Remembering Operation Uranus

On this date, November 18, 1942, the High Command of the Red Army must have been on absolute tenter hooks. This was the final day before the activation of Operation Uranus.

Operation Uranus changed the history of the world.

Punctiliously planned and designed by Soviet Marshal Georgii Zhukov, on November 19, 1942 the Red Army began its tactic of surrounding Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus' Sixth Army.

It was only in the previous few short weeks that the Red Army stopped retreating at the advance of the Germans.

A decision was made that no Soviet soldier would retreat one step east of the Volga. Not one step backwards.

The fighting through the Spring, Summer and Autumn was relentless and cruel. The savagery meted out to the people of Stalingrad was barbaric. And yet the Russian people held out until November 19.

On that date the full force of the Red Army was unleashed on the Germans.

The fight went on until February when Paulus capitulated.

It was a brilliant victory. It changed the face of the war and from that date onwards the Red Army raced west, arriving in Berlin, in agreement with US forces, in Spring 1945.

It is a pity that we in the west have never fully recognised the importance of the battle at Stalingrad.

While Stalin, like all dictators, perpetrated unspeakable deeds, the city on the Volga will be forever remembered for the Battle of Stalingrad.  

Paulus later worked for the army of the German Democratic Republic. He is the only marshal in German military history to have surrendered. That is why Hitler wanted him to take his own life rather than capitulate.

Highly recommended reads: Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor and Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman. The Grossman book is a historical novel and was translated into English this year.

Grossman was a Ukrainian journalist of the Jewish faith who worked as a journalist with the Red Army.