End of the Battle of Stalingrad

The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its Axis allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in southern Russia. Marked by intense close-quarters combat and heavy civilian losses during aerial bombardment, the battle is considered the largest and deadliest urban battle in military history and the deadliest battle in World War II. By the end of the fighting, the German 6th Army had been destroyed, the 4th Panzer Army had suffered severe losses, and Army Group B was routed. The defeat ended Germany’s 1942 summer offensive and passed the strategic initiative on the Eastern Front to the Soviet Union. The Soviet victory at Stalingrad is generally regarded as the pivotal turning point of the European theatre of the war.

Both sides placed great strategic importance on the city of Stalingrad, as it was one of the largest industrial centres of the Soviet Union and an important transport hub on the Volga River. After more than a year of intense fighting along a vast front, Germany's fuel supplies had dwindled, creating a strategic need to advance into the Caucasus to capture the Soviet oil fields. Controlling Stalingrad would provide a supply route for this campaign while preventing Soviet shipments along the Volga. The city also held significant symbolic importance because it bore the name of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet supreme leader.

The German military first clashed with the Red Army's Stalingrad Front on the distant approaches to the city on 17 July. On 23 August, the 6th Army and elements of the 4th Panzer Army launched their offensive with support from intensive bombing raids by the Luftwaffe, which reduced much of the city to rubble.

As German forces advanced into the city, the battle degenerated into house-to-house fighting, which escalated drastically as both sides continued pouring in reinforcements. By mid-November, the Germans, at great cost, had pushed the Soviet defenders back into narrow zones along the Volga's west bank. However, winter set in and conditions became particularly brutal, with temperatures often dropping tens of degrees below freezing, and the fighting bogged down into brutal trench warfare.

On 19 November, the Red Army launched Operation Uranus, a two-pronged counterattack targeting the Romanian armies protecting the 6th Army's flanks. The Axis flanks were overrun and the 6th Army was encircled. Hitler, who exercised daily command from the Wolf's Lair, was determined to hold the city for Germany at all costs and forbade the 6th Army to try a breakout; instead, attempts were made to supply it by air and to break the encirclement from outside. The Soviets managed to prevent the Germans from making enough airdrops to their trapped armies, but heavy fighting continued for another two months. On 2 February 1943, the 6th Army, having exhausted its ammunition and food, finally capitulated, making it the first of Hitler's field armies to surrender.

In post-Soviet Russia, the legacy of the Red Army's victory at Stalingrad is commemorated among the Days of Military Honour of the Great Patriotic War. It is also well known in many other countries that belonged to the Allied powers, and has thus become ingrained in popular culture.