What's in a name?

What if Stalingrad had been named something else? Maybe just Volgograd like it is now? With Hitler no longer seeing it as a symbol to take from Stalin would he still have slit his forces to take it? Or would he keep moving on to take the Oil Fields of the south?
 
I think that, as long as the Soviets put any decent number of troops in, he would have turned it into pretty much OTL. For all the success of blitzkrieg in the first few years of the war, after 1942 Hilter seemed to prefer pouring troops and arms into static sinkholes (at least in the east).
 
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I think that, as long as the Soviets put any decent numer of troops in, he would have turned it into pretty much OTL. For all the success of blitzkrieg inte first few years of the war, after 1942 Hilter seemed to prefer pouring troops and arms into static sinkholes (at least in the east).

And once the Wehrmacht is committed to it, Hitler is not the kind of guy to change that.
 
There is also the issue of Soviet spy Richard Sorge who relaid information that Japan would join Germany in the war against the Soviet Union should Germany secure a city on the Volga. This might not have been true but apparently Stalin believed it and it contributed to the Soviets digging in their heels in Stalingrad/Volgograd. So in short a name change wouldn't change the significance of the city and the Germans are likely to go for it due to the troop build up no matter what the city is actually named.
 
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