(9/12) Battlefield The Battle for Stalingrad Episode 9 (GDH)

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The battle of Stalingrad was the largest single battle in human history. It raged for 199 days. Numbers of casualties are difficult to compile due to the vast scope of the battle and the fact that the Soviet government did not allow estimates to be made, for fear the cost would be shown to be too high. In its initial phases, the Germans inflicted heavy casualties on Soviet formations; but the Soviet encirclement by punching through the German flank, mainly held by Romanian troops, effectively besieged the remainder of German Sixth Army, which had taken heavy casualties in street fighting prior to this. At different times the Germans had held up to 90% of the city, yet the Soviet soldiers and officers fought on fiercely. Some elements of the German Fourth Panzer Army also suffered casualties in operations around Stalingrad during the Soviet counter offensive.
Various scholars have estimated the Axis suffered 850,000 casualties of all types (wounded, killed, captured...etc) among all branches of the German armed forces and its allies, many of which were POWs who died in Soviet captivity between 1943 and 1955: 400,000 Germans, 200,000 Romanians, 130,000 Italians, and 120,000 Hungarians were killed, wounded or captured. Of all of the German POWs taken at Stalingrad, only 5,000 returned to Germany in 1955. All of the rest of the POWs died in Soviet captivity . The Germans were also harsh on Russian POWs. In addition, as many as 50,000 ex-Soviets HiWis were killed or captured by the Red Army. According to archival figures, the Red Army suffered a total of 1,129,619 total casualties; 478,741 men killed and captured and 650,878 wounded. These numbers, however, include a wide scope of operations. Also, more than 40,000 Soviet civilians died in Stalingrad and its suburbs during a single week of aerial bombing as the German Fourth Panzer and Sixth armies approached the city; the total number of civilians killed in the regions outside the city is unknown. In all, the battle resulted in an estimated total of 1.7 million to 2 million Axis and Soviet casualties.

For the heroism of the Soviet defenders of Stalingrad, the city was awarded the title Hero City in 1945. After the war, in the 1960s, a colossal monument of Mother Motherland was erected on Mamayev Kurgan, the hill overlooking the city. The statue forms part of a memorial complex which includes ruined walls deliberately left the way they were after the battle. The Grain Elevator, as well as Pavlov's House, the apartment building whose defenders eventually held out for two months until they were relieved, can still be visited. Even today, one may find bones and rusty metal splinters on Mamayev Kurgan, symbols of both the human suffering during the battle and the successful yet costly resistance against the German invasion.
On the other side, the German Army showed remarkable discipline after being surrounded. It was the first time that it had operated under adverse conditions on such a scale. Short of food and clothing, during the latter part of the siege, many German soldiers starved or froze to death. Yet, discipline and obedience to authority prevailed, until the very end, when resistance no longer served any useful purpose, Generalfeldmarschall Friedrich Paulus obeyed Hitler's orders, against many of Hitler's top generals' counsel and advice, such as Von Manstein, to not attempt to break out of the city before German ammunition, supplies, and food became totally exhausted. Hitler ordered Paulus to stay, and then promoted him to Field Marshal. Hitler, acting on Göring's advice, believed the German 6th Army could be supplied by air; the Luftwaffe had successfully accomplished an aerial resupply in January 1942, when a German garrison was surrounded in Demyansk for four months by the Red Army. However, Göring and Hitler failed to see the obvious differences, in terms of the difficulty of supplying a garrison as opposed to supplying the remnants of an embattled and encircled army. By the time Hitler made him a Field Marshal, even Paulus knew Stalingrad was lost and the air lift had failed. Hitler thought that Paulus would commit suicide, the traditional German General's method of surrender; promoting him was a consolatory gesture, and further impetus for Paulus to avoid being taken by the Soviets alive. Paulus would have been the highest ranking German commander to be captured, and that was not acceptable to Hitler. However, Paulus disobeyed Hitler, shortly after being promoted to Field Marshal, saying that as a Christian he could not, in good faith, kill himself. Hitler did not find this reasonable and openly lambasted Paulus for being the only Field Marshal in German history to surrender alive. (Excerpt from New World Encyclopedia)

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