399. Stalin: Hitler’s Downfall At Stalingrad (Part 5)
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Stalingrad, one of the most brutal battles of all time. By its close, over a million soldiers would lie dead in the rubble of a ruined city. But what was the real reason that Stalingrad was chosen to host this clash of military titans? And how does Putin use this battle to his advantage today? What's he counting on us not to talk about? To guide us through this monumental moment in history, we're joined by none other than the great Sir Anthony Beaver, author of Stalingrad, a book that has redefined the way we view the battle in the West. Anthony, a very warm welcome to Empire.
Thank you very much.
Now, last time in the last episode, we we left Stalin and he had his back to the Volga. The the terror that he had unleashed on his people had gutted his own officer corps. Hitler's invasion had come within sight of the Kremlin towers, and in the summer of 1942, he issues the order that become the iron law of everything else that comes next, not one step backwards. And and the place where Where that order would be tested past the breaking point of most armies is Stalingrad, a long industrial city strung out for more than 20 miles along the west bank of the Volga, renamed from Tsaritsyn, which you'll remember from one of our previous episodes, was a place there Stalin made his name in the Civil War.
Uh however you want to take that. But by the time this battle is over, more Than a million people will be dead, an entire German army will have marched into captivity, and almost none of uh of it will ever march out again. So historians argue a great deal about what happened and how it happened, but most of them agree Stalingrad is the hinge on which the Second World War turns. Almost everything before that is Germany advancing, almost everything. After it is Germany falling back.
And for our younger listeners who who perhaps h don't know Sir Antony's name or uh his book, um for my generation of historians, uh Stalingrad not only changed the way that we looked at Stalingrad, indeed we looked at the Second World War and and how much of it was fought in Russia rather than the version we'd been fed as children where the kind of Battle of Britain and D-Day were the key moments of uh of the of the war. But it also changed the way that uh his history was written. And I should say uh just before we go any further that when I first started writing history books, I went to Sir Antony and learnt his famous system of card indexes, which I still use to this day.
He doesn't use it, but we use it.
If you give them up
now. Well I don't any more, no will it. Very sweet of you to say so.
Anthony K there is there is one school of thought that that suggests that Hitler becomes obsessed with Stalingrad because it bears the name Stalin. I mean, how much of uh do you think that carries any water?
Well, there is an element of truth, yes indeed, because in a way it became an Erzart's victory, a replacement for his failure to capture the oil fuels in the Caucasus.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–9:17
2
Why was Stalingrad chosen as the focal point of the German offensive?
9:17–25:27
3
Did Hitler’s obsession with the city’s name influence his strategy?
25:27–34:10
4
How did the massive aerial bombardment affect civilian casualties?
34:10–39:39
5
Why were civilians forbidden to leave Stalingrad and how did that impact the siege?
39:39–50:37
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Empire: World History
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