(Part 6)World War II full History

Stalingrad

In the spring of 1942, the German offensive against the Soviet Union was nearly a year old. Hitler, believing that he could win in the East by staging a decisive offensive in the south aimed at the Soviet Union’s economic resources, launched a two-pronged attack on 28 June. Army Group A pushed towards the oil-rich area of Baku, and Army Group B advanced towards Stalingrad and the Volga. Stalingrad was a key strategic target. It was an important industrial centre, communications hub, and sat astride the Volga River. Capturing Stalingrad would cut this waterway – the principal supply route from south to central and northern Russia.

The Red Army, demoralised and disheartened by a year of bitter and costly defeats, began to employ a new strategy: the fighting retreat. Instead of defending their positions at all costs – a strategy which had led to heavy losses during the first year of the war – Soviet units were now ordered to withdraw in the face of strong German attacks. This tactic would turn the vast expanse of the Russian steppe against the Germans, and put huge strain on their supply lines.

The German Sixth Army, commanded by General Friedrich Paulus, advanced quickly, assisted by the Fourth Panzer Army. By the summer of 1942 they had reached the suburbs of Stalingrad on the west bank of the Volga. Here the Soviet retreat ended, and Vasily Chuikov prepared to lead a determined defence of the city. As the battle began in earnest, the Luftwaffe dropped 1,000 tons of bombs on Stalingrad, a misjudgement that created a rubble-strewn landscape perfect for defence.

German troops were taken aback by the fierce street fighting they found themselves engaged in during their advance to the city centre. For soldiers accustomed to the well-choreographed mobile warfare, ferocious close-quarter fighting in the city’s ruins was a new and terrifying experience.

The Soviets had their own problems. Reinforcements had to be ferried into the city across the Volga, often under heavy shelling and bombing. Many units suffered large casualties before even going into action. Soviet Penal Units, several containing political prisoners, were used for suicidal charges. The average life expectancy of a Soviet soldier during the height of the battle was just 24 hours.

In 19 November 1942, the Soviets used one million men to launch a counterattack, Operation Uranus, encircling the city and trapping the German Sixth Army within it. For Paulus and his men, the situation was desperate. Winter was setting in, and they were running out of food, ammunition and medical supplies. Despite the Luftwaffe’s efforts, it was not possible to get enough supplies in by air. In December, a relief operation mounted by General von Manstein narrowly failed to break through to the city. It was the last hope for the Sixth Army.

On 2 February 1943, General Paulus surrendered with the 91,000 troops that remained. The tremendous human cost of the battle is difficult to comprehend. The Axis forces (comprised of German, Italian, Romanian and Hungarian troops) suffered 800,000 casualties, the Soviets more than one million. The battle marked the furthest extent of the German advance into the Soviet Union, and is seen by many historians as a key turning point in the war.

Italy

The Allied invasion of Sicily began on 10 July 1943. The US Seventh Army commanded by General Patton, and the British Eighth Army under Montgomery, landed respectively at the Gulf of Gela and south of Syracuse. While Montgomery’s forces encountered stubborn resistance in the hills around Mount Etna, Patton’s troops advanced northwest towards Palermo and directly north to sever the northern coastal road. They then moved eastwards supported by a series of amphibious landings along the north coast, reaching Messina ahead of the British. By the end of August, Sicily was under Allied control and could be used as a base to invade Italy.

On 3 September 1943, the Eighth Army landed at Reggio (on the ‘toe’) and began its slow slog up the boot of Italy. Five days later, the US Fifth Army landed at Salerno, encountering heavy German resistance. At this point the Italian government agreed to an armistice with the Allies (publicly announced on 8 September). Mussolini was dismissed by King Victor Emmanuel III and placed under arrest by his successor, Badoglio, but was rescued by Hitler’s airborne commandos. Mussolini became head of the Salo Republic in German-occupied Gargagno in northern Italy. Badoglio, who had escaped to Pescara, established a government under Allied protection. On 13 October, the Italian government declared war on Germany.

British Commonwealth forces now advanced up the east coast, capturing the port of Bari and the airfields around Foggia. The US, meanwhile, inched up the western side of the boot, encountering increasingly difficult terrain and strong defences. A series of mountains, ridges and rivers prone to sudden flooding presented a formidable natural barrier which complicated Allied commanders’ plans.

German forces withdrew to the Gustav Line south of Rome, which included the heavily-defended hilltop monastery of Monte Cassino. In January 1944, the Allies launched an amphibious assault on the western port of Anzio. Operation Shingle, launched on 22 January, took the Germans by surprise. Allied troops, however, failed in their attempt to thrust inland and cut off German troops on the Gustav Line, instead becoming bottled up in the beach-head they had established.

Between January and May, four major offensives were launched to break the Gustav Line. The objective was finally achieved by a combined assault of the Fifth and Eighth Armies (including British, US, French, Polish, and Canadian troops) along a twenty mile front between Monte Cassino and the western coast. Monte Cassino was captured on 18 May. As the German defences disintegrated, forces at Anzio broke out of their beachhead and moved up the coat towards Rome. Following the liberation of the capital on 4 June, Badoglio resigned and a new anti-fascist government was formed under Bonomi.

German troops now retreated to the Gothic Line. Their resistance condemned the Allies to another harsh year of campaigning. Many Allied units had been withdrawn to be used in Operation Dragoon (the invasion of the South of France launched in August 1944), and progress was slow. It was not until April 1945 that the Allies launched an overwhelming offensive that broke through German positions, and forced the surrender of German Army Group C on 29 April. Four days earlier, Mussolini had been caught by Italian partisans as he tried to escape north to Switzerland. Along with his mistress, he was shot and his corpse put on public display in Milan. Hostilities formally came to an end in Italy on 2 May 1945.

Eastern Front

After the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in February 1943, German generals were convinced that a massive offensive on the Eastern Front would still allow them to regain the upper hand, and knock Russia out of the war. They planned a two pronged assault aimed at ‘pinching off’ the Kursk Salient created by the defeat at Stalingrad. The advance was to be launched from the Orel Salient to the north of Kursk and from Belgorod to the south. Both ‘prongs’ would surround Kursk, restoring the lines of Army Group South to their winter 1941-1942 position.

When the offensive finally began on 5 July, it had already been delayed countless times while the Germans waited for tanks and weapons to be supplied. The Soviets, acting on intelligence information, had massively reinforced the salient, also mobilising reserves to prepare a counterattack. By 13 July, the Germans had been forced into retreat. The attack cost Hitler over 500,000 troops and 1,000 tanks, and spelt the end of the Wehrmacht’s large-scale offensives. As strategic initiative passed to the Soviets, Hitler’s insistence on holding territory at all costs hugely undermined Germany’s ability to mount an effective defence. It was not the first or the last time that Hitler’s inflexibility contributed to military failure.

Throughout the remainder of 1943, the Soviets continued pushing the Germans back. In August 1943, they retook Orel; in the south, fierce battles throughout July and August culminated in the recapture of Kharkov. In the centre, Soviet troops took Bryansk, Smolensk and Gomel. In the south, the Germans' retreat to the River Dneiper forced them to abandon captured farmland and industrial resources. The Germans found it impossible to hold this line, which was broken in October. Kiev, the Ukrainian capital and the USSR’s third largest city, was retaken the following month.

1944 began as 1943 had ended: with unstoppable Soviet success. At the end of January, the 900 day siege of Leningrad was lifted; almost a million of the northern city’s inhabitants had perished. In the south, southern Ukraine and Galitzia were captured in March. The Germans were forced to evacuate the hard-won Crimean Peninsula. April and May saw the liberation of Odessa and Sevastapol. On 9 June, Operation Bagration was launched to retake Belarus. 166 Soviet divisions and 2,700 Soviet tanks crushed the 38 German divisions of Army Group Centre, taking Minsk on 2 July.

The Soviet troops now broke through on the Balkan Front and advanced towards Vistula. With the Soviet homeland secure, Stalin announced that the Red Army had begun a ‘march of liberation’. Sadly, this ‘liberation’ did not extend to Poland. On 5 August, the Polish Home Army, encouraged by the Soviet advance, rose against the Nazis in Warsaw. In an act which did unspeakable damage to Allied relations, Stalin offered no military or material assistance to the Poles. He also denied permission for Allied aircraft carrying aid to land in Soviet airfields. Stalin cynically calculated that it was in his interest to see Polish patriots destroyed by the Nazis, as they would stand in the way of his post-war plans for Poland. On 5 October, General Komorowski’s Army surrendered. The Nazis levelled Warsaw in reprisal and 300,000 Poles – including many innocent civilians – were slaughtered. The Soviets would finally enter Warsaw in January 1945, after its abandonment by the Germans.

Credit to: http://www.history.co.uk for my source of this story