Turning Point World War II
Ravi Perera
When on November 22, 1942, the two pincer arms
of the Russians met at Kalach they had entrapped the great 6th
Army of the Germans.
In the bleak icy Russian Steppe, covered by a
numbing winter mist, the turning point of the Second World War
had been reached. |
Gen. Van Paulus
|
"With a force like the 6th army, I could storm the heavens" Adolf
Hitler
As the surprise Soviet counter-offensive of the winter of 1941
petered out in the freezing snows of the Russian wilderness the minds of
the German war planners began to turn to the inevitable summer campaign
ahead, their successive offensive against a bloodied but defiant enemy.
Six months before, on the 22nd of June 1941 the awesome and seemingly
unstoppable German war machine had launched itself at Russia, the
largest country in the world, with a sudden and devastating ferocity.
For this unprecedented attack the Germans had divided their 4 million
strong striking force into three large army groups. Army Group North was
to dash up to Leningrad, while bringing the Baltic area under its heel.
The task of the exceptionally strong Army Group Centre was to thrust
in to the Russia heartland with Moscow as the desired long stop. The
Donnets River was the ambitious summer target for the Army Group South
with the Ukraine and Crimea as the rich prizes.
Only from an army in the class of the Wehrmacht could a task of such
ambition and scale be demanded. No army in history had to conquer a land
as vast and an enemy as formidable in just one furious campaign. To even
contemplate such an undertaking the attacker had to possess outstanding
soldiery and a capacity for extraordinary economic efficiency. Germany
was obviously blessed with both.
The war opened dazzlingly for the Teutonic warriors. Punching huge
gaps in the bewildered enemy defense lines the formidable Panzer
divisions of the Germans streaked across the Russian plains leaving the
mopping up to the slower infantry divisions. These highly trained men of
the infantry, while fighting, regularly marched 30 miles a day
determined to keep cohesion with their comrades in the armoured units
relentlessly moving east.
But the country, that Germany had now locked horns with was immense,
and the enemy exceedingly tough. It is testimony to the superlative
calibre of German arms that they, hopelessly over-stretched after six
months of continuous fighting, almost achieved victory.
In the north they surrounded Leningrad and imposed a crippling siege
on the city. In the center, German reconnaissance units stomped through
knee high snow to the out skirts of Moscow. In the south most of Ukraine
was theirs. The Russian bear was dreadfully mauled but was refusing to
lie down.
In the huge gamble the Germans had taken, even a near victory
amounted to a defeat. Although they were now deep in Russia, given the
size of the country, the enemy was still in a position to continue
resisting strongly. This essential failure of the Wehrmacht now
necessitated a renewed offensive, which had to bring the enemy to heel
once and for all.
But after the dreadful winter battles of 1941, when Russians launched
quite an effective counter punch, Germans were not in a position to
again attack on all three fronts.
After much consideration they picked on the economically vital
Southern Front, hoping their superior military could administer such a
crippling blow to the Russians that they would be compelled to
surrender. The Army Groups North and Centre were to remain on a
defensive posture with a few local offensives to keep the Russian
defenders pinned down.
For the gigantic attack of 1942 the Army Group South was reorganized
with Field Marshall Von Bock in overall charge. Under his command were
several armies including the 2nd army, 17th army, the 6th army, the 1st
Panzer army and the 4th Panzer army.
Each of these armies was capable of delivering a crippling blow to
the enemy while the 6th was particularly strong with 11 divisions and an
entire Panzer Corps in its establishment.
Operation Blue as the plan was named, was somewhat vague on its final
objectives, but envisaged reaching the Volga in the East, bringing the
large city of Stalingrad under control while reaching the Eastern
Caucasus during the campaign.
Again it was hoped that by menacing this vital area they could compel
the Soviets to commit its precious reserves thus presenting the Germans
with an opportunity to force the issue.
The Germans had no doubts about the superiority of their fighting
men. Repeatedly, they had observed the clumsy battle tactics and the
wooden orthodoxy of the Russian commanders.
In contrast the Germans were trained and encouraged to be
unconventional and resourceful. Rather than attempting to overwhelm the
enemy with numbers and often wasteful firepower, the Wehrmacht embraced
the idea of paralysing their foe with speed and effectiveness.
On 28th of June 1942 Von Bock opened his offensive with predictable
ferocity, within days splitting the Russian front in to rapidly
disintegrating fragments. Once again the vaunted armoured divisions of
the Germans advanced East across the massive steppe seeking for an
opportunity to mortally wound the enemy.
Not only were they assured of their military supremacy, the Germans
were also convinced of their racial superiority over the enemy whom
their internal military magazines routinely described in terms such as-"
degenerate looking Orientals, begging whining Asians, a mixture of low
and the lowest humanity, truly subhuman".
By the 22nd of August elements of the German 6th Army, now under
command of General Von Paulus, had reached the Volga, in the borders of
the Asian continent, a remarkable advance since June of 1941.
Stalingrad, the city carrying the name of the Soviet dictator was
tantalizingly within grasp.
On the 23rd of August with predictable efficiency the German Air
Force began carpet-bombing the ill-fated city. The resulting fires
turned Stalingrad in to a burning inferno of collapsed buildings, rubble
and thick smoke. No human force could resist the German firepower in
those conditions.
Hitler who had baulked at the idea of committing his troops to city
fighting in Moscow and Leningrad the previous year, now decided that he
must have Stalingrad.
Perhaps less sanguinely, but certainly with grim determination,
Stalin had also decided that Russia would not retreat any further.
So began the epic struggle between these two implacable enemies for a
burnt out patch of the earth, which finally became the turning point of
the Second World War. For the valiant Russian defenders there was little
choice. They faced the fury of the German guns well aware that retreat
only meant drowning in the freezing waters of the Volga.
Besides, Stalin who knew how to impose his will had placed Secret
Service Police detachments in the rear with strict orders to summarily
execute any Russian soldier disobeying the order to hold their ground.
For the Germans, the battle for Stalingrad turned their world up side
down. Their armoured divisions trained to capture something like 50
miles a day, were now advancing at snail pace, and attempting to subdue
a burning city square against an enemy who rarely showed himself.
One single building would change hands several times in a day, each
battle only adding to the corpses lying on the floor. In such close
quarter fighting German planes and tanks were unable to join effectively
through the fear of hitting their own.
A German Lieutenant with the 24th Panzer division described the
battlefield thus "Stalingrad is no longer a town. By day it is an
enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke; it is a vast furnace lit by
the reflection of the flames.
And when the nights arrive, one of those scorching, howling, bleeding
nights, the dogs plunge in to the Volga and swim desperately to gain the
other bank. The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals flee
this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for any long; only men
endure."
While the climacteric battle was raging in this man made hell-hole of
a burning city hundreds of powerful German divisions were holding their
impossibly long front line from the Baltic Sea to the Caucasus
Mountains, many almost on an R & R mode. Von Paulus himself could only
commit eight of the divisions of the 6th Army to the crucial battle in
the city while assigning eleven divisions under his command to guard the
large area under the Army's administration and his almost 200 mile long
exposed flanks.
As the battle raged on in to the Russian winter many a General warned
of the dangers inherent in a prestige battle, where the German army was
paying a price totally out of proportion to the city's fast diminishing
strategic importance. But the Majority of the high command including
Hitler, who held the Russians in contempt, could not conceive of a
large-scale counteroffensive by them.
The Wehrmacht, which had traditionally prided itself on its cold
rationality, was now acting increasingly on hateful prejudices,
arrogance and unwarranted optimism.
So General Von Paulus, the harried commander of the 6th Army who was
considered a competent staff office, if slow-witted and unimaginative in
the field, continued with tactics designed to grind down the enemy inch
by inch, an approach which was essentially counter-productive to the
numerically weaker but technically superior Germans.
The German battle order in the Stalingrad area now presented Marshall
Zhukov the Russian commander, legendary for his coolness under pressure,
with a situation where he could turn tables on the enemy.
The German 6th Army intent on gaining Stalingrad at any cost was
fully absorbed in city fighting. Its long and difficult flanks guarded
mainly by satellite divisions from Rumania and Hungary with a sprinkling
of German units, were vulnerable.
These satellite armies were far inferior to the Germans in equipment
as well as in fighting qualities. The nearest German formations of any
size were far away in the Caucasus absorbed in heavy fighting in those
areas.
Realising the opportunity the situation presented, Zhukov decided to
keep the battle of Stalingrad going even at a heavy price while secretly
accumulating huge forces at the extremities of the German flanks. It was
a hard decision.
The men he ferried across the Volga to battle the Germans in the
inferno of Stalingrad had extremely low chances of returning alive.
But in order to keep the Germans firmly focused on the city, Zhukov
was willing to pay with blood for time. For almost four months the two
armies waged a ferocious battle for the few remaining square miles of
the city of Stalingrad.
Then in the early hours of the 19th of November 1942, when the
freezing winter of Russia was well advanced, Zhukov struck.
The Russians, in two huge pincer attacks, pierced the flanks of the
6th Army and moved rapidly towards the town of Kalach their intended
meeting point. On their advance the Russians met only feeble resistance
from the Rumanians and the Hungarians, the satellite troops, to whom the
Germans had entrusted the task of guarding the rear of the 6th Army.
When on 22nd of November the two pincer arms of the Russians met at
Kalach they had entrapped the great 6th Army of the Germans. In the
bleak icy Russian Steppe, covered by a numbing winter mist, the turning
point of the Second World War had been reached. Although the Germans
were to fight on doggedly for another two and half years, they had lost
the initiative. From then on they were largely an Army in defence.
|