![panzer corps stalingrad panzer corps stalingrad](https://www.stalingrad.net/german-hq/the-road-to-stalingrad/summer2.jpg)
To present a human-interest side, I decided to include, for as many days possible, a death card ( Sterbebild) for a soldier who died in the Sixth Army during the Stalingrad campaign. Left at this point, this study might have been too antiseptic, valuable for hard-core Stalingrad researchers, but not interesting enough for other readers. The decision, of which subordinate Fourth Panzer Army units to include, was purely subjective. The study also includes portions of the Fourth Panzer Army that fought very close to Stalingrad – and many of these units were later re-assigned to the Sixth Army. The strategic level of war is generally thought of as army groups and higher-level commands armies and corps comprise the operational level of war, divisions and below are the tactical level of war. Only a few subordinate units (regiments, battalions and detachments) are mentioned: this is an operational-level study, not a tactical. The study has attempted to describe what each division was doing, where it was located and how many losses it suffered for the day. The German Army frequently changed task organization, so the reader should not note with alarm that a division is assigned to one corps on one day, a second corps for the next couple of days and even a third corps within the same week. The various subordinate corps are listed in numerical order, with the divisions listed under each corps. Light data (moon, sunrise and sunset) and weather data are presented first. The format of the study is that of a day-by-day presentation.
![panzer corps stalingrad panzer corps stalingrad](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/aWoIn1752LA/maxresdefault.jpg)
These bloody losses, combined with the massive casualties experienced by the Germans, led to Stalingrad assuming a strategic importance that would ensure that the loser of the battle would have its national will seriously questioned.
#Panzer corps stalingrad full#
In the whole of the Stalingrad Campaign, the Red Army suffered 1,100,000 casualties – a full 485,751 were killed in action or those who shortly afterward died of their wounds. Given the polar ideological differences of Fascism and Communism, combined with this racial antagonism, when the Red Army did gain the upper hand and isolate the German forces around Stalingrad in November 1942, the situation guaranteed that the Sixth Army would not only be defeated, but that it and most of its soldiers were headed for annihilation.
![panzer corps stalingrad panzer corps stalingrad](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RGBBJGSHXmU/maxresdefault.jpg)
In this fight, according to Nazi ideology, the sub-humans had no right to live. Adolf Hitler had insisted that this would be a fight between the supermen of Aryan Germany against the sub-humans of Slavic Russia. Thus, defeat was in order for the Sixth Army, but it would not end there.
![panzer corps stalingrad panzer corps stalingrad](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Il839fHvvz4/maxresdefault.jpg)
That something was the massive Soviet attack that broke through both flanks of the Sixth Army in such a violent manner and to such a great operational depth that any hope of relieving the surrounded pocket from the outside in such horrible winter conditions was probably illusionary. Believing that Stalingrad would be theirs “if only” one more attack against the urban rubble was mounted, the Sixth Army did not see that it was in a situation where if something did go wrong, it would not “see” impending doom until it was too late. Led by Adolf Hitler, who insisted that his forces fight to the last man and bullet, the Sixth Army became enticed by an objective that continued to be just past their grasp. Stalingrad was the perfect storm that would lead to the death of an army – the German Sixth Army.