Episode 23 - Trumpets herald the start of Operation Uranus

The Battle of Stalingrad

This episode is all about the Russian’s fighting back as they launch Operation Uranus. Remember the Germans have been battering away at the Barrikady and Mamaev Kurgan and still have not managed to chase the 62nd Army off the West bank of the Volga river. The Red Army is clinging onto tiny bits of land, despite General Paulus and the Sixth Army throwing everything they have at the isolated Russian troops. The Rattenkrieg has shredded the Germans – and back in Berlin Goebbels has just published an editorial which effectively was preparing the population for a possible defeat in Russia. General Zhukov has been building two powerful armies preparing for a counter-offensive and some German’s are aware that its imminent – such as von Richthofen of the Luftwaffe. But military intelligence has missed the formation of five new armies in the East – and Hitler doesn’t believe the Russians can pull together large forces anymore. Paulus’ final attack before this counter-offensive began on the 11th November 1942 and was as misguided and hopeless as had been the last winter offensive of Army Group Centre against Moscow twelve months before. Within 48 hours it had degenerated into a series of violent personal subterranean battles without central direction. Even the much-vaunted Pioneer Engineering battalions failed to make a real dent in the Russian defences. Many small groups of Germans managed to cover the last three hundred yards to the Volga but having arrived there, they found Russians in their rear who appeared from their cleverly camouflaged foxholes and cut them off. The battalions narrow corridors to retreat were blocked leading to four more days of desperate and ferocious fighting between the combatants in isolated pockets – where they could smell the other at night they were so close. Prisoners were no longer being taken and soldiers had little hope of personal survival. Filled with alcohol and Benzedrine or speed, a drug which the Germans issued to their troops, these Landsers were bearded, exhausted from no sleep, they had lost all sense of motive and purpose. The only thing that mattered was cutting the throat of their individual enemy lying a few feet away. By the 18th November the shortage of ammunition and food led to a lull in fighting. That night there was only a small fraction of the usual crackle of small arms and the head numbing thud of the mortars and artillery. Both sides took the opportunity to try and deal with their wounded. North of Stalingrad, in fact over 100 miles north, a large army was preparing to cross the Don River near Serafimovich (SERA-FIMO-VEECH) and it wasn’t the Germans. And to the south, closer to the city, another army was awaiting orders – they were to launch their attack a day after the northern action and the overall plan was for both armies to meet way behind the Sixth Army at a place called Kalach.

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