The movie Stalingrad (Kretschmann 1993) portrays the 1942 Nazi attempt to
capture the Russian city and its ultimate defeat by the Red Army. While it is
anticipated that movies will fictionalize major historical events in order to
render them more palatable to audiences—individual characters highlighted,
isolated scenes explored in depth to maximize the pathos or elation experienced
by protagonists, incidents telescoped or expanded as they serve the underlying
purpose of the film— primary sources reflect actual events and are generally
considered reliable. If this assumption is correct, history as written should
have no variances. This, however, is not the case; although the explanation for
discrepancies between reality and revision are multiple, it appears that the
lens through which one views the record distorts interpretation to where it
becomes difficult to ascertain the truth. The events surrounding the battle of
Stalingrad are a case in point; two different interpretations of the German
defeat highlight the manner in which individual assumptions can alter the
understanding of why circumstances occur.
The first explanation
examined is written by Brian Hanley (2006),a military officer whose purpose is
to emphasize the need for establishing “ends, ways and means” (Hanley 2006) during strategic
planning. He begins by describing Hitler’s goals in Russia as, to isolate
Stalin in the far eastern portion of Russia by capturing the Ukraine, Moscow,
and Leningrad—thus controlling the agricultural and industrial sections, as
well as its communications and shipping centers (Hanley 2006).
The strategy was formulated in 1940 and, in 1941; the German Wehrmacht had
encircled and defeated large segments of the Red Army, taking more than 3
million prisoners and major equipment including 14,000 tanks and 25,000 guns (Hanley 2006). The German defeat
at Moscow was predestined because of Hitler’s commands to eliminate those enemy
units encircled, as opposed to advancing on Moscow with all due haste. (Hanley 2006). The Command center
ignored logistical imperatives (ways and means)—the Wehrmacht was functioning
on a gradually attenuating supply line; in fact, “supplies were expected to
move great distances, without proper road and rail network, to a front line
constantly in flux....the Germans had far too few trucks...the miscellany of
captured vehicles the Germans had to rely on could not be kept running...” (Hanley 2006,
89)(omissions
mine). While the Wehrmacht was dealing with these
issues, Hitler expanded his war scenario to include targets hundreds of miles
from his forces’ primary location, thus forcing them to expend supplies they
needed for their primary thrust (Hanley 2006).
Stalingrad
sits on the Volga River and is proximate to the Don River. Both these major
waterways are important shipping lanes and were essential in resupplying the
Russian army. Stalingrad was a munitions production hub and a distribution
center for raw materials needed for the war effort (Hanley 2006). Hitler’s Sixth Army
was ordered to ”cut the supply line immediately north of Stalingrad, which was
more than 200 miles east of the front line of the German front” (Hanley 2006). The two armies
engaged in July of 1942, and within a month the Sixth Army had successfully
slowed river traffic, controlled the rail lines and could now focus on the city.
The assumption was that Stalin, having learned from the 1941 assault on Moscow,
would order a strategic retreat and regroup until he had gathered sufficient
forces for an assault. Here German
tactics created the scenario for their defeat—instead of cutting off access to the Volga to the north and its
potential for resupplying Russian forces within the city, they chose instead to
attack Stalingrad head on (Hanley 2006). Because of Russian
resistance, the Germans fought for two months and ended up with a fragile hold
on a large area occupied by enemy army units and resistance fighters (Hanley 2006). By November, the Russians
had in fact regrouped and surrounded what was left of the Sixth Army (Hanley 2006). The author
concludes that
Hitler
is to blame for the Stalingrad debacle. He did not have the means to achieve
his vast and at times incompatible objectives, and when his military chief of
staff told him as much he was removed from his position...the German army would
have achieved its strategic objective...by taking both banks of the Volga many
miles north of Stalingrad. Such a plan would have squared ends, ways and
means...[but] the Nazi leader rejected advice from his commanders about
aligning his strategic objectives with his operational plan and forces
available” (Hanley 2006) (omissions mine).
In the article “Fighting for the Truth about
the Battle of Stalingrad,” David Glantz and Jonathan House (2009) argue that
many of the suppositions about the battle, even if based upon accurate records,
are incorrect. One of the central assumptions is that Stalin had been ordered
to fall back, based on the first campaign of 1941, where he took heavy
casualties (Santoro 2010). On the contrary, his instructions were to
stand and fight at Stalingrad, and to “attack everywhere at every time, in the
belief that somewhere someone will break...” (Santoro 2010). The Red Army
actually attacked the Germans on the road to Stalingrad, and imposed heavy
casualties (Santoro 2010). Glantz and House
(2009) explain that there were several major tank battles and that Stalin
struck in July, at the “bend of the Don river” (Santoro 2010). This tank battle raged for three weeks
and derailed the German strategic plan to seize the city from the north and
south in a pincer like move (Santoro 2010). The Russians
launched continual counterattacks, keeping the German armored divisions
occupied, and preventing the Wehrmacht from entering the northern section of
the city. Instead, they were diverted and had to enter from the west; with no
armor support, they were literally forced into an urban guerilla warfare
scenario, seizing the city in increments, incapable of reaching the northern section
to cut off Russian supply lines (Santoro 2010). The Russian
strategy at this point was to sacrifice as many men as needed to keep the city
from falling completely; it lost tens of thousands of men in the effort. The
plan was to “ruthlessly expend manpower, [as] resistance will wear down a
numerically weaker opponent (Santoro 2010) (insertion mine).
The Red Army’s success had a heavy price, one they were willing to pay to stop
the German thrust.
In conclusion, battles
are massive events and the fog of war prevails. Historians look at the memoirs
of generals, and other primary documents to ascertain the true course of
events; this is a difficult task at best and made more so when reports conflict.
In these two articles, descriptions of how the Battle of Stalingrad was fought
and the assumptions made about command decisions is an interesting study in
contrasts. Both accounts, while giving the same basic information, are just
different enough to give a dissimilar impression of what caused the defeat. The
first states logistical failure and the second that Stalin was actually
planning to wear down the German effort, before they ever reached the city.
Whether it is poor research methodology at work, bias or simply interpretive
variance, these subtle inconsistencies make it difficult to determine exactly
what occurred and why. Thus, while we describe cinematographic interpretations
as mere fiction, the reality is, we each are purveyors of fiction unless we
have lived the event described—and even then we are limited by our own
perspective.
Works Cited
Glantz, D., and J. House. Armageddon in
Stalingrad: September-November 1942. Lawrence, KS: University Press of
Kansas, 2010.
Hanley, Brian.
"The Enduring Relevance of the Battle for Stalingrad." JFQ,
2006: 88-92.
Stalingrad. Directed by Joseph Vilsmaier. Performed by Thomas
Kretschmann. 1993.
Santoro, Gene.
"Fighting for the Truth About the Battle of Stalingrad." Military
Review, 2010.
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