Can i get a red pill on the battle of Stalingrad Why was is

>>2654858
From everything I've read it's the truth. It was a battle that happened because the ego of hitler and stalin was on the line. Stalin would not let his namesake fall and committed to its defense. Hitler eventually commited the entire 6th army into the city proper. They repelled the majority of the russian advances but flanking units were turned and they were surrounded and eventually starved to surrender.

Ultimately russia had far too much weight in men and material for germany to have anything but pyrrhic victories after around '43. Plus they were being pushed on the western flank and would have cracked like a nut either way. If the 6th army was successfully withdrawn they would have been an invaluable force in the retreat from russia but would they have made a diff in the long run.

Who the fuck can say?

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>>2654858
Kursk was the real turning point.

I know it sounds like a normie meme but it really was a turning point not just in the war but in the morale of all sides.

Both sides has stubborn leaders, had Hitler bypassed Stalingrad or instead devoted troops to the centre group things might have gone differently.

When I say stubborn I mean autistic. Hitler and Stalin were autistically obsessed with the city.

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>fighting in -30 degrees

>>2654858
>Why was is considered the turning point of WW2?
For two reasons:
1.It cost the Germans insane amounts of troops and resoources. They never recovered
2.It was a huge morale boost for the allies and it dealt an equal amount of damage to the Nazi's overall morale.

the turning point was in 1941 december

its an iconic event because the red army used the same method as the germans before

not alot of things went right, reaching stalingrad was a promising event, opening the way to the caucasus was great

but it was at the expense of great risks, risk the wehmacht had it been at full strenght would never take

leaving their flanks wide open by having 2nd grade allies who often had zero anti armor weaponry, it was an open invitation for encirclement

they should never have send in the panzers, they should have immediately withdraw the entire 6th army once the reports of the soviets probing the flanks came in

even if somehow they capture stalingrad, at what cost?
they already had difficulties refilling their divisions with equipment and manpower, it got worse
what do you do with a leveled city? and divisions deperately in need of refitting

maybe they could hold and push the line further east and wait another half a year for another offense, but the men and equipment lost in barbarossa and blue wouldnt magically reappear from the ashes

After Stalingrad, Germany could never go on the offensive again due to losses.

It was unusual in that Germany and the Soviets lost comparable numbers of men; even most Soviet victories saw far more Soviet casualties than German ones.

>>2655592
Funny, that's not what Tukhachevsky looks like.

Hitler underestimated how little Stalin cared for his own people's lives/

>>2654858

>Why was is considered the turning point of WW2?
Because that was when the Germans lost the grand initiative on the Eastern Front, and stopped making first move offensives, only counteroffensives to blunt Soviet attacks.

>Or is that just ruski propaganda?
It's not propaganda exactly, but it is an oversimplification. The loss of the 6th army, while bad, was not crippling, and the Soviets ran into some trouble launching offensives of their own, especially in the spring of '43. It's more that the Allies, including the Soviets, were gradually outproducing the Germans and lessening the German qualitative advantage. Stalingrad was around the time the balance of power shifted less than it was the decisive turnaround itself; if the Germans and Soviets had just called a 3 month truce and built up their forces, the Soviets probably would have had the initiative at around that time anyway.

>What went wrong, what went right?
What principally went wrong is that the Germans were in a bad fuel bind, and needed to capture a fuel source closer than Ploesti to the front, because they couldn't ship all their fuel forward. They needed to occupy the Caucasus, ideally Baku, to do that, and steal some of the Soviet oil production to use themselves. Stalingrad was at the very least needed to be blocked off to prevent flanking attacks while the Germans rooted out Russians in the Caucasus mountains. They couldn't crack the city (German high levels of inter-arm coordination tended to break down at very close combat ranges characteristic of urban combat), but even if they did, it's far from clear that would end the threat of counterattack, nor would it make the simultaneous campaign going on in the Caucasus proper (the actual main thrust) go better.

>>2654858
>redpill me on a historical event
Can you ask that again without talking like a retard?

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>>2654858
>Why was is considered the turning point of WW2? Or is that just ruski propaganda?
In pop history, it's considered the turning point because it marks the last major offensive the Germans launched in the East that achieved anything. Actually looking at the evidence, there really wasn't any single turning point in Europe, and it could be reasonably argued that the turning point was everything from Kiev failing to fall on time in 1941 to Kursk in 1943.

As far as Russian propaganda goes, they surprisingly don't play it up as much as you'd expect. In fact, they seem to care just as much about the Kuban campaign that followed, even though Western histories almost completely ignore it.

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>>2657649
IIRC the 6th Army was fairly close to clearing the cit by the time Operation Uranus was launched. The real problem would have been securing the flanks and crossing the Volga. The Soviets still had huge bridgeheads on either flank of Stalingrad and taking the city really wouldn't have done much in the grand scheme of things to keep the Soviets from attacking south into the Caucasus.

>>2657700
>IIRC the 6th Army was fairly close to clearing the cit by the time Operation Uranus was launched.
Not really, no. They were closest at the initial rush into the city, and a spell in early October when the river had partially frozen and it hampered Soviet resupply efforts. https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Stalingrad-Vasili-Ivanovich-Chuikov/dp/B0007FOI56

>The real problem would have been securing the flanks and crossing the Volga.
Well, yes and no. Remember, the prime importance is seizing the Caucasus. Stalingrad is important as a linchpin for your own defenses. Advancing beyond is neither necessary nor advisable, since it would extend your perimeter even should you succeed in advancing, which is far from clear that you would.

>The Soviets still had huge bridgeheads on either flank of Stalingrad and taking the city really wouldn't have done much in the grand scheme of things to keep the Soviets from attacking south into the Caucasus.
This, however, is very true, unless you somehow cause enough damage to the Red Army in taking the city that they can't really counterattack, but that's extremely unlikely.

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>>2655540

>full-retard

A German victory at Kursk (one they nearly achieved in part due to Rokossowski's tactical incompetence) would have temporarily changed the complexion of the eastern front, not much more.

>>2655867

>"never go on the offensive again"
> Third battle of Kharkov
> Operation Citadel