Now Playing
Operation Blau, the Exposed Flanks & the Making of the Trap
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
The battle of Stalingrad's fatal strategic errors are laid bare — from Hitler's catastrophic decision to split Army Group South, to the Romanian divisions left holding hundreds of miles of open steppe. This is the chapter that explains how the Sixth Army walked into a trap it helped build.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
November the eighteenth, nineteen forty-two. The last night before everything changed.
To understand the Romanian flanks, you have to go back to the summer. Back to the plan.
Stalin's order in late July nineteen forty-two was unambiguous. Not one step back.
Here's where the German strategic situation becomes something close to reckless. By October nineteen forty-two, Sixth Army was fully committed inside Stalingrad.
Georgy Zhukov and Alexander Vasilevsky presented their operational concept to Stalin in mid-September nineteen forty-two. The idea was not simply to relieve Stalingrad.
Go back to that image for a moment. Romanian soldiers in thin winter gear, in trenches that hadn't been reinforced to German standards, holding a line that stretched far beyond what their numbers could reasonably defend.
Paulus requested permission to break out immediately. The moment the encirclement was complete, a westward push had some chance.
By late January nineteen forty-three, the Sixth Army had collapsed into two separate pockets. Men were dying from wounds, from cold, from typhus, from starvation.
Chapter summary auto-generated from the verified script. Listen to the full episode for the complete content.