Stalingrad

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>>2724863
Intense aerial bombardment turns the city into a maze of ruins that hide snipers and machine gun nests.
One side refuses to retreat, the other side CAN'T retreat. Stalin wants his namesake city held at all cost.
Defenders bitterly contest every inch of ground. Brutal house-to-house fighting results in heavy casualties for both sides.
Winter sets in. Axis forces get surrounded.
The Germans decide to supply the 6th Army via airlift due to their successes with the Demyansk airlift.
Germans don't have enough planes to supply the army, and the Russians have air supremacy in the region.
Thousands of German soldiers freeze or starve. The rest keep fighting in hopes of being rescued.
Eventual surrender of the 6th Army is the biggest blow for Germany so far in the war. Only 5,000 of the German troops captured at Stalingrad would survive to see their country again.

Why didn't the 6th army retreat or have ANY reserves near the hungarian/italian line to counter attack a potential pocket?

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>>2724922
Autism

>>2724945
Kek fair enough makes sense

>>2724922
They didn't retreat because they were ordered to stand firm at all costs. They didn't have any reserves because they were badly short of men (half of the army group was fucking around down in the Caucasus). That's why you had such a thin line on the flanks in the first place.

>>2724957
But why do you need an entire army in one city?

And surely when the pocket was sealed/threatened hitler should have sent reinforcements straight away (Manstein)

Did he really think that they could supply an entire army by air during winter? Its just crazy,

>>2724863
The rippin and the tearin, the rippin and the tearin

>>2724965
>But why do you need an entire army in one city?
Because there's a very large force garrisoning it. I'm not even sure what you're asking here. The 6th wasn't the entire German army by a long shot, not even the entire force that was assigned to Blue.

>And surely when the pocket was sealed/threatened hitler should have sent reinforcements straight away (Manstein)
Reinforcements from where? The rest of the front was in similarly precarious situations, and movement of large bodies of troops is always dependent on your supply situation, which was not the best.

>Did he really think that they could supply an entire army by air during winter? Its just crazy,
Yes, that was pretty stupid. But honestly, once the 6th Army is enveloped like that, all of your options are really bad.

Determined, well-organized, well-led soviet defense

Retarded German leadership (the besieger managing to get encircled has to be the stupidest shit of all time)

weather

Was there a major reason Germany wanted the city? I've heard multiple things about it, like it could have been skipped and was a useless take, Hitler wanted it because of the symbolic name or Germany needed gateway to Azerbaijan for their oil fields. So what was it?

>>2724863
Encriclement is absolutely terrifying. Most commanders will pull back even if there is a threat of encriclement.

Disease was a huge problem too. They were leaving soldiers in the fields to die if they tuberculosis or whatever

>>2724922
They couldn't retreat because they were burning themselves out taking Stalingrad and the Soviets were making a concerted effort to prevent any breakout. Though a smaller pocket of Italians did manage to break out further north, the 6th Army was deeper behind enemy lines and the focus of the Soviet offensive, so making a breakout attempt only would have cost them more men.

As for reserves, that was the result of Fall Blau being even more overextended than Barbarossa was. Army Group South didn't even have enough men to man the front, let alone serve as a solid reserve. The reason Uranus went as well as it did in the first place was because the Romanians guarding the north flank had so few men they could only allot something like a platoon per mile of front.

>>2725417
Stalingrad was a strategic point on the Lower Volga. Leaving it untouched would give the Soviets a staging point for counterattacks and allow them to ferry troops to the strategically important Caucasus front unhindered.

>>2724957
They were in Caucus to get oil for the war effort. Unfortunately for them Stalin ordered the burning of all excess oil when the soldiers retreated from the cities.
>>2724965
They thought they would get oil from the former Soviet lands to help them. Also the taking of the city was important as it bore the name of the enemy's leader.

>>2724863
Bunch of idiots fighting for a worthless city.That i think is the jist of it.

are ppl aware that the 6th army essentially was an infantry army?
most of its divisions not even motorized, meaning they march and the main way of transporting things are horses?

not that its unusual, but with such means of transportation, theres no quick retreating

>>2724965
lutawaffe said they could produce x amount of tons a day best case scenario, stressed it was short term only, Hitler bought it and the amount sent was way lower then expected, Nazis tried to relieve the 6th but were stopped by the soviets.

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>1
>2
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>"Every five seconds a German soldier died in Stalingrad."
>on loop

>>2724945
The Germans used Hungarians and Romanians as cannon fodder whenever possible. Paulus did nothing wrong for wanting to save German lives.

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>>2726715
It was Hitler's fault but also the luftwaffe's for assuming they would just roll through Azerbaijan.

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>>2724965
>Did he really think that they could supply an entire army by air during winter? Its just crazy
Blame Demyansk and the fact that Hitler surrounded himself with Yes-men. At Demyansk a year prior the Luftwaffe had successfully supplied a pocket of about 100,000 men in a similar manner to stalingrad and a much smaller one at Kholm nearby through nothing but airdrop. They had proven the idea of air supply operationally, and, with the 6th Army too worn to make a breakout attempt, it realistically was their only option, even if it meant undersupplying them.

Where Germany failed with that was not realizing that the Soviets had learned from Demyansk. A significant portion of modernization efforts of the VVS had centered around countering a similar airlift effort, and they put all that to work at Stalingrad.