Who is stalingrad

Estimates are all well over 1 million, with some as high as 1. The battle was brutal, beginning on August 23, , with devastating arial bombarding that leveled most of the city. However, an enormous Soviet-led counterattack on November 19th led to the city's ultimate re-capture.

However, the name Stalingrad wasn't destined to endure. In , the city was remanded Volgograd to help 'de-Stalinize" Russia, a partly controversial move, mostly due to Stalingrad's symbol of survival during the war. The battle is known as a massive turning point in the war, however there are also years of oppression and hardship associated with the name of Joseph Stalin, along with huge industrial success.

It's a complicated issue, to be sure. The city's name change has also been in the news recently, with reports in the mid's with rumors that Volgograd will again be named Stalingrad, to help commemorate the USSR's success over the Germans in WWII.

Business Insider is one publication detailing the potential name change. Come to Russia with us! See all these sites and more when you're living in Russia for a semester. As an ILP volunteer, you'll be in Russia teaching English part time, but then have free time, weekends off and scheduled vacation time to see even more, all for a pretty rad price. Get a better glimpse into what living in Russia is like, right here:. Topics: Europe. ILP volunteers — work closely with your Program Manager who can help you understand current country entrance requirements which will determine what countries you can visit during your semester.

The Germans inside the pocket retreated from the suburbs of Stalingrad to the city itself. The loss of the two airfields at Pitomnik on 16 January and Gumrak on the 25 January meant an end to air supplies and to the evacuation of the wounded.

Third and last serviceable runway was Stalingradskaja flight school which reportedly had last Luftwaffe landings and takeoff night 22nd to 23rd of January After daytime 23rd of January there were no more reported landings except for continuous air drops of ammunition and food until the end. The Germans were now not only starving, but running out of ammunition.

Nevertheless they continued to resist stubbornly, partly because they believed the Soviets would execute those who surrendered. The Soviets, in turn, were initially surprised by the large number of German forces they had trapped, and had to reinforce their encircling forces.

Bloody urban warfare began again in Stalingrad, but this time it was the Germans who were pushed back to the banks of the Volga. They fortified their positions in the factory districts and the Soviets encountered almost the same tooth-and-nail ferocity that they themselves displayed a month earlier. The Germans adapted a simple defense of fixing wire nets over all windows to protect themselves from grenades.

The Soviets responded by fixing fish hooks to the grenades so they stuck to the nets when thrown. The Germans now had no usable tanks in the city. Those tanks which still functioned could at best be used as stationary cannons. The Soviets did not bother employing tanks in areas where the urban destruction ruined their mobility. Hitler promoted Friedrich Paulus to Generalfeldmarschall on January 30, , the 10th anniversary of Hitler coming to power.

Since no German Field Marshal had ever been taken prisoner, Hitler assumed that Paulus would fight on or take his own life. The remnants of the German forces in Stalingrad surrendered on February 2; 91, tired, ill, and starving Germans were taken captive.

To the delight of the Soviet forces and the dismay of the Third Reich, the prisoners included 22 generals. According to the German documentary film Stalingrad , over 11, German and Axis soldiers refused to lay down their arms at the official surrender, seemingly believing that fighting to the death was better than what seemed like a slow end in Soviet camps.

These forces continued to resist until early March , hiding in cellars and sewers of the city with their numbers being diminished at the same time by Soviet forces clearing the city of remaining enemy resistance. By March, what remained of these forces were small and isolated pockets of resistance that surrendered. According to Soviet intelligence documents shown in the documentary, 2, of the men were killed, and 8, were captured. Only 5, of the 91, German prisoners of war survived their captivity and returned home.

Already weakened by disease, starvation and lack of medical care during the encirclement, they were sent to labour camps all over the Soviet Union, where most of them died of overwork and malnutrition. A handful of senior officers were taken to Moscow and used for propaganda purposes and some of them joined National Committee for a Free Germany. Some, including Paulus, signed anti-Hitler statements which were broadcast to German troops. General Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach offered to raise an anti-Hitler army from the Stalingrad survivors, but the Soviets did not accept this offer.

It was not until that the last of the handful of survivors were repatriated. The German public was not officially told of the disaster until the end of January , though positive reports in the German propaganda media about the battle had stopped in the weeks before the announcement.

It was not the first major setback of the German military, but the crushing defeat at Stalingrad was unmatched in scale. On February 18, the minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels , gave his famous Sportpalast speech in Berlin , encouraging the Germans to accept a total war which would claim all resources and efforts from the entire population. The battle of Stalingrad was one of the largest battles in human history.

It raged for days. Numbers of casualties are difficult to compile due to the vast scope of the battle and the fact that the Soviet government did not allow estimates to be made, for fear the cost would be shown to be too high. In its initial phases, the Germans inflicted heavy casualties on Soviet formations; but the Soviet encirclement by punching through the German flank, mainly held by Romanian troops, effectively besieged the remainder of German Sixth Army, which had taken heavy casualties in street fighting prior to this.

Some elements of the German Fourth Panzer Army also suffered casualties in operations around Stalingrad during the Soviet counter offensive. Various scholars have estimated the Axis suffered , casualties of all types wounded, killed, captured The remainder of the POWs died in Soviet captivity.

In the whole Stalingrad area the Axis lost 1. According to archival figures, the Red Army suffered a total of 1,, total casualties; , men killed and captured and , wounded. These numbers are for the whole Stalingrad Area; in the city itself , were killed, captured, or wounded. Also, more than 40, Soviet civilians died in Stalingrad and its suburbs during a single week of aerial bombing as the German Fourth Panzer and Sixth armies approached the city; the total number of civilians killed in the regions outside the city is unknown.

In all, the battle resulted in an estimated total of 1. Besides being a turning point in the war, Stalingrad was also revealing of the discipline and determination of both the German Wehrmacht and the Soviet Red Army.

The Soviets first defended Stalingrad against a fierce German onslaught. So great were Soviet losses that at times, the life expectancy of a newly arrived soldier was less than a day, and the life expectancy of a Soviet officer was three days. For the heroism of the Soviet defenders of Stalingrad, the city was awarded the title Hero City in After the war, in the s, a colossal monument, Mother Motherland was erected on Mamayev Kurgan, the hill overlooking the city.

The statue forms part of a War memorial complex which includes ruined walls deliberately left the way they were after the battle. Even today, one may find bones and rusty metal splinters on Mamayev Kurgan, symbols of both the human suffering during the battle and the successful yet costly resistance against the German invasion.

On the other side, the German Army showed remarkable discipline after being surrounded. It was the first time that it had operated under adverse conditions on such a scale. In this case, however, there were obvious differences. The encircled forces at Demyansk were a much smaller garrison, while an entire army was trapped in Stalingrad. During the latter part of the siege, short of food and clothing, many German soldiers starved or froze to death.

Yet, discipline was maintained until the very end, when resistance no longer served any useful purpose. German ammunition, supplies, and food became all too scarce. Paulus knew that the airlift had failed and that Stalingrad was lost. He asked for permission to surrender to save the life of his troops but Hitler refused and instead promoted him to the rank of Generalfeldmarschall. No German officer of this rank had ever surrendered, and the implication was clear.

If Paulus surrendered, he would shame himself and would become the highest ranking German officer ever to be captured. Hitler believed that Paulus would either fight to the last man or commit suicide. Download our mobile app for on-the-go access to the Jewish Virtual Library.

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Skip to main content. The Ohio State University. Department of History. Home Topics Africa. Middle East. North America. International Relations Religion Education Sports. Search form Search. Connecting History. Hot off the Press. History Talk. Printer Friendly Version. Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, New York: Penguin Books, RSS Feed.

Email alerts. Read Article. Featured Book Review. Read Book Review. Privacy Policy. Log In. Goofs Towards the end of film a Ju52 drops a single supply parachute. When dropped out of the plane and falling towards ground, it is green, when they recover it on the ground it is white. In reality the Luftwaffe was first using white parachutes until they realized it is too difficult to spot white parachutes on the snowy ground.

Quotes Lt. User reviews Review. Top review. Very graphic and brutally honest. A must see. Stalingrad should be ranked right up there among the top World War II movies ever made. I can't say it's the best but it certainly is a great film and is under rated in its importance.

What the movie is about is simple. It shows the German soldiers war on the Russian front, in Stalingrad from the point of view of a few German soldiers. It should not be viewed with the intentions of seeing the battle of Stalingrad or any strategic view of the Russian Front.

This is from the eyes of a select few. You won't see the broad picture. Just like the average soldier doesn't see it. He knows and sees the part of the war that is directly around him. That is his world and that is how you will see it.

It's often very graphic and brutally honest in its depictions.