Battle of Stalingrad and the D-Day Campaign
Overview
Statewide Dual Credit Modern World History: Unit 14, Lesson 8
A discussion of the Battle of Stalingrad and the D-Day Campaign highlights the brutal fighting and losses on both the German and Russian sides, which ultimately turned the tide of the war in Russia's favor. and the Allied forces' contributions to the war effort.
Battle Of Stalingrad
In the meantime, as German forces advanced deeper into Russian territory, they faced increasingly stiff resistance plus exposure from the brutal Russian winter. German armies failed to take either Leningrad or Moscow. Over the opposition of his generals, Hitler ordered an all-out assault on the city of Stalingrad. Beginning in August 1942, General Friedrich von Paulus (1890-1957) led a combined army of 270,000 soldiers armed with 500 Panzers and 600 Junker and Stuka bombers against 187,000 Russian defenders armed with 400 outdated T-34 tanks and only 200 IL-2 monoplanes and Yakovlev single-engine fighters.
For six months, German and Russian forces waged a bloody campaign for the city involving block-by-block fighting, carpet bombing, sniper attacks, psychological warfare and starvation. With Allied military aid and their brutal “not one step backward policy,” Russian forces regained control of the city at the loss of over a million casualties. With their own losses at nearly a million men, the Germans were forced to retreat. Operation Barbarossa was a defeat, and Germany now lay open to invasion.
Spotlight On | LIBERATION OF STALINGRAD
Following the launch of Operation Barbarossa, Stalingrad and the oil fields it defended remained a tempting military target. Throughout summer 1942, General Friedrich von Paulus (1890-1957) and the German 6th Army advanced deep into Ukraine. By October, German Junker bombers had pummeled much of Stalingrad into dust, although Russian forces clung desperately to the city’s western edge. Ordering Russian troops to hold Stalingrad at all costs, Stalin had fresh reinforcements constantly ferried into the city across the Volga River. Raw Russian recruits, many unarmed, were forced by their officers to advance on German forces under pain of death if they retreated. While Russian snipers such as Vasily Zaitsev (1915- 1991) pinned down German troops inside the city, Soviet Marshall Georgi Zhukov (1896-1974) surrounded Paulus’s army with two large Soviet forces. Although Hitler insisted that his troops fight to the death, Paulus surrendered his remaining 91,000 soldiers to Russian forces on February 2, 1943.
While Russian forces carried out the vast majority of fighting against the Axis powers, Great Britain and American troops launched a campaign to defeat German and Italian forces in Africa and thus defend the Suez Canal. British forces under General Bernard Montgomery (1887-1976) decisively defeated German General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika corps at the Battle of El Alamein in November. Having secured North Africa, British and American forces launched a successful invasion of Sicily in July 1943. In September, Allied forces landed at Salerno. Following heavy losses to entrenched German and Italian forces, Allied divisions captured Naples, Monte Cassino, and Rome. Mussolini’s fascist government collapsed, and the new regime held the former dictator prisoner. Although rescued by German commandos, he was recaptured and executed in April 1945.
D-Day Campaign
After the Italian campaign reached a stalemate in late 1943, Allied commanders prepared plans to launch a cross-channel invasion from Britain. On June 6, 1944, 156,000 British, American, Canadian, Polish and French troops under Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890- 1969) stormed the beaches of Normandy, France. Despite high casualties and 10,000 Allied losses by the end of the day, the Allied forces had secured a beachhead and opened a second front in the war.
Allied forces made rapid strides across northern France using their own combinations of massive ariel bombardments and rapid tank attacks. In late December 1944, German forces pushed back Allied troops at the bloody “Battle of the Bulge.” Although Axis forces were almost spent, the Allies enjoyed constant infusions of new soldiers and material and were soon on the offensive again. On August 25, 1945, Allied forces liberated Paris, with German forces agreeing to leave without destroying the city. Fighting would further intensify as British and American armies advanced toward the German border.
Spotlight On | US HOMEFRONT DURING WWII
Back home, the Second World War took its toll on virtually all aspects of American society. Factories were recalibrated to churn out weapons, ammunition, tanks, planes, ships and uniforms. The federal government contracted with large agricultural corporations and small family farms to procure food for the troops. As millions of men enlisted in the military, women, African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans found employment in America’s burgeoning wartime industrial sector. Iconic figures such as “Rosie the Riveter” became popular symbols of wartime production. Taking advantage of wartime labor conditions, labor organizer A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979) planned a “March on Washington” to occur in 1941. On the personal appeal of President Roosevelt, who reminded Randolph of the need to defeat fascism abroad before dealing with civil rights at home, Randolph called off the march. In return, Roosevelt supported the creation of the Fair Employment Relations Act, which called for an end to job discrimination. Randolph’s plan for a March on Washington would come to fruition during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
While British and American forces pushed eastward, the Red Army invaded East Prussia. Russian forces advanced upon Berlin by taking the German city of Konigsberg in April 1945. For two weeks, two million Soviet and Allied forces fought Berlin’s defenders, many of whom were Hitler Youth or elderly civilians with little military training. On April 30, Adolf Hitler, his wife Eva Braun (1912-1945), and a few of his commanders committed suicide in their command bunker. Two days later, Russian forces raised the flag of the Soviet Union over the burned-out remains of the German Reichstag building. The remaining German troops surrendered. The war in Europe was now over.