........ on paper, were they equally as deviating to Germany.? When you consider all of the men, supplies, fuel, planes, money and war effort that were lost in each campaign. Thank You
The losses were indeed terrible, but the German troops were in Stalingrad for a totally different reason and were driven out for a good reason. Stefan.
That is why the defeat in Africa was also called "Tunisgrad". However, Stalingrad had a much greater psychological impact on the general public. But both defeats seem meaningless when one considers the appalling losses during the final phase: On May 10, 1945, the Wehrmacht command staff (Army, Waffen-SS, and Luftwaffe field units) published an extrapolation*, according to which the Wehrmacht between September 1, 1939, and 31 December 1944 had suffered 3,376,000 losses (KIA, WIA, MIA, POW). For the the last 4 months of 1945, this number rose to another 4,617,000. Of all these losses until 1944 1,757,000 were confirmed as KIA, in 1945 it were 2,007,000 In other words, in the last 4 months of the war, 50% more German troops were killed than in the 5 years before together *OKW, WFSt, Org Abt, 10.05.45, Gesamtverluste (NARA RG 242, T 78, Roll 398.)
Additionally, the Wehrmacht lost war equipment at Stalingrad,said to be equivalent to 3 months war material output and something like 100000 who became POWs compared to Tunisia when over 250000 of the Africa Korps went into the bag. The thrust on the Eastern Front was declared to be in the primary interest of Lebensraum. After the rout of the 6th Army at Stalingrad, the motivation of Barbarossa was declared to be to save Europe from the communist hordes of Stalin.The defeat at Stalingrad was far different from the situation in North Africa where German presence through the Africa Korps was defeated for it resulted in no repercussions which threatened the being of the Third Reich. But It was the occasion when the deep German military thinkers external to Hitler's circle realised the war was lost.It set the seeds of dissent among an element of the Wehrmacht leadership that the war should end.Failed Hitler assassinations followed but but the pathway was laid for the serious attempt on Hitler's life on 20 July 1944. Himmler continued with the theme of the anti communist in attempting to negotiate with the Allies,hoping that they would recognise him as statesman to be involved in a new postwar Germany.He envisaged that the Western Allies would take up his offer of what remained of German military strength to compliment Western Allies and thwart Stalin's drive on Germany. He failed and Hitler, being made aware of Himmler's treachery was dismissed from the Nazi Party and his various military appointments.
Thanks for the replies. I realize. in reality, these are two VERY Different Scenarios.....which is why i asked "On Paper". Anything that the Western Allies did was going to be a giant Amphibious Campaign. After Stalingrad, and Army Group-A had to run for its life out of The Caucasus Mountains....... The Red Army was looking at a long land campaign. Not a walk in the park by any measure, but at least they did not have to start all their supplies by crossing 3k miles of ocean, at least.
I think that there was another point about the two theatres of war.The assault on Russia had it's motivation in the foundation of the Third Reich ideology with the elimination of the Stalin communist regime and of Russia Jews who were deemed by Hitler to be integral in USSR communism,the Slavs whose role in the Greater German Reich would be a life of servitude and one of denied education.The failure at Stalingrad was the watershed of the plan that the Hitler regime had for the extension of the Greater German Reich....the defeat marked the start of a succession of defeats and retreats which led to the storming of Berlin more than two years later. The North African campaign was different in that the Third Reich's contribution in the theatre was non ideological but was to come to the aid of the Italians who against British and Commonwealth forces had bitten off more than they could chew in an attempt to take the Suez Canal.There appeared to be an intention of Hitler to envisage a southern pincer movement across North Africa with a northern thrust through the Caucasus to take Iraq and Persia.He also had a vision of advancing on India.If this had come to be attempted, I cannot see that it would have been successful due to a problem with manpower and the tremendous long lines of communication and supply....in the end, a pipe dream but the Germans did manage to rouse up the services of Rashid Ali and ferment an uprising in Iraq. As it was the German North African campaign was not based on the Third Reich racial ideology...the SS were never deployed there and from the low number of divisions deployed there,it can be said that the campaign was of secondary importance to Hitler.Hitler saw North Africa and the Italian colonial empire in Africa as an Italian domain,he was more interested in closing the door to the Mediterranean by persuading Franco to join in an alliance to take Gib. Meanwhile his focus was always on the USSR prize yearning for yet more territory
I don't know about "equally devastating," because to do that you have to establish a baseline of devastation. (Loss of 1 division/1 geschwader/50 tanks/500 trucks =1 unit of devastation, etc.) Within Stalingrad itself the Germans lost around 300,000 men.German forces destroyed in the pocket consisted of 3 panzer divisions, 3 motorized divisions, 1 flak division, and 14 infantry divisions, plus army and corps artillery, assault guns, and engineers, as well as 2 Romanian divisions and a Croat regiment. In addition to this, most of three Axis armies (3rd and 4th Romanian, 8th Italian) were also lost in the Don-Volga area, several other German divisions were destroyed outside the encirclement, and 4th Panzer Army suffered heavy losses in the relief attempt. Taking David Glantz as a guide, total Axis troop losses from November to February in the Stalingrad theater were on the order of some 800,000. The Luftwaffe suffered severe losses as well, especially in transports and multi-engine bombers. In numbers of troops lost, Tunisia was not on the larger scale given by Glantz for Stalingrad. The American and British official histories disagree on the total numbers of Axis PW taken, the former saying 275,000 and the latter 238,000. That is Axis PW alone, however, not total combat losses, but even in PW alone it is fairly comparable with the total Axis losses within the Stalingrad Kessel. More than half the total PW taken in Tunisia were German, which fits with the AG Afrika's order of battle. The German formations lost in Tunisia were 3 panzer, 2 flak, and 5 infantry, all the last being motorized if not officially so. The Italians lost 5 infantry divisions and 1 armored division, and both nations lost various independent brigades and regiments as well as army and corps artillery, engineers, etc. John Ellis kvetched that the PW figures for Tunisia were inflated by large numbers of Italian non-combatants, refugees from their fallen Libyan colony. I don't know his sources for this, or even if there are any. Some might say that even Italian combat troops shouldn't be reckoned in a Tunisia-Stalingrad comparison, but the fact is that the Italians fought surprisingly well at times in Tunisia, just as the Romanians often fought better than the Germans liked to admit. If German troops only are considered, then the Tunisian loss was about half that suffered in the Stalingrad Kessel. It should be remembered, though, that the German army in Africa was the only completely motorized army Germany ever put into the field, and when that army was lost a very large number of vehicles, parts, and POL were lost with it. As for the Luftwaffe, it suffered even worse in Tunisia than at Stalingrad. By March, the Allies had established air dominance in that part of the Med, and the German transport fleet was simply shot out of the sky. The combined losses of Tunisia and Stalingrad effectively ruined the Luftwaffe's transport and bomber commands, the worst part of the loss coming in trained aircrew. Tunisia destroyed the Italian merchant fleet, which had been the unacknowledged lifeline of the Afrika Korps for so long, and this was a devastating blow to the Italians. As for the strategic effects of Tunisia on the overall German situation, those were quite as bad as the consequences of Stalingrad. Tunisia destroyed all vestige of Italian military effectiveness and laid the groundwork for Mussolini's fall; from May 43 on, the Med would be an exclusively German affair, drawing increasing numbers of precious resources away from both the Russian front and the coast of Northwest Europe. The French empire was now back in the war on the Allied side, and the western Allies had learned valuable lessons which would be put to good use in all the campaigns to come. In Stalingrad and in Tunisia the Germans lost about 30 divisions, half of which were mechanized or motorized, and the German Army was not so large that it could recover from this loss easily. Taken together, the defeats at Stalingrad and in Tunisia constituted a dual strategic catastrophe from which the Axis cause never recovered at all.
