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Begun in August 1942, the battle of Stalingrad consisted of two very different phases, the conquest operations carried out by the German Sixth Army, and the encirclement to which it was subjected from the moment the Soviet troops from the Southwestern fronts and from Stalingrad they contacted Kalach, in their rear, on November 23, 1942. Unable to escape and after more than two months of fighting in hellish conditions, the last defenders surrendered on February 2, 1943 , eighty years ago today. When the Soviet armies contacted Kalach on November 23, 1942, the German soldiers who had been fighting to take the city were left without the capacity to respond as their already precarious logistical situation worsened exponentially. Little by little the new defenders were losing territories, suffering defeats in local confrontations and running out of supplies. Their subsistence began to depend on what could arrive through the air.
All this, together with intense cold, the dense blanket of snow that covers the city in winter and the diseases caused by poor sanitary conditions, overcrowding and malnutrition, caused the Sixth Army to begin to crumble little by little. Under these conditions, the situation of the wounded and sick became tragic. The medical posts were insufficient to BTC Users Number Data cure them all and many died due to lack of personnel and means to stop infections and injuries that on other occasions would have been minor. Compared to a few who managed to be evacuated, many would end up piled up next to the frozen corpses of their companions waiting for death to come. Last days of the Battle of Stalingrad On January 25, 1943, shrapnel from an explosion hit Generaloberst Friedrich Paulus , a staff specialist turned head of a field army, seriously wounding him while his troops, who had so far managed to stay west of Stalingrad, lost territories.
The Soviets reached the Tsaritsa River. Meanwhile, from Berlin , Hitler proclaimed: “The army will hold its positions to the last man and the last bullet!” This certified the failure of the attempts to break the siege, as well as the absurd idea of Hermann Göring, commander in chief of the Luftwaffe, to supply those surrounded by air. What the dictator was very clear about was that he was not going to give permission to his generals to surrender because defeat could be a hard blow to the morale of the German population, a humiliation for the Reich and a great boost for the Red Army. Little by little, the troops of the 21st and 62nd armies tightened the encirclement, dividing the last German defenders into two pockets , one to the north and a smaller one to the south, and then into three, dividing the northern one. According to reports, it was during these last days of January that several hundred soldiers, in small groups or individually, tried to escape the siege.
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發表於 2024-3-9 17:18:16