Operation Uranus
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| Eastern Front |
|---|
| Barbarossa – Baltic Sea – Finland – Leningrad and Baltics – Crimea and Caucasus – Moscow – 1st Rzhev-Vyazma – 2nd Kharkov – Stalingrad – Velikiye Luki – 2nd Rzhev-Sychevka – Kursk – 2nd Smolensk – Dnieper – 2nd Kiev – Korsun – Hube's Pocket – Belorussia – Lvov-Sandomierz – Balkans – Hungary – Vistula-Oder – Königsberg – Berlin – Prague |
| Operation Blue to 3rd Kharkov |
|---|
| Blue – Voronezh – Edelweiss – Stalingrad – Uranus – Winter Storm – Saturn – Tatsinskaya Raid – 3rd Kharkov |
Operation on Uranus was the World War II Soviet encirclement of German forces during the Battle of Stalingrad. The double envelopment was launched on November 19, 1942 with twin attacks that met at Kalach four days later.
Preparations for the encirclement had been painstaking. Stalin was persuaded to allow Zhukov and Vasilevsky the conditions and resources they needed. Zhukov's strategy was to supply besieged Stalingrad with just enough resources to draw in, hold and exhaust Paulus' German 6th Army while fresh Soviet troop intakes and equipment were used to build five new fresh tank armies. (By this time Soviet war production far outstripped German expectations.) The new armies were then 'blooded' elsewhere on the frontline. Once German forces were concentrated on Stalingrad, the Soviets decided on a wide encirclement for two main reasons: to attack weaker fronts held by poorly equipped Romanian armies and to avoid early intervention by the 6th Army. Secrecy was surprisingly effective, partly due to Soviet deceptive actions and partly due to deep German skepticism about the Soviet ability to carry out such an operation.
Once Romanian resistance had been overcome, Soviet forces advanced through freezing fog. No significant German forces were in place to resist and the northern and southern pincers met at Kalach, capturing intact its vital bridge across the Don.
More than a quarter million Axis soldiers were cut off from supplies just as the harsh winter began to take hold. The situation for the German attackers of Stalingrad seemed desperate and on November 22 General Friedrich Paulus sent Adolf Hitler a telegram saying that the German 6th Army was surrounded. Breakthroughs in Soviet cryptography contributed to the success of the operation.
Forbidden to break out from the encirclement, the German Sixth Army fell to a number of Soviet ground attacks, starting on January 31, 1943. Promises of resupply by the Luftwaffe were never met and there were serious losses of transport aircraft. The harsh weather conditions were critical in sapping the health of troops and the effectiveness of equipment.
On February 2, the 6th Army consisting of nearly 100,000 soldiers, surrendered to the Soviets, although only about 6,000 survived captivity to be returned to Germany years after the end of the war. The operation was conducted in rough coordination with the Operation Mars near Moscow.
The Red Army linked up so rapidly at Kalach that it had to be re-enacted for propaganda filming several days later. Soviet forces took the bridge on the march as its German defenders could not comprehend that the advancing tanks, with lights fully on, could be anything but their own forces (German units often used captured T34 tanks as they were highly regarded by all sides.)
The morale boost of the German defeat, particularly in Russia, was significant. Germany had suffered its largest scale defeat in the war so far.
During the siege, Paulus had been promoted to Field Marshal. He thus became the first German Marshal to surrender. According to some sources Hitler ordered his promotion specifically in the hope that he would commit suicide to avoid surrendering his Marshal's baton.
