4.+The+Battle+of+Stalingrad+as+a+Turning+Point

Written by Chris DiPietro My, God how could Hitler have made us do this? My name is Captain Lars Umolt, an officer for the German Army. Hitler ordered us on a huge offensive known as Operation Blue. This Offensive was to drive the Red Army out of the Caucasus region on the Eastern Front. This would let us have direct access to the Middle East, and have a path to attack Moscow (Novakovsky 1). The odds were on our side to take Stalingrad. Joseph Stalin kept all of his troops at Moscow, so we would not have that much of a fight, so 250,000 of our troops moved to attack the outskirts of the city. The Soviets were collapsing and retreating. Stalin finally realized how much of a force we were and sent soldiers eight miles away, and was able to hold us off. On August 19 Friedrich Paulus, the commander of the sixth army mounted the first assault on Stalingrad with the fourth panzer army for support. After two days we reached the Volga River. The fighting in the city was ferocious; all of the fights were from street to street. It all seemed like victory was ours, until I heard that the Russians broke through our flank and surrounded us in what was known as Der Kessel, or The Kettle (.Danzer 572) We were trapped like rats and the only way to get supplies was for planes to air drop them into German controlled areas (Yoder Battle 3). Hitler ordered us to not surrender and to fight to the bitter end, which is what some of us actually did. We were dieing from the cold and starvation. My men were practically skeletons I talked with Field Marshal Paulus, and he said that we would have to surrender. One of the finest armies in the world was going to die from starvation, disease and exposure. Our supply drops soon started to fade away, and I hear about soldiers deserting from the battle field and even a mutiny. I saw soldiers inflicting wounds on themselves just so they could get evacuated from this terrible city Men were so desperate that they even clung to the wings of the aircraft that would make rounds to evacuate us (Yoder “Annihilation” 1. I quickly thought that it was a bad idea because it would show that our military was vulnerable and moral would sky rocket for the Allies, but my men needed care and we surrendered. We lost over 147,000 men and 91,000 of us were taken prisoner. How ever the Red Army lost a staggering number, of over a half million soldiers that were killed during the battle. The loss of Stalingrad was a turning point in the war because the Russians were able to wipe out one of Germany’s elite armies, and showed to the people of Germany the truth behind their propaganda. ahoy.tk-jk.net Works Citied   Yoder, Mike. "Annihilation and Aftermath." 2003. 10/21/08 . Yoder, Mike. "Battle of Stalingrad." 2003. 10/21/08 . Danzer, Gerald, et. al. __The Americans__. Evanston: Mcougal, 2005. 572