re: Was Stalingrad necessary for Hitler to grab when he did?

Yes. According to historians Hitler had a micro penis. He had to compensate somehow, but he tried too hard and didn’t want to appear soft.

His generals wanted to go into Moscow, but Hitler also wanted Stalingrad as a propaganda piece.

It cost him dearly.

There were strategic considerations to Staliningrad vis a vis the oil in the Caucuses. It is a pipeline terminus and it has a nuigue position in that things coming up from the Caspian have to move through Stalingrad in order to move to the Black Sea

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Urban city full of civilians - no value (unless you need slave labor). On the contrary, capturing a bunch of civilians means you now have to assign personnel to occupy the area and watch/guard them.

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You are absolutely right. Military campaigns or waged for securing something of value. Stalingrad was humiliation that turned on Hitler.

I was really disappointed during the world cup when Germany was one game away but failed to advance to face Russia in St. Petersberg. That would have been awesome.

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The Russians saw their opportunity by concentrating their attack on the Romanians who lacked just about anything, anti-tank weapons, artillery, coordinated air support, trucks and above all will.

Had decent German units been protecting the flanks, Stalingrad doesn't happen the way it does

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Or had the Germans actually listened to the Romanians when they told them they were way undersupplied and vulnerable, maybe their flanks don't get caught so easily. But the Germans were going down either way once the Soviet counter started anyways. Maybe they hold out a little while longer on the flanks had they been properly equipped, but the counter was just too much for them to hold off after the winter they'd gone through and the amount of shite the Soviets counterattacked with.

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seems as if it was an act of over-confidence and arrogance.

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It was.

His troops up north had Moscow literally in sight when he diverted them, and had the Russians retreating. He could have taken Moscow and rode out the winter but instead thought he had time to go get Stalingrad. When he did this it allowed Stalins troops from eastern Siberia to arrive to reinforce Stalingrad and they were prepared for the harsh winter.

Also Japan promising not to attack Russia on the east really fricked Hitler. That decisions and Pearl Harbor by the Japs really fricked Hitlers plans up, along with the Italians failure in Greece and North Africa

The whole operation was rushed because the Germans launched a desperate preemptive strike—the Soviets were amassing the largest invasion force in history on the German border, and the Germans frankly got lucky that they weren’t completely destroyed themselves in the first few weeks of a late summer Soviet attack. Even after capturing massive personnel and supplies on the border by surprising the Soviets, the Germans were outnumbered and outgunned.

Given this, going for a knockout punch by quickly trying to seize the three key objectives makes sense to me. They were not winning a prolonged conflict unless they pushed the Russians back past the Caspian and seized most of their wartime production, and that couldn’t occur until those three cities were KOed.

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That and he should have delivered the knock out punch and taken Moscow

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This

No.

Oilfields in the Caucasus should have been his primary goal, with a robust rear-guard defense. Once he locked that down and started moving on Moscow (isolating Stalingrad), it's very likely that Stalin would have sued for peace.