What did the Germans lack for a quick victory in Stalingrad?

Stalingrad is the most brutal battle in my opinion ever to be fought, streets of blood. What types of weapons where the Russians using in these hand to hand situations other than for example shovels an rifle butts. Did they carry a club of any sort of perhaps sabres ? Btw Ive never actually read anything that indicates that the Russians were equipped with sabres, lol. But then again Ive only read one book on Stalingrad.

Do you guys believe perhaps a SS unit could have broken the last Russian defenders before the tide turned against the Germans.

 

I think the German troops deployed in Stalingrad were more professional than the SS troops.

 

Agreed. Yet SS troops may have been more fanatic in fighting for "Stalingrad" than perhaps conscripts. Perhaps 2 SS divisions would have made sure the last remnants of the 62nd army were destroyed. The Russians "barely" hung on, one last push would have destroyed them. The last defenders of the 62nd army believed they were going to lose 2 times, it was over, but they barely and bravely managed to hang on.

 

I think the point is that even if 62nd Army had been destroyed or neutralized inside Stalingrad, by that stage of the battle the 'action' was elsewhere - on the perimeter. The Germans would still have been encircled and with the Luftwaffe's airlift effort weakening by the day, even SS units wouldn't get very far without food, medical supplies and ammunition.

 

I meant more along the lines that the German Army units that were deployed in Stalingrad were better trained, more experienced, and just as fanatical as the SS troops that were deployed in the mid-war stage.

The bayonet strength of the 6th Army literally fought itself to the death until nothing was left except support troops.

 

This would not even be a subject if the Germans would have fought one front at a time. Initially they were much more powerful than everyone else. Since they lacked resources they had to win quickly before the U.S. and the USSR could get mobilized. Once they failed to do that they were doomed. They simply wore themselves too thin to win on any front let alone on the vast frontiers of the Soviet Union.

 

Again, I don't mean to be offensive or disrespectful, but this is sheer lunacy.

62d Army did not barely hang on because it was a in a dire contingency, but because Stalin intentionally withheld munitions and manpower supply to the lowest number possible in order to permit a counterattack across the Volga and yet glue the Germans fast onto Stalingrad, the trap with which he would grind their mobile strength.

Moving your forces far away from your forward communications center and expose an for 800km long flank courted disaster. The fight for Stalingrad the city only mattered to the extend that the Russians were attriting German strengths so as to fry bigger fish else where. Stalin had the strength and the resources to defend the city in far greater power than he did. For the STAVKA, the objective of the Winter Campaign of 1942 was to destroy Army Group Center and the city was just a sacreficial pawn.

 

they lacked supplies and winter survival gear which was needed in russia during the harsh arctic winters

 

A quick commander.

 

I am having trouble understanding that argument. Would you mind to elaborate that? Given the caliber of the opposition, Chucikov and his 62d Army, and the terrain that negated most of Germany's military advanges, I don't see how slight impvrovements in Germa tactical skill would offset all of that.

 

Its not what the Germans lacked but rather what they weren't: Slow steady ground pounders that didn't rely on amour to force a breakthrough.




woot! post 300!

 

well, if they weren't what they were, they would never have gotten to Stalingrad. Maybe, it wasn't what the Germans didn't have, it was what the Russians had. Unlike the disasters at Smolensk, Kiev, and Kharkov, they finally had some semblance of organized resistance.

Lets try a different approach, without the statistics and numbers. The 62nd army, might have surrendered if it was in Smolensk in the onset of BB, but, as it was, they never stopped fighting. Perhaps the most important factor was the true reach of the Germans to reach as far as Stalingrad.

To once again allude to the metaphor of the bear, if a bear was out by the stream, and it ran into the wolves, it would fight to defend its fishing grounds. But, after some amount of beating, it would undoubtedly give up and head home to lick its wounds. But, if the wolves chanced upon its den and attacked, the bear would not hold back, and would not stop fighting until it died, or it had destroyed all the wolves.

This mentality, progammed into the basest of animals, is also present in human minds, and very possibly determined the course of the battles of Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad. Each city had its own importance. Besides the depth of German reach, even the common Soviet soldier recognized the oil pipeline that Stalingrad was. To add on to that, propoganda campaigns and officers definitely convinced many that this might be Russia's final word, and that the soldiers were the only thing saving it.

 

Chuck Norris

 

The thing that really hurt the Germans was the lack of long range bombers. They could have bombed Russian industry that was east of the Urals and slowed down Soviet weapons production which would have had a significant impact on the entire eastern front. Instead the Soviets produced 10,000s of tanks and other weapons at will which heavily impacted the outcome of the war.

 

Would long range bombers really have helped that much? Trans Ural targeting would have been a problem and the experiance of the Western Allies was that you needed a lot of planes to make an impact. What could the Germans have given up in order to have enough long range bombers that wouldn't have put them in a worse postition?

 

Exactly which "long ranged bomber" did you have in mind that Germany would produce?

 

Without superiority fighters the Luftwaffe would lose aerial superiority sooner. Then, they would have an early meeting with the Sturmovik.

 

You don't think the Germans could produce a long range bomber?

 

No, they could. But, they couldn't produce enough to:

A. Make any real difference in the war.
B. Keep any really useful force of them together and operational.
C. To put them in service quickly.

 

Maybe they should had not canceled Germany's long-range bomber projects such as the Do19 and the Ju89 to concentrate on tactical bombers.

Oops another pre-war blunder.