Russia 1943 ▶ Battle of Stalingrad Capitulation (1) Red Army Offensive Pocket 6th Army (Jan-Feb 43)

161 Russia 1943 ▶ Battle of Stalingrad Capitulation (Part 1) Red Army Offensive Pocket 6th Army POW (Januar / February 43)
German History Archive ▶ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLEtu_bvreispSTeS_m08OcY8sC26bJVN
The Battle of Stalingrad is one of the most famous battles of the Second World War. The annihilation of the German 6th Army and allied troops in the winter of 1942/1943 is considered the psychological turning point of the German-Soviet War begun by the German Reich in June 1941. The industrial site of Stalingrad was originally an operational objective of the German war effort and was intended to serve as a launching point for the actual advance into the Caucasus. Following the German attack on the city in late summer 1942, as many as 300,000 Wehrmacht and allied troops were encircled by the Red Army as a result of a Soviet counteroffensive in November. Hitler decided that German troops should hold out and wait for a relief offensive, but this failed as part of Operation Wintergewitter in December 1942. Although the situation of the inadequately supplied soldiers in the Kessel was hopeless, Hitler and the military leadership insisted on continuing the casualty-laden fighting. Most of the soldiers stopped fighting at the end of January/beginning of February 1943, partly on orders and partly for lack of material and food, and went into captivity without an official surrender. About 10,000 scattered soldiers, hiding in cellars and sewers, continued their resistance until early March 1943. Of the approximately 110,000 soldiers of the Wehrmacht and allied troops who were taken prisoner, only a few thousand returned home. In the course of the fighting for the city, over 700,000 people were killed, most of them Red Army soldiers. Although there were major operational defeats of the German Wehrmacht during World War II, Stalingrad gained special significance as a German and Soviet memorial. More than any other battle of the Second World War, the battle is still anchored in the collective memory.
By "Operation Uranus", which started on the morning of November 19, 1942, the troops of the Wehrmacht were surrounded by Soviet forces within five days. These had broken through the lines of the Romanian 3rd Army in the west on the Don front under Rokossovsky and on the southwest front under Vatutin, as well as through the lines of the Romanian 4th Army in the southeast on the Stalingrad front under Andrei Ivanovich Yeryomenko. For this purpose, first from the Don bridgehead of Serafimovich the 5th Panzer Army (General Romanenko) and from the bridgehead of Kletskaya the 21st Army (from October 14 under Lieutenant General Chistyakov) each started to break through to the south. The Romanian 3rd Army (General Petre Dumitrescu) facing them could not hold out for long, as it had to secure an overstretched flank and was insufficiently equipped for the task. Thus, to defend against the Soviet tanks, these units had mainly 3.7-cm PaK drawn by horse-drawn vehicles, which were practically ineffective against the Soviet T-34 tanks. The Red Army advance proceeded rapidly, in part because bad weather prevailed at the time of "Operation Uranus" and the German Luftwaffe was unable to intervene. When the weather improved, the Luftwaffe found itself unaccustomed to the defensive, as this battle saw the first use of the Lavochkin La-5 in larger numbers, a type of aircraft with comparable performance to the German Fw 190 and thus capable of providing effective cover for its own strike aircraft. Behind the Romanian 3rd Army was the XXXXVIII Panzer Corps, consisting of the 22nd German and the 1st Romanian Panzer Divisions. On Hitler's orders, it was thrown to the Soviet troops to stabilize the situation. The armored corps, primarily equipped with completely obsolete Czech 38(t) armored fighting vehicles, lay in readiness in barns and stables. Mice, massing in the straw, had eaten their way through the vehicles' coverings and electrical cables, leaving only about 30 tanks ready for action, which, due to their small numbers and fairly low combat strength, were unable to stop the Red Army's attack. The commander of that tank corps, Ferdinand Heim, served as a scapegoat in retrospect, was expelled from the Wehrmacht, and was not entrusted with a command in Boulogne again until 1944.

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