Stalingrad Movie Depicts Horror Of War, Part One, Historical Background

A little historical background: Stalingrad was a massive and famous World War Two battle, which came to symbolize, along with El Alamein in North Africa, the turning point in the war against Hitler and Mussolini. In the summer of 1942, a year after ordering his forces to invade the Soviet Union, Hitler concentrated his forces in the southern part of the Soviet Union in a strategic move to capture the oil fields of the Caucasus region, and to breach the Volga River, thus halting Soviet river traffic northwards. As the summer proceeded, Hitler divided his forces, sending one branch southward to take the oil fields, and keeping the other branch focused on the Volga at the city of Stalingrad.* The Soviets were determined to fight for the city, and German efforts to completely capture it were thwarted in August through October of 1942, bringing a street to street and building to building struggle for the remaining part of the devastated city still in Soviet hands.** In an effort to capture the last part of the city, the Germans sent in combat engineer battalions to try to gain control (the movie deals with a group of these combat engineers).*** As the slow, but brutal fighting took place, the Soviets mustered substantial forces outside the city for an offensive of their own.

With the bulk of his forces in the area tied down in and around Stalingrad, Hitler relied on his allies for forces to protect the flanks of his forces in the immediate Stalingrad area. These Italian, Hungarian and Rumanian troops were largely ill equipped to face the Soviet forces, especially to face Soviet tanks, but Hitler entrusted them with this important mission anyhow, believing the Soviets to be too weak to launch any major offensive operations, although German intelligence had reported Soviet troop concentrations on either side of German forces in the Stalingrad area, an area defended by Rumanian troops. In mid November the Soviets struck. While some Rumanian forces fought hard, the presence of large numbers of Soviet tanks eventually spread panic among their ranks and the front line collapsed. The Soviets raced to the rear of the German forces in the Stalingrad area (their 6th Army), trapping about a quarter of a million German troops, along with some Rumanian and Croatian forces.**** Hitler refused to allow a breakout attempt by the 6th Army, and a relief attack from the south was halted by Soviet resistance and winter weather. Attempts to supply the surrounded forces by air failed to adequately deliver enough supplies to keep the army going and repeated Soviet attacks gradually whittled down the size of the 6th Army. Although forbidden by Hitler to surrender, Colonel General (Generaloberst) Friedrich Paulus, then promoted to Field Marshal by Hitler as the end neared on January 30,***** decided to surrender his remaining 91,000 men to the Soviets in early February 1943. Only about 6000 of these men ever returned to Germany after the war. Prior to that time, the Soviets had attacked the Italians and the Hungarians, inflicting devastating casualties on these German allies, including many thousands killed. After the war, Italian-Soviet diplomatic relations were poor for decades, as the Italians said the Soviets had never given a full accounting for the Italian prisoners they had taken during the Stalingrad battle. "As I recall," the Soviets said the Italian prisoners, unfamiliar with the harsh winter conditions in Russia, had consequently suffered a high death rate in captivity, but the Italians felt the Soviets had mistreated their Italian prisoners, causing their deaths, or had executed many of them. The Rumanians and Hungarians, both under Soviet domination in the postwar era, could not offer any protest about their Soviet held prisoners of war until their communist governments were ousted and they were able to ask questions decades later.

This overall gigantic "Battle of Stalingrad" brought staggering casualties of at least three quarters of a million Axis troops killed, wounded or missing, and at least a million Soviet killed, wounded or missing. In addition, perhaps as many as fifty thousand Soviet civilians died.

* Stalingrad had been known as "Tsaritsyn" under the Tsars and into the early years of Soviet rule, when it was then renamed in honor of Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin. It was renamed "Volgograd," circa 1961, as Soviet leaders tried to distance themselves from Stalin's rule. Stalin had died in 1953.

** German air and artillery bombardment had left many structures in partial to total ruin, but these ruins then provided the remaining Soviet troops with excellent hiding places to ambush German units, slowly bleeding the German forces and leaving their units in a weakened state. The fighting was often confusing for the opposing forces, as later reports indicated examples where German forces would control certain floors of a building, while Soviet forces controlled other floors of the same building.

*** The movie has a scene using an actual preserved recording of Hitler giving a speech to long time Nazi Party members in Munich in November 1942. The movie has the exhausted men, who had just fought to capture a Soviet factory, sitting around and listening to the speech, which had been broadcast on radio all over Germany, and to the troops on the Eastern Front. In the speech, Hitler says he wants to take the remaining part of Soviet held Stalingrad "mit ganz kleinen Stoßtrupps" ( "with very small assault detachments"), in reference to the combat engineers. Some of the men look at each other in astonishment, as they have already suffered high casualties just taking this one factory.

**** Croatia had been established as an independent state, although with foreign policy tied to Italy and Germany, after the defeat of Yugoslavia in 1941. It was a fascist ruled nation which provided some military forces to Germany, although these forces were technically part of the "German" armed forces (Wehrmacht). Another small unit was part of the Italian military. Their other forces remained as part of their own Croatian military to combat insurrection forces in the Croatia-Serbia region, often, but not always, organized by communist leaders, most prominent of whom was Josef Tito, who later became the head of postwar Yugoslavia.

***** Essentially, German general ranks had been copied from the French long ago. Typically the Germanic languages (which includes English) place adjectives before the noun they describe, as in, "the blue car." The Latin based languages, which includes French, typically place adjectives after the noun. In the British and American armies of World War Two, there was the rank of Major General, for instance, but the Germans use the French form, "General Major" (Generalmajor, in German). Neither the British nor American armies had the specific German rank of "Colonel General" (Generaloberst) in World War Two, but it was equivalent to a four-star general in the U.S. Army. Hitler had promoted Paulus to field marshal (Generalfeldmarschall) just a couple of days before the end, with the thought that Paulus would commit suicide, rather than surrender.   

Word History:
Freeze-This word goes back to Indo European "preus," which meant "to freeze, to frost over." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "freusan," as the Indo European "p" often became "f" in Old Germanic. This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "freosan," which then became "fresen," before the modern version. The figurative sense, "to remain motionless, to stop in one tracks and remain motionless," may well have developed in Old Germanic and was passed on to a number of its offspring, including English. The noun form meaning, "a period of cold temperatures in which crops freeze," came from the verb. The other Germanic languages have: German "frieren," ^ Low German "fresen," ^^ Dutch "vriezen" West Frisian "frieze," Danish and Norwegian "fryse," Swedish "frysa" and Icelandic "frysta" and "frjósa."

^ Note the change of "s" or "z" to "r," a common change (sound shift) which developed in High German centuries ago, although the "s" sound continued in this case, as Old High German had "friosan;" and it wasn't until later that that sound shift took place. Another example is, English has "I was," but German has "Ich war" (not pronounced like English "war," but rather it rhymes with "far").

^^ Low German, under influence from German (standard German is heavily based on High German), also has "freren," a borrowing with the "r" from standard German. Low German was once the general dialect of northern Germany, but the teaching of standard German in schools has brought a serious decline to Low German, although it still is used, but less than in times past. Low German is very closely related to English, as northern Germany is the ancestral homeland of Anglo-Saxon.