Battle Of Stalingrad Analysis

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The opening of the Russian archives in the mid-1990’s shed a new light on many historical facts that previously were lacking a Soviet perspective. One example of this disparity was the strategy development and implementation skills of the Red Army in World War II. According to German reports created during the war, as well as most historiographies written before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Soviet army was virtually incapable of adapting new tactics or to new situations. However, the Soviet reports from the archives show a completely different story: the Red Army was actually quite flexible and intuitive in warfare. Furthermore, evidence in these articles point to disorganization within the Axis forces by this point in the war, rather …show more content…
According to Glantz, the Battle of Stalingrad, as well as the nine months directly following, was a critical time in the war on the Eastern Front. New sources from the Soviet archives are available and provide a new picture of the actual tactics used by the Red Army during this crucial time. Operation Barbarossa caught the Red Army off-guard, handing strategic control of the situation to Germany. Glantz notes that possibly the only reason that the Soviet forces weren’t immediately obliterated was due to the German Army’s own strategic blunders. Also, the sense of superiority that blinded the Germans to the potential power of a fully and effectively mobilized Red Army was another contributing factor in their inability to completely quash the Soviets. Glantz goes on to say that the Winter Campaign was five month long Soviet counteroffensive to the Germans’ attack on Stalingrad. Operations Mars and Jupiter, which were massive counteroffensives on the Axis forces northwest of Stalingrad, were included in this Winter Campaign. By the end of February 1943, just after the surrender of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, the Soviet army was rebounding and making slow but fairly steady strides eastwards in a semi-coordinated movement. However, amount of logistical issues the Soviets encountered while moving east slowed these efforts to near full stop by the end of March. Nevertheless, the Red Army learned from these failures: offensives launched in the summer of 1943 were adapted in order to avoid the sort of problems found in the February-March operations, such as a lack of available reserve troops. These adjustments demonstrate the maturation of Soviet tactics
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