Eighty years ago Paulus surrenders at Stalingrad and the Japanese abandon Guadalcanal

 

Hitler promoted Paulus, commander of the German troops in Stalingrad, to Field Marshal. It was tantamount to an instruction that he was to kill himself rather than surrender. He did not take the hint and surrendered with the 90,000 odd survivors of the Sixth Army. The Battle of Stalingrad had cost around two million casualties, rather more on the Soviet side where many civilians lost their lives. The city was practically destroyed. It was the turning point of the Second World War; it was now a matter of time until Germany was defeated. Stalingrad set the seal on the USSR's standing as the most commited and (so far) most effective opponent of Nazi Germany which served to mask from most in the West Stalin's history of mass-murder and oppression.

Defeat at Stalingrad coincided with the tenth anniversary of Hitler's accession to the Chancellorship, spuriously labelled the Machtergreifung (seizure of power). This was one of the high days of the Nazi regime but Hitler's proclamation (read over the radio by Goebbels) offered no more than a stark choice of victory or destruction. Daylight raids on Berlin by RAF Mosquitos were staged to disrupt any more formal events, but it seems none were attempted. Conscription had just been extended to all men between 16 and 65 and women between 17 and 45.

91 bombers of the US 8th Air Force mounted the first American air raid on German territory with a daylight attack on the port of Wilhelmshaven. Only three aircraft were lost; the coastal location of the target made it a relatively safe operation. 

The Japanese finally abandoned their attempt to dislodge the Americans from Guadalcanal and moved to evacuate their surviving troops from the island in an operation codenamed Ke. This was not immediately obvious to American commanders, who interpreted Japanese ship movements as part of an attempt to reinforce their forces on the island. In the ensuing sea battle the USN lost the heavy cruiser Chicago and a destroyer to air attack. One Japanese destroyer was damaged, but some 10,000 soldiers were rescued in three lifts. Most were so ill and underfed tht it would be months before they were fit for combat again, but the Japanese could congratulate themselves on having avoided an abject defeat.