AskBiography Logo   Latest News  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Google Buzz  Became Fan - Facebook  Subscribe to RSSRSS   Bookmark and Share

Battle of Stalingrad

Battle of Stalingrad
Soviet soldier waving the Red Banner over the central plaza of Stalingrad in 1943.
Military Conflict
ConflictBattle of Stalingrad
Date23 August 1942 � 2 February 1943
LocationStalingrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
ResultDecisive Soviet victory
Nazi Germany
Romania Romania
Kingdom of Italy
Hungary Hungary
Croatia
Soviet Union
Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler
Nazi Germany Erich von Manstein
Nazi Germany Friedrich Paulus 
Nazi Germany Hermann Hoth
Nazi Germany Wolfram von Richthofen
Romania Petre Dumitrescu
Romania C. Constantinescu
Kingdom of Italy Italo Gariboldi
Hungary Gusztáv Vitéz Jány
Viktor Pavičić 
Soviet Union Joseph Stalin
Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov
Soviet Union Nikolay Voronov
Soviet Union A.M. Vasilevsky
Soviet Union Andrei Yeremenko
Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev
Soviet Union K.K. Rokossovsky
Soviet Union Nikolai Vatutin
Soviet Union Vasily Chuikov
Initial:
270,000 men
3,000 artillery pieces
500 tanks
600 aircraft, 1,600 by mid-September (Luftflotte 4)
At the time of the Soviet counter-offensive:
700,000 men (400,000 Germans, 200,000 Romanians, 100,000 Italians)
10,250 artillery pieces
500 tanks
732 (402 operational) aircraft  
Initial:
187,000 men
2,200 artillery pieces
400 tanks
300 aircraft 
At the time of the Soviet counter-offensive: 1,143,500 men
13,451 artillery pieces
894 tanks
1,115  aircraft
est. 750,000 killed, missing or wounded
91,000 captured
Aircraft: 900 (including 274 transports and 165 bombers used as transports)
1,500 tanks and 6000 artillery pieces 
Total: 841,000 casualties
478,741 killed or missing
650,878 wounded and sick
40,000 civilians dead
4,341 tanks
15,728 guns and mortars
2,769 combat aircraft
Total: 1,129,619 casualties

     Home | Military Conflict | Battle of Stalingrad





The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 23 August 1942 and 2 February 1943. It was among the largest on the Eastern Front and was marked by its brutality and disregard for military and civilian casualties. It was amongst the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare with the higher estimates of combined casualties amounting to nearly two million. In its defeat, the crippling losses suffered by Germany's military proved to be insurmountable for the war. The battle was a turning point in the war, after which the German forces attained no further strategic victories in the East.

The German offensive to capture Stalingrad commenced in late summer 1942, supported by intensive Luftwaffe bombing which reduced much of the city to rubble. The German offensive eventually became bogged down in house-to-house fighting; and despite controlling over 90% of the city at times, the Wehrmacht was unable to dislodge the last Soviet defenders clinging tenaciously to the west bank of the Volga River.

In November 1942, the Red Army launched Operation Uranus; a two-pronged attack, targeted at the inferior Romanian and Italian forces which were protecting the German 6th Army flanks. The success of these attacks caused the weakly held flanks to collapse and the 6th Army to be cut off and surrounded inside Stalingrad. As the Russian winter set in, the 6th Army weakened rapidly from cold, starvation and ongoing Soviet attacks. Command ambiguity coupled with Adolf Hitler's resolute belief in the "power of the will" and the value of "standing fast" further compounded the German predicament. Eventually, the failure to break the encirclement by relieving German forces, coupled with the failure of re-supply by air, caused the final collapse. By early February 1943, German resistance in Stalingrad had ceased and the remaining elements of the surrounded 6th Army had either surrendered or had been destroyed.


Warning: simplexml_load_file(http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/-/Battle/of/Stalingrad?orderby=viewCount&max-results=10) [function.simplexml-load-file]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 410 Gone in /home/askbio/public_html/index_bio.php on line 257

Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: I/O warning : failed to load external entity "http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/-/Battle/of/Stalingrad?orderby=viewCount&max-results=10" in /home/askbio/public_html/index_bio.php on line 257

Fatal error: Call to a member function children() on a non-object in /home/askbio/public_html/index_bio.php on line 260