Stalingrad :: essays research papers

The attack came as a complete surprise to the attraction of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin. Despite repeated intelligence warfarenings, which included the precise twenty-four hours and hour of Germanys incipient assault, Stalin remained convinced that Hitler would not risk an eastern war as long as the British Empire remained undefeated. It has been argued that Stalin in situation planned a pre-emptive attack on Germany for the early summer of 1941, and was thusly thrown off-balance by the German invasion.For two years Soviet forces pushed the German army back into Germany ...The evidence makes clear the defensive posture of the Soviet Union in 1941. Stalin did not want to risk war, though he hoped to profit from the German-British struggle if he could. In the event, the shock of attack nearly unhinged the Soviet state, and by the autumn German forces had destroyed most of the sanguine Army and the Russian air force, surrounded and besieged Leningrad - where everyplace one million people died of starvation and cold - and were approaching the outskirts of capital of the Russian Federation.The Red Army had sufficient reserves to stop the German army from complementary the rout in December 1941, but the following summer German offensives launched far to the south of Moscow, to seize the rich oilfields of the Caucasus and to cut the Volga shipping route, created that chaos.Hitler hoped that German forces would capture the oil and sweep on through the midsection East to meet up with Axis forces in Egypt. The Volga was to be occlude at Stalingrad, after which German forces could wheel northwards to outflank Moscow and the Soviet line.The southern attack failed at Stalingrad. After weeks of chaotic retreats and well-heeled German victories, the Red Army solidified its defence and against all the betting odds clung on to the battered city. In November 1942 Operation Uranus was launched by the Soviets, and the German 6th Army at Stalingrad was encircled.S ome historians have seen this as the turning arrest of the war.