Why didn't the Germans encircle Stalingrad?

Why didn't the Germans encircle Stalingrad? A question by an Oberst (Supporter) “The Wehrmacht in the first couple years of the war as all about massive encirclements and 'bewegungskrieg'. I cant seem to find anywhere a reason why it was decided to attack Stalingrad directly and not cut it off like other cities (Kiev, Leningrad) or the 'cauldrons' during Barbarossa. The OKW and Hitler must have been aware about large cities being so difficult to take directly by force.”
For this we look at various misconceptions, original directives, the development of the campaign and geography.

Cover design by vonKickass.

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» SOURCES «

Hubatsch, Walther: Hitlers Weisungen für die Kriegführung 1939 - 1945: Dokumente des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht. Karl Müller Verlag: Erlangen, Germany, 1999.

Wettstein, Adrian E.: Die Wehrmacht im Stadtkampf 1939-1942. Ferdinand Schöningh: Paderborn, Germany, 2014.

Boog, Horst et al: Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg 6: Der Globale Krieg. Bd. 6. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt: Stuttgart, Germany, 1990.

Mawdsley, Evan: Thunder in the East. The Nazi-Soviet War 1941-1945. Second Edition. Bloomsbury: London, 2016.

Citino, Robert M.: Death of the Wehrmacht. The German Campaigns of 1942. University Press of Kansas: Lawrence, Kansas, 2007.

Glantz, David M.; House, Jonathan M.: To the Gates of Stalingrad. The Stalingrad Trilogy, Volume 1: April-August 1942. University Press of Kansas: United States, 2009.

#Stalingrad,#WhyStalingrad,#BattleOfStalingrad

[MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized]

Sat 2th Oct. 1pm Texas time / 7pm London / 8pm Central Europe

[mensch]

"One does not just "cross" the Volga" - [ancient Sean Bean Boromir memes activated]

[douglasstrother]

To the north, the Volga looks to be about 3 miles wide; to the south, the east bank is a huge marshland.

[mikegirkin]

Hi! My home city is Volgograd, former Stalingrad. Just want to add some precise details.
There were no bridges across Volga in 1940s for hundreds of kilometers up or downstream.
The hydroelectric dam near Volgograd was build in 1950s and opened in 1961, and that was the first crossing point. The actual bridge was opened in 2004.
I am not even sure bridges existed in Saratov and Astrakhan in 1942, both being the closest cities, both about 350km from Stalindgrad.

And big thanks for your great videos!

[johnnyfortpants]

Stalingrad is being covered by Indy Nidell's World War 2 in Real Time, and in brilliant, massive detail by @TIK in Battlestorm Stalingrad. Recommend both. WW2 is great for global perspective.

[AlexanderSeven]

1. about one km wide river in that area
2. enemy on the other side will counterattack with all forces and will have better logistics
3. looks like Germans were really good at underestimating their opponents

[vladimpaler]

The army that reached Stalingrad had been bled very badly and was far from full strength. I cannot imagine it had enough men, much less logistics, to support encircling an area that large. Even if you secure a bridge over the Volga what do you drive across that bridge? You require enough strength to turn towards the city and still defend towards the east. Paulus had already been asking for reinforcements and been told no significant amounts were available.

[cwjian]

Also maybe if the Germans could snap their fingers and teleport 50 S-boots into the Volga river, because the Soviet Volga river flotilla is going to have something to say about building bridges across the Volga

[billd.iniowa]

Finally, absolute confirmation on the subject. Ever since I'd heard it wasnt mentioned in the original Case Blue battle plan I have been wondering about this. Thankyou so much Bernhard.

[SouthParkCows]

It's difficult to encircle and to just power through a city. Plus hindsight is 20/20.

Can't wait for the Stuka book, going to look sweet with my Stuka aircraft.

[Waldemarvonanhalt]

Why not encircle the city? Imagine trying to cross the Volga (one of the biggest rivers in the world) while being shot at with everything the Soviets had on the eastern bank. Oh, and your forces are practically running on empty aready.

[megatherium]

Yep, a couple of years ago a visited Russia and actually went to Volgograd, I saw the might Volga river, can confirm, it seem to me more like a stretched out, never ending lake than a river itself, if you're going to cross it, you need a lot of planning, it would be almost like a full on amphibious operation than a land one.

[michaelkovacic]

Havent watched the video yet but Stalingrad was no typical city, it was basically a 30 kilometer long strip along the Volga, only a few kilometers deep. Lack of petrol and other supplies would have prevented even a normal encirclement, let alone crossing the Volga.

[Niinsa]

Thank you for an interesting video. You mention how difficult it would have been to seize bridges over the Volga. Well, since there are only two bridges over the Volga near Volgograd/Stalingrad today, and both of them are in Volgograd, they would have been useless for encirclement purposes. And I don't think those two bridges existed back then, I've only heard about the Soviets shipping in reinforcements across the Volga on ferries and barges. The other closest bridges today are in Saratov, 200 miles/320 kilometers to the north, and in Astrachan, 200 miles/320 km to the south down by the Caspian Sea. Totally useless for encircling Stalingrad, if those bridges even existed back then. Also, the terrain to the south of Volgograd would be difficult if you wanted to cross the river there, as there the Volga flows through wetlands, at least 10 miles/16 km wide, but sometimes twice that. To the north, the terrain would be better, but there the river itself is at least 2 miles/3.2 km wide at its narrowest point, and often more than twice that. Not easy to get an army across that kind of river. Crossing the Don was nothing compared to crossing the Volga. That river is big, seriously big.

[onewhoseeks]

Imagine losing half a million men trying to take a secondary objective...

[PhonciblePBonehimself]

Thx that's spot on to the time ghost WW2 coverage ! Much appreciated :)

[johnnyfortpants]

One thing is certain: the Soviets encircled the city.

[raylast]

Asking this question in that way gets at some of the major misconceptions around Stalingrad, or we could say the falsehoods spread by traditional historiography on the topic (starting with the German Generals).

Which includes the idea that attacking directly was unsound and the 6th Army was defeated because they took unsustainable losses during the urban combat. This is not the case.
The real reason is that the losses taken were not adequately replaced even though the German Army still had the resources to do so, and the reason for this is that the OKW was funneling the vast majority of replacements to Army Groups Mitte and Nord, even though it was Army Group B in the South which was taking the most losses by far. This is what cost them the battle of Stalingrad.

6th Army lost most of their troops between July and September, of which only the latter month was fought within the city, the rest of the losses were taken during the Don campaign. These losses were significant, and probably unsustainable strategically, but they were replaceable and if they had been adequately replaced the city likely would have fallen very quickly.

As it was, the 6th Army was down by the equivalent of at least a couple of entire divisions when they reached the city, with their formations increasingly depleted, which only got worse as the battle went on in the city. In spite of this, they got extremely close to taking it several times, and were only stopped because Chuikov‘s 62nd Army received vital reinforcements at exactly the right moment. Unlike the Germans, the Red Army was funneling significant reinforcements into the city at a steady rate.

All Paulus got was a couple of extra formations that were moved around operationally but cut holes in the front in other sectors of the Stalingrad Area. But no actual replacements for the overall losses of the entire Army Group, of which 6th Army suffered the brunt.

So it wasn‘t that an intact army at full strength was destroyed at Stalingrad, or that the Germans lost countless additional reserves in the city: instead it was a depleted army receiving too few reinforcements very nearly succeeded in taking the city with its last reserves of strength, but once they were used up, it became impossible to take further ground despite a number of piecemeal attempts.

But of course, even if they had enough reinforcements and took the city, there‘s a good chance the Soviet Counteroffensive would still have been devastating, the German Army still lost its capacity for strategic offensives and taking Astrakhan or Baku would still have been an impossible objective.

Any ideas of a Germany victory by 1942 hinged on the idea that the Red Army might break if pushed just a little further and this was not going to happen in any case.

As for any attempts to encircle the city: that was even more of an impossible task given the lack of troops and would have been unnecessary with enough replacements. The idea was to remove an enemy bridgehead and crucially to shorten the front. Attempting to cross the Volga would just make things worse.

[raylast]

I mean the simple answer to why there wasn‘t a big encirclement is that they had lost the strategic capacity to do that. The last bigger encirclements happened during the Don campaign, but it was clearly the death of „Bewegungskrieg“. And even in 1941 when it was working they were taking staggering, unsustainable losses. Same during Fall Blau.

[fightsports]

A friend of mine told me one of the things that went wrong at Stalingrad was that after Paulus made it to the Volga in late August, 1942, he was supposed to chase the Russians into Stalingrad where the Luftwaffe was supposed to bomb them to death. But the Luftwaffe bombed Stalingrad before the Soviets retreated, which is to say that most of them survived, and then fortified the ruins (which made excellent cover). I am just trying to find out from anyone else if this description is accurate.