According to both books by Beevor, 11th Panzer were 9 miles from Stalingrad which didn't have a single Soviet troop stationed there on the 3rd August but didn't drive into the city as they didn't realise its strategic importance and was ordered to help drive south into the Caucus and Stalingrad was left to 76th Infantry division of 6th Army which took 2 weeks to fully deploy there.
How accurate is this claim? Can someone verify?
Just a few things to say here:
Firstly, could you tell me which page this was found on? I’ve looked through the index for Beevor’s Stalingrad, and found no mention of 11th Panzer Division, and I don’t remember where else in the book it could be.
Secondly, I don’t believe Antony Beevor ever wrote a separate book about/called Barbarossa.
This isn't at all like Beevor's actual characterization of the initial attacks on Stalingrad. The Germans did break through the Don defenses and cross the distance to the Volga pretty quickly, but that occurred on 23 August, and it was 16th Panzer. Paulus' forces were fighting west of the Don on 3 August (the encirclement near Kalach started on 2 August and took a couple of days). The initial crossing of the Don wasn't until 21 August.
Stalingrad initially didn't have regular Soviet forces and the sudden arrival of German troops on the Volga did cause some panic (Beevor relates how a new pontoon bridge, freshly completed, was immediately ordered to be destroyed). However, it did have a lot of semi-organized defenses in the local militia forces and the anti-aircraft-batteries, which put up quite a fight. It was quite some time after that before the Germans were able to consolidate positions near Stalingrad and get a proper attack on the city underway, but these don't constitute a missed opportunity; rather, the forward German positions were extremely exposed on both flanks and also short on fuel, and thus not in a position to rush the city even if they could have taken it.
Apologies for not having page references (I'm referring to it on my phone... how DO people refer to pages when looking at an electronic version for which the page number is variable?)