WW2 Urban Warfare

The WW2 urban warfare includes the most ferocious battles fought in this armed conflict. The struggle for the control of a city, such as Stalingrad, Berlin, Caen, and Manila was extremely savage and unrelenting as the enemy showed no mercy. Soldiers on both sides had to recourse to any available and desperate means to defeat their enemy; snipers, flamethrowers, hand grenades, booby traps, and anti-bunker guns, as they hid in factories, basements, and the city sewers.

If the machine gun, artillery fire, and barbed wire stopped the advance of the infantry and cavalry in World War I, cities delayed an army offensive in WWII as sometimes the military engagement had to be decided through an urban warfare. Street by street and house-to-house, close-quarters fighting and surprise are the main characteristics of this type of military engagement, for the city buildings, warehouses, churches, homes, and the drainage and sewage systems offer a lot of cover and hiding places for the defending forces.

In WW2, urban battles usually started in the neighboring countryside area. Then, as the retreating army marched into the city looking for cover and protection, the military engagement was switched to its outskirts first and next into the city. The urban landscape is the ideal battlefield for snipers and the perfect war environment for setting up booby traps as narrow streets become lethal traps for trucks and armored vehicles, which were often attacked from the flanks with anti-tank grenades or Molotov cocktails thrown into tank turrets through the top hatch.

To attack an enemy force ingrained in the cement and brick structures of town, the advancing army needed the triple or four times the amount of infantrymen than the defending troops, who had to be ferreted out from each building. To break into a room to eliminate or flush out the hiding enemy, sub-machine guns, shotguns, flamethrowers, and hand grenades were used. In order to reduce the risk of being caught in the crossfire coming from window machine gun nests, the infantry squad had to advance along the sidewalks, away from the center of the street, hugging the building walls. Most of the time air and artillery support for the advancing forces made the situation worst, for the heap of rubble offered even better hiding places to the defending army; the battles of Stalingrad and Caen are examples of this. Thus, the death toll in urban warfare were usually higher than field battles, with a high number of civilian population casualties.

Most ferociously fought urban battles of WW2

1- Battle of Stalingrad

2- Battle of Berlin

3- Battle of Caen

4- Battles of Kharkov

5- Battle of Manila (Philippines)

6- Battle of Rostov

Infantry weapons used in WW2 urban warfare

Sub-machine guns: German MP 38/40, M3 “Grease Gun”, Thompson, PPSh-41, Sten Gun

Rifles: Mosin-Nagant (Russia), Mauser Gewehr M1898 (Germany), M1 Garand (US), M1 Carbine (US), FG 42 (Germany), Sturmgewehr 44 (Germany), Tokarev (Russia), BAR (US).

Shotguns: Browning Auto-5, Ithaca 37

Sniper rifles: Mauser Gewehr 98, Mosin-Nagant, Springfield M1903, Lee-Enfield

Anti-tank weapons: Panzerfaust, Panzerschreck, Bazooka, RPG-40.

Hand grenades

Flamethrowers

Machine guns

Mortars

Infantry support guns (usually 75 and 105mm)

Urban battle: Stalingrad (footage)