[C19fan]

Imaging how history could have been different if this city had any other name besides Stalingrad. The city's name was given the Stalin moniker because Stalin ran the Red Army in that sector during the Russian Civil War. From what I read the life expectancy of a Red Army grunt in Stalingrad was 24 hours.

[OKSooner]

Recommended viewing: “Enemy At the Gates”, with James Woods. Not for the squeamish, though.

[Jack Hammer]

Even a superficial study of World War II beggars the imagination with the extent and depth of the suffering endured.

[fso301]

Had Paulus been less of a Nazi staff officer and more of a capable combat commander, Stalingrad would have been just another Soviet city captured by the Germans.

On the approach to Stalingrad, General Hoth of the 4th Army recognized the opportunity to trap two Soviet armies on the outskirts of Stalingrad if von Paulus' 6th Army would swing a pincer south to meet Hoths' 4th Army pincer headed north.

Rather than recognize the opportunity and aggressively pursue it, Von Paulus dithered about long enough to permit the two Soviet armies to withdraw intact into Stalingrad.

And the rest is history.

[Chode]

[Chickensoup]

No wonder that the Russians drink.

[ckilmer]

Good job Dan. If this is you posting—glad to see you’re at Freerepublic.

[ought-six]

I have been a history buff my entire life (and my degree is in History), with particular attention to the American West and WWII. I have read countless books and accounts on the Battle of Stalingrad. That was clearly “urban combat” at its most brutal. The Russians are an odd group, on many levels. But I don’t think there has ever before been a people who could have gone through the horrors of the Battle of Stalingrad and the Siege of Leningrad and not only survive, but win, and come out of it all far more powerful than when the fights started. The fights at Stalingrad and Leningrad define the adjective “horrific.”

[dfwgator]

[Billthedrill]

Unbelievably ugly. Vasily Chuikov won the war for us in the East.

Instead of declaring war on the U.S. right away Hitler might have held out for a Japanese attack in Siberia in 1942 as a quid pro quo. Had he done so the two armies Stalin shipped in from there that encircled the 6th Army in Operation Uranus might not have been available and the Germans might have withdrawn successfully. Lots of "might have beens" here.

I cannot understand how Hitler expected Army Group A to take the oil fields intact in the face of the existing Soviet scorched earth policy elsewhere. Naturally when they got there the place was in flames and it would have taken them a year of occupation to put them back into production. Instead, what happened...happened. For which we all may be grateful.