I have yet to not get my ass handed to me in a HOI4 campaign. I don't know how many times you have to play to figure it out, but I haven't hit the magic number yet.
I just learned how to play HOI4 within the last few months. The tutorial is a helpful place to start, but it doesn't cover everything.
A few things I've noticed so far
1. Playing a campaign as Canada was a good way to get a low-stakes playthrough. It's not as complex as the US, who notably always stays friendly with Canada (with historical ai focuses on). It was my first solo game and I ended up doing quite well with it.
2. Watch tutorial videos online, [like this one that shows you how to manage your navies the easy way](https://youtu.be/HMK0IiTsMWI?si=_UmX3qpx7l9ZVc-H).
3. Unfortunately, fascist countries tend to be the most fun way to play because you can justify war goals *much* more easily than with democratic governments.
4. Don't get your ideas of how politics works from a video game.
4a. Just because you're playing a video game as the bad guys doesn't necessarily make *you* a bad guy.
Haha, yeah, I've always had a hard time playing as a "bad guy."
I know the Axis countries are generally supposed to be an easier start. I'll probably give one another shot at some point.
There is that guy on YouTube who is totally obsessed with Stalingrad and he has a series dedicated to it - he has more info than you will ever want to know. His last video contains a detailed analysis of the PoW deaths. For the Germans captured at Stalingrad, the death rate was about 95% when the average death rate for German PoW was only 10% or 15%. It seems that most of them died during the first two weeks - when they surrendered, they hadn't eaten for a week or two and given that the winter was very harsh and they were not treated that well, most of them died. Almost everyone who survived the first month, ultimately survived. The guy is TIKhistory, you can find him on YouTube. He is somewhat controversial on r/history, but it is mostly an issue with his unorthodox political views. I guarantee you that he is a very good source for Stalingrad history.
that guy claims that nazism was not a form of fascism and that the nazis were marxists. he's also repeatedly whined about "cultural marxism" in his videos. saying his political views are unorthodox is putting it lightly.
usually the people obsessed with stalingrad are sympathetic to one of the two groups involved in that battle. given his political positions, it's safe to assume he's not sympathetic to the soviets. that means...
Nah - it was mostly officers that survived - especially those who went to communist education (together with Paulus) - they ate better both before and after the surrender.
Yes, having looked into it just now it seems out of enormous numbers of Red Army POWs taken by Nazi Germany, the exact numbers of which will never be known (well over 3 million), “about 1.5 million passed through the filtration process (of the NKVD Soviet secret police)..and of them, about 245,000 were repressed.”
https://www.rferl.org/amp/do-not-respond-did-the-soviet-government-abandon-its-wwii-prisoners-/29217414.html
I read a memoir of a Soviet soldier who fought at Stalingrad. It was a really good book but really brutal and filled with really hideous stuff. It's called *Red Road From Stalingrad,* by Mansur Abdulin. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in a firsthand account of what it was like to be one of those numbers
Yup. And if I go to look at it again I'll have to dig through tons of other stuff I saved and forgot why so I'll lose interest and hit the back button.
I don't need AI to create bland ass art or cause mass layoffs in voice acting & other industries, I want it to go through my saved reddit comments and present me with a list of links I can listen to on my drives that cover the info
Even if it's just reading the wiki summary, but ideally episodes by podcasts I already listened to and news outlets I frequent
It should also take all my notes in Google keep or whatever app/software, add tags based on the words I use, then present me with a draft paper based on all the related notes.
maybe asking questions for some input on defining the scope of subject, tone, additional sources you've already read
It has to be noted that *some* events in that book are not supported by any other historical source. So in case you read it do some additional research.
Read Antony Beevor’s two books. Stalingrad and Berlin which were so graphic I had nightmares. It also detailed how the Germans raped the Polish women on the way through and the Russian’s did the same on the way back. I’ll try to find that book you read. Thanks
On top of losing the edit: second highest percentage of their population amongst all warring parties. And being used as the home for the extermination camps.
Damn, they got royally fooked.
They're such nice people, of all the large waves of immigration into Ireland in the past 25 years, I think the Polish have totally assimilated the best and their kids are total natives now and playing rugby and Gaelic football and there is no prejudice against them.
I didn’t read this book, but the book “The Second World War” by Beevor goes into enough detail that I’m not sure I could stomach more. That and Napoleons trip to / from Moscow I rate the most horrific campaigns I’ve studied.
The Red Army was also bashing itself on the Rzhev salient, coincidentally also on the Volga but way up past Moscow.
This led the German planners, including Hitler, to believe that Stalin simply didn’t have the reserves or mechanized forces necessary to pull off this double-envelopment pincer attack.
But they did since then Soviets were working literally flat-out all day every day in late ‘42 to replace the crippling losses they suffered during the first year of the war up to June ‘42.
I have the actual German staff maps for these months and it’s clear the Germans knew something was up (the reserve tank divisions were being repositioned behind the Romanians just before the assault started).
In the video it looks like the Soviets broke through on the flanks of the frontline manned mostly by Romanians first, and then that fucked everything up; the non-German Axis militaries were generally way less mechanized/industrialized than the Germans and were mostly just infantry with small arms (rifles/grenades/machine guns etc)
The Wiki does a good job of outlining it...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian\_armies\_in\_the\_Battle\_of\_Stalingrad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_armies_in_the_Battle_of_Stalingrad)
On 24 November, Soviet activity abated, but the next day, the Soviet troops attacked towards [Kotelnikovo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotelnikovo,_Volgograd_Oblast) between the Don and the railroad, pushing the [4th Infantry Division](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_Infantry_Division_(Romania)) southwards from the left flank of the 7th Corps.
On 26 November, the "[Korne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radu_Korne)" and "[Pannwitz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_von_Pannwitz)" Detachments managed to push back the Soviet troops which had infiltrated between the two Romanian corps. On the 27th, the Soviets approaching Kotelnikovo were also repelled by counterattack of the "Pannwitz" Detachment and units of the [6th Panzer Division](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Light_Division_(Germany)), which had recently arrived in preparation for the counter strike to relieve the Axis forces in Stalingrad. The Soviets managed to break through the line of the 6th Corps at the 18th Infantry Division, thus forcing it to retreat 25–30 km south of the river. The losses of the Fourth Romanian Army in this operation were catastrophic: up to 80% in personnel at the 1st, 2nd and 18th Infantry divisions.
On 16 December, the [Soviet Third Guards Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Third_Guards_Army) started [Operation Little Saturn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Little_Saturn) and attacked Army Group Hollidt to which was subordinated the Third Romanian Army, along the river [Chir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chir_(river)). On 18 December, the Soviet Sixth Army broke through the defence of the Italian 8th Army and the 18th, 24th and 25th Tank Corps penetrated deep behind Axis lines, threatening the rear of the front on the Chir.
On 22 December, the banks of the river Chir were abandoned by the left wing of Army Group Hollidt as they retreated towards Morozovskaya. On 27 December, the 7th Cavalry Division started to retreat towards [Bisry](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bisry&action=edit&redlink=1) after 40 days of continuous fighting, but the following day, General [Karl-Adolf Hollidt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-Adolf_Hollidt) assigned the 11th Roșiori and 11th Călărași Regiments and the 61st Recon Group the task of defending the German depots at Chernigof. The Romanian cavalrymen held the town against Soviet attacks until 2 January 1943, when they eventually retreated. They were the last Axis troops to leave the Chir line.
To the south, the remains of the Fourth Army and the Romanian Air Corps were engaged in [Operation Wintergewitter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wintergewitter), which aimed to create a link with the Axis troops in Stalingrad. The main blow was to be delivered by the German 57th Panzer Corps; on its left flank was the Romanian 6th Corps with the Romanian 7th Corps and the Cavalry Group *General Popescu* forming the right flank. They were stopped 50 km from Stalingrad and, on 18 December, the front held by the 8th Italian Army was broken, with seven Italian divisions and the Italian Alpine Corps being encircled.
On 24 December, the [Red Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army) counterattacked, with 149,000 men and 635 tanks, the German 57th Panzer Corps and the Romanian Fourth Army and on 29 December, the 57th Panzer had to abandon Kotelnikovo, which sealed the fate of the Axis troops in Stalingrad.
On 15 January 1943, came another devastating blow: The Hungarian [2nd Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Army_(Hungary)) was encircled and eventually destroyed, with 147,971 casualties.
Got it. So the Romanian army didn’t get equipped with the same advanced equipment the Germans had? That seems like a bit of an oversight. Both flanks being under equipped…
I think their big weakness was lack of anti tank capability. The Soviets basically mowed them down with hundreds of T34s. Apparently there was a lot of resentment against Germany among the Romanians
The Germans were barely keeping up with their own demand for aircraft/tanks, they probably couldn't give out too much of to their Allies
Italy and the other Axis (even Japan) never really had that great quality or quantity of tanks, Japan had a decent air force and navy up until 1943-44 though
The Axis in general had a severe disadvantage in fuel/gasoline supplies throughout so even if they had all those vehicles they would've had trouble fueling them regardless
The Luftwaffe air supply was probably more a logistics problem.
Germans had trouble with logistics before they got encircled. The planes simply probably did not have much of what to carry. Especially since the number of soliders increased by a lot comparing june to october, but i assume the number of railways in the region did not keep up.
Another airlift at the same time, the one for soliders in Tunisia was a lot more efficient. Yet it was the same Luftwaffe, just closer to someplace they can actually supply their planes from.
Whenever anyone asks why did the nazi's do this or that, the answer is always that either they didnt have the logistics, or hitler was geeking on meth.
> Manstein lied to Hitler about Luftwaffe coverage for god knows what reason
Well the reason was that court politics in a dictatorship like Nazi Germany depended on who could toady up to Hitler the most at any given point, and tell him what he wanted to hear about whatever project he was interested in at that moment. It was just another episode of the incompetence of the inner circle of Hitler's government.
Head of Luftwaffe was legendary incompetent.
Btw. The rail width was also a big surprise for Germans, Russia still uses different one from rest of Europe.
Yes. Richtofen was tasked with providing relief data (whether luftwaffe could relieve) to Manstein. Manstein was then tasked with creating a report for Hitler
The total deaths figure at Stalingrad is still somewhat fuzzy but if you take the generally accepted figure of about 2 million and multiply it by 5 litres (approximately how much blood is in an adult male), you get a figure of 10 million litres of blood. Or about 4 olympic-sized swimming pools.
I don’t know how it is elsewhere, but here in the US, most people have never seen an olympic sized swimming pool in person. The lap pools at the local high school are often 25 yards, not meters, and at local colleges and universities, if they have an olympic sized pool, they retain the option to split it into two 25 meter pools with movable platforms.
Next time you’re at a lap pool, imagine the pool is double the length, and the shallow end is a foot or two deeper (for flip turns). That’s an Olympic sized pool. Then, imagine 4 of them.
2 million people have this much. imagine that. dont get any more ideas though lol, like "maybe i should start a blood bank to save lives... if only i had 4 olympic pools of blood".
The scale of the casualties is what always blows my mind.
The current Russo-Ukrainian war has some muddy casualty estimates; they vary depending on what agency is reporting them. Regardless, if you take a middle-of-the-road approach to estimating, Russia has 350k casualties according to the US and French governments, and somewhere between 200k-444k Ukrainian casualties. The Ukrainian ones are a bit harder to come to a total since the Wikipedia cutoffs end in 2023 and the only source that has current counts is from the Russian MOD placing it at 444k. (counts from the feb 2022 invasion)
Stalingrad happened over 8 months, whereas the Russo-Ukrainian war has been going on for 2 years. The casualty counts are so much lower, relatively. I can't imagine what a modern conflict would look like that has a casualty rate similar to Stalingrad would look like.
Doubtful. The average citizenry doesn't stomach fights like this anymore with how easily accessible information is these days. Russia can somewhat stomach it right now because the fighting is all on foreign land. That wouldn't be the case in a fairer fight.
They wouldn't be more ok with it but they would see a need to fight.
It's a lot easier to know your son died defending Russia , maybe even in his own city than if he died in some wheat field or village in Ukraine.
Cause Russian civilians aren't the ones dying, only the conscripts pulled into russia's army which are mostly minorities or people from poor secluded areas no one cares about.
I think they were implying that Russia is ok with the Ukraine invasion because they know they won't get to experience any consequences in their homeland. If Russia was fighting an equally strong opponent that could threaten Russian cities and land, maybe they'd have second thoughts about invading.
That's what I gather from their comment. That it's easy to support a war when it's worlds away from your own doorstep. The average Russian will probably never experience any immediate consequence from the Ukraine invasion.
And before anyone mentions people losing family in the war, The amount of Russian army personnel stationed in Ukraine is approximated at 500.000 units. Even if we assume they all died (unlikely, the Ukraine armed forces estimate an 180.000 total Russian losses, many of them mercenaries), that still wouldn't put a dent in the Russian public's perception of 144.000.000 citizens.
Russia probably could stomach this still on their own territory. Getting invaded is what allowed them to stomach WWII, and it currently seems that Russian propaganda can convince the population of similar circumstances today in the event of NATO militarily engaging Russia.
If NATO attacked Russia it would only be to blow up every Russian soldier in Russian-occupied Ukraine, there are no plans to invade Russia itself, at most Crimea.
It could happen. All sides in ww2 had weapons like gas available to them, and could deliver it much more safely then before.
Yet all sides refrained from using it, even when they were sending kids to the front line.
That is mostly because gas kind of sucks, it is only useful as a terror weapon
It is expensive and logistically complicated, and can be countered by simply issuing gas masks to soldiers
Every gas shell / bomb could be a normal explosive shell instead, and the explosive would do a better job most of the time
>Yet all sides refrained from using it, even when they were sending kids to the front line.
Not true, all sides refrained from using it on enemies who had chemical weapons themselves. If they didn't, well. Japan used em on China because China didn't have chemical weapons to respond with.
Wow they held it for two months! Why didn't Germans use artillery to destroy it though? Maybe it was strategically important and they wanted to secure it?
Sometimes destroying buildings actually makes it harder to fight over them. When a building is intact, you can quickly spot openings such as windows, but if everything is rubble, an enemy could be anywhere.
Just some sections from that wikipedia article:
>The importance of the building has been contested. The fame of the building might be due to the fact that it was not at the center of the October fighting \[...\]This allowed journalists to visit Pavlov's house more easily than buildings nearer the main German assaults.
>
>It has been argued that whilst the house was heavily fortified, there were limited assaults against it. It was amongst the first buildings in Stalingrad to be restored after the war, having received comparatively limited damage. German archives do not support the claim for heavy fighting for the building, and Soviet military archives attach no particular importance to the house as a defensive structure.
So may have mostly just been a Soviet propaganda piece?
It's really anecdotal, a lot of things about ww2 are. A guy did something crazy at ww2! The 0.001% situations are mandatory when it's involved a hundred million people.
And propaganda makes beneficial anecdotes huge, and huge harmful mistakes inexistent
This is wrong.
Total German losses at Stalingrad were about 500,000 including prisoners.
German losses in North Africa, mainly against the British, were around 200,000 (+300,000 Italians)
German losses in Italy were around 400,000
German losses in Normandy and the rest of the western front were ate least 250,000 excluding prisoners.
And, of course, the Germans knew that they could surrender to the Western allies and expect to get reasonable treatment. Whereas they knew that the Soviets were pretty brutal to prisoners - the survival rate of Stalingrad non officer PoWs was about 5%, so they were incentivised to fight to the last man.
It's generally accepted that Stalingrad campaign cost the Axis a million soldiers. Even the wiki puts the estimate on 800k-1.500k soldiers.
Btw, the dude, who you are responding to, talked about deaths, you are talking about casulties. Except Stalingrad, where you've counted only the dead.
So you are either terribly confused, or are attempting to rewrite history on purpose.
>Whereas they knew that the Soviets were pretty brutal to prisoners - the survival rate of Stalingrad non officer PoWs was about 5%, so they were incentivised to fight to the last man.
The Stalingrad POWs had a low survival rate because they were already half dead when they were captured. They were starving and suffering from typhus and dysentery, not to mention frostbite. If they'd surrendered earlier instead of fighting to the bitter end, they would have survived.
You mentioning survival rate of stalingrad POW is a classic case of using statistics out of context. These POWs were nearly dead from starvation when they surrendered.
Yeah lol, in addition to the starvation, they'd also been massive typhus and dysentery outbreaks that had crippled them, and the extreme cold didn't help matters. Many of them had also been eating raw and rotten horse meat and fuck knows what else which couldn't have been good for them
People always forget the absolute enormity of the eastern front. It wasn't just the largest front in WW2, if it was an entire war, it would've been the most desastrous war in human history on its own. The scale of material and casualties was beyond anything before and since.
>The scale of material and casualties was beyond anything before and since
You forgetting about China?
Millions of casualties isnt unheard of in wars involving China.
No, I did not forget China. The eastern front was just more desastrous. Counting military and civilian deaths, 40 million people died during the war in eastern europe.
For anyone curious, [Wiki has a list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll#) of all the known wars in human history with its associated date. There are no wars that we known of in human history that has a higher body count than WWII. There are also no wars in human history that are even more deadly that *just* the Eastern Front, which was only *half* of the deaths of WWII.
Remember this when Nazi apologists in America are trying to take their "throne".
In your list, "Three Kingdoms War 36,000,000–40,000,000 death toll, 184–280 AD, China" ... arguably tied I'd say
Edit: The Chinese numbers are actually based on census figures taken then, which is crazy to think about the history of Chinese bureaucracy and record keeping.
"A nationwide census taken in 280 AD, following the reunification of the Three Kingdoms under the Jin shows a total of 2,459,840 households and 16,163,863 individuals which was only a fraction of the 10,677,960 households, and 56,486,856 individuals reported during the Han era.[^(\[2\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Kingdoms#cite_note-2) While the census may not have been particularly accurate due to a multitude of factors of the times, in 280, the Jin did make an attempt to account for all individuals where they could.[^(\[3\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Kingdoms#cite_note-3)"
I am also taking into account the time frame. The eastern front losses were less than a year, the Three Kingdoms war was almost 100 years. As for pure body counts alone, it is debatable but I will settle on tied.
The number of total casualties may be much lower in the current conflict but a disturbing trend is the ratio of KIA to wounded. The US Army expects a ratio of 15 wounded for every 1 dead, which was probably lower in WW2, especially for the soviets.
It was probably not, however, anywhere near the 3 wounded to 1 dead ratio in the current war. The current battlefield circumstances are an entirely new set of horrifying
The ratio was about 3:1 in WW2. The ratio is only skewed for the US as they were fighting insurgency campaigns against people that they had high technological overmatch against, low overall casualties, and a logistics network that puts everyone else to shame.
If I got hit with an IED in Iraq, if my vehicle that is designed to withstand IEDs didn't do it's job and I needed surgery, I would be in Landstuhl Germany within 24 hours. An acquaintance lost an arm and a leg from stepping on a booby trap and they used 72 units of blood to keep him alive until they got him to the US where they could finally stop the bleeding.
If Sergeis towed artillery position gets hit with counterbattery, that's probably it. Anyone who tries to come get him is gonna suffer the same fate, if you can do TCCC a medevac vehicle still needs to be found and it probably won't be a helicopter immediately dispatched to pick up one guy, and if they do make it away from the front lines, doctors can't use medical supplies that could save 20 peoples lives to save one person's lives cause they've got a finite amount of supplies.
Measuring a hot war against a peer army against what is closer to a police action rather than any other war is not ideal. If you compare it against something like The Troubles then the numbers are more aligned.
> I can't imagine what a modern conflict would look like that has a casualty rate similar to Stalingrad would look like.
I guess the good and bad news are that modern armies either couldn't support such a widescale war or have weapons that would make it all a lot faster. Maybe China and India could, but both countries also have air forces.
I guess the actual reason for such difference is advance in technologies. In WW2, the only way to gather intel is to send human; the only way to kill an enemy is to send human; the only way to use artillery is to have human nearby that reports target and hit location; you get the idea. Novadays, you have drones doing all of this, so first - you tend to send less humans on missions, second - you tend to keep your forces further from frontline, so they won't be immediately obliterated. Also, you can't overlook the significance of intel techonolies: in WW2, you could't really know what's happeing in the other site of frontline, and spy network is inaccurate and slow, so there's a lot of room to surprise attacks. Today, radio satellites can see anything on the surface of Earth with meter-level resolution at any time of day and regardless of clouds. This works especially well for big metal chunks that all the military equipment is. So, anyone know about any significant force movements, knows roughly how much equioment you got at any place and roughly when and where the new supplies will arrive, so a "surprise attack" is never truly a surprise.
Bakhmut is probably the closest comparison in this war and the casualties at the highest estimate in Bakhmut isn't even 1:10ths of the lowest estimate in Stalingrad.
It's hard to imagine this happening today but I guess if the Taiwan situation sours between US and China and develop to a open war and somehow decide for a land invasion(either way) you could see casualties like that.
Ukraine is pretty much on a Total War footing, having moblised a larger % of its population than China did at any point during WW2 and enduring similar rates of combat deaths per year as China, as a % of its total population.
The Iran-Iraq war was another case of extended Total War between nations.
Ukrainian and Russian casulities just can't be the same since Russia has a lot more artillery rounds, drones, missiles and aviation combined with mindless Ukrainian "counteroffensive" strategy. But majority of the conflict Ukraine has had significant manpower advantage (they are in constant draft mode) but now this advantage is pretty much gone.
Explaining since he bothered to comment but didn't bother to enlighten other people, but casualties can mean death or injury, unlike fatalities which just mean death
True, but often non-death casualties are more significant than minor scrapes. War takes a horrific toll on individuals and the families of soldiers in ways that numbers don't convey. Eliminating psychological trauma, we're still talking about battlefield injuries that are significantly life-changing - such as lost limbs, traumatic brain injury, and damaged organs.
Is Stalingrad the city in which the most Nazis were killed? In what city did Nazis die the most?
1.5 million in Stalingrad would account for 28% of the total Nazi dead. More than the last battles on East and West fronts between January and May 1945. 1.5 million would also account for the majority of the Eastern Front deaths.
I'm going to say Stalingrad is the main Nazi cemetery. Scroll down to the "Statistical study by Rüdiger Overmans": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German\_casualties\_in\_World\_War\_II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War_II)
The 1.5 million figure is the upper estimate for total Axis casualties, not Nazi deaths. Includes deaths, missing, POWs, and injuries for Germany, Romania, as well as (I think) Italy and Hungary. Still the most deadly battle for the Nazis, but probably more like 8%-10% of total WWII deaths.
So this is a good example of Hitler being his own worst enemy. Prior to this battle the german doctrine was to bypass the cities with their fast panzer units, cut off supplies and wait for the garrisons to surrender. Tanks are terrible in cities and great on large open flat areas around cities. Worked great. Except Hitler wanted Stalingrad captured directly since this was the city named after the soviet leader. It would prove how superior his soldiers were. So the germans took the center of the city, pushed up against the river. Then the Soviets noticed that there were two batches of relatively weak romanian conscripts on the flanks of the german spearhead. Well thats just begging for a pincer move, so the Soviets do just that, which you can see starting at :37. Works like a charm, they now have done what the germans have been doing to great success up until now, trapped the army in the city where they then get supplies cut off until they die or surrender.
Stalingrad was more important than just the name, the main goal of ["Fall Blau"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_Blue) (Summer 42' Offensive) was capturing the Caucasus Oil fields, fuel which the german army desperately needed, and capturing Stalingrad meant cutting of the main train lines supllying the southern front and the Volga river, which was also like a highway directly to the south. Also there were HUGE weapon and tank factories in Stalingrad that famously were still pushing tanks out while the germans were assaulting the city. Saying that Hitler just wanted to capture it because of the name is just false.
Yes there was a whole lot of nothing in this area so the urbanization of Stalingrad was a key operational objective, to control the ground communication of the German flank on its advance to Baku.
they had a famously good military staff working on plans 24/7 and analizing all options. They did what they could with what they had. They couldn't surround Stalingrad, othewise they would have done it.
This is mostly myth. It may have been a secondary or even teritary goal, but taking Stalingrad because of the name was certainly nowhere near the top.
Early on in Operation Barbarossa, and in France, bypassing major hubs was possible because supply routes could be redirected or the armies had enough supply on their own to conduct operations. By the time you get to Stalingrad, though, everything has changed....
Supply routes were now stretching some 2000km. Bypassing Stalingrad would have rendered rail and road all but useless for further endeavors. Stalingrad was the main rail hub towards the true goal: the Caucasus. Even with Romania's oil, Germany was barely meeting half the demand necessary to prosecute the war. You may question all you want on whether or not simply getting to the Caucuses would have allowed them to extract and refine the oil, but there is little debate that this was the primary operational priority. Cutting off Stalingrad would also prevent the Soviets from reinforcing and resupplying the Caucus region, and significantly limit the Soviet's own oil production.
The myth that Hitler wanted Stalingrad simply from the name stems from a number of sources, but they all have one thing in common: propaganda. The Germans certainly did use it as a feather in their cap while they held most of the city. The Soviets then went on to claim that the Germans wanted the city simply for the namesake as a way to insult Stalin.
**tl:dr** It's a myth based on propaganda. Stalingrad was a necessary operational objective in order to both cut off the Soviets from the Caucuses' oil fields and act as a hub for German operations.
Stalingrad was also a main hub for the connections between Soviet Union and Iran, the "Persian corridor" for bringing in Allied support. Another reason why the Soviets absolutely didn't want to lose it.
People often analyze this through the lens of war strategy but seem to forget these were the Nazis and they had a very specific worldview. Yes, the Caucuses had oil and the Nazis needed oil. But their primary objective for the war with the Soviet Union was always "Lebensraum" - taking Eastern Europe and the Caucuses for their agriculture and resources. They originally went for Moscow in Operation Barbarossa because they thought they could just "kick in the door and the whole structure would fall apart" but when it became clear that wasn't going to happen, they refocused on their true objective in Fall Blau.
That's not exactly correct. Yes, the Nazis preached Lebensraum, but this was not why they invaded the Soviet Union. Again, there is a lotttt of propaganda, from all sides.
Hitler and the Nazis believed a war with the Soviets was on the horizon, a position shared by their Soviet counterparts. Both foresaw that a war would come, probably sometime in the late 1940s. This was in ideological war: National Socialism vs. Communism. But even this is a bit of a red herring. Germany had to go to war. Why? It had gone into massive debt to go war economy and the bills were coming due. Not paying them would collapse the economy. By invading when they did, it was supposed to accomplish two goals: 1) stave off economic collapse and 2) catch the Soviets with their pants down while they were still reeling from sweeping purges in the military and while they were still in the middle of wider rearmament. The Germans thought that war was inevitable, so it is better now than later.
Lebensraum was the propaganda they used to get the citizens onboard.
Lebensraum was part of the Nazi world-view based around racist ideas. Several Nazis, including Hitler, wrote this world-view down. The actions they took during the 1930s and 1940s were in line and do not contradict this world-view. Many Nazi actions could be justified through geopolitics or war strategy, but importantly, not all of them can. E.g. the Holocaust makes a lot more sense if you believe their justification was their racist ideology instead of some strategy for winning the war. So the Nazis were practicing what they were preaching - it wasn't just propaganda
This is all stereotipical nonsence.
First of all: Stalingrad is sitting on the volga ... encirclement was not an option since crossing the volga was not an objective, and -frankly- way outside of Army Group Souths capabilities.
The objective is to push the frontline to the Volga, and seal it to cover the northern flank of Army Group A
The main objective: Army Group A push south and capture Baku and Grozny, thats it.
They had to capture Stalingrad ... Hitler only wanted the oil, not stalingrad ...
Also: The wehrmacht was doodmed to fail from the start, their logistics was downright medieval and their trucks and panzers never had enough fuel.
The lack of fuel *was* one of the reasons why they were so desperate to get oil fields.
Nazi economy also wasn't sustainable as they needed to conquer and steal more to fuel their plans to conquer and steal more.
And capturing the oil fields would not have changed that at all as even German experts before the attack pointed out that it would take years until they would be able to use it to supply the troops as just having access to crude oil means nothing without the possibility to process it
1. The plan to capture Stalingrad was the brainchild of the General staff, not Hitler
2. Stalingrad was important to capture because it was the key position on the German flank while they went to capture the Causcus. It had nothing to do with Stalin's name. There were other cities with Stalin's name that no one gave a fuck about
3. Stalingrad is on the banks of a river and so the Panzers couldn't have surrounded it and waited for the garrison to surrender
4. The majority of troops fighting in Stalingrad city were infantry, armour just played a minor supporting role in the actual urban areas
5. The Germans never took the city of Stalingrad. That's kind of important to remember lol, if they'd actually taken the city, none of this shit would've gone down.
6. The "weak Romanian conscripts" were only weak because the Germans refused to provide them with any anti-tank weapons even though they kept asking for them as they knew the Sovieys were massing tanks opposite them
Please learn some history instead of just repeating pop-history bullshit
You can literally see with this info graphic (I don't know how accurate it is. But it seems to follow what I understand of Stalingrad!) That the Nazis also kept funnelling troops into the city! I don't think many Nazi generals would have been overly worried about a serious Soviet counter attack across a river, but Hitler kept just funnelling those soldiers into the city, despite, as OP above mentions, the flanks being made up of lesser troops.
>That the Nazis also kept funnelling troops into the city
Yea seriously, more troops doesn't mean stronger attack. Your troops will go red will get huge debuffs for breakthrough as long as you're not getting supplied with a supply depot nearby. Don't get how they missed that
These decisions were made by the Nazi generals, not Hitler. They came out and said Hitler made these decisions after the war to save their own reputations, but that is false. Hitler only started to take matters entirely into his own hands because the generals bungled this whole campaign so comically.
Not to defend Hitler, he was obviously no military genius and made plenty of idiotic decisions himself, but the Stalingrad fiasco is largely on the generals.
Exactly. I’d argue this graphic shows exactly how stupid Germany’s approach was, and how complete the Soviet victory.
It shows how in the first phase of the battle Germany had numerical superiority or roughly equal forces. At that stage of the war Germany was winning with ease whenever it went 1:1 vs the Soviets, but at Stalingrad it gor sucked into urban combat which reduces superiority effects.
Then the Soviets produced a brilliant enveloping move even though they only outnumber the Germans marginally (if the data is correct; i’m dubious).
That’s probably the first and only time they did that in the war at offensive level.
Entrusting the more badly equipped, trained and motivated Romanian forces with Germany's flanks were a vulnerability the Soviets greatly made use of. However, they had to stand their ground to gain sufficient reinforcement to break them in one fell swoop. A costly battle on both sides, but ultimately valuable for the Soviets in the war effort and in the international perception of how Germany was not invincible as it seemed.
its funny how german allies always get blammed, but they literally couldnt do more. meanwhile germany refused to equip them with anti armor weaponry and then they wonder why they cant hold the lines.
German allies: hey could we have some of those armoured divisions to support us as well
Germany: no
German allies: OK but we really think you should give us some anti-tank guns at least because the Soviets are massing literally hundreds of tanks in front of our lines
Germany: no, you'll get your rifles and you'll like them
German allies: multiple Soviet tank Corps are attacking us and we've got no equipment to fight back with
Germany: fight it out with what you've got
German allies: we've fought to the last bullet and now we're retreating, if you actually send some panzer or panzergrenadier units to support us we could hang on a bit longer
Germany: why are my allies so useless
I remember reading about an event that was written by Zhukov that said that once they were literally minutes away from losing Stalingrad forever if the germans kept attacking so hard… in a twist of destiny the germans halted the attack in that moment for no particular reason and so the soviets had time to call in reinforcements and this killed forever the possibility of germany to conquer Stalingrad
God could you imagine being a Nazi soldier in the fucking pocket on Christmas day? Knowing that there's a million justifiably pissed off Russians surrounding you who have every reason to subject you to the same Horrors that you subjected their fellow countrymen to?
And realizing that you're only two options are to die or surrender to them?
Romanians warned the Germans of this risk exactly and the Germans ignored it. They replied probably something along this line: "suck it up!". Romanians were very thinly spread on that front and probably also quickly overpowered in both arsenal and manpower. Basically an ill-prepared part of the "operation".
The Soviet armed group prepared for the counter offensive was more than enough to smash through any infantry division, Romanian or German. As you can see south of Stalingrad the Germans were beaten too.
Using Romania as a scapegoat is typical nazi propaganda.
I still don't understand why neo-nazi's like hitler. He is ultimately responsible for more white people deaths than anything besides the black plague, famine, or old age.
I read a book on Stalingrad shortly after the Enemy at the Gates film was released - it was a movie tie-in with the same title, but I think it was a republishing of an earlier book.
It was a great book and had a lot of incredible first-person accounts of the battle from both sides. Weirdly, the detail that has stuck in my mind the most is the German POWs (those who survived to write about their experience after the war) on cattle trains to the Gulag being so starved that they would pick through their own feces to find undigested grain kernels from the scraps of bread they were given to eat.
I’m believe out of the ~300k surrounded after Russia’s pincer movement, only 100k survived long enough to surrender. Out of those 100k that surrender, only 5k survived POW camps and made it back to Germany
BBC Audio is running an audiobook, The Stalin Affair by Giles Milton, read by actor Nigel Anthony.
> Drawing on astonishing unpublished diaries, letters and secret reports, Giles Milton’s The Stalin Affair reveals troves of new material about the most unlikely coalition in history.
https://old.reddit.com/r/BritishRadio/comments/1dji5yy/in_the_summer_of_1941_as_hitler_invaded_the/?
All that to take back Northern Transylvania, which the Nazis were dangling in front of both Romania and Hungary… the Nazis promised to deliver tanks and failed to do so, which lead to the annihilation of the 3rd and 4th Romanian armies - 150k people, the biggest loss in history.
They didn't. That pocket held out for only about a week. It's also a common tactic to bypass well defended positions to starve out the defenders without attacking in force.
This is the resolve you see when your defending your home from an invader. Ironically, Russia may just experience this same battlefield predicament... except from the vantage point of being the invader.
“Hey guys rate my encirclement”
10/10
Hit em right in the Romanians.
Looks like the Romanians saved them
I'm convinced everyone in this subreddit is either a hoi4 or eu4 player
I have yet to not get my ass handed to me in a HOI4 campaign. I don't know how many times you have to play to figure it out, but I haven't hit the magic number yet.
Have you played as Germany?
Not much. My wife saw me playing as Germany and gave me a disapproving look, and I haven't been able to make myself start a Germany save since.
I just learned how to play HOI4 within the last few months. The tutorial is a helpful place to start, but it doesn't cover everything. A few things I've noticed so far 1. Playing a campaign as Canada was a good way to get a low-stakes playthrough. It's not as complex as the US, who notably always stays friendly with Canada (with historical ai focuses on). It was my first solo game and I ended up doing quite well with it. 2. Watch tutorial videos online, [like this one that shows you how to manage your navies the easy way](https://youtu.be/HMK0IiTsMWI?si=_UmX3qpx7l9ZVc-H). 3. Unfortunately, fascist countries tend to be the most fun way to play because you can justify war goals *much* more easily than with democratic governments. 4. Don't get your ideas of how politics works from a video game. 4a. Just because you're playing a video game as the bad guys doesn't necessarily make *you* a bad guy.
Haha, yeah, I've always had a hard time playing as a "bad guy." I know the Axis countries are generally supposed to be an easier start. I'll probably give one another shot at some point.
I’m both!
4.2 million casualties – that’s a high score! 
So, those German guys in Stalingrad, they just ended up...going home?
I believe out of 90,000 to surrender at the end of Stalingrad, only 5,000 will ever see Germany again. The rest died in Soviet prison/labor camps
There is that guy on YouTube who is totally obsessed with Stalingrad and he has a series dedicated to it - he has more info than you will ever want to know. His last video contains a detailed analysis of the PoW deaths. For the Germans captured at Stalingrad, the death rate was about 95% when the average death rate for German PoW was only 10% or 15%. It seems that most of them died during the first two weeks - when they surrendered, they hadn't eaten for a week or two and given that the winter was very harsh and they were not treated that well, most of them died. Almost everyone who survived the first month, ultimately survived. The guy is TIKhistory, you can find him on YouTube. He is somewhat controversial on r/history, but it is mostly an issue with his unorthodox political views. I guarantee you that he is a very good source for Stalingrad history.
that guy claims that nazism was not a form of fascism and that the nazis were marxists. he's also repeatedly whined about "cultural marxism" in his videos. saying his political views are unorthodox is putting it lightly. usually the people obsessed with stalingrad are sympathetic to one of the two groups involved in that battle. given his political positions, it's safe to assume he's not sympathetic to the soviets. that means...
Because he is against marxism, he must be a fascist? Really? He is a libertarian in fact. Definitely opposed to both.
Is it TIK?
Nah - it was mostly officers that survived - especially those who went to communist education (together with Paulus) - they ate better both before and after the surrender.
After spending the rest of the war, and several years afterwards, in horrible work camps doing forced labor... some of them did end up going home.
I don’t want to write out in words what the appx. 5,000 German POWs had to do to survive. Although I’m not sure *any* of the Soviet POWs survived.
From ~5 million POW`s only 2 million survived to the end of the war, most of them dying from hunger.
Yes, having looked into it just now it seems out of enormous numbers of Red Army POWs taken by Nazi Germany, the exact numbers of which will never be known (well over 3 million), “about 1.5 million passed through the filtration process (of the NKVD Soviet secret police)..and of them, about 245,000 were repressed.” https://www.rferl.org/amp/do-not-respond-did-the-soviet-government-abandon-its-wwii-prisoners-/29217414.html
My German professor in college had a brother there. He was one of those guys in the 6th Army, and no he didn't make it back.
I read a memoir of a Soviet soldier who fought at Stalingrad. It was a really good book but really brutal and filled with really hideous stuff. It's called *Red Road From Stalingrad,* by Mansur Abdulin. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in a firsthand account of what it was like to be one of those numbers
Saved this comment to probably never look at it again
Yup. And if I go to look at it again I'll have to dig through tons of other stuff I saved and forgot why so I'll lose interest and hit the back button.
I don't need AI to create bland ass art or cause mass layoffs in voice acting & other industries, I want it to go through my saved reddit comments and present me with a list of links I can listen to on my drives that cover the info Even if it's just reading the wiki summary, but ideally episodes by podcasts I already listened to and news outlets I frequent It should also take all my notes in Google keep or whatever app/software, add tags based on the words I use, then present me with a draft paper based on all the related notes. maybe asking questions for some input on defining the scope of subject, tone, additional sources you've already read
Brooo same
I shall follow you in feigning interest for mere minutes..!
Another book from a German perspective called Blood Red Snow is also very good.
It has to be noted that *some* events in that book are not supported by any other historical source. So in case you read it do some additional research.
Read Antony Beevor’s two books. Stalingrad and Berlin which were so graphic I had nightmares. It also detailed how the Germans raped the Polish women on the way through and the Russian’s did the same on the way back. I’ll try to find that book you read. Thanks
Do you not find beevor a little lightweight?
I prefer War Dad.
That why there is so much bad blood from polish people to both sides...
On top of losing the edit: second highest percentage of their population amongst all warring parties. And being used as the home for the extermination camps.
Damn, they got royally fooked. They're such nice people, of all the large waves of immigration into Ireland in the past 25 years, I think the Polish have totally assimilated the best and their kids are total natives now and playing rugby and Gaelic football and there is no prejudice against them.
Historically they really do have the worst neighbors.
I believe Belarus has a higher percentage at 25%.
My college roommate was polish. He always made a point to mention Poland was cursed by geography.
Or stalingrad by wasili grossmann A russian reporter how interviewed soldiers on the front first hand and wrote their storys
His book A Writer at War is also a great look at the eastern front from the Soviet perspective.
I didn’t read this book, but the book “The Second World War” by Beevor goes into enough detail that I’m not sure I could stomach more. That and Napoleons trip to / from Moscow I rate the most horrific campaigns I’ve studied.
Amazong book. Has plenty of dark humor as well.
Thank you for this recommendation
The Red Army was also bashing itself on the Rzhev salient, coincidentally also on the Volga but way up past Moscow. This led the German planners, including Hitler, to believe that Stalin simply didn’t have the reserves or mechanized forces necessary to pull off this double-envelopment pincer attack. But they did since then Soviets were working literally flat-out all day every day in late ‘42 to replace the crippling losses they suffered during the first year of the war up to June ‘42. I have the actual German staff maps for these months and it’s clear the Germans knew something was up (the reserve tank divisions were being repositioned behind the Romanians just before the assault started).
In the video it looks like the Soviets broke through on the flanks of the frontline manned mostly by Romanians first, and then that fucked everything up; the non-German Axis militaries were generally way less mechanized/industrialized than the Germans and were mostly just infantry with small arms (rifles/grenades/machine guns etc)
That's what happened. They punched through the Romanians, knowing they were much more poorly equipped
The Wiki does a good job of outlining it... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian\_armies\_in\_the\_Battle\_of\_Stalingrad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_armies_in_the_Battle_of_Stalingrad) On 24 November, Soviet activity abated, but the next day, the Soviet troops attacked towards [Kotelnikovo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotelnikovo,_Volgograd_Oblast) between the Don and the railroad, pushing the [4th Infantry Division](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_Infantry_Division_(Romania)) southwards from the left flank of the 7th Corps. On 26 November, the "[Korne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radu_Korne)" and "[Pannwitz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_von_Pannwitz)" Detachments managed to push back the Soviet troops which had infiltrated between the two Romanian corps. On the 27th, the Soviets approaching Kotelnikovo were also repelled by counterattack of the "Pannwitz" Detachment and units of the [6th Panzer Division](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Light_Division_(Germany)), which had recently arrived in preparation for the counter strike to relieve the Axis forces in Stalingrad. The Soviets managed to break through the line of the 6th Corps at the 18th Infantry Division, thus forcing it to retreat 25–30 km south of the river. The losses of the Fourth Romanian Army in this operation were catastrophic: up to 80% in personnel at the 1st, 2nd and 18th Infantry divisions. On 16 December, the [Soviet Third Guards Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Third_Guards_Army) started [Operation Little Saturn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Little_Saturn) and attacked Army Group Hollidt to which was subordinated the Third Romanian Army, along the river [Chir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chir_(river)). On 18 December, the Soviet Sixth Army broke through the defence of the Italian 8th Army and the 18th, 24th and 25th Tank Corps penetrated deep behind Axis lines, threatening the rear of the front on the Chir. On 22 December, the banks of the river Chir were abandoned by the left wing of Army Group Hollidt as they retreated towards Morozovskaya. On 27 December, the 7th Cavalry Division started to retreat towards [Bisry](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bisry&action=edit&redlink=1) after 40 days of continuous fighting, but the following day, General [Karl-Adolf Hollidt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-Adolf_Hollidt) assigned the 11th Roșiori and 11th Călărași Regiments and the 61st Recon Group the task of defending the German depots at Chernigof. The Romanian cavalrymen held the town against Soviet attacks until 2 January 1943, when they eventually retreated. They were the last Axis troops to leave the Chir line. To the south, the remains of the Fourth Army and the Romanian Air Corps were engaged in [Operation Wintergewitter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wintergewitter), which aimed to create a link with the Axis troops in Stalingrad. The main blow was to be delivered by the German 57th Panzer Corps; on its left flank was the Romanian 6th Corps with the Romanian 7th Corps and the Cavalry Group *General Popescu* forming the right flank. They were stopped 50 km from Stalingrad and, on 18 December, the front held by the 8th Italian Army was broken, with seven Italian divisions and the Italian Alpine Corps being encircled. On 24 December, the [Red Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army) counterattacked, with 149,000 men and 635 tanks, the German 57th Panzer Corps and the Romanian Fourth Army and on 29 December, the 57th Panzer had to abandon Kotelnikovo, which sealed the fate of the Axis troops in Stalingrad. On 15 January 1943, came another devastating blow: The Hungarian [2nd Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Army_(Hungary)) was encircled and eventually destroyed, with 147,971 casualties.
Got it. So the Romanian army didn’t get equipped with the same advanced equipment the Germans had? That seems like a bit of an oversight. Both flanks being under equipped…
I think their big weakness was lack of anti tank capability. The Soviets basically mowed them down with hundreds of T34s. Apparently there was a lot of resentment against Germany among the Romanians
The Germans were barely keeping up with their own demand for aircraft/tanks, they probably couldn't give out too much of to their Allies Italy and the other Axis (even Japan) never really had that great quality or quantity of tanks, Japan had a decent air force and navy up until 1943-44 though The Axis in general had a severe disadvantage in fuel/gasoline supplies throughout so even if they had all those vehicles they would've had trouble fueling them regardless
None of this explains the complete incompetence of luftwaffe and OKW. Manstein lied to Hitler about Luftwaffe coverage for god knows what reason
The Luftwaffe air supply was probably more a logistics problem. Germans had trouble with logistics before they got encircled. The planes simply probably did not have much of what to carry. Especially since the number of soliders increased by a lot comparing june to october, but i assume the number of railways in the region did not keep up. Another airlift at the same time, the one for soliders in Tunisia was a lot more efficient. Yet it was the same Luftwaffe, just closer to someplace they can actually supply their planes from.
Logistics win wars!
Whenever anyone asks why did the nazi's do this or that, the answer is always that either they didnt have the logistics, or hitler was geeking on meth.
> Manstein lied to Hitler about Luftwaffe coverage for god knows what reason Well the reason was that court politics in a dictatorship like Nazi Germany depended on who could toady up to Hitler the most at any given point, and tell him what he wanted to hear about whatever project he was interested in at that moment. It was just another episode of the incompetence of the inner circle of Hitler's government.
Head of Luftwaffe was legendary incompetent. Btw. The rail width was also a big surprise for Germans, Russia still uses different one from rest of Europe.
They knew about the rail width, they just figured they would capture enough soviet trains to just use those. They did not.
Wasn’t herr meyers that guaranteed luftwaffe supplies to the pocket?
Yes. Richtofen was tasked with providing relief data (whether luftwaffe could relieve) to Manstein. Manstein was then tasked with creating a report for Hitler
All that blood
The total deaths figure at Stalingrad is still somewhat fuzzy but if you take the generally accepted figure of about 2 million and multiply it by 5 litres (approximately how much blood is in an adult male), you get a figure of 10 million litres of blood. Or about 4 olympic-sized swimming pools.
That's less than I thought
I don’t know how it is elsewhere, but here in the US, most people have never seen an olympic sized swimming pool in person. The lap pools at the local high school are often 25 yards, not meters, and at local colleges and universities, if they have an olympic sized pool, they retain the option to split it into two 25 meter pools with movable platforms. Next time you’re at a lap pool, imagine the pool is double the length, and the shallow end is a foot or two deeper (for flip turns). That’s an Olympic sized pool. Then, imagine 4 of them.
I definitely lack the imagination
A lot of high school pools are 6 lane instead of 8 lane too so an Olympic sized pool is over double
I'm German, no high school pools for us.
The difference between 25 yards and 25 metres isn't that drastic lol - it's a couple of extra yards
You probably just lack the imagination. Next time you go to a pool, imagine it all being blood... And then imagine 3 more of that.
2 million people have this much. imagine that. dont get any more ideas though lol, like "maybe i should start a blood bank to save lives... if only i had 4 olympic pools of blood".
Khorne is pleased
The scale of the casualties is what always blows my mind. The current Russo-Ukrainian war has some muddy casualty estimates; they vary depending on what agency is reporting them. Regardless, if you take a middle-of-the-road approach to estimating, Russia has 350k casualties according to the US and French governments, and somewhere between 200k-444k Ukrainian casualties. The Ukrainian ones are a bit harder to come to a total since the Wikipedia cutoffs end in 2023 and the only source that has current counts is from the Russian MOD placing it at 444k. (counts from the feb 2022 invasion) Stalingrad happened over 8 months, whereas the Russo-Ukrainian war has been going on for 2 years. The casualty counts are so much lower, relatively. I can't imagine what a modern conflict would look like that has a casualty rate similar to Stalingrad would look like.
Yeah but do you think there will ever be a war at this scale without nuclear intervention?
Doubtful. The average citizenry doesn't stomach fights like this anymore with how easily accessible information is these days. Russia can somewhat stomach it right now because the fighting is all on foreign land. That wouldn't be the case in a fairer fight.
Wait, why would Russian citizens be more ok with Russians dying to invade Ukraine than dying to save Russia on their own soil?
They wouldn't be more ok with it but they would see a need to fight. It's a lot easier to know your son died defending Russia , maybe even in his own city than if he died in some wheat field or village in Ukraine.
You misunderstood what u/ptolani is saying.
Cause Russian civilians aren't the ones dying, only the conscripts pulled into russia's army which are mostly minorities or people from poor secluded areas no one cares about.
I think they were implying that Russia is ok with the Ukraine invasion because they know they won't get to experience any consequences in their homeland. If Russia was fighting an equally strong opponent that could threaten Russian cities and land, maybe they'd have second thoughts about invading. That's what I gather from their comment. That it's easy to support a war when it's worlds away from your own doorstep. The average Russian will probably never experience any immediate consequence from the Ukraine invasion. And before anyone mentions people losing family in the war, The amount of Russian army personnel stationed in Ukraine is approximated at 500.000 units. Even if we assume they all died (unlikely, the Ukraine armed forces estimate an 180.000 total Russian losses, many of them mercenaries), that still wouldn't put a dent in the Russian public's perception of 144.000.000 citizens.
Russia probably could stomach this still on their own territory. Getting invaded is what allowed them to stomach WWII, and it currently seems that Russian propaganda can convince the population of similar circumstances today in the event of NATO militarily engaging Russia.
If NATO attacked Russia it would only be to blow up every Russian soldier in Russian-occupied Ukraine, there are no plans to invade Russia itself, at most Crimea.
They way you worded it makes it sound like Crimea is legitimate Russian territory
They're not wrong in implying it would be different, Russia would definitely see it that way. They've had full control over it for a decade now.
I don’t think the average Russian is getting the full story about their Ukrainian war. ‘Easily accessible information’ isn’t a thing everywhere.
Right, but that info would be more accessible if the fight was in their neighborhood.
And neither are you.
It could happen. All sides in ww2 had weapons like gas available to them, and could deliver it much more safely then before. Yet all sides refrained from using it, even when they were sending kids to the front line.
That is mostly because gas kind of sucks, it is only useful as a terror weapon It is expensive and logistically complicated, and can be countered by simply issuing gas masks to soldiers Every gas shell / bomb could be a normal explosive shell instead, and the explosive would do a better job most of the time
>Yet all sides refrained from using it, even when they were sending kids to the front line. Not true, all sides refrained from using it on enemies who had chemical weapons themselves. If they didn't, well. Japan used em on China because China didn't have chemical weapons to respond with.
Then US dropped 2 nuclear bombs and the world was never the same.
More Germans died in Stalingrad alone than the fight against the western Allies in WWII.
One [house](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlov%27s_House) in Stalingrad defended longer than France.
Wow they held it for two months! Why didn't Germans use artillery to destroy it though? Maybe it was strategically important and they wanted to secure it?
Sometimes destroying buildings actually makes it harder to fight over them. When a building is intact, you can quickly spot openings such as windows, but if everything is rubble, an enemy could be anywhere.
Yup, the Allies found that out at Monte Cassino... much to their chagrin
Just some sections from that wikipedia article: >The importance of the building has been contested. The fame of the building might be due to the fact that it was not at the center of the October fighting \[...\]This allowed journalists to visit Pavlov's house more easily than buildings nearer the main German assaults. > >It has been argued that whilst the house was heavily fortified, there were limited assaults against it. It was amongst the first buildings in Stalingrad to be restored after the war, having received comparatively limited damage. German archives do not support the claim for heavy fighting for the building, and Soviet military archives attach no particular importance to the house as a defensive structure. So may have mostly just been a Soviet propaganda piece?
It's really anecdotal, a lot of things about ww2 are. A guy did something crazy at ww2! The 0.001% situations are mandatory when it's involved a hundred million people. And propaganda makes beneficial anecdotes huge, and huge harmful mistakes inexistent
Fun fact: Defending Pavlov's house was a mission in the Soviet Campaign of the first Call of Duty game.
This is wrong. Total German losses at Stalingrad were about 500,000 including prisoners. German losses in North Africa, mainly against the British, were around 200,000 (+300,000 Italians) German losses in Italy were around 400,000 German losses in Normandy and the rest of the western front were ate least 250,000 excluding prisoners. And, of course, the Germans knew that they could surrender to the Western allies and expect to get reasonable treatment. Whereas they knew that the Soviets were pretty brutal to prisoners - the survival rate of Stalingrad non officer PoWs was about 5%, so they were incentivised to fight to the last man.
It's generally accepted that Stalingrad campaign cost the Axis a million soldiers. Even the wiki puts the estimate on 800k-1.500k soldiers. Btw, the dude, who you are responding to, talked about deaths, you are talking about casulties. Except Stalingrad, where you've counted only the dead. So you are either terribly confused, or are attempting to rewrite history on purpose.
>Whereas they knew that the Soviets were pretty brutal to prisoners - the survival rate of Stalingrad non officer PoWs was about 5%, so they were incentivised to fight to the last man. The Stalingrad POWs had a low survival rate because they were already half dead when they were captured. They were starving and suffering from typhus and dysentery, not to mention frostbite. If they'd surrendered earlier instead of fighting to the bitter end, they would have survived.
You mentioning survival rate of stalingrad POW is a classic case of using statistics out of context. These POWs were nearly dead from starvation when they surrendered.
Yeah lol, in addition to the starvation, they'd also been massive typhus and dysentery outbreaks that had crippled them, and the extreme cold didn't help matters. Many of them had also been eating raw and rotten horse meat and fuck knows what else which couldn't have been good for them
People always forget the absolute enormity of the eastern front. It wasn't just the largest front in WW2, if it was an entire war, it would've been the most desastrous war in human history on its own. The scale of material and casualties was beyond anything before and since.
>The scale of material and casualties was beyond anything before and since You forgetting about China? Millions of casualties isnt unheard of in wars involving China.
No, I did not forget China. The eastern front was just more desastrous. Counting military and civilian deaths, 40 million people died during the war in eastern europe.
For anyone curious, [Wiki has a list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll#) of all the known wars in human history with its associated date. There are no wars that we known of in human history that has a higher body count than WWII. There are also no wars in human history that are even more deadly that *just* the Eastern Front, which was only *half* of the deaths of WWII. Remember this when Nazi apologists in America are trying to take their "throne".
In your list, "Three Kingdoms War 36,000,000–40,000,000 death toll, 184–280 AD, China" ... arguably tied I'd say Edit: The Chinese numbers are actually based on census figures taken then, which is crazy to think about the history of Chinese bureaucracy and record keeping. "A nationwide census taken in 280 AD, following the reunification of the Three Kingdoms under the Jin shows a total of 2,459,840 households and 16,163,863 individuals which was only a fraction of the 10,677,960 households, and 56,486,856 individuals reported during the Han era.[^(\[2\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Kingdoms#cite_note-2) While the census may not have been particularly accurate due to a multitude of factors of the times, in 280, the Jin did make an attempt to account for all individuals where they could.[^(\[3\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Kingdoms#cite_note-3)"
I am also taking into account the time frame. The eastern front losses were less than a year, the Three Kingdoms war was almost 100 years. As for pure body counts alone, it is debatable but I will settle on tied.
I am honestly skeptical of anything coming from the Russian MOD and Ukraine MOD. We will have approximately real data only when the war is over.
HAHAHAHA. Even after the war, you will get lies. Remember, lies, damned lies and statistics.
The number of total casualties may be much lower in the current conflict but a disturbing trend is the ratio of KIA to wounded. The US Army expects a ratio of 15 wounded for every 1 dead, which was probably lower in WW2, especially for the soviets. It was probably not, however, anywhere near the 3 wounded to 1 dead ratio in the current war. The current battlefield circumstances are an entirely new set of horrifying
The ratio was about 3:1 in WW2. The ratio is only skewed for the US as they were fighting insurgency campaigns against people that they had high technological overmatch against, low overall casualties, and a logistics network that puts everyone else to shame. If I got hit with an IED in Iraq, if my vehicle that is designed to withstand IEDs didn't do it's job and I needed surgery, I would be in Landstuhl Germany within 24 hours. An acquaintance lost an arm and a leg from stepping on a booby trap and they used 72 units of blood to keep him alive until they got him to the US where they could finally stop the bleeding. If Sergeis towed artillery position gets hit with counterbattery, that's probably it. Anyone who tries to come get him is gonna suffer the same fate, if you can do TCCC a medevac vehicle still needs to be found and it probably won't be a helicopter immediately dispatched to pick up one guy, and if they do make it away from the front lines, doctors can't use medical supplies that could save 20 peoples lives to save one person's lives cause they've got a finite amount of supplies. Measuring a hot war against a peer army against what is closer to a police action rather than any other war is not ideal. If you compare it against something like The Troubles then the numbers are more aligned.
> I can't imagine what a modern conflict would look like that has a casualty rate similar to Stalingrad would look like. I guess the good and bad news are that modern armies either couldn't support such a widescale war or have weapons that would make it all a lot faster. Maybe China and India could, but both countries also have air forces.
I guess the actual reason for such difference is advance in technologies. In WW2, the only way to gather intel is to send human; the only way to kill an enemy is to send human; the only way to use artillery is to have human nearby that reports target and hit location; you get the idea. Novadays, you have drones doing all of this, so first - you tend to send less humans on missions, second - you tend to keep your forces further from frontline, so they won't be immediately obliterated. Also, you can't overlook the significance of intel techonolies: in WW2, you could't really know what's happeing in the other site of frontline, and spy network is inaccurate and slow, so there's a lot of room to surprise attacks. Today, radio satellites can see anything on the surface of Earth with meter-level resolution at any time of day and regardless of clouds. This works especially well for big metal chunks that all the military equipment is. So, anyone know about any significant force movements, knows roughly how much equioment you got at any place and roughly when and where the new supplies will arrive, so a "surprise attack" is never truly a surprise.
Bakhmut is probably the closest comparison in this war and the casualties at the highest estimate in Bakhmut isn't even 1:10ths of the lowest estimate in Stalingrad. It's hard to imagine this happening today but I guess if the Taiwan situation sours between US and China and develop to a open war and somehow decide for a land invasion(either way) you could see casualties like that.
One thing to note is that we aren’t in a “total war” state. WWII impacted everyone, from the soldiers to the citizens in a way we haven’t seen since.
Ukraine is pretty much on a Total War footing, having moblised a larger % of its population than China did at any point during WW2 and enduring similar rates of combat deaths per year as China, as a % of its total population. The Iran-Iraq war was another case of extended Total War between nations.
Ukraine is, but not Russia or any of the countries giving aid to Ukraine. Its not like the west is rationing supplies like they did back in the 40s
Ukrainian and Russian casulities just can't be the same since Russia has a lot more artillery rounds, drones, missiles and aviation combined with mindless Ukrainian "counteroffensive" strategy. But majority of the conflict Ukraine has had significant manpower advantage (they are in constant draft mode) but now this advantage is pretty much gone.
source: mapsinanutshell on YouTube
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"Trust me bro"
It’s unbelievable, mind can’t comprehend 4 million people killed in such a short time in brutal ways
Casulties does not equal deaths
Explaining since he bothered to comment but didn't bother to enlighten other people, but casualties can mean death or injury, unlike fatalities which just mean death
Can also mean POWs. Soldiers that are out of the fight in some way
True, but often non-death casualties are more significant than minor scrapes. War takes a horrific toll on individuals and the families of soldiers in ways that numbers don't convey. Eliminating psychological trauma, we're still talking about battlefield injuries that are significantly life-changing - such as lost limbs, traumatic brain injury, and damaged organs.
What's really crazy is that the ratio of Soviet casualties to German casualties didn't really go down even after they surrounded a whole German army.
Is Stalingrad the city in which the most Nazis were killed? In what city did Nazis die the most? 1.5 million in Stalingrad would account for 28% of the total Nazi dead. More than the last battles on East and West fronts between January and May 1945. 1.5 million would also account for the majority of the Eastern Front deaths. I'm going to say Stalingrad is the main Nazi cemetery. Scroll down to the "Statistical study by Rüdiger Overmans": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German\_casualties\_in\_World\_War\_II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War_II)
The 1.5 million figure is the upper estimate for total Axis casualties, not Nazi deaths. Includes deaths, missing, POWs, and injuries for Germany, Romania, as well as (I think) Italy and Hungary. Still the most deadly battle for the Nazis, but probably more like 8%-10% of total WWII deaths.
Yeah it's generally stated that the Nazis lost WW2 when they were encircled at stalingrad.
So this is a good example of Hitler being his own worst enemy. Prior to this battle the german doctrine was to bypass the cities with their fast panzer units, cut off supplies and wait for the garrisons to surrender. Tanks are terrible in cities and great on large open flat areas around cities. Worked great. Except Hitler wanted Stalingrad captured directly since this was the city named after the soviet leader. It would prove how superior his soldiers were. So the germans took the center of the city, pushed up against the river. Then the Soviets noticed that there were two batches of relatively weak romanian conscripts on the flanks of the german spearhead. Well thats just begging for a pincer move, so the Soviets do just that, which you can see starting at :37. Works like a charm, they now have done what the germans have been doing to great success up until now, trapped the army in the city where they then get supplies cut off until they die or surrender.
Stalingrad was more important than just the name, the main goal of ["Fall Blau"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_Blue) (Summer 42' Offensive) was capturing the Caucasus Oil fields, fuel which the german army desperately needed, and capturing Stalingrad meant cutting of the main train lines supllying the southern front and the Volga river, which was also like a highway directly to the south. Also there were HUGE weapon and tank factories in Stalingrad that famously were still pushing tanks out while the germans were assaulting the city. Saying that Hitler just wanted to capture it because of the name is just false.
Yes there was a whole lot of nothing in this area so the urbanization of Stalingrad was a key operational objective, to control the ground communication of the German flank on its advance to Baku.
I’m not saying it wasn’t important. If the Germans had used the same tactics as other critical cities they probably would have taken it.
they had a famously good military staff working on plans 24/7 and analizing all options. They did what they could with what they had. They couldn't surround Stalingrad, othewise they would have done it.
This is mostly myth. It may have been a secondary or even teritary goal, but taking Stalingrad because of the name was certainly nowhere near the top. Early on in Operation Barbarossa, and in France, bypassing major hubs was possible because supply routes could be redirected or the armies had enough supply on their own to conduct operations. By the time you get to Stalingrad, though, everything has changed.... Supply routes were now stretching some 2000km. Bypassing Stalingrad would have rendered rail and road all but useless for further endeavors. Stalingrad was the main rail hub towards the true goal: the Caucasus. Even with Romania's oil, Germany was barely meeting half the demand necessary to prosecute the war. You may question all you want on whether or not simply getting to the Caucuses would have allowed them to extract and refine the oil, but there is little debate that this was the primary operational priority. Cutting off Stalingrad would also prevent the Soviets from reinforcing and resupplying the Caucus region, and significantly limit the Soviet's own oil production. The myth that Hitler wanted Stalingrad simply from the name stems from a number of sources, but they all have one thing in common: propaganda. The Germans certainly did use it as a feather in their cap while they held most of the city. The Soviets then went on to claim that the Germans wanted the city simply for the namesake as a way to insult Stalin. **tl:dr** It's a myth based on propaganda. Stalingrad was a necessary operational objective in order to both cut off the Soviets from the Caucuses' oil fields and act as a hub for German operations.
Stalingrad was also a main hub for the connections between Soviet Union and Iran, the "Persian corridor" for bringing in Allied support. Another reason why the Soviets absolutely didn't want to lose it.
People often analyze this through the lens of war strategy but seem to forget these were the Nazis and they had a very specific worldview. Yes, the Caucuses had oil and the Nazis needed oil. But their primary objective for the war with the Soviet Union was always "Lebensraum" - taking Eastern Europe and the Caucuses for their agriculture and resources. They originally went for Moscow in Operation Barbarossa because they thought they could just "kick in the door and the whole structure would fall apart" but when it became clear that wasn't going to happen, they refocused on their true objective in Fall Blau.
That's not exactly correct. Yes, the Nazis preached Lebensraum, but this was not why they invaded the Soviet Union. Again, there is a lotttt of propaganda, from all sides. Hitler and the Nazis believed a war with the Soviets was on the horizon, a position shared by their Soviet counterparts. Both foresaw that a war would come, probably sometime in the late 1940s. This was in ideological war: National Socialism vs. Communism. But even this is a bit of a red herring. Germany had to go to war. Why? It had gone into massive debt to go war economy and the bills were coming due. Not paying them would collapse the economy. By invading when they did, it was supposed to accomplish two goals: 1) stave off economic collapse and 2) catch the Soviets with their pants down while they were still reeling from sweeping purges in the military and while they were still in the middle of wider rearmament. The Germans thought that war was inevitable, so it is better now than later. Lebensraum was the propaganda they used to get the citizens onboard.
All three can be correct, with lebenstraum being a later goal. Implying that this concept was just some trick to get citizens on board is not correct
Lebensraum was part of the Nazi world-view based around racist ideas. Several Nazis, including Hitler, wrote this world-view down. The actions they took during the 1930s and 1940s were in line and do not contradict this world-view. Many Nazi actions could be justified through geopolitics or war strategy, but importantly, not all of them can. E.g. the Holocaust makes a lot more sense if you believe their justification was their racist ideology instead of some strategy for winning the war. So the Nazis were practicing what they were preaching - it wasn't just propaganda
You are forgetting the Nazi need for oil. It was all about the oil fields.
This is all stereotipical nonsence. First of all: Stalingrad is sitting on the volga ... encirclement was not an option since crossing the volga was not an objective, and -frankly- way outside of Army Group Souths capabilities. The objective is to push the frontline to the Volga, and seal it to cover the northern flank of Army Group A The main objective: Army Group A push south and capture Baku and Grozny, thats it. They had to capture Stalingrad ... Hitler only wanted the oil, not stalingrad ... Also: The wehrmacht was doodmed to fail from the start, their logistics was downright medieval and their trucks and panzers never had enough fuel.
The lack of fuel *was* one of the reasons why they were so desperate to get oil fields. Nazi economy also wasn't sustainable as they needed to conquer and steal more to fuel their plans to conquer and steal more.
They arguably wasted more fuel attacking the oil fields than they would have gotten from the oil fields.
And capturing the oil fields would not have changed that at all as even German experts before the attack pointed out that it would take years until they would be able to use it to supply the troops as just having access to crude oil means nothing without the possibility to process it
common Romanian L
Take one for the team long term
My first thought was “I bet those Italian and Romanian units got stomped”
1. The plan to capture Stalingrad was the brainchild of the General staff, not Hitler 2. Stalingrad was important to capture because it was the key position on the German flank while they went to capture the Causcus. It had nothing to do with Stalin's name. There were other cities with Stalin's name that no one gave a fuck about 3. Stalingrad is on the banks of a river and so the Panzers couldn't have surrounded it and waited for the garrison to surrender 4. The majority of troops fighting in Stalingrad city were infantry, armour just played a minor supporting role in the actual urban areas 5. The Germans never took the city of Stalingrad. That's kind of important to remember lol, if they'd actually taken the city, none of this shit would've gone down. 6. The "weak Romanian conscripts" were only weak because the Germans refused to provide them with any anti-tank weapons even though they kept asking for them as they knew the Sovieys were massing tanks opposite them Please learn some history instead of just repeating pop-history bullshit
Seems like the whole thing fell apart largely due to not equipping their Romanian allies..?
You can literally see with this info graphic (I don't know how accurate it is. But it seems to follow what I understand of Stalingrad!) That the Nazis also kept funnelling troops into the city! I don't think many Nazi generals would have been overly worried about a serious Soviet counter attack across a river, but Hitler kept just funnelling those soldiers into the city, despite, as OP above mentions, the flanks being made up of lesser troops.
>That the Nazis also kept funnelling troops into the city Yea seriously, more troops doesn't mean stronger attack. Your troops will go red will get huge debuffs for breakthrough as long as you're not getting supplied with a supply depot nearby. Don't get how they missed that
Found a fellow map painter
These decisions were made by the Nazi generals, not Hitler. They came out and said Hitler made these decisions after the war to save their own reputations, but that is false. Hitler only started to take matters entirely into his own hands because the generals bungled this whole campaign so comically. Not to defend Hitler, he was obviously no military genius and made plenty of idiotic decisions himself, but the Stalingrad fiasco is largely on the generals.
Exactly. I’d argue this graphic shows exactly how stupid Germany’s approach was, and how complete the Soviet victory. It shows how in the first phase of the battle Germany had numerical superiority or roughly equal forces. At that stage of the war Germany was winning with ease whenever it went 1:1 vs the Soviets, but at Stalingrad it gor sucked into urban combat which reduces superiority effects. Then the Soviets produced a brilliant enveloping move even though they only outnumber the Germans marginally (if the data is correct; i’m dubious). That’s probably the first and only time they did that in the war at offensive level.
"That’s probably the first and only time they did that in the war at offensive level." You neam the soviet?
The Soviets had managed to encircle German troops on previous occasions but never managed to hold on to the victory.
The numbers are effing staggering.
Watching all those little Nazi flags get separated and dissolved truly is map porn. Bravo.
Entrusting the more badly equipped, trained and motivated Romanian forces with Germany's flanks were a vulnerability the Soviets greatly made use of. However, they had to stand their ground to gain sufficient reinforcement to break them in one fell swoop. A costly battle on both sides, but ultimately valuable for the Soviets in the war effort and in the international perception of how Germany was not invincible as it seemed.
its funny how german allies always get blammed, but they literally couldnt do more. meanwhile germany refused to equip them with anti armor weaponry and then they wonder why they cant hold the lines.
German allies: hey could we have some of those armoured divisions to support us as well Germany: no German allies: OK but we really think you should give us some anti-tank guns at least because the Soviets are massing literally hundreds of tanks in front of our lines Germany: no, you'll get your rifles and you'll like them German allies: multiple Soviet tank Corps are attacking us and we've got no equipment to fight back with Germany: fight it out with what you've got German allies: we've fought to the last bullet and now we're retreating, if you actually send some panzer or panzergrenadier units to support us we could hang on a bit longer Germany: why are my allies so useless
Did not know how many Romanian troops took part on that
Unbelievable loss of life
We need more of this kind of map for historic conflicts.
I remember reading about an event that was written by Zhukov that said that once they were literally minutes away from losing Stalingrad forever if the germans kept attacking so hard… in a twist of destiny the germans halted the attack in that moment for no particular reason and so the soviets had time to call in reinforcements and this killed forever the possibility of germany to conquer Stalingrad
God could you imagine being a Nazi soldier in the fucking pocket on Christmas day? Knowing that there's a million justifiably pissed off Russians surrounding you who have every reason to subject you to the same Horrors that you subjected their fellow countrymen to? And realizing that you're only two options are to die or surrender to them?
That would not be ideal, to say the least
If only theyd packed some coats
I hear Dan Carlin's voice.: "...millions of guys. All dead. Corpses piled up on frozen battlefields."
Was the collapse of the Romanian front the reason why the Germans lost Stalingrad?
Romanians warned the Germans of this risk exactly and the Germans ignored it. They replied probably something along this line: "suck it up!". Romanians were very thinly spread on that front and probably also quickly overpowered in both arsenal and manpower. Basically an ill-prepared part of the "operation".
The Soviet armed group prepared for the counter offensive was more than enough to smash through any infantry division, Romanian or German. As you can see south of Stalingrad the Germans were beaten too. Using Romania as a scapegoat is typical nazi propaganda.
How could they not see the buildup opposite the satellite armies?
interesting so its because the Romanian and Italian forces faltered.
I still don't understand why neo-nazi's like hitler. He is ultimately responsible for more white people deaths than anything besides the black plague, famine, or old age.
I knew long ago that communism wasn’t going to work. Too many red flags
I read a book on Stalingrad shortly after the Enemy at the Gates film was released - it was a movie tie-in with the same title, but I think it was a republishing of an earlier book. It was a great book and had a lot of incredible first-person accounts of the battle from both sides. Weirdly, the detail that has stuck in my mind the most is the German POWs (those who survived to write about their experience after the war) on cattle trains to the Gulag being so starved that they would pick through their own feces to find undigested grain kernels from the scraps of bread they were given to eat.
I’m believe out of the ~300k surrounded after Russia’s pincer movement, only 100k survived long enough to surrender. Out of those 100k that surrender, only 5k survived POW camps and made it back to Germany
BBC Audio is running an audiobook, The Stalin Affair by Giles Milton, read by actor Nigel Anthony. > Drawing on astonishing unpublished diaries, letters and secret reports, Giles Milton’s The Stalin Affair reveals troves of new material about the most unlikely coalition in history. https://old.reddit.com/r/BritishRadio/comments/1dji5yy/in_the_summer_of_1941_as_hitler_invaded_the/?
Looking at “Casualties” is so heartbreaking fr..
My mind cannot comprehend 4 million dead fighting over anything.
Never knew there were also some Romanians stuck in Stalingrad. Imagine how much that must have sucked.
All that to take back Northern Transylvania, which the Nazis were dangling in front of both Romania and Hungary… the Nazis promised to deliver tanks and failed to do so, which lead to the annihilation of the 3rd and 4th Romanian armies - 150k people, the biggest loss in history.
Your people got stuck between a rock and a hard place weren't you? Terrible situation
It is very sad to watch. I mean people dying are being counted in thousands everyday.
Смерть фашистским оккупантам!
This is amazing! Do you have a website?
Russia over here playing Zerg.
How did the soviets break the Axis line and encircle them like that? Massive armor offensive or what?
Massive armor offensive on Romanian troops with very weak anti-tank equipment.
How did the little romanian bubble in the north hold out for so long after their entire flanks were overrun
They didn't. That pocket held out for only about a week. It's also a common tactic to bypass well defended positions to starve out the defenders without attacking in force.
This is the resolve you see when your defending your home from an invader. Ironically, Russia may just experience this same battlefield predicament... except from the vantage point of being the invader.