More Red Army soldiers (nearly 480,000) died in the five-month defense of Stalingrad than Americans (416,800) in the entire war.įor Soviet citizens, the Red Army’s ferocious defense of Stalingrad-named for Hitler’s archenemy Joseph Stalin, the country’s leader-became a source of enormous national pride. The Nazis and their Hungarian, Romanian and Italian allies suffered more than one million casualties. With nearly 4 million combatants, the Battle of Stalingrad-fought August 23, 1942-February 2, 1943-dwarfed battles on the Western Front. “The Germans never fully recovered from it.” “If you look at the whole operation, the Soviets essentially wiped out the German Sixth Army and a Panzer army…leaving a massive hole in the Eastern Front,” says Stalingrad historian David Glantz, author of five books on the battle. That decision led to Germany’s first major Eastern Front defeat and became the turning point of World War II. Then, late that summer, the Nazi leader attacked Stalingrad. Jackbooted German soldiers had marched victoriously through the streets of the communist nation’s major cities while their comrades laid siege to Leningrad and threatened the capital of Moscow. By early 1942, Adolf Hitler’s dream of destroying the Soviet Union seemed closer to fulfillment.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |