Battle of Stalingrad

The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union,... Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. It was known by many different names depending on the nation, notably the Great Patriotic War in the former Soviet Union, while known in Germany as the Eastern Front , the Eastern Campaign or the Russian Campaign . The battles on the Eastern Front constituted the largest military confrontation in history. They were characterized by unprecedented ferocity, wholesale destruction, mass deportations, and immense loss of life variously due to combat, starvation, exposure, disease, and massacres. The Eastern Front, as the site of nearly all extermination camps, death marches, ghettos, and the majority of pogroms, was central to the Holocaust. Of the estimated 70 million deaths attributed to World War II, over 30 million, many of them civilians, died on the Eastern Front.
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World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict that was underway by 1939 and ended in 1945. It involved most of the world's... nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, with more than 100 million military personnel mobilised. In a state of "total war", the major participants placed their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service of the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Marked by significant events involving the mass death of civilians, including the Holocaust and the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, it is the deadliest conflict in human history, resulting in 50 million to over 70 million fatalities. Although Japan was already at war with China in 1937, the world war is generally said to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany, and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and most of the countries of the British Empire and Commonwealth. Germany set out to establish a large empire in Europe.
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The term Great Patriotic War , Velíkaya Otéchestvennaya voyná, is used in Russia and some other states of the former Soviet Union to... describe the period from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945 during World War II, in the many fronts of the Soviet-German war against Nazi Germany and its allies. The term Patriotic War refers to the Russian resistance of the French invasion of Russia under Napoleon I, which became known as the Patriotic War of 1812. The term denotes a war for otechestvo, "the fatherland", i.e. a defensive war for one's homeland. The phrase Great Patriotic War appeared in 1914. It was the name of a special war-time appendix to the magazine Theater and Life in Saint Petersburg, and referred to the Eastern Front of World War I, where Russia fought against the German Empire and the Austrian Empire. The phrases Second Patriotic War and Great World Patriotic War were also used during World War I in Russia.
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Case Blue , later renamed Operation Braunschweig, was the German Armed Forces name for its plan for the 1942 strategic summer offensive in southern... Russia between 28 June and 24 November 1942. A continuation of the previous year's Operation Barbarossa and intended to finally knock the Soviet Union out of the war, the operation involved a two-pronged attack against the rich oilfields of Baku as well as an advance in the direction of Stalingrad along the Volga River, to cover the flanks of the advance towards Baku. For this part of the operation, Army Group South of the German Army was sub-divided into Army Groups A and B . Army Group A was tasked with crossing the Caucasus mountains to reach the Baku oil fields, while Army Group B protected its flanks along the Volga. Initially, the German offensive saw spectacular gains with a rapid advance into the Caucasus capturing vast areas of land and several oil fields. However, the Red Army decisively defeated the Germans at Stalingrad, following Operations Uranus and Little Saturn.
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Operation Saturn, revised as Operation Little Saturn, was a Red Army operation on the Eastern Front of World War II that led to battles in the... northern Caucasus and Donets Basin regions of the Soviet Union from December 1942 to February 1943. The success of Operation Uranus, launched on 19 November 1942, had trapped 250,000 - 300,000 troops of General Friedrich Paulus's German 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army in Stalingrad. To exploit this victory, the Soviet general staff planned a winter campaign of continuous and highly ambitious offensive operations, codenamed "Saturn". On 17 May 1942, German Army Groups A and B launched a counteroffensive against advancing Soviet armies around the city of Kharkov, resulting in the Second Battle of Kharkov; this would ultimately be expanded on 28 June into Case Blue, which aimed for the capture of the Caucasus oil fields. By 6 July, General Hermann Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army had taken the city of Voronezh, threatening to collapse the Red Army's resistance.
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Operation Winter Storm was a German offensive in World War II, undertaken between 12–23 December 1942, in which the German 4th Panzer Army... failed to break the encirclement of the German 6th Army during the Battle of Stalingrad. In late November 1942, the Red Army completed Operation Uranus, encircling some 300,000 Axis personnel in and around the city of Stalingrad. German forces within the Stalingrad pocket and directly outside were reorganized under Army Group Don, under the command of Feldmarshal Erich von Manstein. Meanwhile, the Red Army continued to allocate as many resources as possible to the eventual launch of the planned Operation Saturn, which aimed to isolate Army Group A from the rest of the German Army. To remedy the situation, the Luftwaffe attempted to supply German forces in Stalingrad through an air bridge. When the Luftwaffe proved incapable of carrying out its mission and it became obvious that a successful breakout could occur only if launched as early as possible, Manstein decided on a relief effort. Originally, Manstein was promised four panzer divisions.
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