On November 21, 1943, Hitler ordered the expansion of Field Marshal Manstein's 11th Army into Army Group Don, with Field Marshal Manstein as its commander, and placed Paulus's 6th Army, Hort's 4th Panzer Army, and Romania's 3rd and 4th Armies under his command. In his order, Hitler instructed: "The immediate task of Army Group Don is to halt the enemy's offensive and regain the lost positions. Manstein believed that the only chance of German success was for the 6th Army to break through from Stalingrad to the southwest, and for the 4th Panzer Army to attack northeast from Kotelnikovo, south of Stalingrad, to flank Yeremenko's Stalingrad Front, and then rotate to attack the right flank of Tuvatin's Southwestern Front. However, on November 30, 1942, Hitler said in a public speech that he would never retreat from Stalingrad, and once again stressed that the besieged forces must not surrender, and that Manstein must fight his way to Stalingrad.

On December 12, 1943, Marshal Manstein, with a heavy heart, launched a counteroffensive codenamed "Winter Storm". The Germans, led by Hort's 4th Panzer Army, broke through the defensive line of the 51st Army of the Soviet Red Army on the Aksai River on December 16, 1942. By 19 December 1943, the 57th Panzer Corps, which was part of the 4th Panzer Army, had advanced to within 30 miles of the southern encirclement. At this time, Manstein found himself also in danger of being surrounded by the Soviet Red Army, which was several times his size. So, he decided to ignore Hitler's orders and ordered Paulus to immediately break south to join the 4th Panzer Army. Paulus, however, had no intention of breaking through without receiving a direct order from Hitler, and he rejected Manstein's order on the grounds of lack of fuel, giving up this last chance. On December 27, 1942, the Soviet Red Army launched a powerful counterattack to push back the 4th Panzer Army of Hort for 150~200 kilometers, and finally made it return to its original position, forcing the German high command to finally give up the attempt to rescue the encircled group. Manstein's "Winter Storm" was declared a failure. At that time, the temperature had dropped to minus 45 degrees Celsius. The ice on the Volga gradually thickened, so that the Soviet Red Army could more easily replenish its own troops. And the German 6th Army in the encirclement had less and less air supplies, averaging less than 100 tons per day. The German 6th Army was on the verge of running out of ammunition and food. The distribution of food rations has been reduced to a subsistence standard; The lack of ammunition for the artillery began to be felt; Medicines, fuel, and fuel have been exhausted; Thousands of people suffer from typhoid fever and dysentery, and even more so with frostbite, and thousands of soldiers die every day from starvation, cold and malnutrition. Some officers tried to persuade Paulus to quickly break out of the siege despite Hitler's orders. But Paulus, fearing the charge of disobeying military orders, insisted on standing still. On December 29, 1943, Paulus sent Lieutenant General Hubi, commander of the 14th Army, out of the encirclement to meet Hitler and report the situation of the 6th Army to the Führer in person. Hitler, however, ordered the 6th Army to hold Stalingrad until the spring of 1943. On the same day, thanks to Zeitzler's repeated requests, Hitler finally agreed to withdraw Army Group A from the Caucasus.

The 6th Army is destroyed

In January 1944, the Soviet Red Army launched another offensive, codenamed "Operation Jupiter", in an attempt to break through the Italian defenses in the Don region and capture Rostov-on-Don. If this operation was successful, the remnants of the German Army Group South would be completely besieged in the Caucasus. Although the Soviet Red Army never approached Rostov-on-Don, the operation forced the Germans to be separated by more than 250 kilometers from the German forces in the Stalingrad encirclement. In fact, the 6th Army had completely lost its reinforcements.

On January 8, 1944, the commander of the Suton Front, Lieutenant General Rokossovsky, issued an ultimatum to the commander of the German 6th Army, Colonel-General Paulus, urging him to surrender. Paulus telegraphed to Hitler asking for permission to act on camera, which was denied. On the 10th, Rokossovsky's Don Front launched an offensive codenamed "Ring" against the besieged German 6th Army, and the encircled German army began to shrink its defense from the outskirts of Stalingrad to the city. On January 22, 1944, the Soviet Red Army occupied the Gumenlak airfield

AK), the complete transport of air supplies of the 6th Army and the complete interruption of the evacuation of the wounded. Despite the extreme lack of food and ammunition, the Germans resisted stubbornly, believing that the Soviets would execute the surrendered soldiers. Fierce street fighting broke out again in the city of Stalingrad. On the contrary, the Soviets, also surprised by the sheer number of German troops in the encirclement, continued to consolidate the encirclement. Paulus reported to Hitler: "The troops are no longer able to support it, there is no point in continuing to resist, please allow us to surrender." He received the reply: "Surrender is impossible, and the 6th Army should fulfill its heroic duty at Stalingrad until the last man." Manstein urged Hitler to approve the surrender of the remnants of the 6th Army, and Hitler explained to Manstein that surrender was not allowed, "so that even if the German forces in the encirclement were divided into several smaller units, they could resist for a considerable time; Second, the Russians simply would not keep the promises they made after the surrender of the 6th Army. ”

On January 30, 1944, Hitler awarded Paulus the Scepter of the German Field Marshal to encourage him to continue his resistance. He said to Jodl: "In the history of Germany, there has never been a marshal who has been taken prisoner alive. Hitler also hoped that Paulus would fight to the end or commit suicide. On January 31, 1944, Paulus sent his final telegram to the headquarters: "The 6th Army, faithful to its oath and aware of the great mission it has undertaken, has stood at its post for the sake of the Führer and the Fatherland, and has fought to the last soldier, shot and shot." But when the Soviet Red Army stormed the German headquarters in a department store, Paulus chose to surrender. On the same day, the 64th Motorized Infantry Brigade of the 38th Army of the Soviet Red Army hit Paulus's headquarters, "The radio station of the Sixth Army is about to be turned off!" The Russian army has taken it! Long live the defeat of the Bolsheviks, God bless Germany! On February 1, 1944, the messenger of the besieged Sixth Army Headquarters decided to send the last famous telegram to Berlin that touched the Germans, and finally wrote "CL" in international code, indicating that "this station will stop transmitting". The Soviet Red Army ordered the personnel of the command of the 6th Army to surrender outside the basement, and the Chief of Staff of the 6th Army, General Schmidt, accepted the request. Schmidt asked Paulus: "Field Marshal, may I ask you anything else?" Paulus had nothing to say and had to surrender. On February 2, 1943, the remnants of the 11th Army, besieged north of Stalingrad, also announced their surrender. At this point, the Battle of Stalingrad ended. Field Marshal Paulus, commander of the German 6th Army, Lieutenant General Pfefer, commander of the 4th Infantry Army, Lieutenant General Kurzbach, commander of the 51st Army, Major General Colfez, commander of the 295th Division, and other 23 generals, 2,000 officers below the rank of colonel and 91,000 German soldiers who were extremely hungry and tired were captured, about 140,000 people died, and only more than 30,000 wounded patients were evacuated by air in advance.

To the great surprise of the Soviet Red Army, but at the same time to the great disappointment of the Germans, the prisoners of war included 22 generals. Hitler was extremely disappointed with the new field marshal and openly stated that "Paulus was on the verge of entering the halls of glory, but he chose to retreat." "There is no clear evidence that the severe mistreatment of Japanese and German prisoners of war resulted in widespread deaths. However, of the 91,000 prisoners of war who were allowed, only 6,000 survived and returned to the German mainland. Most of the soldiers were already malnourished and lacked medical care, and the Red Army sent them to prisoner of war camps throughout the Soviet Union for forced labor, resulting in most of them dying of overwork and malnutrition. More than a dozen high-ranking officers were taken to Moscow to be used as Soviet propaganda tools. The officers, including Paulus, made anti-Hitler manifestos and hyped up the German troops. General von Seydlitz Kurzbach even offered to form an anti-Hitler army from German prisoners of war, but the USSR did not accept this proposal. It was not until 1955 that these high-ranking POWs were repatriated.

Although the German state media had stopped reporting favorable news weeks before the end of the campaign, the German public did not learn of the tragedy at Stalingrad until the end of January 1944. This was not the first blow to the Germans, but the defeat was unmatched by any other campaign in terms of scale and strategy. On February 18, 1944, German Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels delivered the famous SPO in Berlin

Tpalast made a speech in which he encouraged the German people to embrace the idea of total warfare, that is, to fight to the end with all the resources and forces of the country.

A million people died in the battle, including Soviets, Romanians, Hungarians, Germans. Of the 260,000 men of the German Sixth Army, 91,000 were besieged, and only 5,000 returned to Germany alive after the war.

At the height of the battle, both sides invested more than 2 million troops, 2,000 tanks, more than 2,300 aircraft, and 25,000 artillery pieces and mortars.

In the two months of September and October 1943, the Soviets had only five infantry divisions crossing the river for reinforcements, while the Germans threw in no less than 27 infantry divisions and 19 armored brigades for reinforcements. Its first-line divisions often suffered 70 percent casualties, and only 30 or 40 men remained in a company. The number of troops that the Germans invested in Stalingrad increased from the initial 25 divisions to 51 divisions.

From July to November 1943, the Germans lost 700,000 officers and men, more than 1,000 tanks, more than 2,000 artillery pieces and more than 1,400 aircraft.

During the battle, Soviet railway workers delivered 300,000 wagons of military equipment to the Stalingrad region. During the entire battle, a total of 9,568 wagons of ammunition and 8,353 wagons of artillery shells were consumed, which was more than 13 percent of the artillery shells consumed in the battle of Berlin. Enemy annihilation battalions were set up in various factories and enterprises in Stalingrad, and more than 80,000 people were added to the Red Army units. Many who stayed in the factory continued to insist on production. For example, the factories in the Kirov district kept only 10 to 15 percent of the workers at most, but produced 5,000 tons of foodstuffs, 100 tons of mustard oil, 67 tons of soap, 12,000 bottles of mixed fuel, 5,000 military stoves, 1,300 **, and the factories in Stalingrad supplied more than 4,800 tanks, artillery, and mortars to the front line on July 8, 1943 alone.

The war was brutal, almost a victory piled up with blood. Although the Battle of Stalingrad turned out to be good, its course was horribly bloody. Any war is not a matter of a few commanders strategizing, it must be built by a living life. Under Hitler's leadership, Nazi Germany conquered several smaller countries, but in the face of the vast Soviet Union, the German offensive showed its difficulty. The German assault on Stalingrad can be compared to the Japanese assault on Nanking, and they slaughtered the people to the point of dehumanization. The fall of Stalingrad was not the end of the campaign, but the beginning of another tragic counterattack. In the face of the heavy loss of defensive ground, the Soviet army group still did not give up the last chance to resist, and they still resisted and fought in the urban area building by building, which is the famous street fighting. The city was burned out of ruins, and it was in this rubble that the Soviet army hid from the enemy but our artillery fire and fought bravely to kill the enemy. Despite the strong resistance of the commander Chuikov, the war was finally won for both Stalin and Hitler.

Although the Battle of Stalingrad was won by the Soviet Red Army, the Soviet Union's losses were still higher than those of the Germans. The German army, which lost the initiative, was destroyed step by step in the later battles, and the Soviet people who defended their homeland were also recorded in history forever. To this day, the city is still known as the City of Heroes.

The main military reasons for the defeat of the German army in the Battle of Stalingrad were: a strategic attempt to disconnect from strength, an overestimation of one's own strength; The deployment of troops is scattered and cannot form the focus of the offensive; logistical supply difficulties, etc.

The Soviet army seized the strategic initiative from the Germans, and the influence of Stalingrad further increased the international prestige of the USSR and its armed forces, eliminated the main German forces and significantly weakened the fascist forces. The Battle of Stalingrad was a decisive one, but it had far more psychological significance than military significance.

This is the first time since the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union that the German army has been annihilated in the form of an army group, before which it was only an organized retreat, and it also disrupted the deployment of the German army in the south, and Army Group A attacking the Caucasus was almost annihilated, but this battle was not the final turning point, few people know that just 5 months after this campaign, when the Soviet army launched a major counteroffensive against the German army like a flood, the appearance of a figure turned the entire tide of the war, one of the three fathers of German armor---- Manstein, With his legendary military talent, he gave the Soviets a Stalingrad that belonged to them, very dramatically, the vanguard of the Soviet counteroffensive, and a Sixth Army was completely and completely annihilated, at the end of the year, the positions held by the German army and the Soviet army were surprisingly consistent with the beginning of the year, this is a memory belonging to the German veterans, unfortunately, for political reasons, the impact of the Battle of Stalingrad is not known to many people.

The impact of the Battle of Stalingrad announced the opening of the second theater of the Allied army on the European continent, which meant that Nazi Germany fell into a state of fighting on two fronts, relieving the pressure on the Soviet army, and cooperating with the Soviet army to conquer Berlin and force fascist Germany to surrender unconditionally ahead of schedule. In this way, the U.S. military threw its main forces into the Pacific to fight against Japan with all its might, thus hastening the end of World War II.

The Soviets saw the hope of victory in this battle, so their morale increased greatly, and this war was like magic, so the significance of the Battle of Stalingrad was really significant. The initiative on the German Eastern Front was lost forever. The attrition of troops also caused it to begin to be in chaos, and the war situation forced the German army to begin to withdraw from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union finally began to regain the lost territory step by step, so it is inseparable from this war that it was able to recover the territory in the end. And it was through this war that the people of the world saw that Hitler was not invincible, and the people began to be more determined to oppose fascism.

Therefore, the significance of the Battle of Stalingrad was to break the situation and win the most noble opportunity for victory. The Battle of Stalingrad was of great significance to the peoples of the world. It can be said that this war not only enabled the Soviet army to seize the initiative in the war from the German army, but also gave Nazi Germany a blow to the head, let the arrogant fascists see the power of justice, and let the people of the world no longer feel that Nazi Germany is terrible.

After the battle, the commander of Army Group South of Nazi Germany said: "We lost a quarter of our troops at Stalingrad, which is tantamount to breaking our backbone on the Eastern Front. ”

Li Ming's troops did not participate in this battle, the German army was defeated in the European battlefield as in history, and the Northern Revolutionary Army was stepping up construction and gathering strength.