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Operation Uranus & the Encirclement: How the Sixth Army Was Doomed
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
The Battle of Stalingrad reaches its turning point as Operation Uranus closes the trap around Paulus and the Sixth Army. From Chuikov's fingernail grip on the Volga to the Soviet pincer that changed the entire war in the East.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Two million casualties. That number alone tells you something decisive happened at Stalingrad.
Operation Blau launched in the summer of nineteen forty-two with a dual objective. The Sixth Army under Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus would push toward Stalingrad on the Volga.
Stalin understood something about the city that bore his name, even if his understanding was laced with personal obsession. Order two-two-seven, issued in late July, was direct and brutal.
The fighting at Stalingrad produced a geography of endurance that's worth knowing precisely. Pavlov's House.
Amid the rubble, snipers became a distinct and significant element of Soviet resistance. Vasily Zaitsev was the most prominent of them.
While Chuikov's army bled on the western bank, Soviet planners were building something larger. Generals Zhukov and Vasilevsky, working under the designation Operation Uranus, had identified the fatal weakness in the German position.
Paulus could have attempted a breakout in those first days. His armor still had fuel.
On the thirty-first of January, nineteen forty-three, Paulus was promoted to Field Marshal by Hitler. No German Field Marshal had ever surrendered in the field.
The turning-point question is worth being precise about, because the word gets overused. Stalingrad didn't end the war in the East on its own.
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