There was nothing to suggest that the biggest battle in the history of warfare would be fought there with the highest casualties ever recorded: combined losses of more than two million killed, wounded, or captured. In July, convinced that the Red Army was on the verge of collapse and that the Germans could seize the Volga easily, Hitler split his southern army group in two and shifted the priority to the advance on Stalingrad. The summer offensive was barely underway when Hitler changed the plan. A German general said later that in June 1942, Stalingrad had been “no more than a name on a map.” Stalingrad-situated on the Volga River, 566 miles southeast of Moscow-was a large industrial city but of limited strategic significance. The Soviet supply line along the Volga River would be a secondary objective. The summer offensive would be aimed instead at the southern USSR, especially the oil fields in the Caucasus. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was braced for another German attempt on Moscow in 1942, but Hitler had a different idea. They occupied half of European Russia, an area encompassing some 40 percent of the Soviet population. The Germans were deep into Russia, holding a 1,500-mile front running from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Hitler still hoped to knock the Soviets out of the war before Britain and the United States could be ready to invade occupied Western Europe. However, Adolf Hitler-who had assumed personal command of the German armed forces-refused to accept the failure of his winter operation as anything more than a temporary setback. Germany’s ill-considered invasion of the Soviet Union foundered in the intense cold and snow, 10 miles short of Moscow, in December 1941.
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