great tank battles in wwii was stalingrad

The split created a gap between the two armies and allowed the Soviet forces there to avoid encirclement and escape to the east. Hitler, however, intervened with the success of the plan and decided to split the army in two to attack both Stalingrad and the Caucasus simultaneously. The Germans got off to a good start with a string of victories.Ī strategic map of the German advance towards Stalingrad, via Under the leadership of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, German operations began on June 28, 1942. Central to this plan working would be the capture of an industrial city that stretched 50 kilometers along the banks of the Volga River, a city that bore the name of Hitler’s arch-nemesis, the city of Stalingrad. From this point, German troops could either wheel north and drive on Moscow, or they could carry on their success in the south to conquer the rest of the Caucasus. “Operation Blue” was the German plan to eliminate Soviet forces and secure the economic resources in Southern Russia. There was no compromise on this position, as the Nazis were committing the greatest genocide in world history on the battlefield against the Soviets. It was a fight to the death, and only Germany or the Soviet Union would end up surviving. Little quarter was asked, and even less was given. The war between Germany and the Soviet Union was an existential one. This was very far from the case in the east.

The battles in Britain and France had been ones where the soldiers respected each other as fellow warriors and human beings. The Lead-Up to the Battle of Stalingrad Stalingrad’s main railway station in late 1942, via Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty

Great tank battles in wwii was stalingrad