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City of Rubble: How Stalingrad Became a Death Trap
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
In the summer of 1942, the Wehrmacht entered Stalingrad expecting a quick victory — and stumbled into the most destructive urban battle in recorded history. This is how two million casualties, one desperate Soviet army, and a single command decision changed the course of the Second World War.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
In the summer of nineteen forty-two, Germany's war in the East was still winnable. That's the part most people miss.
The offensive was called Operation Blau, and its objective was oil. Germany's war machine ran on fuel it didn't have enough of.
On the Soviet side, the situation was desperate. The summer of forty-two had seen catastrophic losses.
The fighting at Stalingrad had its own geography. Three industrial complexes in the northern part of the city became their own separate battles: the Barrikady weapons factory, the Red October steel plant, and the Stalingrad Tractor Factory, which had been producing T-thirty-four tanks until the front reached its gates.
While the Germans bled inside the city, Soviet planning was moving on a different scale entirely. Generals Georgy Zhukov and Alexander Vasilevsky had been studying the situation since September.
Hermann Göring told Hitler the Luftwaffe could supply the encircled army by air. That promise had no basis in capability.
The scale of the German defeat at Stalingrad was unlike anything the Wehrmacht had experienced. The Sixth Army was gone.
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