By Newell Durnbrooke
On February 2nd, 1943 the battered remnants of the German 6th Army surrendered to the victorious Soviet forces in the smouldering rubble of what had once been the city of Stalingrad. For five months the German Wehrmacht and their Axis allies had first battled their way into Stalingrad, and then defended their gains after being cut off and surrounded by superior Soviet forces.
The entire world had watched this colossal struggle, as Hitler’s heretofore undefeated legions engaged in furious house-to-house street battles with an equally stubborn Soviet foe. The ferocity of the Soviet defence was best exemplified by the defenders of the legendary Pavlov’s House. Led by Sergeant Yakov Pavlov, less than 30 Soviet soldiers stood their ground against the overwhelming Nazi onslaught. It is worth noting that this tiny brave force of Soviets held out for longer against the Germans than France or Belgium had been able to resist the Blitzkrieg. In the end, the capitulation of the starving survivors of the German Army in Stalingrad sent a strong message to the Allied forces: The vaunted German war machine could be beaten. To this day, Stalingrad remains the bloodiest battle in the history of warfare, with an estimated 2 million lives lost from both sides. Perhaps more importantly it is also widely recognized as the major turning point in WW2.
Following the German defeat at Stalingrad, Hitler and his Axis allies could still mount limited offensives against the Soviets. However they would never again enjoy the battlefield superiority that had allowed them to conquer Europe from the Atlantic Ocean to the Volga River. There remained two more years of fierce fighting, but following their decisive defeat at Stalingrad, it was the beginning of the end of Hitler’s Third Reich. While the Soviets sacrificed themselves heroically in the close quarter struggles of Stalingrad, they did not do so entirely alone. Since Hitler had launched Operation Barbarossa – the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Allies such as Britain and Canada had begun shipping war materiel to the Soviet Union to keep them in the fight against the common Nazi foe.
Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, forced the western allies to work together with the Soviets. Shortly after the Soviet Union entered the war, Canada restored diplomatic relations with Moscow for the first time since the Russian Bolshevik revolution in 1917. Although he would not established an actual embassy in Ottawa until 1944, in the summer of 1941 Georgy Zarubin was named the Soviet Union’s first Ambassador to Canada. One of the first acts of Canadian-Soviet military cooperation came in August and September of 1941 in a little known action known as Operation Gauntlet. A Canadian-led expeditionary force successfully evacuated about 2,000 Soviet miners from the Norwegian Island of Spitsbergen and returned them to the Soviet port of Archanglesk.
The first few months of the war were disastrous for the Soviets. In the opening battles the Axis forces encircled and destroyed entire Soviet armies. The Soviet loses in men and material were enormous. However with the onset of winter and the transfer of fresh troops from Siberia, the Soviets were able to halt the Germans at the gates of Moscow in December 1941. This was the first tactical setback for Hitler’s ground forces since they had invaded Poland in 1939 and then swept through Scandinavia and Western Europe in the spring of 1940. With the Spring thaw in 1942, the regrouped and re-equipped Axis armies were ready to resume their advance deeper into the Soviet Union. The main German thrust in the summer of 1942 would not be aimed at the symbolic capital Moscow but rather at the oil-rich Caucasus in the southern Soviet Union. As such, the city of Stalingrad became strategically important to both sides. It was a major industrial and transport hub on the Volga river. Whoever controlled Stalingrad would have access to the oil fields of the Caucasus and control over shipping on the Volga. Once it became clear that this was the objective of Hitler’s renewed offensive, Soviet leader Joset Stalin pleaded with the western allies to open a second front in France to draw off Axis reinforcements. The result was the ill-fated Operation Jubilee, also known as the Dieppe Raid. Launched on 19 August, this amphibious assault-landing of over 6,000 infantry was a predominantly Canadian effort.
Supported by the RAF and the Royal Navy, the port of Dieppe was to be captured and held by the Canadians for a brief period, before the attacking force was to make a calculated withdrawal. In addition to destroying German coastal defence and port installations, the Dieppe raid was intended to raise morale of the allies and demonstrate to Stalin their commitment to re-open the Western front. As the actual Dieppe raid unfolded, it became evident that the aerial and naval support was insufficient to enable the Canadian ground forces to achieve their objectives. Their tanks became trapped on the beaches and the Canadian infantry were pinned down heavy German fire. Within ten hours the fiasco had fully unfolded. Forced to retreat under fire, 3,623 of the 6,086 Allied soldiers who landed on the beach had been killed, wounded or captured by the Germans.
There was little to show for the horrific casualties, yet censored western media reported the raid to have been a ‘success.’ Military brass knew better, and the Soviets realized there would be no ‘Second Front’ opened anytime soon. Just four days after the disastrous Dieppe Raid, on 23 August 1942, the first Axis tanks advanced into the outskirts of Stalingrad. The Soviet defenders were on their own. However,one way in which Canada could continue to aid their Soviet allies in their valiant defence was the provision of vital war materiel. Through the winter of 1942-43, the Royal Canadian Navy was heavily engaged in escorting supply convoys through the Arctic Sea to the Soviet port cities of Murmansk and Archanglesk. A second vital Allied supply link to the Soviet Union had also been established over land through Iran to a receiving center in Baku, Azerbaijan in the Caucasus.
One of the most effective pieces of kit shipped by Canada to the Soviet Union during those critical months, was the 16 ton Valentine infantry tank. Built by the Canadian Pacific Rail Company in Montreal, these light tanks were well armoured and packed a 2 pounder cannon. In total Canada shipped 1,420 Valentines to the Soviet union during the course of the war – more than any other foreign tank in service with the Soviet Army. By the time the Germans had reached Stalingrad on the Volga, some 450 Valentine tanks from Canada has been safely delivered to the Soviets.
Shortly after reaching the Volga River and investing the city of Stalingrad, the Germans launched an offensive using their 6th Army and a corps of the 5th Army. The attack was supported by an intense Luftwaffe bombing that reduced the entire city to rubble. In the early stages of the fighting, the Soviets would use suicidal human wave attacks to repel the Germans. The battle degenerated into house-to-house fighting as both sides poured in seemingly endless reinforcements. By November, the Germans had captured all but a couple of narrow Soviet bridgeheads on the west bank of the Volga. Hitler pre-maturely announced to the German people news that Stalingrad had been captured. On November 19, with the Germans sensing that victory was within their grasp, the Soviets launched their own surprise counter offensive dubbed Operation Uranus. This two pronged attack across the Volga River targeted the two Romanian armies which were protecting the German 6thArmy’s flanks. The Romanians were quickly overrun, resulting in the besieging German 6th Army becoming themselves encircled in Stalingrad. Hitler was furious at this development and he ordered the 6th Army to “hold at all costs”. No breakout was to be attempted by the surrounded Axis forces. Luftwaffe Commander Field Marshal Hermann Goring boasted that his fleet of Ju52 transport aircraft could keep the Axis pocket supplied. However, Goring’s ambitions could not be fulfilled. The Sixth army was steadily reduced through the deadly attrition of close quarter combat. Even after an outside German rescue attempt had been repulsed and the resupply by air had proven to be woefully inadequate, the Axis troops in the rubble of Stalingrad fought on for two more months.
On February 2, 1943, having exhausted their food, fuel and ammunition the survivors of the 6th Army finally capitulated. This was the first surrender of an entire German Field Army in World War II. By the end of Operation Uranus, Soviet forces captured about 200,000 soldiers, officers, and generals. These prisoners included Friedrich von Paulus who just three days prior to the capitulation had been promoted to the rank of Field Marshal by Hitler. The promotion came with a reminder to Paulus that“not a single [German] Field Marshal had ever been taken prisoner”. Nevertheless, Field Marshal von Pasulus did surrender and that act was the harbinger of the impending doom for Hitler’s Third Reich. Eighty years ago this month, the world watched in awe and admiration as the Soviet military’s self sacrifice shattered forever the myth of Nazi invincibility.
