Stalingrad 1942

After the failure of Barbarossa's main goal - destroy the Red Army - and with Nazi Germany, now short in troops, equipment and oil reserves, the next eastern summer campaign Needed to be less ambitious. The 1942 German offensive plan was to capture the oil fields in southern Russia, this required also the capture of Stalingrad, a major industrial and transport hub on the Volga River that ensured Soviet access to the Caucasus oil wells. At the beginning Stalin was sure that Moscow would be again the main German objective. So the plan started well for Hitler, but then the fights for Stalingrad started to lure more and more soldiers in a fight in every street, house by house, room by room, with the enemy lines within just a few meters of each other. This made it very difficult for the Luftwaffe to make a difference and assist the ground troops. (this was probably their last battle with some air superiority in the East). For the Soviet Army, crossing the Volga River with boats was the only way to bring soldiers, food, and weapons into the city, so there were intense Luftwaffe attacks to stop that. Finally the conquest by the German Army of the city was almost complete, with the red armies fighting there, apparently on the verge of collapse, but...it was there that the Wehrmacht was decisively defeated (at an enormous human cost), especially given the fact that von Paulus 6th Army was one of the largest and best equipped army formations in the Eastern Front at that time. The encircling and annihilation of that army was a catastrophic defeat for Hitlers ambitions. After Stalingrad, a few months later, Germany had one more offensive in the east (an even less ambitious one at Kursk), after this, it would have to give the initiative to the Soviets for good and fight for survival against an enemy that was rapidly gaining strength and that it was eager for revenge. The author remarks that this battle shows how Hitler continuously thwarted the chances of the Wehrmacht by fully micromanaging the whole operation, expanding its objectives, splitting the forces in two, dominating his senior commanders. He is clearly the single most identifiable cause of the German defeat at Stalingrad. On the contrary, Stalin started to rely the strategic decisions to more capable minds like Zhukov. As in 1941 it was Moscow, in 1942 it was Stalingrad, the city where the Soviets had the ability to force the Germans into fighting an attritional battle with great logistical problems. Excellent illustrations, maps and 3D Bird eyes views. The book is extremely short for such a huge battle, one of the bloodiest in history. So this is a general overview. Actually, Osprey is completing a new 3-part series of this battle, for the ones who want a more detailed version.