The word Stalingrad for us is a symbol of the unparalleled courage and dedication of Soviet soldiers who, at the cost of huge sacrifices, were able to stop the enemy. But what would happen if the Nazis crossed this most important line of defense?
Nowhere to retreat
The Battle of Stalingrad, one of the key episodes of the Great Patriotic War and the Second World War, took place on a vast territory, including the modern Voronezh, Rostov, Volgograd regions, as well as the Republic of Kalmykia. The battle lasted 200 days and nights from July 1942 to February 1943, and despite the enemy's superiority in manpower and equipment, it ended in a crushing victory for the Soviet troops.
The Hitlerite command pinned great hopes on seizing the Stalingrad bridgehead, which would allow the Wehrmacht to block transport links between the central regions of the USSR and the Caucasus and create conditions for further advancement in order to seize the Caucasian oil fields. Such a success could help Germany achieve a tangible strategic advantage.
Throwing away the enemy grouping from Stalingrad, the Red Army prepared a radical turning point in the war and, on the whole, changed the military-political situation in the world. In Germany, they reacted extremely painfully to the defeat, declaring three days of mourning in the country. German general Kurt von Tipelskirch wrote: “The prestige of Germany in the eyes of her allies has been greatly shaken. Since the irreparable defeat was also inflicted in North Africa at the same time, the hope for a common victory collapsed. The morale of the Russians has risen high."
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The importance of the Battle of Stalingrad was discussed not only in the USSR, but also abroad. “We can safely say that the battle of Stalingrad has no example in the entire history of the Soviet-German war,” a London radio broadcast on September 5, 1942 said. And the Berlin radio on September 15 broadcast: "The events taking place in North Africa are of great importance, but, nevertheless, the position of the Soviet troops at Stalingrad remains the main pivot of the entire world war."
How would the scenario of a war with Germany develop if the Red Army were defeated at Stalingrad? It is difficult to answer this question. However, with all the variety of assumptions, our compatriots for the most part do not admit the idea that this would lead to defeat in the war. In the opinion of many, a hypothetical defeat would have delayed the development of confrontation, which would have acquired a different form, taking into account the conquest by the enemy of such an economically and militarily important bridgehead.
It is not excluded that Germany could temporarily seize the initiative and turn the tide of the war. Moscow and Leningrad would most likely become the next most important target of the Nazi troops, but the attack could take place only after the regrouping of the Wehrmacht and the replenishment of the army with manpower, equipment and weapons. It would take many months.
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Historian Olga Platonova highlights the key moments that could have happened after the fall of Stalingrad. In this case, according to her, the Germans would gain access to the main oil fields of the USSR, control over the Volga, access to strategically important facilities beyond the Urals, including in Kazakhstan and Central Asia, where they produced the bulk of food for the entire Union and in the steppe Trans-Volga region, where most of the hospitals were located.
Considering that in case of victory the Germans would not have suffered such tangible losses, then about 1.5 million Wehrmacht soldiers, including Italians, Romanians, Croats, Hungarians, who fought at Stalingrad, should be sent to other sectors of the Soviet-German front. A likely scenario for such a regrouping is the pushing back of the remnants of Soviet troops behind the so-called "A-A" line (Arkhangelsk - Astrakhan) - a defensive wall assumed by the Germans even before the start of the war, which over time was supposed to turn into a powerful defensive line - "a barrier against Asian Russia ".
Having thrown Soviet troops back to the northeast, the Germans, most likely, would have easily established control over the Transcaucasus, where they intended to create a special military-colonial region associated with oil production. And then their goal could be Central Asia, which would serve as an agricultural appendage for the expanded Reich.
It is curious that in one German science fiction novel dealing with the theme of the Soviet-German war, the new border between the Reich and the USSR ran along the Ural ridge. According to the plot of the novel, most of all, the German troops were annoyed by the exhausting partisan war and the sabotage sorties regularly made by the Red Army soldiers to the German rear.
These literary fantasies nevertheless reflect the real ideas of the German command about a possible scenario of the war: many high ranks of the Wehrmacht, even with a favorable outcome of offensive operations, did not believe in the possibility of subjugating the entire territory of the Soviet Union.
Help won't come
The victory at Stalingrad undoubtedly raised the prestige of our country in the eyes of both allies and enemies. So, the German general Gustav Doerr believed that if at Poltava in 1709 Russia achieved the right to be called a great European power, then Stalingrad was the beginning of its transformation into one of the two greatest world powers (by the second, he probably meant Germany).
It was after the Battle of Stalingrad that the work of public organizations in the USA, England, Canada, which advocated the provision of more effective assistance to the Soviet Union, intensified. For example, American labor unions raised $ 250,000 to build a hospital in ruined Stalingrad.
In a statement, the chairman of the United States' Union of Garment Workers said that “every Red Army soldier defending his Soviet soil, killing a Nazi, thereby saves the lives of American soldiers. We will remember this when calculating our debt to the Soviet ally. " Donald Slayton, an American astronaut who went through the Second World War, recalled: “When the Nazis surrendered, our jubilation knew no bounds. Everyone understood that this is a turn in the war, this is the beginning of the end of fascism."
The Anglo-American military leadership, which stepped up plans to open a Second Front, was also aware of this. But without a Soviet victory, military assistance from the Allies could have remained a distant and unlikely prospect. We know perfectly well that Winston Churchill, while promising Stalin the landing of Anglo-American troops, continued to call the USSR "an ominous Bolshevik state." The British and American leaderships benefited from the prolonged confrontation between Germany and the Soviet Union, which drained the forces of two ideological opponents, London and Washington.
As a result of the possible defeat of the Red Army, the Allies would most likely refuse the promised assistance, close their eyes to the redistribution of the USSR, and probably would have conspired with Hitler. However, no one would have given a guarantee that Hitler, having gathered fresh forces, would not have moved on to seize the British Isles, bringing Operation Sea Lion to its logical conclusion.
Reich awaits strengthening
In the event of a positive outcome of the Battle of Stalingrad for itself, Germany could well count on the help of two strong allies - Turkey and Japan, who, after the start of the German-Soviet conflict, took an openly wait-and-see attitude.
It is known that Istanbul, on the eve of Germany's invasion of the USSR, moved away from a pro-British orientation, having concluded a treaty of friendship and non-aggression with Berlin. In the summer of 1942, the Turkish leadership carried out a mobilization, concentrating in the provinces bordering on the territory of the Soviet Union, about a million troops. According to historians, Turkey was ready to enter the war on the side of Germany immediately after the fall of Stalingrad, but the counter-offensive of the Red Army forced it to curtail these plans.
At the same time, the powerful Kwantung Army stationed in Manchuria was preparing to seize the Soviet Far East. By the autumn of 1942, more than 1 million soldiers, two-thirds of tank formations and about half of the aviation that militarist Japan had at that time were concentrated near the borders with the USSR.
At the hearings of the Tokyo Tribunal, General Matsumura Tomokatsu said that in 1942 it was planned to launch an offensive by the main Japanese forces on the Primorsky Territory, at the same time, the Nazis had to seize the "pearl of the British crown" - India, in order to meet "in the heart of Asia" with the Japanese troops.
However, the cautious Japanese, unlike the self-confident Germans, were not sure of the Wehrmacht's victory at Stalingrad, and therefore were in no hurry to declare war on a strong neighbor from the West. In August 1945, the Soviet Union, which had already defeated Germany, attacked the Kwantung grouping itself, gaining the Kuril Islands and South Sakhalin, which had been lost in the Russo-Japanese war, as the victor.
Taras Repin