Guest
On November 20, 1942, a strike group of the Red Army’s Stalingrad Front, commanded by Colonel-General Andrey Yeryomenko, attacked the enemy and breached the defences of the 4th Romanian Army. Three days later, Soviet forces encircled 22 Nazi divisions, as well as over 160 other separate units. This November, we are recalling the heroic Soviet counteroffensive near Stalingrad that marked a turning point in World War II. The 200-day Battle of Stalingrad lasted from July 17, 1942 until February 2, 1945, and raged over a huge territory of about 100,000 square kilometres. At various stages, it involved over 2.1 million officers and soldiers on both sides, dwarfing all previous WWII military engagements in terms of scale and intensity. During the first stage (July 17 - November 18, 1942), the Red Army had to defend its positions and wage intense urban combat. The Wehrmacht’s 6th Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Friedrich von Paulus, faced elements of the 62nd and 64th Soviet armies. Vassily Chuikov, the Commander of the 62nd Soviet Army, is considered the architect of the victory in Stalingrad. He perfected the tactics of assault teams that helped secure a Soviet victory in the battle. By mid-November, favourable conditions shaped up for a Soviet counteroffensive. Army General Georgy Zhukov and Colonel General Alexander Vasilevsky coordinated efforts to draft a plan for an offensive operation codenamed Uranus. The operation lasted from November 19, 1942, through February 2, 1943. During that period, Soviet forces encircled and defeated units of the 4th German Panzer Army and the 6th German Field Army. They also destroyed military units from other Axis states that had sided with Germany. ️ During the Battle of Stalingrad, the Axis bloc lost 25 percent of its forces on the Soviet-German Front. The Soviet high command seized the initiative and gained favourable conditions for launching an all-out Red Army offensive, which allowed them to expel the invaders from the Soviet territory. Источник: Russian MFA ??
