This battle has really interested me, but I don't know much about it. I've tried looking for sites with more detailed information but couldn't find any. Anything sbout would be nice, maps, dates, certain important places/little battles within Stailngrad like the October Factory (I think thats what it was called). What units were involved how many men, anything would be great.
I got a good site for not only Stalingrad, but for much of the battles, and all the leaders and such for the War. http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/WW2.htm This one is for the statistics of nearly everything imagineable. http://www.angelfire.com/ct/ww2europe/stats.html
As far as what units were involved, there were three armies (one Soviet and two German), and the units were: Germany: 6th Army - XIV Panzer Corps -16 Panzer Division -60 Motorised Division LI Corps -389 Infantry Division -100 Infantry Division -76 Infantry Division 4th Armored Army - XLVIII Panzer Corps -24 Panzer Division -14 Panzer Division -29 Motorised Division I'm not sure about the Soviet units, though. All I know is that there was the 62nd Army and parts of three other Soviet armies (the 64th, 59th and 57th, I think). Stalingrad was the 'Meat Grinder of the Eastern Front' (that's what I call it) because the battle chewed up the majority of the two German armies and much smaller pieces of every one of the seven (!!) Soviet armies, except the 62nd, which was reduced to an incredibly small size. However, the Soviets had nearly or over seven times more men at their disposal, and their mastery of the mass attack (which had earlier become an officially acknowledged tactic for the Soviet Union) eventually wore out the German soldiers. And their tenacious anti-tank battalions turned the hundreds of tanks that entered the city and turned them into one single, massive pile of scrap metal. Finally, the Luftwaffe did the Germans aboslutely no good by bombing the city mercilessly. It turned the neat rows of buildings into rubble and debris that piled up on the streets, making it impossible for the German tanks to advance very far before having to stop. Then, the infantry would have to push on without armored support. This made both the tanks and the infantry easy prey for 'capitalistic' Soviet machinegunners and riflemen, who pounced on the Germans immediately. The second reason the bombing of Stalingrad was useless was that it offered up many hundreds of excellent sniper spots, while destroying only a fraction of them. From every sniper spot destoryed by aerial (or artillery) bombardment, several more were created.
The first site is incredibly helpful. There is almost too much information on it (like thats possible)
http://rkkaww2.armchairgeneral.com/index.htm This site isn't about Stalingrad so much, as the Russian Army, but there is still some useful info about Stalingrad.
I used that site daily when I was in Social 9, even though we never studied Stalingrad. Used it again (i think) when writing a short story about Pavlov's House for English (12.5 of 15, second - third best in my class).
