The Battle of Stalingrad, also known as the Battle of StalingradIn May 1943, the Axis Eastern Front armies, led by the Germans, swept through the southwestern part of the Soviet Union and approached the southern Soviet city of Stalingrad. After the Luftwaffe carried out a large-scale brutal bombing campaign against Stalingrad, the Germans invaded the city and engaged in urban street battles with the Soviet soldiers and civilians who were entrenched in the city.

Originally known as Tsaritsyn and later renamed Volgograd (renamed Stalingrad again during the war), Stalingrad is located on the west bank of the lower Volga River, with about 600,000 inhabitants before the war. It is an important port on the Volga River, the main inland shipping line of the Soviet Union, and a railway transportation hub and an important industrial city in the south of the Soviet Union, with a large tractor factory - Stalingrad Tractor Factory (also known as Dzerzhinsky Tractor Factory, which was the largest tractor factory in the Soviet Union at that time, accounting for half of the output of the whole Soviet Union, and played the role of an arsenal for a long time, mainly producing tanks during the war). To the west and south of Stalingrad is the vast and fertile lower Don River basin, the Kuban River basin and the Caucasus region, which were important producers of grain, oil and coal in the Soviet Union. After the German occupation of Ukraine in 1941, Stalingrad became the only transportation choke point from the central region of the Soviet Union to the important economic regions of the south, and its strategic location was extremely important.

If the Germans occupied this area, the Soviet Union would lose the oil, food, and important industrial base needed for the war effort, and Germany desperately needed these resources at this time. Before the offensive was about to be launched, Hitler had said to General Paulus, commander of the 6th Army: "If I can't get oil from Mykop and Grozny, then I must end this war." ”

April 5, 1943 "Hitler Directive No. 41 (Operations on the Eastern Front) Leader and Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht Leader Base Camp Wehrmacht High Command/Wehrmacht April 5, 1942 Command General Staff Document No. 55616 of 1942 was conveyed only to Officer Order No. 41 The winter campaign in Russia was coming to an end. Thanks to the special tenacity and sacrifice of the officers and men of the Eastern Front, the German army had won a great victory in the defensive battle. The enemy suffered extremely heavy losses on the side of personnel and materiel. In this winter, the enemy, in his efforts to extend the so-called initial gains, has greatly depleted the main forces of his reserves, which he was preparing for later operations. As soon as the weather and terrain conditions were in place, the superiority of the German commanders and troops would once again win the initiative and force the enemy to submit. The goal was to finally annihilate the remaining living forces of the Soviet Red Army and to seize as much of its most important economic resources as possible for the war. To this end, all available forces of the Wehrmacht and the Allies should be committed. At the same time, however, the security of the coasts of the occupied territories in the west and north of Europe should be guaranteed in any case. ”

Since the German army suffered about 1.1 million casualties from the beginning of the war to the winter of 1943, he successively sent Goering and Field Marshal Keitel to various countries to recruit servants, and obtained a total of 52 divisions for summer operations, including 27 Romanian divisions, 13 Hungarian divisions, 9 Italian divisions, 2 Slovak divisions, and 1 Spanish division.

In order to implement the above-mentioned strategic intentions, Germany reorganized its forces on the Southern Front, abolished the original Southern Army Group number, and newly formed two army groups, A and B. Army Group A was commanded by Field Marshal Lister and commanded the 1st Panzer Army of General Kleist and the 17th Army of General Louw, with air support from the 4th Air Force of the Air Force, whose mission was to capture the Caucasus; Army Group B, commanded by Field Marshal Bock, commanded the 4th Panzer Army of General Hoth, the 2nd Army of General Weickers, and the 6th Army of General Paulus, with air support from the Air Force Don Regional Air Force, was tasked with capturing Stalingrad and covering the northern flank of Army Group A. In the rear of Army Groups A and B, there was a second line of forces, consisting of the Hungarian 2nd Army, the Italian 8th Army and the Romanian 3rd Army. In addition, in the Crimean region, there were the 11th Army of General Manstein and the 4th Army of Romania. The total strength was 60 German divisions, including 10 armored divisions, 6 motorized divisions, and 43 divisions of vassal troops, with a total of 1,200 tanks and assault artillery, 17,000 artillery pieces and mortars, and 1,640 combat aircraft.

At Hitler's behest, the German High Command drew up a plan for operations in the south in the summer of 1942, codenamed "Operation Blue" (German: Fall Blau). Its main contents were: Lister Ster Army Group A, with Kleist's 1st Panzer Army as the left flank and Ruw's 17th Army as the right flank, attacked from south of Kharkov and north of Taganrog to the east and southeast, respectively, to occupy Rostov in the lower reaches of the Don River, and to the south to control the oil fields in the Caucasus; Army Group B, with Hort's 4th Panzer Army and Weix's 2nd Army as the left flank and Paulus's 6th Army as the right flank, struck east and southeast from south of Kursk and north of Kharkov, respectively, occupying Voronezh on the upper Don River and advancing towards Stalingrad.

In March 1943 the Germans advanced to Stalingrad.

The Supreme Command of the Soviet Red Army was also intensifying preparations for the summer campaign of 1943. Stalin and the Supreme Command of the Soviet Red Army judged that in the summer of 1942, the Germans could launch a large-scale offensive in the direction of Moscow and in the south, with Moscow as the main target of the assault, because in this direction the German army still had more than 70 divisions and more than 1 million men. Therefore, the Supreme High Command of the Soviet Red Army decided to concentrate most of the forces of the reserves in the Moscow direction. The strategic intention of the Soviet Red Army was to conduct an active strategic defense, but at the same time it was necessary to conduct a series of offensive campaigns in the Crimea, the Kharkiv region, the Ligov-Kursk direction, the Smolensk direction, as well as the Leningrad and Demyansk regions. When discussing the specific battle plan, Stalin was interested in and fully supported the plan of offensive in the southwest, put forward by the commander-in-chief of the southwestern direction, Marshal Timoshenko. The Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, Marshal Shaposhnikov, however, said that the General Staff did not agree with this plan, saying that the base camp could not and did not have enough reserves to supply to the southwest. This opinion was rejected by Stalin. In the end, Stalin approved Timoshenko's plan to carry out the Kharkov offensive campaign with troops to the southwest. The plan provided for the implementation of a centripetal assault from the Volchansk region and Barvenko, the capture of Kharkov in one fell swoop and the creation of conditions for the liberation of Donbass.