Why did so many troops involve in the battle of Stalingrad?

Answer 1

Hitler had a group of armies south of Stalingrad (oil fields were the goal) and the decided to quickly capture the city with extra unused forces available.
They did not succeed at first, Stalin pushed more and more troops to defend "his" city.
Hitler would not retreat even if that costs every single soldier. And only 5000 of 750000 survived the war.
Basically it was Hitlers battle against Stalin's city.

Answer 2

Well, for the Germans, from October on it seemed like they were so close to taking it that just one more push was easy to justify; and they did have 90% of the city by early November. They were also convinced that the Soviets were also sending every available reserve into the battle, which if true would have made the long flanks guarded by sattelite armies safe. And there was a feeling that taking that last 10% would cause Soviet resistance to crumble both by cutting off the flow of oil and lend lease supplies from the south, and from the morale collapse that would result from the loss of Stalin's city.
For the Soviets, Stalingrad was basically the cheese in a mousetrap. They sent only enough reinforcements to Stalingrad itself to keep the battle going, while building massive forces to the north and south of the city in preparation for it's encirclement. To ensure secrecy, General Chuikov, defending the city, was also fooled and told he was getting every available reserve. When the counter-offensive that encircled the Germans began on nov 19th, he was as suprised as Paulus, but presumably far less worried.

Answer 3

Stalingrad was a strategic city, it was all that stood between the german 6th army and the oil fields in the south, if hitler could take the oil fields he could starve the soviets of their biggest source of oil, hence bringing their war efforts to a grindind halt, this would make taking the rest of the country and in particular moscow more likely, also it bore the name of stalin, so therefore it would have been an extremely symbolic victory. In the history of the world and mankind Stalingrad was the biggest battle waged between two nations and the most costly in terms of lives lost. Hitlers biggest army, the army he said he could storm the heavan's with was destroyed. Stalingrad is a prime example why modern armies don't want to get drawn into urban combat on such a scale.

Answer 4

Stalingrad was avery important symbol for the Soviets and Stalin in particular. He was determined not to let it fall. It was also an important crossing of the Volga River. The Red Army dumped massive amounts of soldiers there to ensure its survival. Urban combat is very casualty intensive so the Germans were required to constantly reinforce as well if they wanted to push the Soviets out.