Eighty years ago the Soviet encirclement of the Germans in Stalingrad crowns a fortnight of decisive strategic victories against the Axis

 

The Red Army launched Operation Uranus: two thrusts in each direction along a straight axis north-west to south-east. Within days the two thrusts met after each advancing approximately 250km, cutting off the German forces still fighting in Stalingrad. The speed with which Uranus succeeded demonstrates just how thinly spread Axis forces had become as the advance on Stalingrad dominated their operations. The Germans had finally paid the penalty of strategic over-reach; the Soviets had  used their enormously superior strength to transform the German Case Blue from a supposedly decisive offensive into a fight for survival. The 200,000 or so men trapped in the pocket were doomed.

The Allied victories in North Africa brought a strategic dividend when the Operation Stoneage convoy ran from Alexandria to Malta  almost unscathed, apart from severe damage to a cruisier of its escort. This was a dramatic reversal of the position in August when Axis forces around the Mediterranean had made the Pedestal convoy to Malta such a costly and brutal operation. The siege of Malta was over and the island could now function as a well supplied offensive base. The German forces in Tunisia were far from defeated  but Malta could now play a large part in minimizing the supplies they could receive and, finally, preventing their  escape from the American and British advances.

In the space of barely a fortnight the Allied victories of el Alamein, Torch, the naval battle of Guadalcanal and, now, Uranus marked the decisive turning point of the war. 

The vast improvement in Britain's military position spelt the end for the political ambitions of the extreme left-winger, Sir Stafford Cripps. He had returned from Moscow earlier in the year with the spurious lustre of 'the man who brought Russia into the war' and then squandered the political capital this brought on a doomed speculation to become the man who brought India independence. Churchill and Cripps's never very supportive Labour Party colleagues removed him from the War Cabinet. His new job as Minister for Aircraft Production had hollow grandeur; the real work was done by Air Marshal Sir Wilfrid Freeman, with whom Cripps still managed to squabble.

The final pretence that Vichy France was anything other than a German puppet was removed. Marshal Petain granted his arch-collaborationist head of government, Pierre Laval, the authority to rule by decree. Petain's former underling Admiral Darlan could still perform a juggling act of pretence that he held any real authority over the French forces in North Africa but only by the grace and favour of the Americans and British who had no motive to anatgonize Vichy's local remnants.