounded during the implementation of the strategic offensive operation "Uranus".

Captured Germans near Stalingrad. February 1943

As the Wehrmacht was pushed further and further west, Paulus' troops lost hope of salvation. Chief of staff ground forces(OKH) Kurt Zeitzler unsuccessfully urged Hitler to allow Paulus to break out of Stalingrad. However, Hitler was still against the idea. He proceeded from the fact that the Stalingrad group fetters a significant number of Soviet troops and thus prevents the Soviet command from launching an even more powerful offensive.

At the end of December in State Committee The defense passed a discussion on how to proceed. Stalin proposed that the leadership of defeating the encircled enemy forces be placed in the hands of one person. The rest of the GKO members supported this decision. As a result, the operation to destroy the enemy troops was headed by Konstantin Rokossovsky. Under his command was the Don Front.

Broken German column. February 1943

By the beginning of Operation Koltso, the Germans, surrounded by Stalingrad, were still a serious force: about 250 thousand people, more than 4 thousand guns and mortars, up to 300 tanks and 100 aircraft. On December 27, Rokossovsky presented Stalin with a plan of operation. It should be noted that the Headquarters practically did not strengthen the Don Front with tank and rifle formations.

The front had fewer troops than the enemy: 212 thousand people, 6.8 thousand guns and mortars, 257 tanks and 300 aircraft. Due to the lack of forces, Rokossovsky was forced to give the order to stop the offensive and go on the defensive. Artillery was to play a decisive role in the operation.

A downed German fighter jet lies among the ruins of Stalingrad.
During the siege, large-scale air battles flared up in the sky above the city.

One of the most important tasks that Konstantin Konstantinovich had to solve after the encirclement of the enemy was the elimination of the "air bridge". German planes supplied the German grouping with ammunition, fuel, and food by air. Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering promised to transfer up to 500 tons of cargo to Stalingrad daily.

However, as the Soviet troops moved west, the task became more and more complicated. We had to use more and more remote from Stalingrad airfields. Besides Soviet pilots under the command of Generals Golovanov and Novikov, who arrived at Stalingrad, they actively destroyed enemy transport aircraft. Anti-aircraft gunners also played a big role in the destruction of the air bridge.

View of Stalingrad, almost completely destroyed
after six months of fierce fighting, at the end of

hostilities at the end of 1943.

Between November 24 and January 31, 1942, the Germans lost about 500 vehicles. After such losses, Germany was no longer able to restore the potential of military transport aviation. Very soon, German aviation could only transfer about 100 tons of cargo per day. From January 16 to 28, only about 60 tons of cargo were dropped per day.

The position of the German group deteriorated sharply. Ammunition and fuel were scarce. Hunger has begun. The soldiers were forced to eat horses left over from the defeated Romanian cavalry, as well as horses that were used for transport purposes in the German infantry divisions. Ate and dogs.

Food shortages were noted even before the encirclement of German troops. Then it was found that the food ration of soldiers is no more than 1800 kilocalories. This led to the fact that up to a third of the personnel suffered from various diseases. Hunger, excessive mental and physical stress, cold, lack of medicines became the causes of high mortality among the Germans.

Soviet soldiers in winter uniforms took up position
on the roof of a building in Stalingrad, January 1943.

Under these conditions, the commander of the Don Front, Rokossovsky, proposed to send an ultimatum to the Germans, the text of which was agreed with the Headquarters. Given the hopeless situation and the senselessness of further resistance, Rokossovsky suggested that the enemy lay down their arms in order to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. The prisoners were promised normal food and medical care.

On January 8, 1943, an attempt was made to give the German troops an ultimatum. Previously, the Germans were informed by radio of the appearance of truce and ceased fire in the area where the ultimatum was to be delivered to the enemy. However, no one came out to meet the Soviet parliamentarians, and then they opened fire on them. The Soviet attempt to show humanity to the defeated enemy was not successful. Grossly violating the rules of war, the Nazis fired on the Soviet parliamentarians.

However, the Soviet command still hoped for the reasonableness of the enemy. The next day, January 9, a second attempt was made to give the Germans an ultimatum. This time the Soviet truce was met by German officers. The Soviet parliamentarians offered to take them to Paulus. But they were told that they knew the content of the ultimatum from a radio broadcast and that the command of the German troops refused to accept this demand.

The Soviet command tried to convey to the Germans the idea of ​​the senselessness of resistance through other channels: hundreds of thousands of leaflets were dropped on the territory of the encircled German troops, German prisoners of war spoke on the radio.

On the morning of January 10, 1943, after a powerful artillery and air strike, the troops of the Don Front went on the offensive. The German troops, despite all the difficulties with the supply, put up fierce resistance. They relied on a fairly powerful defense, organized in equipped positions that the Red Army occupied in the summer of 1942. Their battle formations were dense due to the reduction of the front.

The Germans made one counterattack after another, trying to hold their positions. The offensive took place in heavy weather conditions. Frost and snowstorms hindered the movement of troops. In addition, Soviet troops had to attack in conditions open area, while the enemy held the defense in trenches, dugouts.

However, Soviet troops were able to penetrate the enemy's defenses. They rushed to liberate Stalingrad, which became a symbol of invincibility Soviet Union. Every step cost blood. Trench after trench, fortification after fortification, was taken by Soviet soldiers. By the end of the first day, Soviet troops in a number of sectors wedged into the enemy defenses for 6-8 km. The 65th Army of Pavel Batov had the greatest success. She was advancing in the direction of the Nursery.

The 44th and 76th German infantry and 29th motorized divisions defending in this direction suffered heavy losses. The Germans tried to stop our armies at the second defensive line, which mainly passed along the middle Stalingrad defensive bypass, but they were not successful. On January 13-14, the Don Front regrouped its forces and on January 15 resumed the offensive. By the middle of the day, the second German defensive line had been broken through. The remnants of the German troops began to retreat to the ruins of the city.

On January 24, Paulus reported the death of the 44th, 76th, 100th, 305th and 384th Infantry Divisions. The front was broken, strong points remained only in the area of ​​the city. The catastrophe of the army became inevitable. Paulus offered to save the remaining people to give him permission to surrender. However, Hitler did not give permission to capitulate.

The plan of the operation, developed by the Soviet command, provided for the division of the German group into two parts. On January 25, the 21st Army of Ivan Chistyakov made his way into the city from the western direction. Vasily Chuikov's 62nd Army advanced from the east. After 16 days of fierce fighting on January 26, our armies united in the area of ​​​​the village of Krasny Oktyabr and Mamaev Kurgan.

A Soviet soldier triumphantly raises the flag over Stalingrad in February 1943

Soviet troops dismembered the 6th German army into northern and southern groups. The southern group, sandwiched in the southern part of the city, included the remnants of the 4th, 8th and 51st army corps and the 14th tank corps. During this time, the Germans lost up to 100 thousand people.

It must be said that the rather long duration of the operation was associated not only with a powerful defense, dense defensive formations of the enemy (a large number of troops in a relatively small space), and a shortage of tank and rifle formations of the Don Front. The desire of the Soviet command to avoid unnecessary losses also mattered. German nodes of resistance crushed with powerful fire strikes. The encirclement rings around the German groups continued to shrink.

The fighting in the city continued for several more days. On January 28, the southern German grouping was torn into two parts. On January 30, Hitler promoted Paulus to field marshal. In a radiogram sent to the commander of the 6th Army, Hitler hinted to him that he should commit suicide, because no German field marshal had yet been captured. On January 31, Paulus surrendered. The southern German group capitulated.

On the same day, the field marshal was taken to Rokossovsky's headquarters. Despite the demands of Rokossovsky and the commander of the artillery of the Red Army Nikolai Voronov (he took an active part in the development of the “Ring” plan) to issue an order to surrender the remnants of the 6th Army and save the soldiers and officers, Paulus refused to give such an order, under the pretext that he was a prisoner of war , and his generals now report personally to Hitler.

German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus being interrogated at the headquarters
Red Army near Stalingrad, USSR, March 1, 1943.
Paulus was the first German field marshal to be taken prisoner by the Soviets.

The northern grouping of the 6th Army, which was defending in the area of ​​the tractor plant and the Barrikady plant, held out a little longer. However, after a powerful artillery strike on February 2, she also capitulated. The commander of the 11th Army Corps, Karl Streiker, surrendered. In total, 24 generals, 2,500 officers and about 90,000 soldiers were taken prisoner during Operation Ring.

Operation "Ring" completed the success of the Red Army at Stalingrad. The whole world saw how until recently the "invincible" representatives of the "master race" sadly wander into captivity in ragged crowds. During the offensive, the army of the Don Front in the period from January 10 to February 2, 22 divisions of the Wehrmacht were completely destroyed.

Almost immediately after the liquidation of the last pockets of enemy resistance, the troops of the Don Front began to be loaded into echelons and transferred to the west. Soon they will form the southern face of the Kursk salient. The troops that passed through the crucible of the Battle of Stalingrad became the elite of the Red Army. In addition to combat experience, they felt the taste of victory, were able to withstand and defeat the enemy's elite troops.

In April-May, the armies participating in the Battle of Stalingrad received the rank of guards. The 21st Army of Chistyakov became the 6th Guards Army, the 24th Army of Galanin - the 4th Guards, the 62nd Army of Chuikov - the 8th Guards, the 64th Army of Shumilov - the 7th Guards, the 66th Zhadov - 5th Guards.

Fresh flower beds are the first sign of improvement and the beginning of a peaceful life:
It will take almost 10 more years of hard work to restore the city...

The defeat of the Germans at Stalingrad was the largest military and political event of the Second World War. The military plans of the German military-political leadership completely failed. In the war there was a radical change in favor of the Soviet Union.

German surrender at Stalingrad

Hitler launched an attack on the USSR on June 22, 1941. He hoped to end it, as with Poland and France, by " lightning war", in a few weeks, no more. But he failed to take either Moscow or Leningrad. The German army will have to endure a winter for which it is not ready.

Considering the failure of the frontal attack on Moscow, on June 22, 1942, Hitler launched an offensive in the south, in the direction of the lower Volga and the Caucasus. His goal is to cut off the Russians from the oil supply (which comes mainly from the Baku region), and then turn north to surround the enemy.

The Germans occupy Rostov, at the mouth of the Don, and then a considerable part of the Caucasus, are located a few kilometers from the Caspian Sea and hoist a banner with a swastika on the very high peak Caucasus - Elbrus (5829 m). But they do not reach the Baku region.

On the Volga, the Germans reached Stalingrad (former Tsaritsyn, today Volgograd) and even occupied the banks of the Volga for several hundred meters. In mid-September 1942, the Battle of Stalingrad began. Soviet troops besieged in Stalingrad cannot receive help except from the other side of the Volga, under enemy fire. The battle lasts for many weeks with exceptional tension, house by house, floor by floor. But because of the crushing numerical superiority of the Germans, who have gathered huge forces near Stalingrad, the defenders seem doomed. Hitler announces the imminent fall of Stalingrad.

At the end of November, General von Paulus, commander of the German troops in Stalingrad, received a startling report: Soviet troops had gone on the offensive in his rear.

From the north and south they take the Germans in pincers and then unite. Von Paulus's army is surrounded. At that moment, von Paulus could still leave Stalingrad and break through the curtain of troops surrounding him. But Hitler forbids it. He demands that the German armies in the Ukraine and the Caucasus break through the ring. However, the German units were stopped 80 kilometers from Stalingrad.

Meanwhile, the ring shrinks. It becomes more and more difficult to supply ammunition and food to the encircled army by air, in snow and severe frost. On February 2, 1943, von Paulus, whom Hitler had just promoted to field marshal, capitulates. Of his army of 330,000, 70,000 were taken prisoner.

The Battle of Stalingrad, together with the landing of the allies in North Africa, which took place at the same time (November 8, 1942), marked a turning point in the course of the war. This is the first major defeat inflicted on Hitler and the end of the myth of German invincibility. For Hitler, the ascending phase of the war ended and was replaced by a phase of retreat until the final defeat.

First phase of World War II

Let's return to the deployment of hostilities, since 1939 Hitler gave himself six weeks to conquer Poland. It took three. The new German methods of "lightning war" (blitzkrieg) with the massive use of tanks and aircraft had the effect of complete surprise. Germany and the USSR divided the Polish territory. The USSR annexed the western lands of Ukraine and Belarus, annexed by Poland in 1921. Germany captured West Prussia (the former "corridor"), Poznan, Silesia; the rest of Poland constituted the Cracow "general government" in the position of a colony.

The Western countries did nothing to help Poland, and until May 1940 the front remained motionless. It was a "strange war".

On April 9, 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway (where, with Allied support, resistance continued until June).

On May 10, the German army attacks in the west, repeating its maneuver of 1914, and invades not only Belgium, but also the Netherlands. The "Maginot Line", an impenetrable and continuous fortification, built along the entire length of the German border, but carelessly not extended further, was bypassed. In early June, the Germans reached the Somme and the Aisne, while the British and part of the French troops, blockaded in the Lunkirk area, were evacuated to England. On June 8, the Germans reached the Seine. Paris, abandoned by the government, which moved to Bordeaux, is occupied. June 25, the Germans reached Brest, Bordeaux, Balance.

France is being disarmed (with the exception of the "truce army" of 100,000); it is divided into two zones: occupied (the northern half of the country, as well as the entire Atlantic coast) and unoccupied, where the French government is located in Vichy. Refugees from Germany must be extradited. Prisoners of war are detained until the end of the war. France must pay for the maintenance of the occupying troops at 400 million a day.

On July 10, Petain receives full powers from both chambers, including constitutional power. He replaces the republic with a fascist-style personal power with the title of "Head of the French State." June 18, General de Gaulle, a member of the former government, addresses from London with an appeal to continue the struggle. In August, French Equatorial Africa and Cameroon join the Free French.

During the summer of 1940, everyone expects the Germans to land in England. The Germans are trying to break the British resistance with massive air bombardments. But they fail to destroy the British aircraft, they suffer heavy losses. The British have at their disposal a still unknown device, radar, which allows them to follow the approach of enemy aircraft.

From October 1940 (occupation of Romania) to April 1941 (occupation of Yugoslavia and Greece), Germany took possession of all of Central Europe.

Everyone (with the exception of Stalin!) is now expecting a clash with the USSR. After the defeat of Poland, Germany and the USSR divided their zones of influence. The USSR created a defensive bastion in the west. It consisted of the occupied and then annexed Baltic countries, Romanian Bessarabia, a strip of land protecting Leningrad, and a naval base at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland, obtained as a result of the Russian-Finnish war of 1939-1940.

Stalin is convinced that Germany will not attack before one or two years, and refuses to listen to those who warn of an imminent German attack.
32 For this reason, the strategic advantage of the defensive line created on the western border will be lost, and the effect of surprise German attack- complete.

The United States supported Britain financially and for this purpose adopted the Lend-Lease Act on March 11, 1941, which allowed military supplies on credit. The meeting between British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and American President Roosevelt aboard a warship from 9 to 12 August led to the signing of the Atlantic Pact, under which the signatories pledged to restore democracy and the right of peoples to self-determination.

On December 7, 1941, without a declaration of war, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands and destroyed the American Pacific Fleet.

In the months that followed, the Japanese occupied South East Asia(Malaya33, Philippines, Netherlands Indies34, Thailand, Indochina).

Second phase of World War II

November 8, 1942 Anglo-American troops under the command of General Eisenhower land in North Africa. The Vichy authorities, after ostentatious resistance, join them (except for Tunisia, where the German troops are stationed).

On November 11, the German army occupies the southern zone of France (until then unoccupied). The French fleet at Toulon is sunk by the sailors themselves.

In Italian Libya, British troops, reinforced by a column of the French General Leclerc, who came from Chad, push back the Italians and Germans who came to their aid from Libya, then from Tunisia, where the last German units capitulate on May 12, 1943.

July 10, 1943 Allied armies land in Sicily. July 25 Mussolini is overthrown, the new government signs a truce, promulgated on September 8. Corsica revolts on September 9 against the Italo-German occupation and is liberated in four weeks.

To this, Hitler responds with the occupation of northern and central Italy. Fighting on a narrow front in Central Italy continues throughout the winter, with French troops arriving from North Africa fighting difficult battles, especially at Monte Cassino. Rome was liberated only in June 1944, and northern Italy in the spring of 1945.

After fierce fighting in Normandy, the German defenses fell apart. At the end of November, all French territory was liberated, with the exception of one "pocket" in Alsace and "pockets" on the Atlantic coast, which the Germans would defend until surrender.

After Stalingrad, despite desperate resistance, the German retreat became permanent (they themselves call it "elastic defense"). In the spring of 1944, the Soviet armies approached their 1940 border. From August 1944 to January 1945, they occupy Central Europe. Warsaw fell on January 17, and on April 24 Soviet and American troops meet on the Elbe. On May 1, Hitler commits suicide in his bunker in Berlin.

In the Pacific, the Japanese, after heavy fighting, were stopped in the Solomon Islands (Guadalcanal) and in the Coral Sea. Since January 1944, the Americans have been retaking island after island, advancing towards Japan. In the spring of 1945, they occupy the island of Okinawa, already in the Japanese archipelago itself. The Japanese are heavily bombarded, their fleet is shattered, and on August 6 and 9, the first two atomic bombs to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The unconditional surrender of Japan will be signed on September 2, 1945 on the cruiser Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

Second World War ended.

In this brief overview, we have left aside the secondary fronts (in Africa) and the role of armed resistance, which, especially in France and Yugoslavia, played an important, sometimes decisive role in the battles of liberation.