The Destruction of 6th Army at Stalingrad

By Ian Baxter

A pictorial history of the last months of Nazi Germany’s 6th Army at the Battle of Stalingrad during World War II.

The scale of death and destruction during the Battle of Stalingrad during late 1942 and early 1943 remains unprecedented in the history of warfare.

The annihilation of General von Paulus’s 6th Army epitomized the devastating defeat of Hitler’s ambition to conquer Stalin’s Soviet Union. After the successful Operation Blue offensive, the 6th Army reached the River Volga north of Stalingrad in summer 1942. With overextended supply lines and facing steely opposition, increasingly desperate attempts to seize the city repeatedly failed. Slowly 6th Army became encircled. The German High Command attempted several relief attempts, notably Field Marshal von Manstein’s “Winter Storm,” but all were defeated by the tenacity of the enemy and the Russian winter. To their credit, the men of the 6th Army fought to the end, but by February 1943, the last pockets of German resistance were either destroyed or had surrendered.

Thanks to a superb collection of unpublished photographs, this entry in the Images of War series provides an absorbing insight into the dramatic events of the last months of the 6th Army’s doomed existence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781526747969

Ian Baxter

Ian Baxter is a military historian who specialises in German twentieth-century military history. He has written more than fifty books. He has also reviewed numerous military studies for publication, supplied thousands of photographs and important documents to various publishers and film production companies worldwide, and lectures to various schools, colleges and universities throughout the United Kingdom and Southern Ireland.

Book preview

Chapter One

The Road to Hell

By the spring of 1942 Hitler was now in full command of the army and was determined to obliterate the Soviet army in southern Russia once and for all. To finally destroy his enemy a plan had been worked out for an all-out drive south to capture a city that bore than name of Stalin. Stalingrad comprised approximately 500,000 inhabitants and stretched for 12 miles along the west bank of the Volga. It was the third largest industrial city in Russia and boasted a huge tractor plant which had been converted to produce more than a quarter of the country’s tanks and armoured vehicles. There was a gun factory, metallurgical and chemical works, railroads, and oil tank farms. The Russians used the river for the shipment of oil from the Caucasus.

Within four days Voronezh was captured sending Red Army troops reeling back across the vast Russian steppe for their lives. Following the capture of the city the 4th Panzer Army then swung south-east along the Don where it linked up with Paulus’s 6th Army east of Kharkov. Over the next few weeks, strung out over more than 200 miles, the 6th Army with twenty divisions – 250,000 men, 500 panzers, 7,000 guns and mortars, and 25,000 horses – pushed down the Don corridor towards

Reviews for The Destruction of 6th Army at Stalingrad

[Germanarmyresearch · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Quite useless, badly written, terrible photo quality. Not recommended at all.