While the Germans didn't firebomb the city in a Dresden-esque style, they certainly did their damndest with conventional air raids and Luftwaffe attacks. Throughout the entirety of the battle the Luftwaffe threw a simply disgusting amount at the Red Army. But it has to be noted that most of the Battle of Stalingrad is occurring in a Russian winter and weather, visibility, and ground conditions made it difficult for the German Air Force to assist the Wehrmacht as the battle dragged on.

As to why the Germans wanted the city? While a lot of it has to do with morale and the show of it all, there are some pretty dern good strategic reasons as well. In regards to the morale, Hitler himself and some members of the German High Command thought it would be a massive blow to the morale of the Soviet people to hear that the city that bared the name of their leader had fallen to the Nazis. On the flip side of the same coin, it would be a boon to the German military morale and a solid bounce back from the failed offensive to capture Moscow earlier in the year. So as to the morale part, the drive to capture the city makes some sense.

Strategically, Stalingrad sits on the Volga River and acts as a key transportation hub in Southern Russia. A German occupation of Stalingrad cuts the rest of Russia off from the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus. With Stalingrad in German hands, the Southern Volga becomes a Wehrmacht stream and all river transportation would likely stop dead in its tracks. With the Caucasus too cut off from the Russians, the Soviet Union loses access to an oil rich region.

So there are some legitimate reasons that the Germans work disturbingly hard to capture the city instead of just wreck it.

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To put it simply, the Luftwaffe didn't have the means to to firebomb Stalingrad and burn it to the ground. Let me explain. To get a firestorm going, you need a few things to be perfect:

• You need a ready supply of fuel

• You need the right weather conditions

• You need to drop the right tonnage of bombs.

With the exception of the firebombings of Tokyo, which was a city that was made to burn (lots of flammable materials used in the construction) European cities weren't overly flammable. The combustibles were hidden in the frames of buildings. The allies used the 4000 lbs Cookie block buster bomb to literally break buildings open to expose flammable materials.

You also needed luck with the weather. Aerial bombing was by no means accurate and bombing attacks were rarely concentrated enough to start fire storms which would be self sustaining. -You would also need the right weather conditions for the firestorm to keep burning.

The other major factor was the ability to drop enough bombs to get the fire started and past the critical mass required. This required a large number of bombers dropping a large load of bombs. (From memory, Dresden required an initial raid of over 700 heavy bombers, directed by a master bomber to get the fires started (Both the Lancaster and the Halifax bombers used in the Dresden raids would have been loaded with about 7 tonnes of bombs). The Luftwaffe just didn't have the capacity to put enough bombs over the city. They used medium bombers and they just didn't have enough bombers around that time.

Hope that helps a little.

In addition to what /u/Huckadoo said, German bomber force wasn't quite comparable to what the allies could field in 1945. The allies had many more heavy bombers capable of carrying huge bomb loads. The Luftwaffe simply didn't have the capacity to do what allied did with Dresden. However they still bombed the city with the bombers they did have and did massive damage to it.

I answered a similar question a few months ago, and I'll transplant my post here. I would be happy to answer any more questions you might have:

We have to consider the types of bomber aircraft at the disposal of the Luftwaffe, and the effectiveness of the bombing campaign carried out against not only Stalingrad, but cities on the Eastern Front in general.

First, German bomber aircraft were of the "schnellbomber," or fast bomber, variety. Aircraft such as the Heinkel He-111 and Junkers Ju-88 were fast, twin-engine bombers whose main defense against enemy fighters was their speed. Due to the German "Blitzkrieg" doctrine, it was decided that slow and lumbering four engine heavy bombers would detract from the speed and efficiency of a direct assault, and was therefore deemed inadequate in the eyes of the German military. For this reason, not a single model of four engine heavy bomber was ever produced by the Luftwaffe throughout World War 2. The schnellbomber, however, was viewed as a logical extension of the mechanized blitzkrieg warfare that was carried out on the ground, and were produced in great numbers. The schnellbomber, by its very existence as a fast bomber, was limited in its bomb carrying capacity. The He-111, for instance, could only carry 7,275 lb (3,307 kg) of bombs, while the American B-17 heavy bomber could carry 17,640 lb (8,000 kg) of bombs. An obvious result of the decreased bomb load is the decreased overall destructiveness of the bomber force. For example, a flight of 10 fully loaded He-111's could carry roughly 33,000 kg of bombs, while the same flight of B-17's could carry roughly 80,000 kg of bombs. With the average size of a bomber flight being roughly 100-200 planes (a very rough estimate, due to factors such as the target, the year, and the number of aircraft available to the respective air force) you can see the difference in the potential bomb carrying capabilities, and by extension the potential damage capabilities, between the schnellbomber and the heavy bomber. For this reason, it was rare that Luftwaffe bombers on the Eastern Front could carpet bomb a city to ruins (a common occurrence for American bombers in both theaters of the War.)

Also, the greatest advantage attributed to the schnellbomber (their speed) was not advantageous during the air war on the Eastern Front. The Soviet air defense during the Battle of Stalingrad was nearly non existent; thus the speed of the schnellbombers was inconsequential. What was consequential was the limited destructive capacity of the schnellbomber armament, as we shall see in a moment.

The second factor was the effectiveness of the bombing campaign. As we've already seen, Luftwaffe bombers significantly lacked the kind of firepower that American and British heavy bombers could employ on a single raid, much less over a campaign. As a result, Luftwaffe bomber raids could damage large portions of the city, but not to the point that the target was completely destroyed. It has been well documented that the Luftwaffe is responsible for large scale damage to the city; I'm not arguing that Luftwaffe bombing raids were insignificant! I'm arguing that the resulting damage of the city actually benefited the Soviet Army. If you haven't seen the Stalingrad battlefield, it can be thought of as an almost never ending expanse of abandoned/ruined buildings and rubble; essentially, the Luftwaffe turned it into a demolished cityscape. The rubble and debris soon became sniper perches, bunkers, hideouts, and makeshift fortifications that were utilized by both sides. (Here is a good example of the battlefield that both armies had to deal with.) An excellent example of this is Pavlov's House (although not bombed to rubble by the Luftwaffe, it nevertheless serves as an indication of how the Soviet Army was able to make use of semi-destroyed structures to fight the Wehrmacht.)

So with street after street of [this type of fighting] (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cu5Qq33KJbI/TWDBgRaAs2I/AAAAAAAAF3k/0PtnVQ3IkoQ/s640/battle-stalingrad-aerial-view-railway-station-august-1942.jpg) why wasn't the Luftwaffe called upon to bomb the rubble and flush the Soviet defenders out? They were! Unfortunately for the Wehrmacht, however, the effect of the bombing campaign had diminishing returns. This was due to:

• The harsh Soviet winter. Subzero temperatures and blizzards prevented a consistent bombing campaign, as both air forces were often grounded for weeks at a time.
• The fluidity of the battle and the subsequent house to house fighting, which prevented tactical air support for the Wehrmacht. It is difficult to distinguish friend from foe, or even a front line, when the battlefield looks like this from the air.
• The physics and concussive force behind a bomb blast. In most pictures of Stalingrad that are taken during the battle, you will see buildings that look like this. The roof has been destroyed (likely caved in to the center of the building) and the windows have been blown out. This is because the outward force of the explosion, which is amplified when the detonation takes place in an enclosed structure. Once the structure has been blown open, the concussive force of the blast decreases exponentially. Thus, once all the buildings had been reduced to rubble, subsequent bombings were simply not as effective.

The German failure at Stalingrad cannot be attributed to any one reason. For the Luftwaffe, however, these factors contributed to the Soviet defense, which eventually led to the encirclement and capture of the 6th Army.