Haha - "Stalin didn't want the Nazis to take STALINgrad" sounds like a vaguely plausible accusation, but Stalingrad was supremely important, even beyond the fact that it was a good place to beat and encircle the Germans:
the top war goal for Germany was to take the oil fields of the Caucasus - securing the highly defensible Stalingrad would mean crossing the Caucasus next and taking the all-important oil; having failed that, Germany slowly starved of fuel for its tanks, trucks, and planes
Stalingrad straddles the great Volga river (hence why it's called Volgograd today), which is both an important defensive barrier AND a shipping route; all that Caucasus oil was shipped from Baku via the Caspian Sea to the Volga and further to the rest of the country, fueling Soviet tanks, trucks, and planes; no Stalingrad, no oil for the USSR, even if Germany couldn't take the Caucasus
Japan promised Germany it would attack the USSR once Stalingrad fell - which the spy extraordinaire Richard Sorge had communicated back to Moscow; the Japanese land army had limited capability, but there were something like 1 million troops just sitting in Manchuria - if they had forced the USSR to wage a two-front war who knows what would have happened
Actually, it was like very mcguyvered. The Nazis had cut off all the lines. So, it wasn't like he could actually communicate with anyone over there. So everyone kind of did whatever they thought was best.. and it worked out!
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Haha - "Stalin didn't want the Nazis to take STALINgrad" sounds like a vaguely plausible accusation, but Stalingrad was supremely important, even beyond the fact that it was a good place to beat and encircle the Germans:
the top war goal for Germany was to take the oil fields of the Caucasus - securing the highly defensible Stalingrad would mean crossing the Caucasus next and taking the all-important oil; having failed that, Germany slowly starved of fuel for its tanks, trucks, and planes
Stalingrad straddles the great Volga river (hence why it's called Volgograd today), which is both an important defensive barrier AND a shipping route; all that Caucasus oil was shipped from Baku via the Caspian Sea to the Volga and further to the rest of the country, fueling Soviet tanks, trucks, and planes; no Stalingrad, no oil for the USSR, even if Germany couldn't take the Caucasus
Japan promised Germany it would attack the USSR once Stalingrad fell - which the spy extraordinaire Richard Sorge had communicated back to Moscow; the Japanese land army had limited capability, but there were something like 1 million troops just sitting in Manchuria - if they had forced the USSR to wage a two-front war who knows what would have happened
whoa all three of those are totally new to me, thanks for sharing this
Actually, it was like very mcguyvered. The Nazis had cut off all the lines. So, it wasn't like he could actually communicate with anyone over there. So everyone kind of did whatever they thought was best.. and it worked out!