The Stalingrad Schoolhouse

Just by random bouncing around YouTube, this weekend I came across something put out by the Army University Press, an arm of the Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate, that is - in a word - exceptional.

As anyone who has been paying attention can attest to, "urban combat" is one of "the new things" we've seen a lot of intellectual effort put towards the last year.

Three are few better examples than WWII's Battle of Stalingrad. What they do in this series is, mostly from the German Army perspective, go through one part of the campaign integrating the tactical actions of the Wehrmacht in this campaign and use them to describe present US Army doctrine.

The graphics and story telling is exceptionally good. They also hit on something regulars at CDRSalamander know well; yes, the tools and details may change, but in the main; essentials of combat remain unchanged.

I cannot describe enough how incredibly impressed I am by this - for a variety of reasons. Take some time today to watch all three videos.

What is the USN intelligentsia similar to this?



A final note that needs to be mentioned;

The Soviets recovered 250,000 German and Romanian corpses in and around Stalingrad, and total Axis casualties (Germans, Romanians, Italians, and Hungarians) are believed to have been more than 800,000 dead, wounded, missing, or captured. Of the 91,000 men who surrendered, only some 5,000–6,000 ever returned to their homelands (the last of them a full decade after the end of the war in 1945); the rest died in Soviet prison and labour camps. On the Soviet side, official Russian military historians estimate that there were 1,100,000 Red Army dead, wounded, missing, or captured in the campaign to defend the city. An estimated 40,000 civilians died as well.