Storming a city versus surrounding a city

How much more difficult is it to storm a city then it is to surround a city? I have often wondered why the Germans decided to storm Stalingrad rather than Lenningrad. What was to be gained by storming Stalingrad? Ultimately, was surrounding Lenningrad rather than storming it the right tactical move?

 

Hitler and the German general staff decided to storm Stalingrad in order to protect the line of communications of German forces committed to the Crimean Peninsula. Nestled on the west bank of the Volga River, Stalingrad was considered a hub of road and rail traffic, and a Soviet concentration in Stalingrad could severe the tenuous line of Army Group South by striking westward through the Donetz-Don corridor, cutting the Army Group off from its primary logistical base in Rostov. Previous experience with the Soviets suggest that no Red Army bridgehead should be suffered to exist under any circumstances, because the Russians invariably turn bridgeheads into impregnable strong points from which they could launch dangerous offensives. Leningrad, in contrast, did not in itself threaten any German line--it was just a front to be held and the Germans could maintain a siege there to preserve manpower and equipment.

The rational behind the strategy of taking Stalingrad at all costs falls apart when it is taken into account that Volga freezes in winter, with a sheet of ice of sufficient solidity to hold the weight of tanks and artillery pieces, rendering the possession of Stalingrad moot.

 

Not only the east front . You can add Dunkirk to this list. Hitler could have taken it, but Goering convinced him to get it with his Luftwaffe only. In the meantime the Abeeville pocket had surrounded the area .

The Soviets acted in a similar way at Warsaw in 1944-1945. They could have taken it earlier but let the Germans do all the dirty jobs frst.

The allies also left a few surrounded cities behind in the west (Lorient, La Rochelle, St Nazaire, ) or Islands (Guernsey, Jersey etc...)

During the Bulge : Bastogne come to my mind.

Back to Stalingrad : Hitler wanted this symbol city at any cost and moved forward without real reinforcments and supplies (or those could not get through) . So the answer to your question whether it was rationnal to take is no in my opinion (mainly because it strechted the front ) .We have many threads open on this forum on this topic which are full detailled.

 

Re: Stalingrad

Stalingrad had one of the few bridges across the enormous Volga river. Rivers, as well as railways, are vital communication pathways in Russia.

The river was a vital route between the Oil rich Caspian Sea, the lend lease route to Persia, and the Northern European Russia.

Stalingrad wasn't needed to protect Crimea. Many units needed for Case Blau, however, were delayed by the stubborn resistence given in Sevastopol. Case Blau was delayed until after the fall of Sevastopol, a serious delay.

When iceflows prevented barges from traversing the river to supply the defenders, as occured, I'd be hesitant to drive a tank across...

Entering Stalingrad was a mistake.

 

Another example would be Leningrad. Surrounding a city takes up resources and time. It could be done only if the attacker can guarantee an effective blockade. In the case of war in the East, cannot afford to leave the Soviets any kind of foothold either behind the lines or holding an area across a river.

 

I don't believe there was an actual bridge across the Volga in that area in WWII, but the "land bridge", the gap between the Volga and Don rivers adjacent to Stalingrad, was an obvious avenue for a Russian counterstroke against the German advance into the Caucasus. The Germans sought to use the Volga-Don line to protect their strategic flank, which required them to advance to the vicinity of Stalingrad. It did not require them to actually occupy the city, let along fight for it block by block, but Hitler was all too willing to demand it.

 

You're indeed correct. Now I'm wondering where on Earth I got the idea of a bridge from. I blame senility.

 

Well, in that case, I've got a bridge across the Volga river I'd like to sell you .......

 

I think I'll pass ....

Back to the original question:

In general, it is better to just skirt/bypass a city, assuming you can afford to leave enough forces behind to contain the forces therein.

A city, by its very nature, will have difficulty feeding everyone inside, and the defenders will often become quickly overwhelmed by the dual responsibilities of fighting, and providing for the inhabitants. Especially if the opportunities for getting supplies in to the city are few and far between.

The question becomes a cost-benefit analysis; How much does forcing the issue cost the invader, versus having your troops tied up in what basically amounts to a medieval siege.

With Leningrad, it was never completely cut off / surrounded. Hitler wanted the Finns to advance further South, but they refused. Had they co-operated, it is entirely possible that organised defence in Leningrad would've collapsed, as it did in other surrounded Soviet cities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad#mediaviewer/File:Leningrad_Siege_May_1942_-_January_1943.png

It's also interesting to note, that the siege of Leningrad cost a comparable amount of German casualties to the Battle for Stalingrad, or the Battle for Moscow (ca 580,000 KIA, WIA & MIA over the nearly 2½ years (look again at that number. That's an average of 665 per day). (Stalingrad totaled 850,000 Axis casualties KIA, WIA, & MIA (includes captured), for Moscow, the numbers seem to diverge greatly according to how one defines the Battle).

Yet again, even here in Leningrad, the lengthy and stalwart defence of Sevastopol delayed Operation Northern LIghts, confounding German attempts at strangling the city.

 

Well, there are cases in campaigns where it is absolutely essential to capture a built up area or the attacker would lose momentum because all of his trucks bearing gas and ammo would have to drive around it. For example Patton had to race his tanks into Avranche and secure the place, and Manteuffel made a big mistake not making sure 2d Pz Div and Pz Lehr could fight their way into Bastogne when they had the chance.

 

You are completely right, after his spearheading troops had driven around Bastogne, Hasso Von Manteuffel should have taken Bastogne, it was too important as a traffic node not to take it and use the good roads to fasten the resupply.

 

SkylineDrive - I always wonder what would have happened if Manteufel's troops had taken Bastogne early in the battle. The town most likely would have suffered the fate of St.Vith, and many other traffic nodes in the Eifel/Ardennes region. It would have been levelled by the Allied air.

Manteufel then still would have been forced to use the roundabout routes for the supply columns. But I'afraid I'm straying a bit off topic now ...

 

I'm wondering just how long Bastogne would've held out, had the 101st airborne not arrived in time.

Not to belittle the ordinary American soldier, but the situation was a tad extreme, with one of America's elite divisions that are trained and expected to operate for days ahead/behind of battlelines, in limited supply situations arriving in time to set-up defences. Regardless, the German offensive was not going to reconquer France, and the Allied air superiority ensured that once the cloud lifted, the Germans were in for a rough ride back home.

Also, there is greater reason to continue to resist, when the frontline fighting has not receeded further than 15 or 20 miles away.

 

It was close. The vanguard of the 101st Airborne Division reached the outskirts of the town just in time to engage German troops with small arms and 75 mm pack howitzers. Sensing resistance, Gen. Bayerlein, commander of Panzer Lehr Division, ordered his unit to bypass the town. Later he would justify his decision by saying he was unfamiliar with the sound of the moutain guns and thought he was encountering fresh armor. Historians such as Charles MacDonald believe that had Lehr pushed the lightly armed paratroopers would be destroyed. Pretty soon, fresh reinforcements of armor did arrive at the satellite villages of Bastogne in the form of a tank destroyer battalion and an unscathed combat command of the 10th Armored, and fought bitter firefights with German armored probes (IIRC 2d Pz.D. as well as the Pz.Lehr), forcing Luetwitz's Panzer Corps to take a long detour around Bastogne and its associated villages.

 

In the case of Bastogne, I'm not sure letting the German armor advance further west before Patton launched his attack from the south would have been so bad, as long as it didn't involve American troops being overrun or cut off.

The natural, and correct, first instinct of the Allied command was to secure the road net until they could evaluate the situation, in part for the use of our troops falling back from the initial assault; but they had had time to develop a strategy before the Germans approached Bastogne. Eisenhower correctly delineated the Meuse as the farthest we could allow the Germans to penetrate, and steps were taken to secure that line, including deployment of the British XXX Corps. With the Meuse secure, there was little danger and much opportunity in letting the Germans thrust themselves further into the meat grinder, as Patton put it.

Patton's staff had identified three potential axes for attack, and striking further east might have offered a better opportunity to cut off the Bulge, but having the 101st surrounded in Bastogne compelled 3rd Army to make its attack there.

IMO the defense of St. Vith was the proper model; the defenders held the town long enough to collect all the retreating American units in the area, inflicted losses and delay on the Germans, and fell back to fight again rather than risk being cut off.

 

It may not be an either-or situation. Stalingrad illustrates the difficulty of assaulting a city when the enemy can feed in reinforcements and supplies. Even if the Germans wanted to assault Leningrad, cutting it off from resupply would have been an essential first step.

In the case of Stalingrad, surrounding it would have meant the Germans crossing the Volga and keeping their forces supplied across the river while fighting a prolonged, intense battle on the east bank. Doesn't seem very feasible to me.

It's often written that the Germans could have captured Stalingrad relatively easily early in the campaign. Once that opportunity was missed, there wasn't a really good strategy for taking the city. But then again, they didn't really need to, except for Hitler's insistence. Whoever decided to rename Tsaritsyn back in 1925 should have gotten the gold star in 1943, although it would probably have been posthumous.

 

The reason storming of Leningrad did not occur was because the city was heavily fortified (only Moscow was fortified more). Zhukov made sure that the defense of the city would hold. Only after storming the city and later bombing the city into submission failed did the surrounding of the city take place with the purpose of starving it into submission.....

 

I'm not sure how that narrative fits into the fact that Operation Northern Lights (Nordlicht) was delayed first due to the lengthy siege of Sevastopol, and then pre-empted, by the Soviet Sinyavino Offensive in 1942, a year into the siege of Leningrad.

"On 21 September (1941), German High Command considered the options of how to destroy Leningrad. Simply occupying the city was ruled out 'because it would make us responsible for food supply'. The resolution was to lay the city under siege and bombardment, starving its population. 'Early next year we enter the city (if the Finns do it first we do not object), lead those still alive into inner Russia or into captivity, wipe Leningrad from the face of the earth through demolitions, and hand the area north of the Neva to the Finns.' On 7 October 1941, Hitler sent a further directive signed by Alfred Jodl reminding Army Group North not to accept capitulation."

Once again, they prove themselves a bunch of nice people. Not.

 

Bastogne was a waste of time and resources. The battle was already lost when the 6th Panzer Army was stopped to the north by the 20th/21st of December. The southern arm, the 5th Panzer army, could never have made the turn north and made it to Antwerp. The entire legend of Bastogne is fiction.

 

Manteuffel might have gotten across the Meuse and he might have reached Brussels, but the outcome would have been the same. The whole offensive was just too ambitious.