No historian doubts that the battle of Stalingrad ranks among the most important engagements of World War II. Indeed, the significance of the battle between August 1942 and February 1943 was readily apparent to contemporaries. In an article published on 2 February 1943, the day the German Sixth Army finally surrendered, Washington Post columnist Barnet Novet called it the equivalent of the Battle of Verdun and the First and Second Battles of the Marne, combined. In November 1943, during the Tehran Conference, British Prime Minister Winston L. S. Churchill presented Soviet Premier Josef Stalin with the Sword of Stalingrad on behalf of King George VI and the British people, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in 1944 that the battle was the turning point of the war.

Scholars and veterans have questioned, however, whether Stalingrad represents the most significant turning point of the war, and whether it ranks as the single most critical battle on the Eastern Front. Some opine that the successful Soviet defense of Moscow in November and December of 1941 was a more important battle (see Albert Seaton’s The Battle for Moscow), whereas others point to the Battle of Kursk in July 1943 as more critical. In a November 1943 Moscow speech, Stalin suggested that Kursk was decisive, and modern authors David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House argue in The Battle of Kursk (1999) that Kursk represented “a turning point in the war strategically, operationally, and tactically.” Moreover, German and Soviet generals shared this view in their memoirs (see works by Heinz Guderian, F. W. von Mellenthin, Erich von Manstein, Aleksandr M. Vasilevsky, and Georgii K. Zhukov), although all of them also suggested that the battles for Moscow and Stalingrad were critical, as well.

Despite these debates, however, many historians remain convinced that the battle for Stalingrad represents the decisive turning point of World War II in Europe. Michel Henri summarized the case well in The Second World War (1975), and it has been reinforced by Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad (1998), Geoffrey Roberts’ Victory at Stalingrad: The Battle That Changed History (2002), and Stephen Walsh’s Stalingrad, 1942–1943: The Infernal Cauldron (2000). These authors hold that Stalingrad was significant because of massive German personnel losses, the psychological blow to German morale of losing an entire army for the first time in the war, the corresponding lift in Soviet and Allied morale as the myth of German invincibility was shattered, the political and diplomatic impact on neutral nations and at the 1943 Tehran Conference, and the inability of Germany after Stalingrad to launch strategic offensives on a scale matching those of 1941 and 1942.

Finally, if contemporary accounts have any meaning, there is little doubt that ordinary Germans marked Stalingrad as a significant downward turn in their fortunes. All German radio broadcasts were suspended for an unprecedented three days of mourning following the defeat, and it became readily apparent after the battle that Germany was suddenly fighting for survival rather than victory.

References

Beevor, Antony. Stalingrad. New York: Viking Press, 1998.

Glantz, David M., and Jonathan M. House, The Battle of Kursk. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999.

Henri, Michael. The Second World War. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1975.

Roberts, Geoffrey. Victory at Stalingrad: The Battle That Changed History. London: Pearson Education, 2002.

Seaton, Albert. The Battle for Moscow. Chicago: Playboy Press, 1980.

Walsh, Stephen. Stalingrad, 1942–1943: The Infernal Cauldron. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2000.