Russian general and military historian: Stalingrad turning point of WWII
It was the Battle of Stalingrad that broke the back of the Wehrmacht, says army general Makhmut Gareyev.
Historians tend to disagree about the significance of the Battle of Stalingrad for the outcome of the Second World War. Many western scholars claimed that it was not the Battle of Stalingrad, but the British victory at El Alamein, where Montgomery’s Eighth Army triumphed over Rommel’s Afrika Korps in November 1942, that marked the war’s biggest turning point.
For the sake of fairness, it has to be said that El Alamein made a substantial contribution to Hitler’s eventual defeat – not least because it marked the first defeat of Erwin Rommel, Germany’s legendary practitioner of blitzkrieg tactics, and because it came as a big morale boost for the Allies.
However, strategically, the surrender of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad, less than three months later, was a much bigger blow for Hitler and the Wehrmacht’s morale. It marked the first major, decisive defeat on Hitler’s Eastern Front, and paved the way for the Red Army’s advance on Berlin in 1945....