"How would you have conducted the offensive on ..." Topic

…Stalingrad if you were in command instead of Paulus?

"Standing in General der Panzertruppe Paulus' position in August 1942, how would you direct and carry out the Stalingrad offensive? What would you change in the way the advance was planned or executed? How would you handle the city fighting and the overall direction of the campaign?…"

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Armand

Encircle and blockade, extending the front East to leave it way behind the lines to be reduced later. But history being history, AH wouldn't allow that, vanity demanding a direct assault, hence the eventual disaster…

Hmm… The city had already been under siege for a long time. The Russians were only supplying the Volga River (at this point, the river is 1 to 2 kilometers wide and 5 to 24 meters deep). The area around Stalingrad is bare, flat steppe for hundreds of kilometers.
The goal of capturing Stalingrad was to cut off fuel supplies from the Caucasus (essentially the only source of oil for the USSR at the time). Oil was shipped exclusively via the Volga—there were no other routes at the time. Since the assault on the Caucasus had failed, this was the last chance to cut off the Russians' fuel supply…

Interestingly, the Russians used railway tank cars to transport oil by sea and river.

And some stupid ignoramuses say that the battles were fought by two dictators for the sake of prestige))))))

Hitler established Stalingrad as an objective because he thought it was strategic. He didn't give up when its military value lapsed because he mistook political needs for military needs. Stalin kept fighting because he could keep a huge army bottled up with minimal resources.

Thanks

Armand

@Murvhill I am not sure I would call it minimal resources. The Russin poured a lot of men and resources into Stalingrad before the offensive to trap the Germans started.

Compared to the amount of troops they used in Uranus the commitment to Stalingrad was minimal.

(smile)

Armand

Stalingrad should have been irrelevant.
Hitler had a few ways to win ww2 but if invading soviet russia had to be done then his choices were pretty limited.
Start by somehow encouraging the Japanese to keep Russians busy over in the east.
Hopefully stops 18 divisions turning up at a critical time.

Plan for the logistics.
( Realise it won't work and… oh.. we said definitely invade ).
But you need working tanks and men who aren't freezing to fight your critical battle for moscow.

Concentrate on moscow, choose moscow, keep going for moscow, don't mess about.

Stalin stayed way too long so hope to take it with him in the city.
Assassinating him would have been quite useful – supposedly his presence in Moscow was key in rallying people.

All the messing about heading in one direction then another was very counter productive. Striking for oil and ukraine very counter productive.
The whole campaign might have gone rather better if the Nazis didn't consider the russians etc to be scum to be murdered. They could have enlisted quite substantial support if they'd been nice to the locals.
Just as well they weren't.

Oh. and do not declare war on america, bin plans for force Z and instead of super expensive pointless ships build subs. Don't insist on making all planes dive bombers. Fire goering and hire someone with sensible ideas doesn't just try and wangle approval ( difficult in nazi leaders admittedly. ) Prolly a few other things I forget as well

Thanks

Armand

It would depend on which wargames rules were being used :^)

Cheers,
John

Ha!…

Armand