Challenge: Successful Siege on Stalingrad

Title. Is it possible? What would be the effects? (I bet this has been mentioned many times, but I was unable to find a thread like this in Search)

Your thoughts, Good People of AH.com.
 
Well with Stalingrad captured, the Volga will be completely cut off from the North. The oil from the Caucasus may not be completely in German hands but it is cut off and if a successful push to Grozny and Baku can follow up on this victory then maybe the campaign will be a massive success.

If an Russian counter offensives can be repelled, then the Caucasus may well (having been entrapped) fall fully into German hands. Astrakhan (at the mouth of the Volga) which was part of the German targets for Operation Barbarossa is now going to be more achievable with an open route now the only thing remaining between the complete isolation of the Caucasus.
 
A siege?... no any seige is severely draining of German infantry strength which was in short supply

however I do see 2 ways it was possible for them to capture the city

1-The Germans had the chance to take Stalingrad off the march at the end of July if they didn't send the 4th Panzer Army into the Caucuses
I didn't need the 4th Panzer Army, they merely blocked the roads I was using they would have been better served leading the 6th Army to Stalingrad and creating a good blocking position to stop the Russians from shutteling around reinforcements-Ewald von Kleist

2-Hans Hube and the 16th panzer division reached the Volga river at Rynok after smashing several defensive AA batteries. There he waited for critical days for the rest of Wittershiems XIV Mobile corps to catch up... during that time the Soviets where able to strengthen the shoulders of his breakthrough and prevent the Germans from being able to roll up the city. If Hube launched an immediate crossing of the Volga to exterminate Russian artillery on the far side its quite possible the Soviets would have abandoned the city for fear of being cut off and let the Germans overwinter on the exposed steppes and hopped to counter punch them once winter came (this idea is a future tl I am going to do)
 
Well,the easiest POD is simply to have Hitler not pursue both objectives simultaneously by splitting Army Group South in half. The extra manpower and machines should be enough to take Stalingrad in the first assault-which came pretty damn close to succeeding in OTL with the vital Soviet ferry landing stage being brought under direct German machine-gun fire for a time.
So, Stalingrad is in German hands by early October. The Germans next move will probably be to eliminate any lingering Soviet bridgeheads over the R.Don. Next, they'll go for seizing the East coast of the Black sea along with Maikop,Grozny and Baku. Road infrastructure was pretty terrible in the area at the time so that will take a considerable length of time. Small Motorised units will probably speed ahead to fight off soviet remnants whilst engineers build up the logistic routes as they go. An earlier fall of Stalingrad probably means no surprise capture of Maikop and it gets its oilfields trashed,ditto for Grozny. Then, we come to Baku which will probably now house the surviving soviet forces in the Caucasus. Baku was supposed to be captured intact and if memory serves had at least some defensive belts constructed by the Soviets to protect it. Assuming the Soviets make a final stand here and can be at least partially resupplied[Via the Caspian?]they stand a good chance of holding for a while, perhaps creating a mini Sevastopol type situation. Baku would take a while to crack since the Germans are at the end of a painfully long logistical supply line and want the oilfields as intact as possible.
So, a seige of Baku could rumble on well into late spring 1943.

On a wider scale-Operation Uranus is butterflied away by the victory at Stalingrad.
Zhukov gets the extra million plus men that would have been used in Op.Uranus and probably uses them in a scaled up version of Operation Mars. Army Group centre will lose ground although nothing of major importance.
Morale/manpower constraints and fuel shortages impose themselves on the Soviet forces by late 43.
Ultimately, the war ends with the Germans still deep within the Soviet Union as the first Atom bombs are dropped on the Fatherland.
 
it was completly possible for the germans to take stalin grad which they almost or basicly did but with the waves of russian soldiers it was hard to keep control of
 

King Thomas

Banned
Germany will still lose. First, Russia is so much bigger then them, and second, the USA will still get the nuclear bomb by 1945.
 
Thought: Turn Stalingrad into a real siege, rather than try to take it in one go... over and over. Instead by systematic, and strangle rather than batter the opposition.

Start off by securing the 'flanks', by destroying the bridgeheads. The next step would be to capture, or otherwise seal*, the river bank in the city itself. This leaves the defenders cut off from reinforcements and supply and they can essentially be left to wear out. In effect use the river as a moat which keeps the Red Army out.

I suspect no matter how you win Stalingrad, 1942 is going to turn in favour of the Red Army. Reserves allocated to the Stalingrad counter offensives would have been used in an attack elsewhere (rather than to reinforce Mars as others suggested), where the Germans were probably thinned out. This fits with the Soviet trend of attacking multiple fronts. The resulting hole will probably cut short any success in the South.

*I'm guessing with the mass of Soviet artillery on the other side of the Volga, holding the river bank might have been a high attrition exercise. Perhaps more effective direction of artillery and air could stymie the flow of resources (with some of course strongpoints) with less cost?
 
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