Basically, those two Soviet armies were going to be sacrificed with the sole purpose of attracting operational German forces to the city and, once there, wearing them down in an urban combat for which they were neither trained nor accustomed and in which the Soviet soldiers, by "sticking" to them and disputing each building, they would deprive the Germans of their substantial superiority in firepower and maneuver. Meanwhile, the fighting in Kotluban and Yerzovka, north of Stalingrad, would serve to pin down Sixth Army's VIII Corps and XIV Panzer Corps, preventing them from reinforcing the fighting in the city.
Although the Germans repulsed repeated Soviet assaults on both locations, this fighting negatively affected the fate of Sixth Army. First, in addition to significantly delaying Paulus's initial drive toward Stalingrad, they disrupted his offensive plans by preventing XIV Panzer Corps from taking part in the assault on the industrial district as part of a pincer drive north of the city, which in turn thwarted the attempt to capture Stalingrad "on the progress". Second, though Pyrrhic, the repeated victories of XIV Panzer Corps and VIII Corps, combined with the later success of 4th Panzer Army in repulsing 64th Army attacks south of the city, plunged German commanders into in complacency, convinced that they could defeat Soviet attacks, counterattacks, and counteroffensives whenever and wherever.
Thus, by September 26, the battle for the city had degenerated into a messy, block-by-block, building-by-building feud, maddeningly slow, exhausting, and immensely expensive, between Paulus and Chuikov , into which German forces managed to break through, though only from the west and south. Stalin's decision to defend the city stripped the Germans of their traditional advantage in mobility, maneuver, and air and artillery support fire, and forced them to "gnaw through" Chuikov's defenses to break through in a battle that more reminiscent of the Somme or Verdun of 1916 than the Blitzkrieg of the previous three summers. Although it was Hitler who forced them to take this objective, Weichs and Paulus' decision to take Stalingrad by assault committed Sixth Army to a fight it could not win, not least because for the Stavka who controlled the city was secondary, as their primary goal was to mount a general counteroffensive to destroy Paulus's forces.
Chuikov's "meat grinder"
Regardless of the final result, the fighting at Stalingrad was just one more element of the strategy that Stalin and the Stavka they had pursued since late July 1942:stop, or at least slow down, the German drive enough to allow the Red Army to conduct a massive counteroffensive against Axis forces when they were overextended, something that the Soviet leadership considered inevitable. This strategy was unsuccessful between late July and September simply because, at decisive moments and despite frequent counterattacks by the Red Army, Army Group B was able to resume the momentum of Sixth Army's advance. Instead, in mid-September, Hitler's decision to storm Stalingrad took the initiative away from him, leaving it clearly in the hands of the enemy. From the perspective of Stalin and the Stavka , the cruel sacrifice in the streets and ruins of Stalingrad of Chuikov's 50,000 men, plus all the reinforcements that were necessary to keep his army operational, was a small price for victory, compared to the million men that would take carry out the planned counteroffensive by the Red Army.
From 26 September, every piece of this mosaic of operations played a critical role in that strategy, and Paulus's assault on Stalingrad brought Sixth Army into a deliberately pinning battle which sapped his strength and forced him to weaken his defenses in other key sectors, where he had to replace veteran German troops with untrained Romanian and Italian units.
Once locked in deadly fighting in the city, Sixth Army's strike groups suffered so many casualties that Paulus was forced to send a steady stream of fresh divisions into the “meat grinder” at the expense of Army Group B’s left wing. In turn, Paulus’s armored power – the main driving force that had propelled him to Stalingrad – waned dramatically, raising again the terrible specter of a catastrophic defeat by the time the Red Army learned to use effectively, if at all, its seemingly endless supply of tanks and crews.
In this context, Paulus used the 24th Panzer Division in a last vestige of maneuver to penetrate and capture the south of the city first, and the western half of the working-class neighborhoods of Krasnoobtyabrski and Barrikadi in the northern industrial district, then during the second half of September. Meanwhile, other forces surrounded the Soviets in the Orlovka salient and captured almost half of the Mamayev Kurgan, but attrition eventually nullified the maneuver and made it impossible for the 24th Panzer tanks to finish their task. As a result, Paulus reinforced the shock groups fighting in the industrial district with another 14th Panzer Division of the 4th Panzer Army. and, after taking Orlovka, with the 389th Infantry Division. This force, which was called the Jänecke Group, managed to progress south and capture most of the Barrikadi factory in late October before succumbing to exhaustion.
The struggle in the industrial district of Stalingrad gradually degenerated into increasingly episodic fighting:for workers' settlements and factories; then by blocks and parts of factories; through buildings, streets, workshops and ravines; and in the end, by mere plants or rooms in buildings or different points of the same ravine or hollow. With his army slowly but surely bleeding to death, Paulus had no choice but to halt his advance, uninterrupted through October and November, to gather forces fit enough to continue the fight. In this way, he managed to bring six relatively fresh divisions into the battle:the 389th and 94th Infantry Divisions, the 14th Panzer , the 100th Jäger , the 305th Infantry, and finally the 79th Infantry, all at the cost of weakening his own left wing and that of Army Group B. In November, with no more divisions available, he had to scrap some of them to take their engineer battalions.
For his part, according to his bridgehead in As the western bank of the Volga dwindled inexorably, Chuikov's 62nd Army was also suffering terrible attrition, but its goal was to defend stubbornly, counterattack whenever and wherever possible, and if necessary, die on the spot.> , all with the sole mission of inflicting as much damage as he could on Paulus's army. As a consequence, his army was reduced, first with the loss of the forces fighting in the south of Stalingrad, then of those defending the Mamayev Kurgan, the workers' settlements and Orlovka, and finally of many of those defending the own factories. To ensure that Chuikov's army fulfilled his mission, the Stavka and Yeriómenko supplied fresh meat to the mincer of Stalingrad:a successive amalgamation of divisions and brigades that, although impressive on paper, were formations already bled by previous combat and, generally, without adequate armament, but strong enough to maintain the machinery. Chuikov's wear gear running. What happened to Paulus in October and November followed the pattern of what happened in late July, August and September. At the most critical moments of its advance, the Sixth Army lacked the strength to decisively overpower, defeat, and destroy the Soviet forces without additional reinforcements, and by mid-November the Germans had exhausted their replacements.
Meanwhile, the Stavka he used this battle of attrition to reorganize and reposition his forces for more decisive offensive operations against Army Group B in the Stalingrad region. In accordance with Yeriomenko's suggestions, the new Don and Southwest fronts were formed along the course of the Don, to the northwest of the city, which, reinforced with fresh troops, were given the mission of preparing future offensives from the bridgeheads. of Serafimovich and Kletskaya. These fronts and the Soviet armies south of the city took advantage of the most decisive moments of the fight for the industrial district to increase the pressure on the Sixth Army with the resumption of counterattacks to the north and south.
Paulus's fighting in the southern half of the industrial district during the final week of October and the first half of November led to a terrible and desperate confrontation for both sides. No longer able to manoeuvre, Seydlitz's LI Corps, trying to dislodge the defenders of the Barrikadi and Red October factories like rats from their burrows. , engaged head-on, in a brutal infantry and engineer fight, the remnants of Chuikov's 62nd Army.
During this fight the defenders held out "as long as necessary", with the end result that the remnants, shattered to less than a full division, would have to defend a depleted bridgehead until the Red Army could mount its long-awaited autumn counteroffensive. As far as Paulus's Sixth Army and Army Group B were concerned, they must have suspected that the Red Army was "up to something," though they could never identify what. Adding to the confusion about Soviet intentions, and based on their own experiences, German field commanders firmly believed that they could deal with any eventuality. (For a detailed description of the German offensive on Stalingrad, see Desperta Ferro Contemporánea #2:Stalingrad (I). The Wehrmacht Assault ).
Plans for Operation Uranus
During the months leading up to October, Stalin, Zhukov, and Vasilevsky had insisted that their forces in the Stalingrad region defeat and destroy the German Sixth Army by surrounding it with shallow penetrations from the regions from Kotluban and Beketovka, to the northwest and south of the city respectively. Described as "the old solution", these short encirclements, with contingents of between three and five armies, failed miserably on four occasions and with very serious losses for the attackers. In early October, General Yeriómenko, commander of the Stalingrad Front , who was strongly opposed to conducting another predictable butchery, suggested, literally on the eve of the fifth attempt, a new solution to this old problem. Based on the weakness of the opposing Romanian forces, Yeriomenko's "new solution" recommended encircling all Axis forces at Stalingrad, first proposing a breakout operation against the Romanian forces defending the Don in the north-west of the region. city and in the lake region to the south and, later, a large-scale raid by the cavalry corps, in cooperation with mechanized forces, which would be found in Kalach on the Don, behind the Sixth Army. General Zhúkov, attached to Stalin in the Supreme High Command, accepted Yeriomenko's idea of a broader involvement and significantly reinforced the assigned contingents to materialize it, giving rise to what would be the plan of Operation Uranus> .
Thus, contrary to what previous interpretations affirm, which attribute to Zhukov the development of this operational concept during a meeting with Stalin on September 12, it was really Yeriómenko who anticipated, on October 6, the idea of this “new solution”. Once Zhukov accepted Yeriomenko's recommendation, the actual plans for Uranus and the subsidiary Operation Mars - an offensive against the German Ninth Army in the Rzhev-Vyazma salient west of Moscow - were developed between 12 and 31 March. October, with some final touches on November 18.
Yeriómenko's imaginative conception of operations, underpinned by Zhukov's strong support and reviews, gave Urano another distinguishing feature against previous failed offensives, namely its long elaboration process. The new idea, coupled with more careful planning and preparation, and better-trained Red Army contingents—particularly tank and mechanized corps—paved the way for later Soviet victories, though it is true that the to allow its forces to reach an unprecedented degree of weakness.
Yeriómenko's recommendation to hit Romanian defenses rather than the Germans was no less important to success and was based on his appreciation of the relative ease with which his forces had penetrated the Romanian defenses in the Lake District south of Stalingrad on 28-30 September. compared to the singular failure to break through the German defenses around the Beketovka region. It was also he who chose the Serafimovich sector for the northern arm of the pincer by virtue of the progress of the 63rd and 21st Armies against the Italian troops in late August 1942, since, with rare exceptions, the Red Army forces had never penetrated a well-organized German defense before November. Finally, although Yeriómenko envisioned the offensive at first as a large-scale cavalry raid with several supporting tank brigades, his idea offered an excellent framework for employing the reorganized tank corps and the newly formed mechanized corps whose commanders and troops, by October 1942, they were more effective at executing and sustaining deep operations, after several failed trials.
Therefore, while Yeriomenko deserves the credit for developing the concept of Operation Uranus, Zhukov has the credit for having appreciated and accepted the idea, acted decisively, and made it a reality. a large-scale counteroffensive with a high probability of success; meanwhile, in the organization and conduct of the offensive, recognition should naturally fall on Generals Vatutin, Yeriómenko and Rokossovski , commanders of the three fronts that carried out the operation. Two of them had to plan the action while their forces were still engaged in deadly combat with the Germans, but despite this, for the first time in the entire war the Stavka and the commanders of the fronts and the armies who were designing the counteroffensive had more than enough time to finish their work. Prior to the fall of 1942, Soviet planning of offensive operations was hurried in nature, literally "on the fly," or deficient through lack of direction from above. Instead, operations Uranus and Mars were different; after accepting the idea of operations between October 10 and 15, the Stavka and the NKO [N. from T.:Narodni Komissariat Oboroni , “People's Commissariat of Defense”] had about a month to form the new Southwestern Front, which would lead the operation, and the commanders of the three fronts and the ten armies designated to lead the counteroffensive had just one month to plan it. Furthermore, thanks to the sacrifice of the 62nd Army, the newly formed Southwestern Front and Don Front, as well as the remnants of the Stalingrad Front, were able to do their job without any German interference.
Uranus planning could not have been more thorough. Consultations between the Stavka and the fronts, who fell to the newly created position of representative of the Stavka , were extremely useful, and the same was true of the coordination between the fronts and their subordinate armies, or between the latter. All of this was, for the most part, the result of the availability of time and of the better training of the front, army and division commanders, whose commanders, to a much greater extent than the previous year, were able to do without the use of orders as a tool. of learning the conduct of modern warfare.
Given Stalin's keen interest in every aspect of the operation and its results, the Stavka , the NKO and the General Staff of the Red Army did their best to provide the necessary resources and guidelines for success. In particular, these organs spared no energy in forming new corps, divisions, brigades, regiments, and individual battalions and in displacing existing formations and units designated to create the South-Western Front. The same can be said of the personnel, weapons and other equipment needed to replace the 1.2 million men – including some 700,000 fallen or captured – who were lost in the Voronezh and Stalingrad axes of 28 from June to November 18; as well as the approximately 3 million casualties suffered on the rest of the German-Soviet front.
Despite their herculean effort, the High Command The Soviet Union could not control the peculiarities of the Soviet Union's underdeveloped communications network, general lack of trucks, and demanding weather conditions. During the build-up to Operation Uranus, logistics managers frequently experienced disruptions in troop movements or material shipments that confounded even the most competent planners. As a result, some of the forces and equipment designated to participate in the counteroffensive arrived late at their destination and some of the ammunition, fuel, and other supplies were delayed or did not arrive in sufficient quantities. Logistics and transportation problems were responsible, at least in part, for the delay in the start date of the counteroffensive, but given the development of the fighting in Stalingrad, this delay had little consequence.
Although not as alarmingly as in previous months, the sheer size, and sometimes haste, of offensive preparations made unit disposition and individual training difficult. of Red Army soldiers. Thus, some of the guards divisions did not turn out to be the elite they were supposed to be, and many of the replacements sent to fill out the divisions and brigades were inadequately trained.
The months of intense fighting in the Stalingrad region during the fall had weakened many divisions, especially in numbers of “bayonets” (riflemen and sappers). This was particularly true of the armies of the Don Front and the 62nd and 64th of the Stalingrad Front. The armies of the 1st Front and the 64th of the 2nd had been engaged, since the end of August, in incessant and costly counterattacks; and the 62nd Army was even more consumed by the even bloodier fighting for the city of Stalingrad. Thus, while the divisions of the Southwestern Front had an average of about 8,800 men each, those of the Don Front armies and the 62nd and 64th armies of the Stalingrad Front had between 4,000 and 5,000 men, and the divisions of the 65th armies of the Don Front and 51st and 57th armies of the Stalingrad Front, between 6,500 and 7,000 men. Despite the numerical weakness of the Red Army divisions, which would persist and in some cases become much more pronounced as the war progressed, the Stavka managed to gather an attack mass of more than a million men and 1,550 tanks to carry out the counteroffensive, divided into 390,000 men and 721 tanks on the Southwestern Front, 368,000 men and 575 tanks on the Stalingrad Front and 258,000 men and 254 tanks on the Don Front. Finally, to mislead the Germans about Soviet intentions, the Stavka he carefully concealed the preparations for the offensive and directed his forces in the Stalingrad region to continue executing offensive operations on the same axes as before. Coupled with the preparations for Operation Mars, the measures confused German intelligence as to when, where and with what forces the Red Army would finally strike.
Bibliography
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