h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is a really interesting entry and I very much enoyed reading it. I'm interested that you suggest that Stalingrad was considered of strategic importance to the capturing of the Ukrainian Oil Fields. I had read that the military preference was for the Oil fields and that Stalingrad was only pursued at Hitler's insistence.

I have read the same: the city had no strategic value whatsoever and the original battle plan was to approach the city sufficiently close so as to render it useless for the soviets (destroy all bridges, factories and railroad links there).

It WAS an important railroad link, and destruction or at least control of the railroad connections there placed the S.U. before enormous logistical problems.

In order to accomplish this objective it would have been sufficient to approach the city so that the railroads would be blocked (in the immediate surroundings of the city they ran East-West because of the Wolga crossings).

Also, control over the Wolga meant a further blow to transport by water for the S.U., but this objective could be achieved anywhere on the Wolga: taking the city was not essential for this objective either.

From what I have read about it, I understand that the city seemed for a while to be a target of opportunity, and gradually became a goal in its own right.

Have you read Antony Beevor's 'Stalingrad'?. It's a pretty decent military assessment, but gets more thumbs up from me for the reems of individual stories it unearths around this epic battle.

Yes to Beevor, but also the following books provide information about Stalingrad:
- Alan Clark's "Barbarossa"
- Guderian's memoirs (not much, but something anyway)
- Robin Cross "The Battle of Kursk" (starts with a review of how the Kursk Bulge came about, and that means Stalingrad)

I agree with you that Beevor is strongest in the personal perspective to the Battle. That was also his goal with this book, of course (see the introduction).

Interesting to see the many memorials to WW2 battles in Stalinngrad and Moscow, the Imperial War Memorial Plaza in Moscow is immense.

I was informed that the memory of the 2WW battles for both cities - and the country - is still "very real" to most Russians

Between Sheremetyevo airport and Moscow is a 20' high representation of a 2WW concrete tank trap, it markes the front line of the battle for Moscow - 500 yards away is the largest IKEA store I've seen !

I guess Russia is unique amongst the Allies (ie, themseles, Britain and USA) for having actually been occupied by Germany. They also stand, as I understand it, shoulder to shoulder with Yuigoslavia as the two nations who successfully slung Germany out once they had got in.