Stalingrad

World War II with Tom Hanks

The Battle of Stalingrad, a pivotal WWII confrontation, marked a turning point on the Eastern Front. Hitler's push for Soviet oil and symbolic victory at Stalingrad led to a brutal urban siege. Stalin's refusal to retreat and Jukov's strategic counteroffensive encircled the German 6th Army. The defeat shattered German momentum and shifted the war's momentum to the Allies.

Key takeaways

• Stalingrad was a turning point in WWII.
• Hitler's focus on Stalingrad was both symbolic and strategic.
• Soviet resilience and leadership under Jukov turned the tide.

Transcript preview

the History Channel Original Podcast. July 1942. It's been over a year since Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union. After initial success, the German campaign bogs down across all fronts, so Hitler prepares to launch another offensive. One of his objectives is capturing Stalingrad, a city of Great Stuttgart. and symbolic value particularly to the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. One of the titanic battles of World War II is about to erupt. This is World War II with Tom Hanks. Episode 10, Stalingrad. June 1942. Carl Gustav Mannerheim. The Germans are about to launch another major offensive against the Soviet Union. But to do so, the Wehrmach needs access to more oil. The amount of fuel the Air Force alone is consuming, the amount our tank divisions are consuming, is something quite monstrous. Hitler's main supply of oil is from his ally Romania. But he confesses to Mannerheim, how dependent on... Germany is on that one source of fuel. And without the a flux of four to five million tons of Romanian petroleum, we would not be able to wage the war. Hitler's also concerned the Romanian oil fields are vulnerable to allied air attacks. Oil is always a problem for Hitler. Unlike the United States of Russia, Germany doesn't have an internal source of oil or petroleum that it can tackle. into. It must go get it from somewhere else. The Caucasus, the mountainous region of the Soviet Union's southwest, contains some of the richest oil fields in the world. If the Germans can seize them, the Wehrmacht will have all the oil it needs, as well as depriving the Soviets access. The Caucasus is a vast mountain range that spans Europe and Asia 750 miles. This is going to be a serious obstacle for any army that spans. to traverse it. Hitler and his generals prepare a plan to conquer the Caucasus. Operation Blue. The Southern Army Group first head towards the Volga River to secure this vital supply route and prevent the Soviets from moving in reinforcements. Next, capture the fields. to get it back to Germany. This is Hitler's idea. It has to be successful. Until now, Hitler's campaign against the Soviet Union has proven to be far more difficult than he and the German high command anticipated. In June of 1941, the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, the biggest military operation of all time. Hitler's banking on a quick win. The Germans take tens of thousands of square miles and capture millions of Soviet soldiers. But they don't take Moscow. They don't get the quick win. The war goes on into 1942. Barra Rosa did not meet its objective set by Adolf Hitler, which was to capture vast amounts of land, to get raw materials, also to wreck Bolshevism, which needed the collapse of the Soviet Union to happen rapidly. none of which happened. Hitler is concerned he's gotten himself in trouble in the Soviet Union but he's convinced that the situation can be righted. He can continue this war forever as long as he has a sufficient supply of oil and that's what the 1942 strike is going to take care of a strike for the oil fields of the Soviet Union. This is the world's first war for oil. June 1942. German forces begin their push south towards the Volga as plan. Hitler is impatient and desperate to get the oil fields as soon as he can. But then he splits the Southern Army group into. For Hitler, Operation Blue is an exercise in frustration. The armies aren't moving fast enough. They're not meeting the objectives. And for that reason, he decided. to split them into two big groups. It's a measure of his arrogance that he thought he was just simply going to be able to divide this force and in some of the most difficult fighting terrain of Europe. Hitler orders most of the Southern Army group to push directly for the oil fields. The job of seizing the Volga will now be left to a single combat force, one of the biggest and most experienced. The sixth army. The sixth army. The German 6th Army is the largest army in the German order of battle. At the beginning of the campaign, the 6th Army had over 300,000 men in it. By the middle of August, they're closing in on the Volga and the city that guards it, Stalingrad. Stalingrad is named after Adolf Hitler's personal rival and the personification of Bolshevism, Joseph Stalin. was named to commemorate a great victory he won over the whites in the Russian Civil War. He doesn't want to surrender a city named after himself. Stalingrad itself is also a major industrial center, which produces something like 20% of Soviet tanks, including the famous T-34. Along with a lot of other products critical to the war economy, Stalingrad is a prize in its own right. Once again, the Red Army is forced to retreat. by the Wehrmacht. The German forces with their shirts off, it's summer, and they're just racing across the steps, and the Red Army is just collapsing. Stalin understands that if Hitler controls the Volga River, that he will control the supply lines, and therefore there's a chance he can defeat the Soviet Red Army. Stalin goes into a free fall panic. Stalin is determined that this is where Hitler must finally be stopped. In late July 1942, as the German Sixth Army advances on Stalingrad, he issues a directive from Moscow, Order 227. As the Germans are advancing and getting ever closer to Stalingrad in July 1942, Stalin issues order 227. not a step back or Nishagunazad order. No more retreat will be tolerated. He's reading a lot of Roman history about how the Roman army punished units for surrendering. Stalin says, we've lost too many provinces, we've lost all of European Russia. The retreat must stop now. Not one more step back. Anyone who retreats in any shape or form will be instantly executed. There are going to be blocking units made up of the secret police, NKVD, commissars, people like that whose job it is to kill soldiers that are coming back towards them. The reason Stalin gives this order, however, is revealing. The Soviets were presumed at the beginning of the war to have had these vast and almost endless stores of manpower, of grain of wheat. A big country after all, a much bigger, a big country after all, a much bigger big big big country after all a big big big big country, the Nazi Germany, but as many as 70 million former Soviet subjects are now behind