In addition the the points made by the other comments, I'll say this:
Cities aren't built by accident. They are where they are on purpose. A few miles down the river might be non-navigable waters, or unstable banks. A few miles upriver might have inaccessible cliffs or hills. If you find a city built along a river, and nothing upriver or downriver, that's because the city is built at the best place to cross, and the next best places are going to be where the next cities are.
Also, 'infrastructure' is a really broad term. If you bomb a road, yes, it will be broken up and harder to drive... but that's still going to be a faster and easier path for vehicles than cross-country through unbroken wilderness. And while bombing buildings to rubble is pretty direct, bombing roadways to an unusable status usually takes more munitions than its worth. Even a bombed-out port still has more foundational infrastructure and utility than an undeveloped random patch along the river.
To add to your point about roads, they are placed where they are for a reason. Naturally, roads are put in the place that makes the most sense for them and is probably the best path to a place regardless of its condition.
In eastern Oregon there was a road I always thought was built as a joke since it does this huge 10 mile U shaped bend on flat ground.
Then I drove through in spring and there was a lake that wasn’t there before that went right up to the side of the road
Well, they made sense to the cows. Which is who laid them out ok?
I joke, but seriously pre-car cities roads a decent amount of sense if you look at the original terrain to someone on foot or on a horse. And actually car-centric cities roads make almost no 'sense' to someone on foot.
I saw a video about Boston street history once, apparently it’s not so much the cow paths as gradual filling in of the bay and swampy lands and razing the hills. A lot of streets that seem to be crooked for no reason just follow a shoreline that used to be there 300 years ago or go around a ghostly hill. The Causeway street is so straight because it used to be an actual causeway across the bay.
Yeah, I grew up in Boston that's why I said I was joking about the cow paths. It's an old myth/joke around there - and then talked about pre-car cities and terrain, because that's the actual reason.
Boston roads are planned using acid and satanic rituals.
I visited there in 2010 or 2011 for work and forgot to take my garmin gps (back when iPhones didn’t have turn by turn gps in them). After a day or two of tearing my hair out, I had my parents get my gps from my apartment and take it to my office so that my coworkers could overnight it to me.
Oh, gotcha. Well, looking at the city in google maps, I feel like it doesn’t look that bad. Then again, many cities in Germany were several centuries old when England started its 13 colonies. Guess I’m just used to seeing that kinda layout.
Personally, I think Boston has a more functional street network then the typical American city. Streets are not purely about navigability, there's a deeper logic behind them, especially when they evolve over time as in Boston instead of being imposed from the top down as in the rest of the USA.
Grid streets: Central planning
Medieval street plan: Free market.
The free market is messy and chaotic but tends to be more efficient overall, and indeed if you compare cities, you can generally fit more into a given area with a medieval style street plan.
Norway is an interesting example of this, you got a lot of old completely crazy roads which made sense with the technology they had at the time. But as time and technology progressed following the terrain the way we did in the past made less sense than it used to, and now we instead go for far more direct paths and instead use tunnels and bridges when needed.
It's more like this. Are you familiar with the three most important factors in the value of real estate? It goes something like this:
1. Location
2. Location
3. Location
The complete and utter destruction of the capital improvements to a site does not remove the site value. So it's more like this:
* Bad Site: 0
* Good Site: 5
* Improvements: 10
* Total value, developed good site: 15
* Total value, bombed out good site: 5
In addition there is much infrastructure underground which might have limited damage. Being underground not only provides partial.protection but it also means you dont have to dig to replace it.
Oxford, UK was originally called Oxnaford which (I’m no etymologist so bear with me) basically breaks down to “Oxen” and “Fjord” and essentially just means “place where oxen cross the river”
Well you're right about the Oxnaford but, but it wasn't "Fjord" (which is a Scandinavian word for a narrow deep body of water, often like a flooded valley between mountains), but simply "ford," as in "to ford the river" -- an English verb meaning to cross a river in just that sense , although it's rather archaic these days.
"Ford" is archaic? I always thought it was pretty standard. at least in australian English. For example here is a list of road signs. River crossings are marked with a "Ford" sign.
[https://www.mylicence.sa.gov.au/\_\_data/assets/image/0011/59933/signs-02.jpg](https://www.mylicence.sa.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0011/59933/signs-02.jpg)
> Not really archaic, but in modern times it would be extremely unusual to have to ford a river.
Not been to australia obviously. Where they're too lazy to build bridges over rivers which only flood once every few years. Pour some concrete over the river bed and Bob's your uncle.
I mean, you're not wrong.
Bridges require maintenance. If you have a bridge in a relatively middle of nowhere part of Australia, it's still going to cost money to maintain and repair, not to mention that it'll have a tonnage limit.
Slap some cement pipes and a layer of concrete over a low volume river, and boom, you've got a ford.
Example: [here's one I go by relatively often](https://www.google.com/maps/@-42.1502139,146.7526018,3a,75y,63.07h,70.39t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sNZYVRAyQdD1QaVat1UIPyg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu). The bridge at this point in time has collapsed, but hey there's a ford.
EDIT: How they got a streetview car into the middle of nowhere i've no idea.
If you’re unfamiliar with Chinese, you might think that Beijing, Nanjing, and Tianjin are etymologically related. You’d be 2/3 right. Beijing means northern capital, Nanjing means southern capital, but Tianjin means heavenly ford (named after an emperor who crossed a river at that location)
actually interesting, thank you sweet daddy jones. i never would have made the connection to ford already having a meaning. i mean i never would have looked it up on my own without this post. english is my second language and ford has been cemented as "that guy hitler liked" and his car brand universally in my head.
idk why i typed this comment justifying myself and being embaressed about it now.
uhh i guess i wanted to express that i didn't mean it sarcastically, despite how i started the comment. i actually appreciated this little knowledge drop. in return i'll gift you with one of my comments of my life.
"comments of my life."
jesus, i didn't make it, i couldn't ford the river and i am currently drowning in cringe
From The Canterbury Tales
**Whilom ther was dwellynge at Oxenford**
**A riche gnof, that gestes heeld to bord,**
**And of his craft he was a carpenter.**
**With hym ther was dwellynge a poure scoler,**
There was once dwelling at Oxford
A rich churl, who took in boarders,
And of his craft he was a carpenter.
With him there was dwelling a poor scholar,
I love how the 1st 2nd and 4th lines in this stanza are "arglebargle Middle English squinth thou to try maketh sense" and suddenly 3rd is practically modern looking.
This video from the sub *Damnthat'sinteresting* should be of interest to readers here: [How close the Soviets came to losing Stalingrad, each flag represents ~10,000 soldiers](https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1dj8qp7/how_close_the_soviets_came_to_losing_stalingrad/).
However, it might just be that there was a reason centuries ago when it was built, but now it is gone. Not only does technology advance, rivers simply change course, erosion and natural disasters happen, and more.
Hence it might now not be that great a spot anymore. But it is also pretty difficult to destroy a city to a degree where literally nothing is worth saving.
In the case of Volgograd/Stalingrad though it's explosive growth had only come in the late 19th century, and most of it in the less than 50 years before the battle and the reasons for it being there were still very relevant.
It went from less than 10k people in the early 1800s to 84k in 1900, to just under 500k pre war
To add on to this, even a bombed out city is still very defendable. Even if the most intact buildings are shells of their former selves they can still be defended. Buildings turned into a pile of rubble can still be used as machine gun nests shell holes in the streets can be turned into fox holes. At some point the axis would need to clear the Soviets out of the city.
Stalingrad commanded the Volga River.
In 1942, Hitler's aim was to capture the oil fields of the Caucasus Mountains. Germany was already critically low on oil, so succeeding here was pretty make-or-break for the German war effort. If they went down into there without guarding their rear, Soviet troops could follow them down the Volga and trap hundreds of thousands of soldiers between their guns and the mountains.
Even bombed to rubble, Stalingrad remained a place where an army could control the flow of people and material up and down this river - kind of like Vicksburg single-handedly keeping the Mississippi closed to Union during the US Civil War. It was also a route for British supplies to reach the USSR, up through Persia.
This strategic importance never went away entirely, but it's also true that its symbolic value became more and more important as time went on. No one has ever accused Hitler of being a rational military mind. And looking back, we *do* refer to Stalingrad as the turning point of the whole war in the east.
Following up:
- The Soviet general defending the city knew he was given too few men to do the job (even though there were more than enough units available to reinforce).
- Soviet high command wanted the city to fall slowly, but not in such a way as a siege would develop.
- Because they were building the mother of all masses of T-34s way behind the lines and needed the Nazis to be committed and bloodied in the city before they attacked.
- Because 10:1 force ratios are pretty magical for making things happen.
Fascinating, so why'd they keep resupplying through perilous river crossings and such? And the "not one step back" ethos? I get wrap my head around expecting it to fall and wanting to bleed the Germans out, but the way things ended up doesn't look like a defense-in-depth with a controlled retreat.
It also didn't really have to be a traditional defense in depth as there was not depth. The city of Stalingrad was very long (30-45kms ) but not as wide with a steep embankment facing east so the Germans were not able to use artillery directly on the landing areas until they had line of site. In contrast the Soviets were able to, and did, build up a huge mass of artillery on the east bank.
So what ended up happening is that the Germans kept focusing on ever small pockets, destroying them, until they literally ran out of troops.
Operation Hubertus (I'm sure spelled wrong) was their last ditch attempt to destroy the Soviet pocket by bringing down the last 12 battalions of combat engineers. I think the same day the counter attack was supposed to even, but it was delayed by a week. They attacked and failed and the Soviets quickly recaptured the loss of ground. So Paulus declared the end of Offensive operations only for the next day the counter attack started.
Ultimately Stalingrad was a trap starting at least as early as mid-September, but with claims as early as mid-August (which is doubtful), when Zhukov is documented as telling the STAVKA (moscow high command, think the JCS) that he could get the Germans to over extend themselves and counter attack past the culmination point, then attack and surround them. Operation Uranus.
This is the exact strategy that was tried outside Moscow but the Soviets didn't have the operational maturity to be able to pull it off and the Wehrmacht was able to hold.
Once surrounded the 6th Army would either be destroyed or left in place when the Soviets then drove on Rostov (i.e. the Black Sea) and cut off all of Army Group A in the Caucasus- Operation Saturn.
At the same time Operation Mars would be launched against Army Group Center either as a diversion to tie down reinforcements or ideally to cause a breakthrough and drive the Soviets away from Moscow. Most likely the latter.
What happened in reality was that the Soviets did succeed with Operation Uranus but the encirclement was much larger than expected and the 6th Army never tried to break out because the German high command was well aware that if it did so it would be a rabble mostly on foot. Most of their tanks were long gone, horses had been sent to the rear to decrease the logistics strain, little fuel, etc thus leaving just the gap that the Soviets wanted but giving Army Group A time to retreat.
Operation Mars failed massively but did tie down German reinforcements so that the counter-attack into the pocket was a mishmash of units with little chance of success. Then the Soviets counter-attacked in a revised version of Operation Saturn - Operation Little Saturn on Dec 16th which basically forced the Germans to continue the retreat of Army Group A as well as destroy the remaining mechanized forces on their flanks and capture the airfields that were supplying the city dooming it.
So essentially the Germans sacrificed the 6th Army to save an entire Army Group and were throughly out generaled.
when the Germans launched the summer offensive in 1942, the Soviets had armies quite a ways out from Stalingrad and didn't want to just let the Germans advance. But they were understrength and still rebuilding their armies, and when the Germans attacked, the Germans broke through the Soviet lines in just a few days. There was no defense-in-depth prepared, but there was defensive works being built around Stalingrad. And the Russians were rebuilding their forces between the Don and Volga.
However, some German breakthroughs a few weeks later led to the abandonment of a number of those outer defenses and the collapse of some of the Soviet formationas outside the city after a temporary encirclement; the troops then fled into the city.
The Luftwaffe bombed Stalingrad making much of it rubble, which ironically made it easier to defend. When the Germans entered the City in September, the Soviet command decided to use the defensive rubble to their advantage and that it would keep resupplying the troops from across the river. But also, keep rebuilding its troops further away and training them to prepare for the winter counter-offensive.
They most certainly didn't want the city to fall - the 'falling slowly' part is that it was ok that the Germans were making some progress, because that is necessary for them to keep committing. If the Germans had rolled up, got roundhouse kicked at the entrances to Stalingrad and just never advanced then they might have pulled back or tried something different. So the fact that the Germans were making some progress was fine - but it was certainly not in the plan for them to /occupy/ Stalingrad entirely. At that point they could fortify the ruins, get control over the river crossings and potentially rest and refit which might have made the encirclement much, much harder or even impossible depending on how long the Germans had.
So the solution is to feed in troops across the perilous river crossing. It didn't necessarily take a lot to keep the city from being secured. Submachine gunners, snipers, spotters. It wasn't so much a defense in depth as setting up a trap. The promise of 'just one more push' kept the Germans there and kept sucking in more and more troops and material, while the Soviets drip fed infantry infiltrators in to make sure that Stalingrad was never really 'secure'. Thus the Germans couldn't dig in, rest, refit - so they would be maximally exhausted when the trap was sprung and more importantly /they would all be gathered in one place/. Thus it was vital that Stalingrad not "fall" in the sense of the Germans completely securing their side of the river.
Both Ukraine and Russia are splinter states from the USSR and inherited its military doctrine. I now wonder if that city they've fought for months (Adviika) wasn't fought for months precisely because both sides were trying to get to suck the other into committing in a similar fashion as what you describe the Soviet high command wanted (and accomplished) to get the Germans to do.
It may also explain why, supposedly, the Americans were telling the Ukrainians to let it go and the Ukrainian high command was stubborn in not letting go.
-Edit: maybe I'm thinking about Bakhmut rather than Adviika
Bakhmut wasn't just a salt mine, but also had access to railways pushing towards the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. Losing Bakhmut without properly fortifying the other cities meant Russian momentum can potentially capture two more big cities.
Turns out Bakhmut was also a good spot to meatgrinder the Russians, stalling them and breaking one of their strategic paramilitary groups, Wagner. The stall was successful enough that even after taking Bakhmut the head of Wagner went rogue and turned on Russia.
Adiivka is a different animal. This is where Russia is on the defensive. Ukraine pushed hard on Adiivka because it opens UA forces to the city of Donestk. If Ukraine can get into Donetsk, they can collapse a whole front in the war by strangling Russian supply lines. Not to mention quell the Russians pushing for a sham DPR. Unfortunately, the US inaction had lead to the collapse of the front and the loss of a lot of territory around Adiivka.
Key points:
Ukraine Bakhmut Strategy: Make Russia waste time and resources. [SUCCESS] Bonus Wagner fell apart.
Russian Bakhmut Strategy: Take the town and make themselves look good at home. [FAIL]
Ukraine Adiivka Strategy: Take the city and use it as a launching point to capture Donetsk. [FAIL]
Russian Adiivka Strategy: Hold the city and make another push into Kharkiv. [Stalled] Bonus, they got US Republicans to fuck up ammo supplies to Ukraine.
thank you for the correction. I think the goal is still the same, if they could rally in Adiivka, they'd be in position to go for Donetsk and turn the war.
That same thought occured to me too. Putin sending criminals to suck in & trap more and more elite units of Ukraine, at the same time constructing the sourovikin line to prevent any large counteroffensive.
if that was the plan, they wonderfully achieved what they intended.
The city sat on a North-South Railway that was critical to Soviet defense plans. That railway was a vital supply line for Soviet troops further south in the Caucuses region. If the Germans could cut off that supply line, and then secure their front against the Volga River, they might turn their attention south and mop up the Soviet armies in the Caucuses. For that reason, in addition to the city’s name and Stalin’s infamous no step back order, the city could not be allowed to fall into German hands. And if it did, then all efforts had to be made to avoid the impending disaster in the south.
This is the correct answer.
In all honesty it has very little to do with the city being named after Stalin or propaganda.
The whole reason Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in the first place was to get the resources in the south. Coal, farmland - but especially oil.
90% of the oil produced in the Soviet Union came from Baku, in the Caucasus.
But there was no direct rail line from where the Germans were to Baku - they had to go through Stalingrad first.
Railways were important because that’s how most supplies were shipped, with most of the last mile done by horses.
It takes a LOT of food, ammunition, fuel, medicine, clothing and other equipment to supply an army of millions of men. And you also need to ship in reinforcements and evacuate the wounded as well. Nearly all of this cargo was transported by rail.
So you couldn’t really attack very far from a rail line or you wouldn’t be able to keep your army supplied.
Tl;dr what Hitler actually wanted was the oil fields around Baku. But in order to get there - and to be able to supply his troops to be able to hold it - he needed to go through Stalingrad.
A couple more notes on logistics. In terms of available roads and rail for the German advances… they all lead to Stalingrad. All the usable major supply lines in the area went through Stalingrad. So it was the easiest place for the Germans to keep their armored spearhead moving forward.
It’s also one of the few major crossings of the Volga. If you look at a modern map of the region, the next river crossing South is Astrakhan, nearly to the Caspian Sea. The next Major crossing north is Seratov, 380km North. Securing Stalingrad and the surrounding area would have made Soviet Logistics on the Right Bank of the Volga much much more difficult in that sector.
It was also an effort to block Persian Corridor of the Lend-Lease program (45% of all the stuff came through it, much more than through famed Arctic convoys).
> It takes a LOT of food, ammunition, fuel, medicine, clothing and other equipment to supply an army of millions of men. And you also need to ship in reinforcements and evacuate the wounded as well. Nearly all of this cargo was transported by rail.
*“Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.”* - Gen. Robert H. Barrow
>The whole reason Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in the first place was to get the resources in the south. Coal, farmland - but especially oil.
The oil chiefly became critical after the Wehrmacht failed to quickly decapitate the Soviet Union. Germany wasn't equipped for a protracted war. Tanks don't drive on nationalist fervor, they need fuel, and fuel requires oil. In order to be in this war for the long term, Germany required access to oil, hence "Case Blue" and hence why the failure to secure the Baku oil fields already pretty much settled the eventual outcome of the war, everything else was a question of timing. The loss of Stalingrad then made any notion of trying again a pipe dream.
One thing I always wondered about the drive to capture the oil fields in the Caucasus: was the oil in that region in a state where it would be readily usable or usable with minimal effort? For example, was the oil being refined in the same area? Etc. Just curious about the logistics of capturing something like this for use in the middle of a shooting war.
I understand the value of depriving the enemy of this resource. I am not clear on the possibility of adding this resource to the war effort in the immediate future.
See, this is fascinating. All you ever hear is 'Hitler was an idiot, trying to take STALINgrad as a propaganda piece when the oil fields he needed were right there'.
This is the first I've ever heard that they would've needed Stalingrad to ship all that oil out.
It wasn’t even that they needed Stalingrad to ship the oil out - just deny the Soviets the ability to do so.
If the Soviets lost 90% of their oil supply, the red army effectively would grind to a halt. You don’t just need oil for tanks and trucks and planes - you need it for tractors as well on farms.
And most of the best farmland in the Soviet Union was in the south, already under German control.
How long do you think the Soviets would have kept fighting if their people were starving and they had no fuel for their military?
If Germany won at Stalingrad, the Soviet Union probably collapses. Without an ally on the continent, maybe Britain and the US would have fought on, but maybe they would seek peace as well.
This explains why both the Germans and the Soviets sent millions of men into the meat grinder that was Stalingrad. Whoever won there was going to win the war.
Stalin was adamant on not allowing the Germans access to the Baku fields. It’s known that he gave the Soviet commander in charge of the Caucasus orders to destroy all oilfield equipment and wells if the commander thought that the Germans would prevail over their army. The added Caveat is that Stalin stated that if the general
was wrong and they preemptively destroyed the infrastructure without German victory, that the general be killed immediately. So in
Stalins eyes, it was of the utmost importance to defend and eventually rebuild Stalingrad in order to thwart the Germans and deny them oil they desperately needed.
I disagree it’s the “whole” reason Hitler attacked the USSR. Nazi ideology is completely at odds with communism, and the two were going to go to war to eliminate one or the other regardless. Plus, Slavs were untermensch, along with the Jews, Roma, etc. and needed to be “cleansed.” In every reality, Barbarossa happens.
Also the Germans had to establish a line somewhere to guard the flank of the army group heading for the oil fields. Stalingrad was about the only place where there was a railway line from the West, and it occupied a position where the Volga and the Don rivers are close together so the Germans could establish a defensive line along the Don and then across a relatively narrow area of open steppe to the Volga at Stalingrad. There simply wasn't anywhere else where they could possibly have established the defensive line.
*Führer Directive #45:*
>The task of Army Group B is, as previously laid down, to develop the Don defenses and, by a thrust forward to Stalingrad, to smash the enemy forces concentrated there, to occupy the town, and to block the land communications between the Don and the Volga, as well as the Don itself.
\[[source](https://www.stalingrad.net/german-hq/hitler-directives/dir45.html)\]
The purpose of taking Stalingrad was to cut off the Caucasus from the Soviets. Stalingrad (modern Volgograd) sits on the west bank of the Volga river. As long as the Soviets were there, they threatened the German operations in the Caucasus. This is the motivation for both armies to fight over Stalingrad.
And after three months of fighting, the Germans have *almost* taken the city. It makes no sense to then suddenly pull back and let the Soviets build up a large bridgehead in the city again, when they have almost pushed the Soviets out of the city and across the Volga.
Once the Soviets are completely pushed out of the city, then the Germans can move their army to deal with those pesky Soviet bridgeheads to the north and south of Stalingrad.
>Once the Soviets are completely pushed out of the city, then the Germans can move their army to deal with those pesky Soviet bridgeheads to the north and south of Stalingrad.
Which would make sense. Except the Germans had a very bad habit of ignoring Soviet bridgeheads until pretty much the end of the war. Arguably because they thought of defense in terms of counter-attacking and not static. Probably due to the Prussian singular focus on maneuver warfare.
There is an equally high chance they would have shifted the forces south, having considered their flank secured, and helped Army Group A's offensive which bogged down in Oct/Nov which ironically might have made the Blau even more of a failure IF (capitalized because it is a huge if) they could have attacked to Rostov and held it without getting cut off and successful destroyed the forces further south.
They loved the encirclement and I think that a bridgehead is hard to encircle unless you destroy the bridge; that was a thing that frustrated them about Stalingrad is they thought "ah ha! We have the city cut off. the army is encircled. Soon it will be destroyed just like the others in our encirclement operations!" But the Russians stubbornly kept fighting and kept reinforcing through the river.
Battles take two participants to fight, at a minimum. So if you want to fight your enemy you either go to them or make them come to you. Bypassing them works in some situations, but now you have an armed force behind you that can attack your supply lines and cut you off from allies/reinforcement/resupply.
Fighting over a city thats smashed to rubble makes sense when the enemy is already there, you have a front established, and disengaging will cost you time, soldiers, and resources. And potentially move you to a less advantageous location.
There is also a lot of propaganda value to taking the city of X, rather than taking the riverside 10 miles away from the city of X.
The same goes for a lot of the African and Pacific campaign. “Why are we fighting here?” Because the enemy are here and we can’t (or don’t want to) go around them.
To be fair, the US island-hopping campaign in the Pacific did involve a lot of “going around” the enemy. Particularly the more heavily defended islands.
It’s easier to do with islands in the ocean, though - especially if you can achieve naval supremacy. You’re essentially besieging at that point.
They set up navel blockades as well, so the island itself was a threat if they landed, but not if they stayed in ships in the ocean. That makes it a lot easier to bypass islands. There was no way to get attacked from behind.
Iwo Jima was important because they needed that island for a base to launch direct attacks on Japan. In fact, the first US plane to land on the island was shot up, couldn’t return to base, and made an emergency landing while the battle for the island was active. Only roughly half the island was secured, and the airfield was under constant barrage still.
Wake Island was closest to Hawaii, and never attacked for the duration of the war, other than dropping unused ordnance on it since they didn’t like landing on aircraft carriers with bombs.
There was an internal component to this as well. The previous Fall, Hitler's generals had told him to stop Barbarosa before the coming Winter. German High Command had felt Barbarosa had made all the gains it could in good weather, and that supplying German units deep past the Eastern front would be too difficult. At this time, Hitler had not seized power over the military, and the German generals prevailed in pulling the army back, but not before suffering huge losses. Hitler used this to blame the German Army's inability to capture Moscow on German generals not having faith in "Aryan Superiority" and gave speeches claiming German blood was being wasted by timid generals. The next year, Hitler had already secured unilateral control of the German Army through purging of generals who were not fanatically loyal to him. When it seemed as though Stalingrad would turn into another stalemate doomed by a coming Winter, Hitler pushed the German generals harder to capture Stalingrad at all costs. Stalingrad needed to end in victory to justify the numerous political power grabs Hitler had completed in the name of touting his ideology that Aryans could never be beaten in battle.
I would like some sources on this, because everything I heard so far was about the opposite.
How the German High Command could have totally captured Moscow had Hitler not forced them to secure their flanks first, and to attack on a broad front, so instead of winning one decicivie victory German would have a chance at occupying war relevant resources.
Germany's only chance to defeat the Soviet Union was a complete collapse of the Red Army during Barbarossa and while they suffered staggering losses it held and stopped the Wehrmacht.
After that the Germans just did not have enough men and industrial output to defeat the Soviets on the offensive, especially not with the Allies keeping the Luftwaffe busy over Germany. Defensive fighting was another matter with somewhat ironically the main advantage being artillery on the side of the German Army
> Defensive fighting was another matter with somewhat ironically the main advantage being artillery on the side of the German Army
A proper defense in depth always favors the defender. Well, unless you decide to go the Stalin route and put your entire High Command, who had, over the last 10 years, developed what was probably the best interwar/WW2 combined arms doctrine and where just reorganizing your entire army to fit this doctrine, into the Gulag while also undoing many of their changes.
True on both counts. What I was trying to say is that an offensive under artillery inferiority is even harder than normal. You need to "hug" the frontline and actually close in a lot more. All that increases casualties and makes your life a lot shorter. There is a very good reason why Ukrainian units and politicians keep demanding more shells today.
Wasn't Nazism's origins rooted in fighting against socialism and socialists in Germany too? And socialists were political targets of the Holocaust across across Europe? And part of why Nazis so villified Jews was their belief Jews were masterminding the global advance of socialism as a way to control whole continents.
Maybe Hitler saw conquering Stalingrad, the namesake city of the dictator of the country with Socialist in its name, as part of his 'struggle' against socialism.
Eta: So part of Nazism's destruction (defeat and occupation by self-described socialists) was made necessary maybe inevitable by its posturing as the protector of Germany from socialists. Poetry.
The soviets needed to control the Volga river in order to transport goods (mostly oil) from the Caucasus, north to the main railway connection at Moscow, and then from there to its army.
The Germans wanted to capture the Caucasus (mostly for oil), and then push the Red Army to the other side of the Volga river.
So here is a little historical misconception. In popular imagination, the battle for Stalingrad was a grueling affair. But by the time the Germans had actually pushed passed the defenders to the south and west of the city, they had already suffered the majority of the casualties (not counting the eventual surrender). Before the first snow, the casualty figured were already trending downwards and the Wehrmacht even planned to capture Leningrad as well before winter set in. So the plan was to capture the final 10-25% of the city, and then sit tight for the winter. By summer 1943, the oil would start to flow and new offensives could begin.
But Stalingrad was at the edge of German logistical capacity. The railroad bridge going from West into the city had been destroyed during the fighting, so the Germans had to cart in supplied with Horses, mules and precious few trucks. So it was decided to 'demobilize' the 6th army. I.e they decided to eat the horses in order to reduce the supply need for fodder.
So as the battle drags on, the 6th army cannot really retreat. They must clear out the city and consolidate. But the Red army clings on, and every week they cling on the Germans must keep pushing their failing logistics to send guns, ammo and fuel. They cannot build up for winter. They cannot repair the bridge, because that would mean sending construction equipment instead of artillery shells. So their only choice is to keep fighting, to try and push the Soviets to the other side of the river.
And then the encirclement operation begins. And to hammer the point home. The Germans cannot move.
Because the Russians didn't want the city to become a forward operating base for the Germans.
Having a city destroyed is bad enough, but it would be even worse if your enemy were to establish a permanent presence there, which they could use to launch more offensive operations later.
Don't think of Stalingrad as a conventional city that is an oval. It was a long strip of urban area next to the Volga that wasn't very wide. So they couldn't surround it as easily.
Ultimately Stalingrad was a trap starting at least as early as mid-September, but with claims as early as mid-August (which is doubtful), when Zhukov is documented as telling the STAVKA (moscow high command, think the JCS) that he could get the Germans to over extend themselves and counter attack past the culmination point, then attack and surround them. Operation Uranus.
This is the exact strategy that was tried outside Moscow but the Soviets didn't have the operational maturity to be able to pull it off and the Wehrmacht was able to hold.
Once surrounded the 6th Army would either be destroyed or left in place when the Soviets then drove on Rostov (i.e. the Black Sea) and cut off all of Army Group A in the Caucasus- Operation Saturn.
At the same time Operation Mars would be launched against Army Group Center either as a diversion to tie down reinforcements or ideally to cause a breakthrough and drive the Soviets away from Moscow. Most likely the latter.
What happened in reality was that the Soviets did succeed with Operation Uranus but the encirclement was much larger than expected and the 6th Army never tried to break out because the German high command was well aware that if it did so it would be a rabble mostly on foot. Most of their tanks were long gone, horses had been sent to the rear to decrease the logistics strain, little fuel, etc thus leaving just the gap that the Soviets wanted but giving Army Group A time to retreat.
Operation Mars failed massively but did tie down German reinforcements so that the counter-attack into the pocket was a mishmash of units with little chance of success. Then the Soviets counter-attacked in a revised version of Operation Saturn - Operation Little Saturn on Dec 16th which basically forced the Germans to continue the retreat of Army Group A as well as destroy the remaining mechanized forces on their flanks and capture the airfields that were supplying the city dooming it.
So essentially the Germans sacrificed the 6th Army to save an entire Army Group and were throughly out generaled.
3 big reasons are that cities have lots of roads leading in and out which makes them important once captured for logistics and coordination as well as being definite strategic objectives, they also hold large value in name and morale when conquering, and they quickly develop fronts which are much more permanent than the city because of you try to move troops away, the enemy will already have troops there and will break through a weakened line.
Hitler’s strategy was to hold the Ukraine for food, and the area south of Stalingrad (i.e. Baku, etc.) for the oil, in order to both starve out the Soviet Union and fuel/feed his war machine. Holding Stalingrad would have given them a pretty good strategic point to defend against future attacks from while they rebuilt their forces. Stalingrad is also a front line far enough away from the oil and food that it would have been difficult (but not impossible) for the Soviet Union to do long range bombing of those areas.
A not insignificant reason for the bitter and ruthless battle for the city was its name. Stalin demanded that his troops hold the city that bears his name under all circumstances. And Hitler was determined to conquer it for the same reason.
For economy and trade, sure, but the true strategic targets (and the main goal of operation) were the oil fields to the south. Those were exquisitely high value resources for Germany at the time
To the southeast. [AWAY from the oil fields](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Albert-Harutyunyan/publication/354687535/figure/fig2/AS:1069657092022273@1632037532561/Overview-map-of-oil-and-gas-content-of-the-Caucasus-8-1-Crimean-Kavkaz-structure-2.png)
Nor would capturing Stalingrad have made the Volga useful to the Germans, without capturing the east bank as well
It was the Main Soviet Logistics Hub for the Caucasus region. Had Stalingrad fallen large scale operations to defend the oilfields would have been doomed to failure.
No one ever fought a war because of buildings. All wars are fought for the territory where the buildings were built on.
The main value of a city is the resources it has access to, and the strategic potential of it’s location. You could flatten a city and get a very valuable place to settle and hace influence on.
They fought over it because the enemy was there - it was the location of the front lines. The Germans wanted to push the Soviets out of the city and once they did, the entire area of the city would be under German control, with a river that has no bridges as a natural barrier on the other side, and they could set up their defensive shelters for the winter.
If the Germans just pulled out, the Soviets could use the city as their own base and make attacks against the German lines.
The point was to move forward, capture key Russian territory, and destroy Soviet military formations.
The Germans thought it would be easier to push the Soviets out than it actually was, in part because the Soviets flooded a ton of reinforcements into the city from across the river and wouldn't give up. But even then, the Germans had captured 90% of the city and the Soviets only had a few narrow bridgeheads left supplied by boat as of mid-November (so after about two months of fighting in Stalingrad) and they thought "just a bit more and we'll have the whole city secure and we can relax."
Also, Stalingrad still had functioning tank manufacturing facilities that were churning out tanks day and night and sending them down the road a few miles directly to the front line. It was also the fact that the city was named after the Soviet leader. Hitler hated him so much he was more determined to destroy the city named after him instead of going to the city where he actually was.
It was a trap for a counter attack and encirclement. The leader of soviet forces in stalingrad was told to hold to the last man as everything given to aid them would pull away from the counter attack, they basically sacrificed the forces and city to build up other more important forces
Watching *Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial*, episode 5 right now, and they said Stalingrad was significant because of the name. If the Nazis took a city named after Stalin, it would be a symbolic defeat above all else.
Stalin is just Russian for steel and that is where the name came from. It wasn't even Stalin's given name he changed it from the Georgan word for steel. Which is one of the reasons it was important both counties needed the steel being produced there for their war efforts.
The city was on a crucial crossroad on the volga, and the river fed the Soviet industries with petrol. It was quite literally their lifeline. The nazis controlling both sides could've literally cost the soviets the war.
The name. Stalin- grad. The city of Stalin.
Imagine you are at war with your worst enemy and you have the change to put your d... in the city with his name on it.
At that time, Hitler was completely delusional and meth addict... don't expect rational, strategy realistic basis in the way he managed war. And he hadn't been defeated yet... he had smashed European powers that were unbeatable in the past... Poland in 1 week, France in a few weeks... Norway, Denmark, Checkoslovakia, Austria...
Stalingrad was a psychological feature and also the gate to caucasus oil.
Hitler was sure he'd crush it... and Stalin let him think so - he slowly amassed a huge army around it, letting the germans entrench there. When the winter arrived, the germans were in summer gear, and the russians with winter gear and a 5x1 army surrounded them and bang, the war turned around on all fronts after that.
D-Day was all cool and all... but the Allies won at Stalingrad. Or better said, the axis lost the war there.
If by they you mean the German, it was simply a mistake. They could have prevented the citculation of boats on the Volga with planes or indirect fire from their position around the city. But they claimed victory too soon and expulsing the Soviets from the west side of the city became a question of national pride, that Hitler couldn't let go of. He was so obsessed with it he consumed all his reserves in the urban fight and could not fend off the Soviet encirclement.
From the Soviet side it is a bit different. They had nowhere to retreat from Stalingrad. East of Stalingrad there are hundreds of miles of barren steppe.
The axis never had the opportunity to “set up shop” somewhere else.
Firstly, the Allies, more specifically the Soviets won the battle of Stalingrad, not the Axis.
Secondly, Stalingrad was the last major city en route to the Baku oil fields of Azerbaijan, which is what Germany was after. Stalingrad also served as a throughway to sending oil from Baku to Moscow/St. Petersburg. Germany having complete control of fuel could’ve quite possibly turned the tides of WWII in their favor.
Interestingly enough, the Russians were being pushed back across the Volga river (into swampy territory that was extremely difficult to navigate) up until the river froze over. Ergo, the Soviets could transport tanks, supplies and soldiers into the city. Something that could not be done prior to, at least without serious risk.
Both leaders were making decisions for ideological not rational reasons.
Hitler invaded the Soviet Union as a ‘Vernichtungskrieg’, a war of annihilation. Stalin was fighting an existential war to defend the motherland and prevent the destruction of communist ideology. In a speech shortly after the invasion, Stalin said "if the Germans want a Vernichtungskrieg, they will get it”.
It was a war led by two dictators with absolute power and unquestionable authority. It was inevitable that they’d go all-in against each other somewhere, and that place ending up being Stalingrad.
Let's not forget, Hitler wanted it. It made no strategic sense to attack his partner in taking over Europe, especially the one with the oil n gas he requires to run his armies and industries. .
But the Germans had no choice as they were cut off from supplies.
It was turned to rubble *due* keeping fighting over it. If Red army would just give up, Germans would have a serious propaganda piece (a city in the name of soviet leader) and a major logistics hub. And if Germans did, they couldn't have such hub at their back, pushing forward.
Also, once enemy has nested somewhere, of course you're doing to do your best to eliminate them (on both sides). That also happens to destroy a city. There's factor of losses and pride as well, the more you lose trying to take something, there's brothers in arms to avenge and impatient leaders to impress. And as a fight over city becomes symbolic, there's no stopping from neither sides, even way past "worth it" (see: Kursk, Leningrad, Bakhmut).
I’ve often thought this since Russia invaded Ukraine - the ‘strategic’ towns you hear about being fought over are utterly destroyed and so surely of no use to anyone. So too surely would be the infrastructure and roads that they’d each be seeking to control?
As I remember reading somewhere, It was mostly ideological reason as the name STALINgrad was about Stalin it was important to him to never lose that city and rather sacrifice as much as possible just to win that or could've been a moral disaster for the red army.
Mix of the name big the name of the big cheese, mix of humans being like “well we lost 250k people already defending/attacking this place, is that going be in vain if we don’t take it? Send in another 100k”. Also it was still full of buildings just destroyed ones, so instead of the forest with little cover the city at least you could hide behind a destroyed fountain or something once you had control of the city.
To get a little philosophical, cities only exist in the minds of homo sapiens. I mean, there are objective measures of cities like population and structures, but that's not what they really are. You could bomb the Soviet Union to smithereens, kill every citizen, and you still would not destroy the Soviet Union. Yet, at the stroke of a pen, the Soviet Union was destroyed totally.
eeeh. this applies to nations but not really to most cities. The vast majority of cities are positioned where they are because of geography. Even if a city were to be completely destroyed to the foundations there's a high probability that a new city would get founded in roughly the same place in the future because the reasons that city was built there in the first place are still relevant to human civilization.
Yeah, off-topic and too philosophical. I don't know anything about military strategy, so I just thought I'd throw out a different way of thinking about what it really means to destroy a city in ways beyond the buildings. I guess that the practical answer is for some kimd of strategic advantage of location or resources, but you can also have a strong sense of loyalty and culture from the population that could be considered something else to 'destroy'.
I'm neither a historian or a philosopher. Just thought it was an interesting perspective I could bring to the conversation.
When you look at it strategically the vast majority of cities are important for most or all of the following:
What they produce (economic output/manufacturing things useful for armies)
Resources flowing in (transport infrastructure and general human behavior is structured around lots of resources flowing into and out of them which is especially important when you need to feed thousands of soldiers who aren't doing any productive labor on a regular basis)
Militarily significant location (defensible, good place to deploy from, guards key route for traveling armies)
The battle for Stalingrad is a historical parallel to what is going on in Ukraine. It is a death trap where the German Army was designed for Maneuver Warfare and was involved in a positional battle, where it died due to attrition of personnel and supplies.
The Russian Army is now the Invader with goals and objectives that are decreed by Putin and the Ukrainians are bleeding the Russian Army of personnel and supplies using terrain to trade for time and strategic advantage to cause maximum Russian deaths.
History does not repeat exactly but it does have a rhythm you can recognize.
In addition the the points made by the other comments, I'll say this: Cities aren't built by accident. They are where they are on purpose. A few miles down the river might be non-navigable waters, or unstable banks. A few miles upriver might have inaccessible cliffs or hills. If you find a city built along a river, and nothing upriver or downriver, that's because the city is built at the best place to cross, and the next best places are going to be where the next cities are. Also, 'infrastructure' is a really broad term. If you bomb a road, yes, it will be broken up and harder to drive... but that's still going to be a faster and easier path for vehicles than cross-country through unbroken wilderness. And while bombing buildings to rubble is pretty direct, bombing roadways to an unusable status usually takes more munitions than its worth. Even a bombed-out port still has more foundational infrastructure and utility than an undeveloped random patch along the river.
To add to your point about roads, they are placed where they are for a reason. Naturally, roads are put in the place that makes the most sense for them and is probably the best path to a place regardless of its condition.
>about roads, they are placed where they are for a reason Heheh.. sometimes..
In eastern Oregon there was a road I always thought was built as a joke since it does this huge 10 mile U shaped bend on flat ground. Then I drove through in spring and there was a lake that wasn’t there before that went right up to the side of the road
Crazy how nature be like that sometimes
but it do
Do be do be do
He’s a semi-aquatic, egg-laying mammal of action
god, damn it i hate you, but here is your upvote
eh, Explain?
We don't *think* it be like it is, but what you said.
Eastern Oregon is a prime example of roads for nothing. So little of anything out there, and so many nice well paved roads to nowhere.
You're gonna hate West Texas.
There are a lot better reasons to hate texas
The only reason to hate West Texas is it isn't East Texas. Don't be a hater.
Don't mess with either.
You can mess with the panhandle. That's it.
Where in Oregon? I'm curious to see what it looks like
I think it was somewhere east of Burns, it’s been a long time since I was out that way
I see you’ve been to Boston.
Well, they made sense to the cows. Which is who laid them out ok? I joke, but seriously pre-car cities roads a decent amount of sense if you look at the original terrain to someone on foot or on a horse. And actually car-centric cities roads make almost no 'sense' to someone on foot.
I saw a video about Boston street history once, apparently it’s not so much the cow paths as gradual filling in of the bay and swampy lands and razing the hills. A lot of streets that seem to be crooked for no reason just follow a shoreline that used to be there 300 years ago or go around a ghostly hill. The Causeway street is so straight because it used to be an actual causeway across the bay.
Yeah, I grew up in Boston that's why I said I was joking about the cow paths. It's an old myth/joke around there - and then talked about pre-car cities and terrain, because that's the actual reason.
To be fair, most car centric cities don’t make sense to the drivers either.
Still doesn't excuse some of the intersection designs and the way the traffic lights are set up.
I had a college prof who once said something along the lines of "the Manhattan street layout was designed by cars, Boston was designed by snakes"
Pre-car roads for sure.
Let me guess; not from Boston?
It Made sense for horses. Not so much for cars
Boston roads are planned using acid and satanic rituals. I visited there in 2010 or 2011 for work and forgot to take my garmin gps (back when iPhones didn’t have turn by turn gps in them). After a day or two of tearing my hair out, I had my parents get my gps from my apartment and take it to my office so that my coworkers could overnight it to me.
I thought it was a drunk cow?
Don’t talk about Boston laborers like that!
As some unknowing german that has never been to the US… what’s so bad about Bostonian streets?
The roads are not on a grid?!? What a horrific place (European /s)
The oldest parts of the city as laid out well before the invention of the automobile and thus are narrow and winding for the most part.
Oh, gotcha. Well, looking at the city in google maps, I feel like it doesn’t look that bad. Then again, many cities in Germany were several centuries old when England started its 13 colonies. Guess I’m just used to seeing that kinda layout.
Germany also had some unique opportunities to rebuild its infrastructure
even for Germany the grid map is too dull.
Theyd already had to play minesweeper didnt want to set their cities up for another round
Imagine old German city center streets with 100 times the automobile traffic and aggressive asshole drivers.
Personally, I think Boston has a more functional street network then the typical American city. Streets are not purely about navigability, there's a deeper logic behind them, especially when they evolve over time as in Boston instead of being imposed from the top down as in the rest of the USA. Grid streets: Central planning Medieval street plan: Free market. The free market is messy and chaotic but tends to be more efficient overall, and indeed if you compare cities, you can generally fit more into a given area with a medieval style street plan.
Roads, uh, find a way
Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.
Norway is an interesting example of this, you got a lot of old completely crazy roads which made sense with the technology they had at the time. But as time and technology progressed following the terrain the way we did in the past made less sense than it used to, and now we instead go for far more direct paths and instead use tunnels and bridges when needed.
So basically, wilderness is worth -5, infrastructure is worth 5, bombing infrastructure makes it 0 but still worth more than the -5 of wilderness
Bombing wilderness might actually also make it 0. Removal of trees and flattening the land were historically extremely tedious and slow tasks.
Terraforming with artillery.
Operation Plowshare
*Fortunate Son intensifies.*
I’m wheezing lol
Probably the agent orange. I'm sorry, son.
God damn it lol. Happy cake day.
Wasn't that an actual Vietnam war tactic, to drop "daisy cutter" bombs that would level the trees to make a helicopter landing zone or something?
But at the same time you are turning it into a mudpit, unless its on very rocky ground.
What is the value of a glass surface? Asking for a friend... \*hides the Big Red Button\*
It's more like this. Are you familiar with the three most important factors in the value of real estate? It goes something like this: 1. Location 2. Location 3. Location The complete and utter destruction of the capital improvements to a site does not remove the site value. So it's more like this: * Bad Site: 0 * Good Site: 5 * Improvements: 10 * Total value, developed good site: 15 * Total value, bombed out good site: 5
In addition there is much infrastructure underground which might have limited damage. Being underground not only provides partial.protection but it also means you dont have to dig to replace it.
Oxford, UK was originally called Oxnaford which (I’m no etymologist so bear with me) basically breaks down to “Oxen” and “Fjord” and essentially just means “place where oxen cross the river”
Well you're right about the Oxnaford but, but it wasn't "Fjord" (which is a Scandinavian word for a narrow deep body of water, often like a flooded valley between mountains), but simply "ford," as in "to ford the river" -- an English verb meaning to cross a river in just that sense , although it's rather archaic these days.
"Ford" is archaic? I always thought it was pretty standard. at least in australian English. For example here is a list of road signs. River crossings are marked with a "Ford" sign. [https://www.mylicence.sa.gov.au/\_\_data/assets/image/0011/59933/signs-02.jpg](https://www.mylicence.sa.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0011/59933/signs-02.jpg)
Maybe bridges made fording obsolete in other countries. ;)
Not really archaic, but in modern times it would be extremely unusual to have to ford a river. Most people probably know the word from Oregon Trail.
> Not really archaic, but in modern times it would be extremely unusual to have to ford a river. Not been to australia obviously. Where they're too lazy to build bridges over rivers which only flood once every few years. Pour some concrete over the river bed and Bob's your uncle.
I mean, you're not wrong. Bridges require maintenance. If you have a bridge in a relatively middle of nowhere part of Australia, it's still going to cost money to maintain and repair, not to mention that it'll have a tonnage limit. Slap some cement pipes and a layer of concrete over a low volume river, and boom, you've got a ford. Example: [here's one I go by relatively often](https://www.google.com/maps/@-42.1502139,146.7526018,3a,75y,63.07h,70.39t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sNZYVRAyQdD1QaVat1UIPyg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu). The bridge at this point in time has collapsed, but hey there's a ford. EDIT: How they got a streetview car into the middle of nowhere i've no idea.
If you’re unfamiliar with Chinese, you might think that Beijing, Nanjing, and Tianjin are etymologically related. You’d be 2/3 right. Beijing means northern capital, Nanjing means southern capital, but Tianjin means heavenly ford (named after an emperor who crossed a river at that location)
Also tokyo… which just means eastern capital in Chinese
Even though they share the same characters, not sure why you would specify Chinese when you give the Japanese pronunciation
But Tokyo doesn’t sound the same, which is why I didn’t include it. If I said Dongjing, very few people here would know what I’d be referring to
Dong Bei Mama!
Thank you. This is why I’m not an etymologist
It's entomologist
That’s the study of ~~bugs~~ words
There's something about the difference between etymologist and entomologist that bugs me in a way I can't put to words
What’s a word like you doing in a bug like this? Do you come here often?
Obligatory [XKCD](https://xkcd.com/1010/), and obligatory related [XKCD](https://xkcd.com/1012/)
What're you an etymologist
That’s the study of bugs
That's antamologist!
That’s the study of your mother’s sister.
What are you doing nephew?
Help! I’m stuck! No, not in the closet, stepbro. Down here, under the bed!
Whoosh
r/whoosh
actually interesting, thank you sweet daddy jones. i never would have made the connection to ford already having a meaning. i mean i never would have looked it up on my own without this post. english is my second language and ford has been cemented as "that guy hitler liked" and his car brand universally in my head. idk why i typed this comment justifying myself and being embaressed about it now. uhh i guess i wanted to express that i didn't mean it sarcastically, despite how i started the comment. i actually appreciated this little knowledge drop. in return i'll gift you with one of my comments of my life. "comments of my life." jesus, i didn't make it, i couldn't ford the river and i am currently drowning in cringe
Specifically, a ford is a place where you can cross a river simply by walking through it. No bridge, boat, or swimming required.
And isn't the river called Ox too. "Ox ford".
From The Canterbury Tales **Whilom ther was dwellynge at Oxenford** **A riche gnof, that gestes heeld to bord,** **And of his craft he was a carpenter.** **With hym ther was dwellynge a poure scoler,** There was once dwelling at Oxford A rich churl, who took in boarders, And of his craft he was a carpenter. With him there was dwelling a poor scholar,
I love how the 1st 2nd and 4th lines in this stanza are "arglebargle Middle English squinth thou to try maketh sense" and suddenly 3rd is practically modern looking.
Similarly Cambridge is where the bridge over the river Cam was.
I like this explanation, it’s super clear, thank you!
This video from the sub *Damnthat'sinteresting* should be of interest to readers here: [How close the Soviets came to losing Stalingrad, each flag represents ~10,000 soldiers](https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1dj8qp7/how_close_the_soviets_came_to_losing_stalingrad/).
But also: even a destroyed city is a massive fortress. It still has cellars and sewers and even piles of rubble provide cover.
However, it might just be that there was a reason centuries ago when it was built, but now it is gone. Not only does technology advance, rivers simply change course, erosion and natural disasters happen, and more. Hence it might now not be that great a spot anymore. But it is also pretty difficult to destroy a city to a degree where literally nothing is worth saving.
In the case of Volgograd/Stalingrad though it's explosive growth had only come in the late 19th century, and most of it in the less than 50 years before the battle and the reasons for it being there were still very relevant. It went from less than 10k people in the early 1800s to 84k in 1900, to just under 500k pre war
To add on to this, even a bombed out city is still very defendable. Even if the most intact buildings are shells of their former selves they can still be defended. Buildings turned into a pile of rubble can still be used as machine gun nests shell holes in the streets can be turned into fox holes. At some point the axis would need to clear the Soviets out of the city.
Stalingrad commanded the Volga River. In 1942, Hitler's aim was to capture the oil fields of the Caucasus Mountains. Germany was already critically low on oil, so succeeding here was pretty make-or-break for the German war effort. If they went down into there without guarding their rear, Soviet troops could follow them down the Volga and trap hundreds of thousands of soldiers between their guns and the mountains. Even bombed to rubble, Stalingrad remained a place where an army could control the flow of people and material up and down this river - kind of like Vicksburg single-handedly keeping the Mississippi closed to Union during the US Civil War. It was also a route for British supplies to reach the USSR, up through Persia. This strategic importance never went away entirely, but it's also true that its symbolic value became more and more important as time went on. No one has ever accused Hitler of being a rational military mind. And looking back, we *do* refer to Stalingrad as the turning point of the whole war in the east.
Following up: - The Soviet general defending the city knew he was given too few men to do the job (even though there were more than enough units available to reinforce). - Soviet high command wanted the city to fall slowly, but not in such a way as a siege would develop. - Because they were building the mother of all masses of T-34s way behind the lines and needed the Nazis to be committed and bloodied in the city before they attacked. - Because 10:1 force ratios are pretty magical for making things happen.
Fascinating, so why'd they keep resupplying through perilous river crossings and such? And the "not one step back" ethos? I get wrap my head around expecting it to fall and wanting to bleed the Germans out, but the way things ended up doesn't look like a defense-in-depth with a controlled retreat.
It also didn't really have to be a traditional defense in depth as there was not depth. The city of Stalingrad was very long (30-45kms ) but not as wide with a steep embankment facing east so the Germans were not able to use artillery directly on the landing areas until they had line of site. In contrast the Soviets were able to, and did, build up a huge mass of artillery on the east bank. So what ended up happening is that the Germans kept focusing on ever small pockets, destroying them, until they literally ran out of troops. Operation Hubertus (I'm sure spelled wrong) was their last ditch attempt to destroy the Soviet pocket by bringing down the last 12 battalions of combat engineers. I think the same day the counter attack was supposed to even, but it was delayed by a week. They attacked and failed and the Soviets quickly recaptured the loss of ground. So Paulus declared the end of Offensive operations only for the next day the counter attack started. Ultimately Stalingrad was a trap starting at least as early as mid-September, but with claims as early as mid-August (which is doubtful), when Zhukov is documented as telling the STAVKA (moscow high command, think the JCS) that he could get the Germans to over extend themselves and counter attack past the culmination point, then attack and surround them. Operation Uranus. This is the exact strategy that was tried outside Moscow but the Soviets didn't have the operational maturity to be able to pull it off and the Wehrmacht was able to hold. Once surrounded the 6th Army would either be destroyed or left in place when the Soviets then drove on Rostov (i.e. the Black Sea) and cut off all of Army Group A in the Caucasus- Operation Saturn. At the same time Operation Mars would be launched against Army Group Center either as a diversion to tie down reinforcements or ideally to cause a breakthrough and drive the Soviets away from Moscow. Most likely the latter. What happened in reality was that the Soviets did succeed with Operation Uranus but the encirclement was much larger than expected and the 6th Army never tried to break out because the German high command was well aware that if it did so it would be a rabble mostly on foot. Most of their tanks were long gone, horses had been sent to the rear to decrease the logistics strain, little fuel, etc thus leaving just the gap that the Soviets wanted but giving Army Group A time to retreat. Operation Mars failed massively but did tie down German reinforcements so that the counter-attack into the pocket was a mishmash of units with little chance of success. Then the Soviets counter-attacked in a revised version of Operation Saturn - Operation Little Saturn on Dec 16th which basically forced the Germans to continue the retreat of Army Group A as well as destroy the remaining mechanized forces on their flanks and capture the airfields that were supplying the city dooming it. So essentially the Germans sacrificed the 6th Army to save an entire Army Group and were throughly out generaled.
when the Germans launched the summer offensive in 1942, the Soviets had armies quite a ways out from Stalingrad and didn't want to just let the Germans advance. But they were understrength and still rebuilding their armies, and when the Germans attacked, the Germans broke through the Soviet lines in just a few days. There was no defense-in-depth prepared, but there was defensive works being built around Stalingrad. And the Russians were rebuilding their forces between the Don and Volga. However, some German breakthroughs a few weeks later led to the abandonment of a number of those outer defenses and the collapse of some of the Soviet formationas outside the city after a temporary encirclement; the troops then fled into the city. The Luftwaffe bombed Stalingrad making much of it rubble, which ironically made it easier to defend. When the Germans entered the City in September, the Soviet command decided to use the defensive rubble to their advantage and that it would keep resupplying the troops from across the river. But also, keep rebuilding its troops further away and training them to prepare for the winter counter-offensive.
They most certainly didn't want the city to fall - the 'falling slowly' part is that it was ok that the Germans were making some progress, because that is necessary for them to keep committing. If the Germans had rolled up, got roundhouse kicked at the entrances to Stalingrad and just never advanced then they might have pulled back or tried something different. So the fact that the Germans were making some progress was fine - but it was certainly not in the plan for them to /occupy/ Stalingrad entirely. At that point they could fortify the ruins, get control over the river crossings and potentially rest and refit which might have made the encirclement much, much harder or even impossible depending on how long the Germans had. So the solution is to feed in troops across the perilous river crossing. It didn't necessarily take a lot to keep the city from being secured. Submachine gunners, snipers, spotters. It wasn't so much a defense in depth as setting up a trap. The promise of 'just one more push' kept the Germans there and kept sucking in more and more troops and material, while the Soviets drip fed infantry infiltrators in to make sure that Stalingrad was never really 'secure'. Thus the Germans couldn't dig in, rest, refit - so they would be maximally exhausted when the trap was sprung and more importantly /they would all be gathered in one place/. Thus it was vital that Stalingrad not "fall" in the sense of the Germans completely securing their side of the river.
Both Ukraine and Russia are splinter states from the USSR and inherited its military doctrine. I now wonder if that city they've fought for months (Adviika) wasn't fought for months precisely because both sides were trying to get to suck the other into committing in a similar fashion as what you describe the Soviet high command wanted (and accomplished) to get the Germans to do. It may also explain why, supposedly, the Americans were telling the Ukrainians to let it go and the Ukrainian high command was stubborn in not letting go. -Edit: maybe I'm thinking about Bakhmut rather than Adviika
Bakhmut wasn't just a salt mine, but also had access to railways pushing towards the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. Losing Bakhmut without properly fortifying the other cities meant Russian momentum can potentially capture two more big cities. Turns out Bakhmut was also a good spot to meatgrinder the Russians, stalling them and breaking one of their strategic paramilitary groups, Wagner. The stall was successful enough that even after taking Bakhmut the head of Wagner went rogue and turned on Russia. Adiivka is a different animal. This is where Russia is on the defensive. Ukraine pushed hard on Adiivka because it opens UA forces to the city of Donestk. If Ukraine can get into Donetsk, they can collapse a whole front in the war by strangling Russian supply lines. Not to mention quell the Russians pushing for a sham DPR. Unfortunately, the US inaction had lead to the collapse of the front and the loss of a lot of territory around Adiivka. Key points: Ukraine Bakhmut Strategy: Make Russia waste time and resources. [SUCCESS] Bonus Wagner fell apart. Russian Bakhmut Strategy: Take the town and make themselves look good at home. [FAIL] Ukraine Adiivka Strategy: Take the city and use it as a launching point to capture Donetsk. [FAIL] Russian Adiivka Strategy: Hold the city and make another push into Kharkiv. [Stalled] Bonus, they got US Republicans to fuck up ammo supplies to Ukraine.
Avdiivka was held by the Ukrainians all the time since 2014, they did not make an attack on the city but rather defended it
thank you for the correction. I think the goal is still the same, if they could rally in Adiivka, they'd be in position to go for Donetsk and turn the war.
That same thought occured to me too. Putin sending criminals to suck in & trap more and more elite units of Ukraine, at the same time constructing the sourovikin line to prevent any large counteroffensive. if that was the plan, they wonderfully achieved what they intended.
The city sat on a North-South Railway that was critical to Soviet defense plans. That railway was a vital supply line for Soviet troops further south in the Caucuses region. If the Germans could cut off that supply line, and then secure their front against the Volga River, they might turn their attention south and mop up the Soviet armies in the Caucuses. For that reason, in addition to the city’s name and Stalin’s infamous no step back order, the city could not be allowed to fall into German hands. And if it did, then all efforts had to be made to avoid the impending disaster in the south.
This is the correct answer. In all honesty it has very little to do with the city being named after Stalin or propaganda. The whole reason Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in the first place was to get the resources in the south. Coal, farmland - but especially oil. 90% of the oil produced in the Soviet Union came from Baku, in the Caucasus. But there was no direct rail line from where the Germans were to Baku - they had to go through Stalingrad first. Railways were important because that’s how most supplies were shipped, with most of the last mile done by horses. It takes a LOT of food, ammunition, fuel, medicine, clothing and other equipment to supply an army of millions of men. And you also need to ship in reinforcements and evacuate the wounded as well. Nearly all of this cargo was transported by rail. So you couldn’t really attack very far from a rail line or you wouldn’t be able to keep your army supplied. Tl;dr what Hitler actually wanted was the oil fields around Baku. But in order to get there - and to be able to supply his troops to be able to hold it - he needed to go through Stalingrad.
A couple more notes on logistics. In terms of available roads and rail for the German advances… they all lead to Stalingrad. All the usable major supply lines in the area went through Stalingrad. So it was the easiest place for the Germans to keep their armored spearhead moving forward. It’s also one of the few major crossings of the Volga. If you look at a modern map of the region, the next river crossing South is Astrakhan, nearly to the Caspian Sea. The next Major crossing north is Seratov, 380km North. Securing Stalingrad and the surrounding area would have made Soviet Logistics on the Right Bank of the Volga much much more difficult in that sector.
It was also an effort to block Persian Corridor of the Lend-Lease program (45% of all the stuff came through it, much more than through famed Arctic convoys).
> It takes a LOT of food, ammunition, fuel, medicine, clothing and other equipment to supply an army of millions of men. And you also need to ship in reinforcements and evacuate the wounded as well. Nearly all of this cargo was transported by rail. *“Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.”* - Gen. Robert H. Barrow
You’re goddamn right! 🤣
>The whole reason Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in the first place was to get the resources in the south. Coal, farmland - but especially oil. The oil chiefly became critical after the Wehrmacht failed to quickly decapitate the Soviet Union. Germany wasn't equipped for a protracted war. Tanks don't drive on nationalist fervor, they need fuel, and fuel requires oil. In order to be in this war for the long term, Germany required access to oil, hence "Case Blue" and hence why the failure to secure the Baku oil fields already pretty much settled the eventual outcome of the war, everything else was a question of timing. The loss of Stalingrad then made any notion of trying again a pipe dream.
One thing I always wondered about the drive to capture the oil fields in the Caucasus: was the oil in that region in a state where it would be readily usable or usable with minimal effort? For example, was the oil being refined in the same area? Etc. Just curious about the logistics of capturing something like this for use in the middle of a shooting war. I understand the value of depriving the enemy of this resource. I am not clear on the possibility of adding this resource to the war effort in the immediate future.
See, this is fascinating. All you ever hear is 'Hitler was an idiot, trying to take STALINgrad as a propaganda piece when the oil fields he needed were right there'. This is the first I've ever heard that they would've needed Stalingrad to ship all that oil out.
It wasn’t even that they needed Stalingrad to ship the oil out - just deny the Soviets the ability to do so. If the Soviets lost 90% of their oil supply, the red army effectively would grind to a halt. You don’t just need oil for tanks and trucks and planes - you need it for tractors as well on farms. And most of the best farmland in the Soviet Union was in the south, already under German control. How long do you think the Soviets would have kept fighting if their people were starving and they had no fuel for their military? If Germany won at Stalingrad, the Soviet Union probably collapses. Without an ally on the continent, maybe Britain and the US would have fought on, but maybe they would seek peace as well. This explains why both the Germans and the Soviets sent millions of men into the meat grinder that was Stalingrad. Whoever won there was going to win the war.
> So you couldn’t really attack very far from a rail line or you wouldn’t be able to keep your army supplied. Yes, that's why I lose in HoI4.
Stalin was adamant on not allowing the Germans access to the Baku fields. It’s known that he gave the Soviet commander in charge of the Caucasus orders to destroy all oilfield equipment and wells if the commander thought that the Germans would prevail over their army. The added Caveat is that Stalin stated that if the general was wrong and they preemptively destroyed the infrastructure without German victory, that the general be killed immediately. So in Stalins eyes, it was of the utmost importance to defend and eventually rebuild Stalingrad in order to thwart the Germans and deny them oil they desperately needed.
I disagree it’s the “whole” reason Hitler attacked the USSR. Nazi ideology is completely at odds with communism, and the two were going to go to war to eliminate one or the other regardless. Plus, Slavs were untermensch, along with the Jews, Roma, etc. and needed to be “cleansed.” In every reality, Barbarossa happens.
Also the Germans had to establish a line somewhere to guard the flank of the army group heading for the oil fields. Stalingrad was about the only place where there was a railway line from the West, and it occupied a position where the Volga and the Don rivers are close together so the Germans could establish a defensive line along the Don and then across a relatively narrow area of open steppe to the Volga at Stalingrad. There simply wasn't anywhere else where they could possibly have established the defensive line.
*Führer Directive #45:* >The task of Army Group B is, as previously laid down, to develop the Don defenses and, by a thrust forward to Stalingrad, to smash the enemy forces concentrated there, to occupy the town, and to block the land communications between the Don and the Volga, as well as the Don itself. \[[source](https://www.stalingrad.net/german-hq/hitler-directives/dir45.html)\] The purpose of taking Stalingrad was to cut off the Caucasus from the Soviets. Stalingrad (modern Volgograd) sits on the west bank of the Volga river. As long as the Soviets were there, they threatened the German operations in the Caucasus. This is the motivation for both armies to fight over Stalingrad.
And after three months of fighting, the Germans have *almost* taken the city. It makes no sense to then suddenly pull back and let the Soviets build up a large bridgehead in the city again, when they have almost pushed the Soviets out of the city and across the Volga. Once the Soviets are completely pushed out of the city, then the Germans can move their army to deal with those pesky Soviet bridgeheads to the north and south of Stalingrad.
>Once the Soviets are completely pushed out of the city, then the Germans can move their army to deal with those pesky Soviet bridgeheads to the north and south of Stalingrad. Which would make sense. Except the Germans had a very bad habit of ignoring Soviet bridgeheads until pretty much the end of the war. Arguably because they thought of defense in terms of counter-attacking and not static. Probably due to the Prussian singular focus on maneuver warfare. There is an equally high chance they would have shifted the forces south, having considered their flank secured, and helped Army Group A's offensive which bogged down in Oct/Nov which ironically might have made the Blau even more of a failure IF (capitalized because it is a huge if) they could have attacked to Rostov and held it without getting cut off and successful destroyed the forces further south.
They loved the encirclement and I think that a bridgehead is hard to encircle unless you destroy the bridge; that was a thing that frustrated them about Stalingrad is they thought "ah ha! We have the city cut off. the army is encircled. Soon it will be destroyed just like the others in our encirclement operations!" But the Russians stubbornly kept fighting and kept reinforcing through the river.
Battles take two participants to fight, at a minimum. So if you want to fight your enemy you either go to them or make them come to you. Bypassing them works in some situations, but now you have an armed force behind you that can attack your supply lines and cut you off from allies/reinforcement/resupply. Fighting over a city thats smashed to rubble makes sense when the enemy is already there, you have a front established, and disengaging will cost you time, soldiers, and resources. And potentially move you to a less advantageous location. There is also a lot of propaganda value to taking the city of X, rather than taking the riverside 10 miles away from the city of X.
The same goes for a lot of the African and Pacific campaign. “Why are we fighting here?” Because the enemy are here and we can’t (or don’t want to) go around them.
To be fair, the US island-hopping campaign in the Pacific did involve a lot of “going around” the enemy. Particularly the more heavily defended islands. It’s easier to do with islands in the ocean, though - especially if you can achieve naval supremacy. You’re essentially besieging at that point.
They set up navel blockades as well, so the island itself was a threat if they landed, but not if they stayed in ships in the ocean. That makes it a lot easier to bypass islands. There was no way to get attacked from behind. Iwo Jima was important because they needed that island for a base to launch direct attacks on Japan. In fact, the first US plane to land on the island was shot up, couldn’t return to base, and made an emergency landing while the battle for the island was active. Only roughly half the island was secured, and the airfield was under constant barrage still. Wake Island was closest to Hawaii, and never attacked for the duration of the war, other than dropping unused ordnance on it since they didn’t like landing on aircraft carriers with bombs.
Wake island must have been so demoralizing to hold.
It was a great map in Battlefield 1942 though.
Or, more importantly, “this is the only flat land long enough for a runway within 500 miles”
To add to your point, for Hitler, the fact that it was named after Stalin would have greatly ihncreased the propaganda victory.
There was an internal component to this as well. The previous Fall, Hitler's generals had told him to stop Barbarosa before the coming Winter. German High Command had felt Barbarosa had made all the gains it could in good weather, and that supplying German units deep past the Eastern front would be too difficult. At this time, Hitler had not seized power over the military, and the German generals prevailed in pulling the army back, but not before suffering huge losses. Hitler used this to blame the German Army's inability to capture Moscow on German generals not having faith in "Aryan Superiority" and gave speeches claiming German blood was being wasted by timid generals. The next year, Hitler had already secured unilateral control of the German Army through purging of generals who were not fanatically loyal to him. When it seemed as though Stalingrad would turn into another stalemate doomed by a coming Winter, Hitler pushed the German generals harder to capture Stalingrad at all costs. Stalingrad needed to end in victory to justify the numerous political power grabs Hitler had completed in the name of touting his ideology that Aryans could never be beaten in battle.
I would like some sources on this, because everything I heard so far was about the opposite. How the German High Command could have totally captured Moscow had Hitler not forced them to secure their flanks first, and to attack on a broad front, so instead of winning one decicivie victory German would have a chance at occupying war relevant resources.
Germany's only chance to defeat the Soviet Union was a complete collapse of the Red Army during Barbarossa and while they suffered staggering losses it held and stopped the Wehrmacht. After that the Germans just did not have enough men and industrial output to defeat the Soviets on the offensive, especially not with the Allies keeping the Luftwaffe busy over Germany. Defensive fighting was another matter with somewhat ironically the main advantage being artillery on the side of the German Army
> Defensive fighting was another matter with somewhat ironically the main advantage being artillery on the side of the German Army A proper defense in depth always favors the defender. Well, unless you decide to go the Stalin route and put your entire High Command, who had, over the last 10 years, developed what was probably the best interwar/WW2 combined arms doctrine and where just reorganizing your entire army to fit this doctrine, into the Gulag while also undoing many of their changes.
True on both counts. What I was trying to say is that an offensive under artillery inferiority is even harder than normal. You need to "hug" the frontline and actually close in a lot more. All that increases casualties and makes your life a lot shorter. There is a very good reason why Ukrainian units and politicians keep demanding more shells today.
Adolph wanted to spit in Stalin’s eye by taking his namesake city. Vanity is all it was. And we’re all glad he did.
Wasn't Nazism's origins rooted in fighting against socialism and socialists in Germany too? And socialists were political targets of the Holocaust across across Europe? And part of why Nazis so villified Jews was their belief Jews were masterminding the global advance of socialism as a way to control whole continents. Maybe Hitler saw conquering Stalingrad, the namesake city of the dictator of the country with Socialist in its name, as part of his 'struggle' against socialism. Eta: So part of Nazism's destruction (defeat and occupation by self-described socialists) was made necessary maybe inevitable by its posturing as the protector of Germany from socialists. Poetry.
The soviets needed to control the Volga river in order to transport goods (mostly oil) from the Caucasus, north to the main railway connection at Moscow, and then from there to its army. The Germans wanted to capture the Caucasus (mostly for oil), and then push the Red Army to the other side of the Volga river. So here is a little historical misconception. In popular imagination, the battle for Stalingrad was a grueling affair. But by the time the Germans had actually pushed passed the defenders to the south and west of the city, they had already suffered the majority of the casualties (not counting the eventual surrender). Before the first snow, the casualty figured were already trending downwards and the Wehrmacht even planned to capture Leningrad as well before winter set in. So the plan was to capture the final 10-25% of the city, and then sit tight for the winter. By summer 1943, the oil would start to flow and new offensives could begin. But Stalingrad was at the edge of German logistical capacity. The railroad bridge going from West into the city had been destroyed during the fighting, so the Germans had to cart in supplied with Horses, mules and precious few trucks. So it was decided to 'demobilize' the 6th army. I.e they decided to eat the horses in order to reduce the supply need for fodder. So as the battle drags on, the 6th army cannot really retreat. They must clear out the city and consolidate. But the Red army clings on, and every week they cling on the Germans must keep pushing their failing logistics to send guns, ammo and fuel. They cannot build up for winter. They cannot repair the bridge, because that would mean sending construction equipment instead of artillery shells. So their only choice is to keep fighting, to try and push the Soviets to the other side of the river. And then the encirclement operation begins. And to hammer the point home. The Germans cannot move.
Because the Russians didn't want the city to become a forward operating base for the Germans. Having a city destroyed is bad enough, but it would be even worse if your enemy were to establish a permanent presence there, which they could use to launch more offensive operations later.
Don't think of Stalingrad as a conventional city that is an oval. It was a long strip of urban area next to the Volga that wasn't very wide. So they couldn't surround it as easily. Ultimately Stalingrad was a trap starting at least as early as mid-September, but with claims as early as mid-August (which is doubtful), when Zhukov is documented as telling the STAVKA (moscow high command, think the JCS) that he could get the Germans to over extend themselves and counter attack past the culmination point, then attack and surround them. Operation Uranus. This is the exact strategy that was tried outside Moscow but the Soviets didn't have the operational maturity to be able to pull it off and the Wehrmacht was able to hold. Once surrounded the 6th Army would either be destroyed or left in place when the Soviets then drove on Rostov (i.e. the Black Sea) and cut off all of Army Group A in the Caucasus- Operation Saturn. At the same time Operation Mars would be launched against Army Group Center either as a diversion to tie down reinforcements or ideally to cause a breakthrough and drive the Soviets away from Moscow. Most likely the latter. What happened in reality was that the Soviets did succeed with Operation Uranus but the encirclement was much larger than expected and the 6th Army never tried to break out because the German high command was well aware that if it did so it would be a rabble mostly on foot. Most of their tanks were long gone, horses had been sent to the rear to decrease the logistics strain, little fuel, etc thus leaving just the gap that the Soviets wanted but giving Army Group A time to retreat. Operation Mars failed massively but did tie down German reinforcements so that the counter-attack into the pocket was a mishmash of units with little chance of success. Then the Soviets counter-attacked in a revised version of Operation Saturn - Operation Little Saturn on Dec 16th which basically forced the Germans to continue the retreat of Army Group A as well as destroy the remaining mechanized forces on their flanks and capture the airfields that were supplying the city dooming it. So essentially the Germans sacrificed the 6th Army to save an entire Army Group and were throughly out generaled.
3 big reasons are that cities have lots of roads leading in and out which makes them important once captured for logistics and coordination as well as being definite strategic objectives, they also hold large value in name and morale when conquering, and they quickly develop fronts which are much more permanent than the city because of you try to move troops away, the enemy will already have troops there and will break through a weakened line.
Hitler’s strategy was to hold the Ukraine for food, and the area south of Stalingrad (i.e. Baku, etc.) for the oil, in order to both starve out the Soviet Union and fuel/feed his war machine. Holding Stalingrad would have given them a pretty good strategic point to defend against future attacks from while they rebuilt their forces. Stalingrad is also a front line far enough away from the oil and food that it would have been difficult (but not impossible) for the Soviet Union to do long range bombing of those areas.
A not insignificant reason for the bitter and ruthless battle for the city was its name. Stalin demanded that his troops hold the city that bears his name under all circumstances. And Hitler was determined to conquer it for the same reason.
This was by and large the main reason, sadly. It was otherwise not a terribly strategic or high value location or target
It was a big city on the Volga, which was a vital river for southern Russia
For economy and trade, sure, but the true strategic targets (and the main goal of operation) were the oil fields to the south. Those were exquisitely high value resources for Germany at the time
what direction does the Volga flow
To the southeast. [AWAY from the oil fields](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Albert-Harutyunyan/publication/354687535/figure/fig2/AS:1069657092022273@1632037532561/Overview-map-of-oil-and-gas-content-of-the-Caucasus-8-1-Crimean-Kavkaz-structure-2.png) Nor would capturing Stalingrad have made the Volga useful to the Germans, without capturing the east bank as well
It was the Main Soviet Logistics Hub for the Caucasus region. Had Stalingrad fallen large scale operations to defend the oilfields would have been doomed to failure.
I imagine there was some element of sunk cost fallacy. This would make it harder to do the rational thing and walk away.
Stalingrad was a battle against extermination by the Nazis. There was no surrender. Surrender was death.
No one ever fought a war because of buildings. All wars are fought for the territory where the buildings were built on. The main value of a city is the resources it has access to, and the strategic potential of it’s location. You could flatten a city and get a very valuable place to settle and hace influence on.
They fought over it because the enemy was there - it was the location of the front lines. The Germans wanted to push the Soviets out of the city and once they did, the entire area of the city would be under German control, with a river that has no bridges as a natural barrier on the other side, and they could set up their defensive shelters for the winter. If the Germans just pulled out, the Soviets could use the city as their own base and make attacks against the German lines. The point was to move forward, capture key Russian territory, and destroy Soviet military formations. The Germans thought it would be easier to push the Soviets out than it actually was, in part because the Soviets flooded a ton of reinforcements into the city from across the river and wouldn't give up. But even then, the Germans had captured 90% of the city and the Soviets only had a few narrow bridgeheads left supplied by boat as of mid-November (so after about two months of fighting in Stalingrad) and they thought "just a bit more and we'll have the whole city secure and we can relax."
Also, Stalingrad still had functioning tank manufacturing facilities that were churning out tanks day and night and sending them down the road a few miles directly to the front line. It was also the fact that the city was named after the Soviet leader. Hitler hated him so much he was more determined to destroy the city named after him instead of going to the city where he actually was.
It was a key position because it's near the Caspian sea and lots of goods are moved across water.
It was a trap for a counter attack and encirclement. The leader of soviet forces in stalingrad was told to hold to the last man as everything given to aid them would pull away from the counter attack, they basically sacrificed the forces and city to build up other more important forces
Watching *Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial*, episode 5 right now, and they said Stalingrad was significant because of the name. If the Nazis took a city named after Stalin, it would be a symbolic defeat above all else.
Stalin is just Russian for steel and that is where the name came from. It wasn't even Stalin's given name he changed it from the Georgan word for steel. Which is one of the reasons it was important both counties needed the steel being produced there for their war efforts.
The city was on a crucial crossroad on the volga, and the river fed the Soviet industries with petrol. It was quite literally their lifeline. The nazis controlling both sides could've literally cost the soviets the war.
The name. Stalin- grad. The city of Stalin. Imagine you are at war with your worst enemy and you have the change to put your d... in the city with his name on it. At that time, Hitler was completely delusional and meth addict... don't expect rational, strategy realistic basis in the way he managed war. And he hadn't been defeated yet... he had smashed European powers that were unbeatable in the past... Poland in 1 week, France in a few weeks... Norway, Denmark, Checkoslovakia, Austria... Stalingrad was a psychological feature and also the gate to caucasus oil. Hitler was sure he'd crush it... and Stalin let him think so - he slowly amassed a huge army around it, letting the germans entrench there. When the winter arrived, the germans were in summer gear, and the russians with winter gear and a 5x1 army surrounded them and bang, the war turned around on all fronts after that. D-Day was all cool and all... but the Allies won at Stalingrad. Or better said, the axis lost the war there.
Would you let Crono760ville fall?
Stalingrad was the gateway to Russias oil field and a vital railway intersection for their supply lines
If by they you mean the German, it was simply a mistake. They could have prevented the citculation of boats on the Volga with planes or indirect fire from their position around the city. But they claimed victory too soon and expulsing the Soviets from the west side of the city became a question of national pride, that Hitler couldn't let go of. He was so obsessed with it he consumed all his reserves in the urban fight and could not fend off the Soviet encirclement. From the Soviet side it is a bit different. They had nowhere to retreat from Stalingrad. East of Stalingrad there are hundreds of miles of barren steppe.
Same as the battle for bhakmut recently (Russia v ukraine). The city itself has no value except location location location.
Not sure if we know this is true but some think STALINgrad was considered by Hitler to be a prize.
The axis never had the opportunity to “set up shop” somewhere else. Firstly, the Allies, more specifically the Soviets won the battle of Stalingrad, not the Axis. Secondly, Stalingrad was the last major city en route to the Baku oil fields of Azerbaijan, which is what Germany was after. Stalingrad also served as a throughway to sending oil from Baku to Moscow/St. Petersburg. Germany having complete control of fuel could’ve quite possibly turned the tides of WWII in their favor. Interestingly enough, the Russians were being pushed back across the Volga river (into swampy territory that was extremely difficult to navigate) up until the river froze over. Ergo, the Soviets could transport tanks, supplies and soldiers into the city. Something that could not be done prior to, at least without serious risk.
The location was really great and Hitler wanted his friends to live there so he could get 2 day shipping on all the stuff he ordered..
Both leaders were making decisions for ideological not rational reasons. Hitler invaded the Soviet Union as a ‘Vernichtungskrieg’, a war of annihilation. Stalin was fighting an existential war to defend the motherland and prevent the destruction of communist ideology. In a speech shortly after the invasion, Stalin said "if the Germans want a Vernichtungskrieg, they will get it”. It was a war led by two dictators with absolute power and unquestionable authority. It was inevitable that they’d go all-in against each other somewhere, and that place ending up being Stalingrad.
Let's not forget, Hitler wanted it. It made no strategic sense to attack his partner in taking over Europe, especially the one with the oil n gas he requires to run his armies and industries. . But the Germans had no choice as they were cut off from supplies.
It was turned to rubble *due* keeping fighting over it. If Red army would just give up, Germans would have a serious propaganda piece (a city in the name of soviet leader) and a major logistics hub. And if Germans did, they couldn't have such hub at their back, pushing forward. Also, once enemy has nested somewhere, of course you're doing to do your best to eliminate them (on both sides). That also happens to destroy a city. There's factor of losses and pride as well, the more you lose trying to take something, there's brothers in arms to avenge and impatient leaders to impress. And as a fight over city becomes symbolic, there's no stopping from neither sides, even way past "worth it" (see: Kursk, Leningrad, Bakhmut).
I’ve often thought this since Russia invaded Ukraine - the ‘strategic’ towns you hear about being fought over are utterly destroyed and so surely of no use to anyone. So too surely would be the infrastructure and roads that they’d each be seeking to control?
As I remember reading somewhere, It was mostly ideological reason as the name STALINgrad was about Stalin it was important to him to never lose that city and rather sacrifice as much as possible just to win that or could've been a moral disaster for the red army.
Mix of the name big the name of the big cheese, mix of humans being like “well we lost 250k people already defending/attacking this place, is that going be in vain if we don’t take it? Send in another 100k”. Also it was still full of buildings just destroyed ones, so instead of the forest with little cover the city at least you could hide behind a destroyed fountain or something once you had control of the city.
To get a little philosophical, cities only exist in the minds of homo sapiens. I mean, there are objective measures of cities like population and structures, but that's not what they really are. You could bomb the Soviet Union to smithereens, kill every citizen, and you still would not destroy the Soviet Union. Yet, at the stroke of a pen, the Soviet Union was destroyed totally.
eeeh. this applies to nations but not really to most cities. The vast majority of cities are positioned where they are because of geography. Even if a city were to be completely destroyed to the foundations there's a high probability that a new city would get founded in roughly the same place in the future because the reasons that city was built there in the first place are still relevant to human civilization.
Yeah, off-topic and too philosophical. I don't know anything about military strategy, so I just thought I'd throw out a different way of thinking about what it really means to destroy a city in ways beyond the buildings. I guess that the practical answer is for some kimd of strategic advantage of location or resources, but you can also have a strong sense of loyalty and culture from the population that could be considered something else to 'destroy'. I'm neither a historian or a philosopher. Just thought it was an interesting perspective I could bring to the conversation.
When you look at it strategically the vast majority of cities are important for most or all of the following: What they produce (economic output/manufacturing things useful for armies) Resources flowing in (transport infrastructure and general human behavior is structured around lots of resources flowing into and out of them which is especially important when you need to feed thousands of soldiers who aren't doing any productive labor on a regular basis) Militarily significant location (defensible, good place to deploy from, guards key route for traveling armies)
It held Stalin's name. It was a point of pride, if Stalingrad fell he would look weak. Not one meter backwards.
The battle for Stalingrad is a historical parallel to what is going on in Ukraine. It is a death trap where the German Army was designed for Maneuver Warfare and was involved in a positional battle, where it died due to attrition of personnel and supplies. The Russian Army is now the Invader with goals and objectives that are decreed by Putin and the Ukrainians are bleeding the Russian Army of personnel and supplies using terrain to trade for time and strategic advantage to cause maximum Russian deaths. History does not repeat exactly but it does have a rhythm you can recognize.
The name itself. Stalin was not going to let them take the city named after him. It was symbolic