Episode 1 - Shock and awe as Barbarossa begins & Stalin goes AWOL

Welcome to the Battle of Stalingrad podcast with me your host, Des Latham, this is the Battle of Stalingrad, episode 1. As I went about planning this series over the last year, the big question that emerged was how was I to make sense of the madness? The utter devastation and destruction wrought by this moment in history, where the 6th German Army under the direction of an increasingly out of touch Führer were sent to a city that became a graveyard for about two million people. Stalingrad is now a legal term meaning to wear down opposition lawyers by presenting any argument by any means possible and to stall in the face of overwhelming odds. I guess that’s what General Paulus and his men were doing at the end of this most significant battle in history. Starting with some background which will take us through about four or five initial episodes we’ll deep dive into the battle itself from both the German and the Russian point of view. The first few podcasts will deal with the German invasion of Russia in some detail including the battles for Moscow and Leningrad which predated Stalingrad. We really need to understand Stalingrad through the lens of operation Barbarossa because the German’s failed in their initial invasion which began in June 1941. Then will focus on the preparations in May, June and July 1942 where Hitler decided to target Stalingrad instead of bypassing the city as the 6th Army headed towards the all-important oil producing region in the Caucasus. We know just how the entire Russo-German war of 1941-1945 has resonated down the ages. This battle remains a symbolic event in the minds of modern Russian leaders like Vladimir Putin. By 1940 many citizens inside Russian were fully aware that at some stage the USSR may have to fight Germany after almost a decade of tension between the fascist and the communist states. Stalin and his advisors were buying time before 1941, desperately trying to upgrade the Russian army before an inevitable war between the two ideologies. But they got the timing wrong, with Stalin certain he could lead Hitler on a merry dance of diplomacy until his military production had caught up with the Germans which was estimated to be later in 1942. Time ran out. The terrible struggle in Stalingrad that killed around a million Russians and over eight hundred thousand Germans dwarves most other battles. Leningrad experienced a far longer siege, far more bombing, far more fighting, but Stalingrad is pretty much its own league when it comes to number of dead and the viciousness of the struggle. It is vital to understand present day Russia through the prism of The Great Patriotic War as it’s known and through the understanding of the defence of four main cities. Leningrad which endured a remarkable two years of siege - Moscow the heart of Russia, Sebastopol in the Crimea which was part of Russia’s underbelly, and of course Stalingrad because it symbolized everything that the USSR was endeavouring to advertise. It was a model city, built on manufacturing. Hundreds of thousands of Russians died fighting the Germans in the Crimea and in 2014 Moscow took it back. Don’t underestimate the importance of Sebastopol and this little isthmus in the consciousness of modern Russians. Let’s see why the German invasion of Russia which began in June 1941 seemed to take Joseph Stalin by surprise even after he received more than 80 warnings over the period immediately before the invasion. For the Germans, they took the decision to hide in plain site because Hitler’s operation was just so unbelievable.