Annotations: Name: ______Period: ______Annotations: Connections to Connections to The Battle of Stalingrad Animal Farm Animal Farm The Nazi plan: Operation Barbarossa and Case Blue Characters In June 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union under the name Events Operation Barbarossa. The goal of the invasion was to conquer the Soviet lands, and to annihilate the people who lived in the East to make room, or Lebensraum, for German settlers. The war in the East was gruesome. Over a period of four years, 27 million Soviet soldiers and 4 million German soldiers would die. The civilian populations were starved and terrorized.

Operation Barbarossa was very successful at first, and the German Reich was at its largest, stretching over France to the West, Norway to the North, North Africa to the South, and far to the East. Some in Europe had come to believe that the German army was invincible. By October, the Germans seemed set to take Moscow. However, despite massive losses, the Soviet Union did not fall as the Nazis had planned. By late 1941, German troops had advanced too far, too fast and had run out of supplies, so they fell back and regrouped over the winter. In the summer of 1942, the German forces launched a new offensive against the Soviets called Case Blue. They would drive south toward the oil reserves in the Caucasus region, going through the city of Stalingrad, which sits on the Volga River. The bloody Battle for Stalingrad would claim over 2 million lives, and become a major turning point in WWII.

The Battle for Stalingrad from a Russian Perspective Although defending every city was important for the Soviets, Stalingrad was special because it was named after the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin. Stalin himself demanded that his namesake city be held at all costs, and motivated the troops with a mix of patriotism and fear. Civilians were forbidden from evacuating the city. Many soldiers were genuinely motivated to fight by patriotism and pride. However, the life expectancy of a Soviet soldier in Stalingrad was a mere 24 hours. To enforce discipline in the face of so much death and fear, Stalin issued Order No. 227 which ordered 'Not a Step Back!'. Troops were forbidden from retreating, and anyone caught doing so would be executed. Special troops were placed just behind the front lines to shoot anyone caught retreating. There are conflicting reports about how many were actually executed with some claiming 13,000 and the Russian archives listing a little less than 300. A common cry was, 'There is no land for us beyond the Volga,' as the Soviets fought valiantly to hold the city.

At the beginning of the battle, the Germans bombed the city with over 1,000 tons of bombs, including devastating incendiary bombs. Over 80% of the city's buildings were destroyed on the first day of bombing, and about 40,000 civilians were killed in the bombing campaign. The Soviet forces held their line as closely as possible to the German line to ensure that some German forces would be hit during the bombings. Once the bombing ended, bloody door-to- door fighting began. The battle also saw the rise of popular Russian heroes, like the sniper Vasily Zaitsev. The Soviets wore down the Germans, who slowly starved and froze to death through the winter. German forces eventually surrendered in February 1943, but at the grisly cost of over 1 million Soviet troops, and untold civilian casualties. Annotations: Annotations: The Battle from the German Perspective Connections to Connections to The German army was feeling confident at the outset of Case Blue. When the Animal Farm German Sixth Army with 250,000 soldiers prepared to attack Stalingrad, Hitler Animal Farm Characters ordered that, 'No stone should remain unturned'. In other words, beyond simply Events defeating the Soviet army, Soviet civilians were to be expelled, killed, or taken as slaves. The German bombing campaign on Stalingrad reduced the city to wreckage, and what a German soldier called, 'a chaos of twisted skeletons of factories'. However, the grit of the Soviet civilians and soldiers who remained entrenched in the city surprised the German troops. They realized this wouldn't be an easy victory. Vicious fighting, and a Soviet counterattack, had the Germans on their heels by mid-November 1942. Some German officers wanted to abandon Stalingrad, but Hitler refused to give up the city, even with winter approaching.

As winter arrived, Stalingrad became a frozen hell as German soldiers were starving and freezing while trying to fend off the Soviets. Hitler expected them to fight to victory or commit suicide before surrendering. But eventually the Russian soldiers closed in on the German commander's hideout in the basement of a department store. Rather than commit suicide, the commander surrendered. Between January 31 and February 2, 1943, 91,000 German soldiers surrendered. These 91,000 German troops were taken prisoner by the Soviets. The fate of the German prisoners of war is unclear. Many would have frozen or starved to death soon after surrender. Others may have been sentenced to work in Soviet labor camps, where death was an almost certainty. Only 6,000 of the 91,000 would make it back to Germany at the end of the war.

Significance of the Battle The German defeat at Stalingrad was the major psychological turning point in the war. The news of the surrender shook Germany to its core, and even Germany's head of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, admitted the defeat had deflated the German people. Some in Europe had come to believe that the German army was invincible, but Stalingrad destroyed that belief. Although it was one of the bloodiest battles in history, leaving over 2 million dead, the victory at Stalingrad gave the allies confidence and hope. The defeat of Germany seemed possible, if not inevitable.

From Stalingrad, the Soviets advanced while the Germans retreated, until their ultimate defeat. The Soviet army pushed west from Stalingrad liberating the East until they arrived in Berlin. In April 1945, the Soviet troops encircled Berlin. On April 30, Hitler committed suicide and on May 2, 1945, Germany surrendered. By the end of the war, over 25 million Soviets were dead, but the Soviet Union had a compelling national story. From the Soviet perspective, they had fought a war of liberation against fascism, and Stalingrad was placed firmly at the center of that patriotic narrative.

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