6th Army (Wehrmacht)

The Soviet counter-attack at Stalingrad

  German front, 19 November

  German front, 12 December

  German front, 24 December

  Soviet advance, 19–28 November

On 28 June 1942, Army Group South launched Case Blue, the German Army's summer offensive into southern Russia.[8] The goals of the operation were to secure both the oil fields at Baku, Azerbaijan, and the city of Stalingrad on the river Volga to protect the forces advancing into the Caucasus.[9]

Two months after the beginning of Case Blue, the 6th Army reached the outskirts of Stalingrad on 23 August.[10] On the same day, over 1,000 aircraft of the Luftflotte 4 bombed the city, killing many civilians.

Stalingrad was defended by the 62nd Army (Soviet Union) under the command of General Vasily Chuikov.[11] Despite German air superiority over Stalingrad, and with more artillery pieces than the Red Army, progress was reduced to no more than several meters a day. Eventually, by mid November, the 62nd Army had been pushed to the banks of the Volga, but the 6th Army was unable to eliminate the remaining Soviet troops.[12]

On 19 November the Stavka launched Operation Uranus, a major offensive by Soviet forces on the flanks of the German army.[13] The first pincer attacked far to the west of the Don, with the second thrust beginning a day later attacking far to the south of Stalingrad.[14] The 6th Army's flanks were protected by Romanian troops, who were quickly routed, and on 23 November, the pincers met at Kalach-na-Donu, thereby encircling the 6th Army.[15] A relief attempt was launched on 12 December, codenamed Operation Winter Storm, but this failed.[16] The army surrendered between 31 January and 2 February 1943.[17] German casualties are 147,200 killed and wounded and over 91,000 captured, the latter including Field Marshal Paulus, 24 generals and 2,500 officers of lesser rank.[17] Only 5,000 would return to Germany after the war.[1]

Soon after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the Sixth Army's surgeon, the staff doctor Gerhart Panning, learned about captured Russian expanding bullets by using Jewish POWs. To determine the effects of this type of ammunition on German soldiers, he decided to test them on other human beings after asking SD member and SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel for some "guinea pigs" (Jewish POWs).[32]

In July 1941 while conducting operations in Right-bank Ukraine, the Sixth Army bloodlessly captured the Ukrainian town of Bila Tserkva. Immediately after the town's capitulation, Sixth Army police units separated the Jewish population of the town into a ghetto and required that they wear the Star of David as identification. Two weeks after the occupation, members of Einsatzgruppen marched the Jews out of the town, 800 men and women in all, to be shot. The Sixth Army provided logistical support for this massacre, providing drivers, guards, weapons and ammunition. Afterwards ninety children aged twelve and under were left, their parents having been killed the night before. A staff officer with the division that made the town their headquarters wrote of their conditions:

"The rooms were filled with about 90 children. There was an indescribable amount of filth; Rags, diapers, refuse lay everywhere. Countless flies cover the children, some of whom were naked. Almost all of the children were crying or whimpering. The stench was unbearable. In the above mentioned case, measures were taken against women and children which were no different from atrocities committed by the enemy.".

— Lieutenant Colonel Helmuth Groscurth (1941)[33]^: 06:18

Groscurth himself sought out the district commander and insisted that the execution must be stopped. Sixth Army headquarters was faced with a decision on what to do with the children left behind now that their parents had been murdered. The division commander passed the decision up to Walter von Reichenau, then commander of the Sixth Army, who personally authorized the massacre.[33]^: 06:54 All the children were murdered[33]^: 07:27 by Sixth Army regulars. Groscurth, appalled by the murders, wrote to his wife that "We cannot and should not be allowed to win this war".[34]

The army's commander, Walther von Reichenau, a committed, fanatical Nazi, had this to say about the expected conduct of soldiers under his command. The order said, in part[35]

"The most important objective of this campaign against the Jewish-Bolshevik system is the complete destruction of its sources of power and the extermination of the Asiatic influence in European civilization.

In this eastern theatre, the soldier is not only a man fighting in accordance with the rules of the art of war, but also the ruthless standard bearer of a national conception and the avenger of bestialities which have been inflicted upon German and racially related nations. For this reason the soldier must learn fully to appreciate the necessity for the severe but just retribution that must be meted out to the subhuman species of Jewry. A further purpose of this retribution is the annihilation of revolts in hinterland which, as experience proves, have always been caused by Jews.

Das wesentlichste Ziel des Feldzuges gegen das jüdisch-bolschewistische System ist die völlige Zerschlagung der Machtmittel und die Ausrottung des asiatischen Einflusses im europäischen Kulturkreis.

Der Soldat ist im Ostraum nicht nur ein Kämpfer nach den Regeln der Kriegskunst, sondern auch Träger einer unerbittlichen völkischen Idee und der Rächer für alle Bestialitäten, die deutschem und artverwandtem Volkstum zugefügt wurden. Deshalb muss der Soldat für die Notwendigkeit der harten aber gerechten Sühne am jüdischen Untermenschentum volles Verständnis haben. Sie hat den weiteren Zweck, Erhebungen im Rücken der Wehrmacht, die erfahrungsgemäß stets von Juden angezettelt wurden, im Keime zu ersticken.

— Conduct of Troops in Eastern Territories

Immediately after this order was issued, Sixth Army records show a dramatic increase in shootings, rapes and massacres committed by Sixth Army constituent units. The BBC upon examining the now released records of the Sixth Army, stated that there were "so many executions, and so many victims that it was impossible to keep them a secret."[33]^: 08:13

The Sixth Army confiscated large quantities of food to be used by its troops, creating acute food shortages in Ukraine. By January 1942, around one-third of the Kharkov's 300,000 remaining inhabitants suffered from starvation. Many would die in the cold winter months.[36] Civilians survived the famine by making stews out of boiled leather and sawdust, and making omelets out of coagulated blood. Survivors bitterly remembered these "meals" for the rest of their lives.[37]