Stalingrad

My grandfather had served in Stalingrad as a reconnaissance officer for the germans. He had a lot of stories of the advance through Russia and about the winter but one of the few things he said about Stalingrad itself was that its lines were something like a bullseye with a pocket of russians surrounded by germans surrounded by russians etc. The food was scarce and he had amazing stories about hunting for hares in the wildlife and duping his officers.

It's fucking trash actually, so attacker sided it's not even funny.

DELETE THIS. NEEEEIIIINNNNNN

why was this particular grain elevator so crucial to the war effort

How is it attacker sided? Defenders have a fuck-huge tower to shoot out of and retreat inside of if necessary

It was one of those structures that small amounts of russian deffenders held on with continuous german assaults and, like Pavlov's House, kept fighting until few survived. The building itself was probably not strategic but if you add up all these small deffences that stand their ground and keep the germans in check it really becomes hard for advancing armies to deal with incoming russian reinforcements (which is what happened).

Delayed Jerry advances. In fact the defending was so intense the Jerries believed there was a shit ton of Soviet troops stationed in that building (when it was only about 50).

Yes, reminder that more Soviet soldiers died at Stalingrad than British who died during the war.

It was bad for sure, but not as decisive as pop history makes it out to be. At the time (and until 1944) German casualties were below WWI rates. They'd actually lose more men in 1944 alone than they had from 1939-1943, Stalingrad included.

Equipment losses weren't very high either, losing 1,910 tanks in all theaters during Case Blue, the majority (~66%) being Panzer III's. In the same period they produced 2,788, with a higher percentage of newer models, meaning the Germans had a larger and more modern armored force after Stalingrad than before it.

WW2 was not measured by year as some sort of corporation. It obviously had an enormous effect on the front and it snowballed from there.

> meaning the Germans had a larger and more modern armored force after Stalingrad than before it.

obviously since 1944 is the future in comparison to 1942

>an enormous effect
Not in human casualties or equipment. Nothing lost at Stalingrad couldn't be replaced. Loses wouldn't overtake production until July 1944, over a year and a half later.

No, it's actually a bit worse than that.

Okay? There's more going on tactically than raw numbers of casualties.

>krauts make millions battle of stalingrad victory medals in anticipation of victory before even setting foot in stalingrad
>medal features the grain elevator as centerpiece
>proceed to lose stalingrad and lose tons of POWs at the grain elevator

epic

share duping officers stories please

>Taking B on Grain Elevator
>Leutnant yells, "SCHUTZE!! SECURE ZIS AREA"
>Move across conveyor belt tunnel into main Grain Elevator
>Russian is waiting there with PPSH 41
>Can not ready K98 fast enough
>Lit up with 71 Rounds of 7.62 at 900rpm
>Last thing I see is the dirty floor of the grain elevator
>Last thing i scream is "MUTTI MUTTI"
>Last thing I hear is a 12 year old call someone a faggot over voip chat while another blasts Erika over Public chat.

True Horror Gents

>Not in human casualties or equipment. Nothing lost at Stalingrad couldn't be replaced.
Except all the experienced pilots and instructors lost during the air blockade.

You can replace equipment fine and all, but experiences isn't something you can roll out of a factory. The Luftwaffe lost many flight instructors during the air blockade portion of the battle, and, although their industry may have been able to keep up with losses, they lacked the training facilities to churn out pilots as fast as they needed them after Stalingrad.

Take the Kuban campaign immediately following Stalingrad - Gunther Rall's II./JG 52 had each pilot flying up to five sorties a day because of a shortage of pilots.

>almost 2 million dead in just one battle

Yes user, that's bad no matter how you slice it.

initiative,resources and strategical aim is what they lost in Stalingrad
it was the large battle where the German had a parity of loss with Russia
you dont have 1 million casualty and just shrug it off

Most of the tower is too high to shoot ground level without exposing yourself a ridiculous amount, you should be on the point anyway.
1st point is capped instantly by any halfway competent team
2nd point only required a tiny bit of smoke and some grenades and you get a completely covered approach
Then once they're in the tower you get a countdown to reinforcements being cut off.
Defenders almost never win if the teams are even slightly evenly matched.

a pop shooter at the top floor could eviscerate advances and dp28 could cover the bottom elevator
otherwise its balanced

This is wrong though. Grain is heavily favored for attackers just by the multiple entrances into the factory. There's a roof top on A that allows an MG to cover the defenders entrance into B but also be covered from any sniper fire from the factory. Literally the only way to deal with the MG spot is to face it directly. Regarding the factory, ground level has four seperate approaches for attackers to enter, not counting the fire escape where attackers can preemptively camp the second and fourth floors.

I played RO2 competitvely with clans and would rack 100+ kills routinely as an MG. Grain elevator was one of my favorite maps to do so.

>Except all the experienced pilots and instructors lost during the air blockade.
Estimated losses of aircraft during the blockade was ~500 planes, less than 2% of 1943 production. The majority of the Luftwaffe was already on different fronts at this point as well. Generalmajor von Rohden, Chief of Staff for Luftflotte 4 during the battle and later official historian to the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe, attributed the defeat to having less than 40% of deployed aircraft in the East, not attrition. A plane shot down over the Volga has no more effect on experienced pilots than one shot down over Sicily.

That said, the gradual degradation of the Luftwaffe was far more decisive than any one land battle, no matter how people fetishize it in video games and movies.

>my dad

How old are you?

>surrenders immediately.

Why didn't he kill himself

He woke up and found he was being held at gun-point by soviets, he didn't have much of a choice.

I'd want to stick it to Hitler too after leaving me in a clusterfuck of a situation like that

My great grandfather died in Stalingrad

that's funny
did you notice that user asked why didn't he kill himself?
being held at gunpoint sounds like good opportunity, don't you think?

The advance into Russia was very long, there was a lot of, well, nothing. Every now and again there would be small villages or farm houses and often the good buildings were used by the officers for their comfort and planning, etc. I don't know where exactly but this once an officer who had high ranking members visiting asked my grandfather to hunt the local wildlife for hares (apparently good ones around) so they had something nice to cook. My grandfather was also the highest NCO of his team so hence why they asked him. He went around the forests for (period of time unremembered) but couldn't find anything except the stupid cats that roamed around the farm. He decided to get the cats and on his way back got a hare but only one. He then told the cooks to pretend the cats were the local excellent wildlife and he along with the cooks and other guys ate the hare (which apparently was a nice meal) and they offered the officers the cats. But my grandfather pulled the short stick when the question came on who was to serve them and the officers invited him to sit with them while they talked about the great game he got them to eat. There was a lot more to the story but my father told me about 5 years ago.
He also had an interesting story about what built him the mentallity of survival and his own way of rolling cigarettes in his pocket not to attract the entire german army with his tobacco bag out.
i am unnaware where in that post i mention my dad.

that's a nice story, any more?

Thanks i guess yeah i have another one i remember.
I never got to meet the man in person but he never cried, he was a really 'old school' guy according to my father but one of his memories made his eyes water a little.
He mentioned often the different weather in Russia which could mean you were scouting ahead on a frozen river and on the way back that river was a swamp with water up to the waist. He must have been there during winter because as he was scouting for russians (by the way his role was to identify the enemy assets in order for the germans to counter it with what was most effective) and he was wearing one of those snowman outfits with his men while advancing through the frozen steppes and on the way there saw that there were about two(~) buildings with a military truck in the center. The truck had its doors open and was still running and so the first assumption was that the russians had noticed them advancing and quickly hid in the buildings to ambush. The team advanced in "super sophisticated advance and cover" (my father was really not a military man) and they crept up and suddenly noticed a russian girl, typical head scarf, coat, all that stuff, walking away from the village with buckets on her shoulders. About 200 meters away was a fountain and she was walking to get water but halfway there turned and saw a squad of snowmen stretched out on the ground so she dropped her buckets, ran, and screamed. Immediatelly my grandfather rested his rifle on the nearest man, and somehow got himself to shoot the running girl (woman? she was probably 20s-30s). Sound was produced, shots were fired, the russians would 100% know germans are there now so the team rushed the little farm houses for the deffenders before they could organize but found nothing but a family hunched up in a corner in the basement. The russian soldiers came, looted the family, and left quickly forgetting one of their trucks when they probably heard a german army was near. (cont)

Cigarrettes, bread, and other supplies were given to the family. The girl was buried by the men and they left the settlement walking slowly. In the moment that the girl was screaming and running the only single thought that half produced itself in his mind was "me or her". There was no room for morallity because should the russians have been there the story would have been "we killed a bunch of them and some girl ran away" but the story was "i shot her". He became a soldier because of that (he claimed) and did what would need to be done to survive the war, which he did and then served as military police for the english.

lol what an idiot

nice joke
he killed many nazis

Damn that's gotta be rough

>400,000 crack veterans can be replaced.

it must have been, i've been told quite a bit of stories about that man but he always seemed to remember that one the most. My father even went off to note the detail that this story in particular almost made him cry. I can't imagine what it must be to be in a position where you and a man of a different nation are mutually deciding who gets to live and who dies.

>Why didn't he kill himself
He had no intention of dying for 'the bohemian corporal'

>pseudo-historical romanticism

Fuck that stupid shit map

Great-grandpa fled to Soviets from Hungarian army there.

I've been reading a lot the about battle of Stalingrad and the encirclement of the sixth army and what bothers me that through various sources I keep seeing figure of 750 tonnes as some set in stone number without which the forces trapped in Stalingrad were sure to fall.

Let's do some counting. There were roughly 265,000 Germans and their allies in the pocket at the end of operation Uranus. The FSC lists the reference value for daily intake levels based on an average adult diet of 8,700 kJ. So for the soldier to maintain their weight (and mind, people can last on much less for much longer), the luftwaffe would have to supply 2305500000
kJ, or 2305.5 GJ if you please.

Now there are many ways how to supply that energy in a balanced meal but due to constrains and shortages, let's assume they would use to most energy/weight efficent way.

100ml of Sunflower Oil contains 884 calories, or 3713 kJ. Doing the math, we arrive at 62092 liters of sunflower oil per day. Its density at 25 °C is 918.8 kg/m3, so in the end only 57 tons of food has to be supplied. Water can be melted from snow and let's be generous and say that other supplies (small arms ammunition, bandages, clothing, medicine, grenades, cigarettes,...) would in total weight 43 tons.

Even with being generous, that leaves us at only 100tons of material daily, amount that the Luftwaffe was routinely able to supply at Demyansk pocket at worse conditions. Mind you, they weren't supposed to go on offensive, they were only to defend their positions until relief force arrived. And the required amount would get smaller, as their numbers dwindled.

Why didn't OKW do this?

People can't survive on sunflower oil.

Additional vitamins and minerals could be supplied in pills, and it wouldn't increase weight by that much

Average new soldier in stalingrad had an expected lifespan of less than 24 hours
It was quite dreadful

You need protein and carbs. In fact I'm not sure if majority could digest just sunflower oil.

fucking nerd, if you spent those 43 tons you left for
>small arms ammunition, bandages, clothing, medicine, grenades, cigarettes,...
all on ammunition, you wouldn't even have enough to give every man in that pocket a single bullet for their rifle

SEE YOUR FRIENDS FALL
HEAR THEM PRAY TO THE GOD
YOUR COUNTRY DENIES

REMEMBER COMRADES! WE ARE TANK!
THEY TAKE OUT TREADS, WE ARTILLERY!
THEY TAKE OUT MAIN GUN, WE ARE PILLBOX!
THEY TAKE OUT MACHINE GUN, WE BUNKER!
THEY TAKE OUT ARMOUR, WE HEROES!

How large was the city of Stalingrad? Would the fight there be like fighting in New York?

>posts amerifat tank that never even entered service

Liquid shits tend to interfere with combat ability.

>How large was the city of Stalingrad?
fairly large
>Would the fight there be like fighting in New York?
are you for real?

lend-lease :^^^^^^^^)

you can swap some of that oil for potatoes and bread, fried bread with salt is waay to delicious, sure you can't live on that forever buy you will last half a year

>new soviet soldier
that's an important detail you forgot to mention

t.ugly wehraboo

> one million plus dead

Was it really THAT bad

Don't know how true this is and i didn't even remember it correctly, but apparently more Russian civilians died in Stalingrad of hunger and bombing than all of Allied forces, namely US and Britain throughout the war.

>but apparently more Russian civilians died in Stalingrad of hunger and bombing than all of Allied forces, namely US and Britain throughout the war.
there was 400,000 people in the city on the eve of battle and good deal of them fled, was evacuated and when dust settled 60,000 were still live, so no fucking chance in hell Stalingrad had bigger civilian deathtoll than combined murrican and brit war deaths

The angles that defenders have are completely shit for defending.
You are fairly hard to kill for attackers, but the map almost always ends up with attackers just cutting off the ticked supply so KD doesn't matter for shit.

Could it be Russian civilians overall during war being killed more than Allied soldiers? I did say I didn't remember it completely, but then again, the guy could be talking shit.

>Could it be Russian civilians overall during war being killed more than Allied soldiers?
that's definitely true, no argument there
soviet civilian deaths were floating somewhere around 20 million, absolutely dwarfing allied military deaths

How did Goering re-supply go?

it didn't

Damn, Stalingrad looked like THAT?!

what's the matter?

Nice chin dude.

If you look at aerial photos of the city it's pretty crazy how SMALL it is, it looks like an average american city with a population of like 50,000. Reading about the battle makes it seem like a massive metropolis

It was Goering's overpromising fat ass which doomed the 6th army;;

>Hitler passive-aggressively gets your army obliterated and sends hints you should totally kill yourself
>follow your unit's survivors into captivity like an adult
>wowwww why didn't you shoot yourself I thought you liked me

Richthofen.(the commander of the LW in russia) told everyone including Von Paulus his aircraft could not keep the army re-supplied. Von-Ps only chance was a fighting withdrawl as early as possible, he failed as a commander by following Hitlers orders.

>The germans captured that

After pushing so long and so hard that they thought there was hundreds of Russians defending it. Turns out it was only 40.

It's portrayed as one in "Enemy at the Gates." Movie memes shape peoples impression of reality more than what actually happened does.

it was actually around 10 miles wide along the river and maybe 4-5 miles deep west-east
population was like half a million tops
also holy fuck that picture, there is nothing left

Are you implying that a force of fresh soldiers perform as well as veterans?

yes

youtube.com/watch?v=kg_JPSe0pMY

>More people died fighting over this single building in this one battle than died during the whole of the battle of France
Really makes you think.

No, but the idea that the Sixth Army was some elite formation is nonsense, especially when you consider part of the Stalingrad mythos is the poor performance of Romanian units, many of whom were just as experienced, being in the field since '41 and many veterans of Odessa.

It also belies a poor understanding of how German divisions were reformed; intentionally pairing green combat units with veteran HQ, supply, and artillery units, ideally at a 1:1 ratio. Thus a "green" German infantry division of 12,000 men would itself include ~6,000 veterans. It's obviously not the same as a fully veteran combat unit, but at least some institutional memory remains.

>>Last thing I hear is a 12 year old call someone a faggot over voip chat while another blasts Erika over Public chat.

He knew that Stalingrad was a lost cause, even before they actually got the order to take it at all cost. One of the good ones in that shitshow.

Man that a hungarian looking dude if i ever saw one. dat chin.

this. Anyone who followed Hitlers orders at that point doomed the german army.
Hitler needed to go for Germany to stand any chance ( way earlier too)

this is why we can't have nice things

the temp. wasnt 25c
soldiers cant just eat sunflower oil

humans arent machines, there are reports to high command that if ppl cant get their traditional rations, theyll perform poorly or even refuse to fight

it was a real problem with axis soldiers given german rations

>read german guy in Stalingrad memories
>ok prepare to break through
>ok burn all what we can not take like food and supplies and warm clothes
>ok...........
>ok break through cancelled guys we stay :^

It was pretty small.

(4u)

For 250,000 men per day:
~1 kg of food and misc (250t)
~1 l of fuel (250t)
~50 rounds of 7.92 (200t)
Now you know, nerd.

That not the barrika nor the tractor factories tho

was the house made of diamonds?