How many victims were in the battle of Stalingrad. The battle of Stalingrad: the course of hostilities, heroes, meaning, map

Stalingrad battle- the battle between the troops of the USSR, on the one hand, and the troops of Nazi Germany, Romania, Italy and Hungary during the Great Patriotic War. The battle was one of the most important events of the Second World War. The battle included an attempt by the Wehrmacht to seize the left bank of the Volga in the area of ​​Stalingrad (present-day Volgograd) and the city itself, a confrontation in the city, and a counteroffensive by the Red Army (Operation Uranus), as a result of which the 6th Army of the Wehrmacht and other forces of Germany's allies inside and around the city were surrounded and partly destroyed, partly captured. According to rough estimates, the total losses of both sides in this battle exceed two million people. The Axis powers lost a large number of men and weapons and were subsequently unable to fully recover from the defeat. J.V. Stalin wrote:

For the Soviet Union, which also suffered heavy losses during the battle, the victory at Stalingrad marked the beginning of the country's liberation and a victorious march through Europe that led to the final defeat of Nazi Germany c.

Preceding events

The capture of Stalingrad was very important to Hitler for several reasons. It was the main industrial city on the banks of the Volga (a vital transport route between the Caspian Sea and northern Russia). The capture of Stalingrad would provide security on the left flank of the German armies advancing into the Caucasus. Finally, the very fact that the city bore the name of Stalin, Hitler's main enemy, made the capture of the city a winning ideological and propaganda move. Stalin may also have ideological and propaganda interests in defending the city that bore his name.

The summer offensive was codenamed "Fall Blau" (German. option blue). It was attended by the 17th Army of the Wehrmacht and the 1st Tank Army with the 4th Tank Army.

Operation Blau began with an offensive by Army Group South against the troops of the Bryansk Front to the north and the troops of the Southwest Front to the south of Voronezh. It is worth noting that despite a two-month break in active hostilities by the troops of the Bryansk Front, the result was no less catastrophic than for the troops of the Southwestern Front, battered by the May battles. On the very first day of the operation, both Soviet fronts were broken through tens of kilometers and the Germans rushed to the Don. Soviet troops could oppose the Germans only with weak resistance in the vast desert steppes, and then they began to flock to the east in complete disarray. Attempts to re-form the defense ended in complete failure, when German units entered the Soviet defensive positions from the flank. Several divisions of the Red Army in mid-July hit the boiler in the south of the Voronezh region near the village of Millerovo

German offensive

6th Army's initial offensive was so successful that Hitler intervened again, ordering 4th Panzer Army to join Army Group South (A). As a result, a huge "traffic jam" was formed when the 4th and 6th armies needed several roads in the zone of operations. Both armies were stuck tightly, and the delay turned out to be quite long and slowed down the German advance by one week. With a slowed offensive, Hitler changed his mind and reassigned the target of the 4th Panzer Army back to the Stalingrad direction.

In July, when German intentions became completely clear to the Soviet command, it developed plans for the defense of Stalingrad. Additional Soviet troops were deployed on the eastern bank of the Volga. The 62nd Army was created under the command of Vasily Chuikov, whose task was to protect Stalingrad at any cost.

Battle in the city

There is a version that Stalin did not give permission to evacuate the residents of the city. However, documentary evidence of this has not yet been found. In addition, the evacuation, albeit at a low rate, still took place. By August 23, 1942, out of 400 thousand inhabitants of Stalingrad, about 100 thousand were evacuated. On August 24, the Stalingrad City Defense Committee adopted a belated decision to evacuate women, children and the wounded to the left bank of the Volga. All citizens, including women and children, worked to build trenches and other fortifications.

A massive German bombing raid on 23 August destroyed the city, killing thousands of civilians and turning Stalingrad into a vast area covered in burning ruins. Eighty percent of the city's housing was destroyed.

The burden of the initial struggle for the city fell on the 1077th Anti-Aircraft Regiment: a unit staffed mainly by young female volunteers with no experience in destroying ground targets. Despite this, and without the proper support available from other Soviet units, the anti-aircraft gunners remained in place and fired at the advancing enemy tanks of the 16th Panzer Division until all 37 air defense batteries were destroyed or captured. By the end of August, Army Group South (B) had finally reached the Volga north of Stalingrad. Another German advance to the river south of the city also followed.

At the initial stage, the Soviet defense relied largely on the "People's Militia of Workers", recruited from workers not involved in war production. The tanks continued to be built and were manned by volunteer crews of factory workers, including women. The equipment was immediately sent from the conveyors of factories to the front line, often even without painting and without sighting equipment installed.

Street fighting in Stalingrad.

The headquarters considered the plan of Eremenko, but considered it impracticable (the depth of the operation was too great, etc.)

As a result, the Headquarters proposed the following option for encircling and routing German troops at Stalingrad. On October 7, the General Staff issued a directive (No. 170644) to conduct an offensive operation by two fronts to encircle the 6th Army. The Don Front was asked to deliver the main blow in the direction of Kotlubani, break through the front and reach the Gumrak area. At the same time, the Stalingrad Front is advancing from the Gornaya Polyana area to Elshanka, and after the front breaks through, the units move to the Gumrak area, where they join up with the DP units. In this operation, the front commanders were allowed to use fresh units. Don Front - 7th Rifle Division, Stalingrad Front - 7th Art. K., 4 Sq. K. The date of the operation was set for October 20.

Thus, it was planned to encircle and destroy only German troops fighting directly in Stalingrad (14th Panzer Corps, 51st and 4th Infantry Corps, about 12 divisions in total).

The command of the Don Front was dissatisfied with this directive. On October 9, Rokossovsky presented his plan for an offensive operation. He referred to the impossibility of breaking through the front in the Kotluban area. According to his calculations, for a breakthrough, 4 divisions were required, for the development of a breakthrough, 3 divisions and 3 more for cover from the attacks of the Germans; thus, 7 fresh divisions were clearly not enough. Rokossovsky proposed to inflict the main blow in the Kuzmichi area (height 139.7), that is, everything according to the same old scheme: to encircle parts of the 14th Panzer Corps, link up with the 62nd Army and only after that move to Gumrak to join the 64 th army. The headquarters of the Don Front planned 4 days for this: -24 October. The "Oryol ledge" of the Germans haunted Rokossovsky since August 23, so he decided to "play it safe" and first deal with this "callous", and then complete the complete encirclement.

The Headquarters did not accept Rokossovsky's proposal and recommended that he prepare an operation according to the Headquarters plan; however, he was allowed to conduct private operations against the Oryol group of the Germans on October 10, without attracting fresh forces.

In total, during Operation Ring, more than 2,500 officers and 24 generals of the 6th Army were taken prisoner. In total, over 91 thousand soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht were taken prisoner. The trophies of the Soviet troops from January 10 to February 2, 1943, according to the report of the headquarters of the Don Front, were 5762 guns, 1312 mortars, 12701 machine guns, 156 987 rifles, 10 722 assault rifles, 744 aircraft, 1666 tanks, 261 armored vehicles, 80 438 vehicles, 10 679 motorcycles, 240 tractors, 571 tractors, 3 armored trains and other military equipment.

Battle results

The victory of the Soviet troops in the Battle of Stalingrad is the largest military and political event during the Second World War. The great battle, which ended with the encirclement, defeat and capture of a select enemy grouping, made a huge contribution to the achievement of a radical turning point in the course of the Great Patriotic War and had a decisive influence on the further course of the entire Second World War.

In the Battle of Stalingrad, new features of the military art of the Armed Forces of the USSR manifested themselves with all their might. Soviet operational art was enriched by the experience of encircling and destroying the enemy.

As a result of the battle, the Red Army firmly seized the strategic initiative and was now dictating its will to the enemy.

The outcome of the Battle of Stalingrad caused confusion and confusion in the Axis countries. The crisis of pro-fascist regimes began in Italy, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia. The influence of Germany on its allies was sharply weakened, the differences between them were noticeably aggravated.

Defectors and prisoners

According to some other data, from 91 to 110 thousand German prisoners were taken prisoner at Stalingrad. Subsequently, our troops on the battlefield were buried 140 thousand soldiers and officers of the enemy (not counting tens of thousands of German soldiers who died in the "cauldron" within 73 days). According to the testimony of the German historian Rüdiger Overmans, almost 20 thousand "accomplices" - former Soviet prisoners who served in auxiliary positions in the 6th Army - were also killed in captivity. They were shot or died in the camps.

In the reference book "The Second World War", published in Germany in 1995, it is indicated that 201,000 soldiers and officers were taken prisoner near Stalingrad, of whom only 6,000 people returned to their homeland after the war. According to the estimates of the German historian Rüdiger Overmans, published in a special issue of the historical magazine "Damals" dedicated to the Battle of Stalingrad, about 250,000 people were surrounded at Stalingrad. Approximately 25,000 of them were evacuated from the Stalingrad cauldron and more than 100,000 Wehrmacht soldiers and officers were killed in January 1943 during the end of the Soviet operation "Ring". 130,000 people were taken prisoner, including 110,000 Germans, and the rest were the so-called "volunteers" of the Wehrmacht ("hivi" is an abbreviation for the German word Hillwillge (Hiwi), literal translation; "volunteer assistant"). Of these, about 5,000 people survived and returned home to Germany. The 6th Army included about 52,000 "hivis", for which the headquarters of this army developed the main directions of training for "volunteer assistants", in which the latter were viewed as "reliable comrades-in-arms in the struggle against Bolshevism." Among these "volunteer assistants" were Russian support personnel and an anti-aircraft artillery battalion manned by Ukrainians. In addition, in the 6th Army ... there were about 1000 people of the Todt organization, consisting mainly of Western European workers, Croatian and Romanian associations, numbering from 1000 to 5000 soldiers, as well as several Italians.

If we compare the German and Russian data on the number of soldiers and officers captured in the Stalingrad region, the following picture appears. In Russian sources, all the so-called "volunteer assistants" of the Wehrmacht (more than 50,000 people) are excluded from the number of prisoners of war, whom the Soviet competent authorities never categorized as "prisoners of war", but considered them as traitors to the Motherland, subject to trial under wartime laws. As for the mass death of prisoners of war from the "Stalingrad cauldron", most of them died during the first year of being in captivity due to exhaustion, the effects of cold and numerous diseases received during the period of being surrounded. Some data can be cited on this score: only in the period from February 3 to June 10, 1943, in the camp of German prisoners of war in Beketovka (Stalingrad region), the consequences of the "Stalingrad cauldron" cost the lives of more than 27,000 people; and out of 1,800 captured officers stationed in the premises of the former monastery in Elabuga, by April 1943, only a fourth of the contingent survived

The turning point in the course of World War II was the great summary of events that is not able to convey the special spirit of solidarity and heroism of the Soviet soldiers who participated in the battle.

Why was Stalingrad so important to Hitler? Historians point out several reasons that the Fuhrer at all costs wanted to seize Stalingrad and did not give the order to retreat even when the defeat was obvious.

A large industrial city on the banks of the longest river in Europe - the Volga. Transport hub of important river and land routes connecting the center of the country with the southern regions. By capturing Stalingrad, Hitler would not only cut an important transport artery of the USSR and create serious difficulties in supplying the Red Army, but would also reliably cover the German army advancing into the Caucasus.

Many researchers believe that the presence of Stalin in the name of the city made its capture important for Hitler from an ideological and propaganda point of view.

There is a point of view according to which there was a secret agreement between Germany and Turkey on joining the ranks of the allies immediately after the passage for Soviet troops along the Volga was blocked.

Battle of Stalingrad. Summary of events

• The time frame of the battle: 07.17.42 - 02.02.43 years.
• Took part: from Germany - the reinforced 6th Army of Field Marshal Paulus and the Allied troops. From the side of the USSR - the Stalingrad Front, created on 12.07.42, under the command of first Marshal Timoshenko, from 23.07.42 - Lieutenant General Gordov, and from 09.08.42 - Colonel General Eremenko.
• Battle periods: defensive - from 17.07 to 18.11.42, offensive - from 19.11.42 to 02.02.43.

In turn, the defensive stage is divided into battles on long approaches to the city in the Don bend from 17.07 to 10.08.42, battles on the distant approaches between the Volga and Don rivers from 11.08 to 12.09.42, battles in the suburbs and the city itself from 13.09 to 18.11 .42 years.

The losses on both sides were colossal. The Red Army lost almost 1,130,000 fighters, 12,000 guns, 2,000 aircraft.

Germany and allied countries lost almost 1.5 million soldiers.

Defensive stage

• July 17th- the first serious clash of our troops with enemy forces on the shores
• August 23- enemy tanks came close to the city. German aircraft began regularly bombing Stalingrad.
• 13 september- storming the city. The glory of the workers of the Stalingrad factories and factories, who under fire repaired damaged equipment and weapons, thundered all over the world.
• October 14- the Germans launched an offensive military operation off the banks of the Volga with the aim of capturing Soviet bridgeheads.
• 19 november- Our troops launched a counteroffensive according to the plan of Operation Uranus.

The whole second half of the summer of 1942 was hot. The summary and chronology of the events of the defense indicate that our soldiers, with a shortage of weapons and a significant advantage in manpower on the part of the enemy, did the impossible. They not only defended Stalingrad, but also launched a counteroffensive in difficult conditions of exhaustion, lack of uniforms and the harsh Russian winter.

Offensive and Victory

As part of Operation Uranus, Soviet soldiers succeeded in encircling the enemy. Until November 23, our soldiers strengthened the blockade around the Germans.

• 12 December- the enemy made a desperate attempt to break out of the encirclement. However, the breakout attempt was unsuccessful. Soviet troops began to tighten the ring.
• December 17- The Red Army recaptured German positions on the Chir River (the right tributary of the Don).
• December 24- ours have advanced 200 km into the operational depth.
• 31th of December- Soviet soldiers advanced another 150 km. The front line stabilized at the Tormosin-Zhukovskaya-Komissarovsky line.
• 10 january- our offensive in accordance with the "Ring" plan.
• January 26- The 6th German army is divided into 2 groups.
• January 31- destroyed the southern part of the former 6th German army.
• 02 february- the northern group of fascist troops was eliminated. Our soldiers, heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad, won. The enemy surrendered. Field Marshal Paulus, 24 generals, 2,500 officers and almost 100 thousand exhausted German soldiers were taken prisoner.

The Battle of Stalingrad brought enormous destruction. Photos of war correspondents captured the ruins of the city.

All the soldiers who took part in the significant battle proved themselves to be courageous and brave sons of the Motherland.

Sniper Zaitsev Vasily, with aimed shots destroyed 225 opponents.

Nikolai Panikakha - rushed under an enemy tank with a bottle of combustible mixture. He sleeps in eternal sleep on the Mamayev Kurgan.

Nikolai Serdyukov - closed the embrasure of the enemy bunker, silencing the firing point.

Matvey Putilov, Vasily Titayev are signalmen who established communication by clamping the ends of the wire with their teeth.

Gulya Koroleva, a nurse, carried dozens of seriously wounded soldiers from the battlefield near Stalingrad. Participated in the attack to the height. The fatal wound did not stop the brave girl. She continued to shoot until the last minute of her life.

The names of many, many heroes - infantrymen, artillerymen, tankmen and pilots - were given to the world by the Battle of Stalingrad. A summary of the course of hostilities is not capable of perpetuating all the feats. Whole volumes of books have been written about these brave people who gave their lives for the freedom of future generations. Streets, schools, factories are named after them. The heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad must never be forgotten.

The meaning of the battle of Stalingrad

The battle was not only on a grand scale, but also of extremely weighty political significance. The bloody war continued. The Battle of Stalingrad was its main turning point. It is no exaggeration to say that it was after the victory at Stalingrad that humanity gained hope for victory over fascism.

Few people in our country and in the world will be able to dispute the significance of the victory at Stalingrad. The events that took place between July 17, 1942 and February 2, 1943 gave hope to the peoples who were still under occupation. Next, there will be 10 facts from the history of the Battle of Stalingrad, designed to reflect the severity of the conditions in which the hostilities were fought, and, perhaps, tell something new, forcing us to look at this event from the history of World War II in a different way.

1. To say that the battle for Stalingrad took place in difficult conditions is like saying nothing. The Soviet troops in this sector were in dire need of anti-tank guns and anti-aircraft artillery, they also lacked ammunition - some formations simply did not have them. The soldiers got what they needed, as best they could, mostly taken from their killed comrades. The dead Soviet soldiers were enough, since most of the divisions thrown to hold the city, named after the main man in the USSR, consisted either of unharmed newcomers who arrived from the Stavka reserve, or of soldiers exhausted in previous battles. This situation was aggravated by the open steppe area, in which the fighting took place. This factor allowed the enemies to regularly inflict great losses on Soviet troops in equipment and people. Young officers, who only yesterday left the walls of military schools, went into battle as ordinary soldiers and died one after another.

2. At the mention of the Battle of Stalingrad, images of street battles, which are so often shown in documentaries and feature films, pop up in the minds of many. However, few people remember that although the Germans approached the city on August 23, they began the assault only on September 14, and far from the best Paulus divisions took part in the assault. If we develop this idea further, then we can come to the conclusion that if the defense of Stalingrad were concentrated only in the city limits, it would have fallen, and fell rather quickly. So what saved the city and held back the enemy onslaught? The answer is continuous counterattacks. Only after repulsing the counterstrike of the 1st Guards Army on September 3, the Germans were able to begin preparations for the assault. All offensives by Soviet troops were conducted from the northern direction and did not stop even after the start of the assault. So, on September 18, the Red Army, having received reinforcements, was able to inflict another counterattack, because of which the enemy even had to transfer part of the forces from Stalingrad. The next blow was struck by Soviet troops on September 24. Such countermeasures did not allow the Wehrmacht to concentrate all their forces to strike the city and constantly kept the soldiers in suspense.

If you wondered why this is so rarely remembered, then everything is simple. The main task of all these counterattacks was to connect with the defenders of the city, and it was not possible to complete it, and the losses were enormous. This can be well traced in the fate of the 241st and 167th tank brigades. They had 48 and 50 tanks, respectively, on which they pinned their hopes as the main striking force in the counteroffensive of the 24th Army. On the morning of September 30, during the offensive, the Soviet forces were covered with enemy fire, as a result of which the infantry lagged behind the tanks, and both tank brigades disappeared behind the hill, and a few hours later, radio communications were lost with vehicles that broke through into the enemy's defenses. By the end of the day, out of 98 vehicles, only four remained in service. Later, repairmen were able to evacuate two more damaged tanks from these brigades from the battlefield. The reasons for this failure, like all the previous ones, were the competently built defense of the Germans and the weak training of the Soviet troops, for whom Stalingrad became a place of baptism of fire. The chief of staff of the Don Front, Major General Malinin, said that if he had at least one well-trained infantry regiment, he would have marched all the way to Stalingrad, and that the point is not in the enemy's artillery, which is doing its job well and pressing the soldiers to the ground, but the fact that at this time they do not rise to the attack. It is for these reasons that most writers and historians of the post-war period were silent about such counterstrikes. They did not want to darken the picture of the triumph of the Soviet people or were simply afraid that such facts would become a reason for excessive attention to their person on the part of the regime.

3. Axis soldiers who survived the Battle of Stalingrad usually noted later that it was a real bloody absurdity. They, being by that time already seasoned soldiers in many battles, in Stalingrad felt like rookies who did not know what to do. It seems that the command of the Wehrmacht was subjected to the same sentiments, since during urban battles it sometimes gave orders to storm very insignificant areas, where sometimes up to several thousand soldiers died. Also, the fate of the Nazis, locked in the Stalingrad cauldron, was not facilitated by the air supply of troops organized by Hitler's order, since such aircraft were often shot down by Soviet forces, and the cargo that nevertheless reached the addressee sometimes did not at all satisfy the needs of the soldiers. For example, the Germans, who were in dire need of provisions and ammunition, received from the sky a parcel entirely consisting of women's mink coats.

Tired and exhausted, the soldiers at that time could only rely on God, especially since the Octave of Christmas was approaching - one of the main Catholic holidays, which is celebrated from December 25 to January 1. There is a version that it was because of the upcoming holiday that Paulus's army did not leave the encirclement of Soviet troops. Based on the analysis of the letters of the Germans and their allies home, they prepared provisions and gifts for friends and waited for these days like a miracle. There is even evidence that the German command turned to Soviet generals with a request for a ceasefire on Christmas night. However, the USSR had its own plans, so on Christmas the artillery worked in full force and made for many German soldiers the last night of December 24-25 in their lives.

4. On August 30, 1942, the Messerschmitt was shot down over Sarepta. Its pilot, Count Heinrich von Einsiedel, managed to land the plane with the landing gear retracted and was captured. He was a renowned Luftwaffe ace from the JG 3 Udet squadron and the "concurrent" great-grandson of the "Iron Chancellor" Otto von Bismarck. Such news, of course, immediately hit the propaganda leaflets designed to raise the spirit of the Soviet fighters. Einsiedel himself was sent to an officer's camp near Moscow, where he soon met Paulus. Since Heinrich was never an ardent adherent of Hitler's theory of the highest race and purity of blood, he went to war with the belief that the Great Reich was waging a war on the Eastern Front not with the Russian nation, but with Bolshevism. However, the captivity forced him to reconsider his views, and in 1944 he became a member of the anti-fascist committee "Free Germany", and then a member of the editorial board of the newspaper of the same name. Bismarck was not the only historical image that the Soviet propaganda machine exploited in order to raise the morale of the soldiers. So, for example, the propagandists spread a rumor that the 51st Army has a detachment of machine gunners, commanded by Senior Lieutenant Alexander Nevsky - not just the full namesake of the prince who defeated the Germans at Lake Peipsi, but also his direct descendant. He was allegedly presented to the Order of the Red Banner, but such a person does not appear in the lists of the knights of the order.

5. During the Battle of Stalingrad, Soviet commanders successfully used psychological pressure on the pain points of enemy soldiers. So, in rare moments, when hostilities subsided in certain areas, propagandists through speakers installed not far from the enemy's positions transmitted songs that were native to the Germans, which were interrupted by messages about breakthroughs by Soviet troops in one or another sector of the front. But the most cruel and therefore the most effective was the method called "Timer and Tango" or "Tango Timer". In the course of this attack on the psyche, the Soviet troops transmitted the uniform beat of the metronome through loudspeakers, which after the seventh blow was interrupted by a message in German: "Every seven seconds one German soldier dies at the front." The metronome would then count down seven seconds again, and the message would repeat itself. This could go on 10 – 20 times, and then a tango melody sounded over the enemy's positions. Therefore, it is not surprising that many of those who were locked in the "cauldron", after several such influences, fell into hysterics and tried to escape, dooming themselves, and sometimes their colleagues, to certain death.

6. After the end of the Soviet operation "Ring", 130 thousand enemy soldiers were taken prisoner by the Red Army, but only about 5000 returned home after the war. Most of them died in the first year of being in captivity from diseases and hypothermia, which the prisoners had earned even before the capture. But there was another reason: out of the total number of prisoners, only 110 thousand were Germans, all the rest were from the "Khivi". They voluntarily went over to the side of the enemy and, according to the calculations of the Wehrmacht, had to faithfully serve Germany in her liberation struggle against Bolshevism. So, for example, one-sixth of the total number of soldiers of the 6th Army of Paulus (about 52 thousand people) consisted of such volunteers.

After the capture by the Red Army, such people were no longer regarded as prisoners of war, but as traitors to their homeland, which is punishable by death under the law of wartime. However, there were cases when the captured Germans became a kind of "hivi" for the Red Army. A striking example of this is the incident that occurred in the platoon of Lieutenant Druzya. Several of his fighters, who were sent in search of the "language", returned to the trenches with an exhausted and mortally frightened German. It soon became clear that he did not have any valuable information about the actions of the enemy, so he should have been sent to the rear, but due to heavy shelling this promised losses. Most often, such prisoners were simply disposed of, but luck smiled at this. The fact is that the prisoner before the war worked as a teacher of the German language, therefore, on the personal order of the battalion commander, they saved his life and even put him on allowance, in exchange for the fact that "Fritz" would teach German intelligence officers from the battalion. True, according to Nikolai Viktorovich Druz himself, a month later a German was blown up by a German mine, but during this time at an accelerated pace he more or less taught the soldiers the enemy's language.

7. On February 2, 1943, the last German soldiers laid down their arms in Stalingrad. Field Marshal Paulus himself surrendered even earlier, on January 31. The official place of surrender of the commander of the 6th Army is considered to be his headquarters in the basement of a building that was once a department store. However, some researchers disagree with this and believe that the documents indicate a different place. According to them, the headquarters of the German field marshal was located in the building of the Stalingrad executive committee. But such a "desecration" of the building of Soviet power, apparently, did not suit the ruling regime, and the history was slightly corrected. Whether this is true or not, perhaps it will never be established, but the theory itself has the right to life, because absolutely everything could have happened.

8. On May 2, 1943, thanks to a joint initiative of the leadership of the NKVD and the city authorities, a football match took place at the Stalingrad stadium "Azot", which became known as the "match on the ruins of Stalingrad." The Dynamo team, which was made up of local players, met on the field with the leading USSR team - Moscow Spartak. The friendly match ended with a score of 1: 0 in favor of Dynamo. It is not known to this day whether the result was rigged or if the city's battle-hardened defenders were simply accustomed to fighting and winning. Be that as it may, the organizers of the match managed to do the most important thing - to unite the residents of the city and give them hope that all the attributes of a peaceful life will return to Stalingrad.

9. On November 29, 1943, Winston Churchill, at the opening ceremony of the Tehran Conference, in a solemn atmosphere, presented Joseph Stalin with a sword forged by special decree of King George VI of Great Britain. This blade was presented as a sign of admiration of the British for the courage shown by the defenders of Stalingrad. An inscription in Russian and English was made along the entire blade: “To the inhabitants of Stalingrad, whose hearts are as strong as steel. A gift from King George VI as a sign of the great admiration of the entire British people. "

The decoration of the sword was made of gold, silver, leather and crystal. It is rightfully considered a masterpiece of modern blacksmithing. Today it can be seen by any visitor to the Museum of the Battle of Stalingrad in Volgograd. In addition to the original, three copies were also produced. One is in the Swords Museum in London, the second is in the National Museum of Military History in South Africa, and the third is part of the collection of the head of the United States diplomatic mission in London.

10. An interesting fact is that after the end of the battle, Stalingrad could have completely ceased to exist. The fact is that in February 1943, almost immediately after the surrender of the Germans, the question arose before the Soviet government: is it worth rebuilding the city, after all, after fierce battles, Stalingrad lay in ruins? It was cheaper to build a new city. Nevertheless, Joseph Stalin insisted on restoration, and the city was revived from the ashes. However, the residents themselves say that after that, for a long time, some streets exuded a cadaverous smell, and Mamayev Kurgan, due to the large number of bombs dropped on it, did not become overgrown with grass for more than two years.

The Battle of Stalingrad is one of the largest in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. It began on July 17, 1942 and ended on February 2, 1943. By the nature of the hostilities, the Battle of Stalingrad is divided into two periods: defensive, which lasted from July 17 to November 18, 1942, the purpose of which was to defend the city of Stalingrad (from 1961 - Volgograd), and offensive, which began on November 19, 1942 and ended on February 2, 1943. years by the defeat of the grouping of German fascist troops operating in the Stalingrad direction.

This fierce battle continued for two hundred days and nights on the banks of the Don and Volga, and then at the walls of Stalingrad and directly in the city itself. It deployed on a vast territory of about 100 thousand square kilometers with a front length of 400 to 850 kilometers. More than 2.1 million people took part in it on both sides at different stages of hostilities. In terms of goals, scope and intensity of hostilities, the Battle of Stalingrad surpassed all previous battles in world history.

From the side of the Soviet Union, the troops of the Stalingrad, South-East, South-West, Donskoy, left wing of the Voronezh fronts, the Volga military flotilla and the Stalingrad air defense corps region (operational-tactical formation of the Soviet air defense forces) took part in the Battle of Stalingrad at different times. The general leadership and coordination of the actions of the fronts at Stalingrad on behalf of the Headquarters of the Supreme Command (VGK) was carried out by the Deputy Supreme Commander-in-Chief Army General Georgy Zhukov and the Chief of the General Staff Colonel General Alexander Vasilevsky.

The fascist German command planned in the summer of 1942 to defeat Soviet troops in the south of the country, seize the oil regions of the Caucasus, the rich agricultural regions of the Don and Kuban, disrupt communications linking the center of the country with the Caucasus, and create conditions for the end of the war in their favor. This task was entrusted to Army Groups A and B.

For an offensive in the Stalingrad direction, the 6th Army under the command of Colonel-General Friedrich Paulus and the 4th Panzer Army were allocated from the German Army Group B. By July 17, the 6th German army had about 270 thousand people, three thousand guns and mortars, about 500 tanks. It was supported by the aviation of the 4th Air Fleet (up to 1200 combat aircraft). The German fascist troops were opposed by the Stalingrad Front, which had 160 thousand people, 2.2 thousand guns and mortars, about 400 tanks. It was supported by 454 aircraft of the 8th Air Army, 150-200 long-range bombers. The main efforts of the Stalingrad Front were concentrated in the big bend of the Don, where the 62nd and 64th armies took up defenses in order to prevent the enemy from crossing the river and breaking it by the shortest route to Stalingrad.

The defensive operation began on the distant approaches to the city at the border of the Chir and Tsimla rivers. On July 22, after suffering heavy losses, Soviet troops withdrew to the main line of defense of Stalingrad. Having regrouped, on July 23, the enemy troops resumed their offensive. The enemy tried to encircle the Soviet troops in a large bend of the Don, reach the area of ​​the city of Kalach and break through to Stalingrad from the west.

The bloody battles in this area continued until August 10, when the troops of the Stalingrad Front, having suffered heavy losses, withdrew to the left bank of the Don and took up defenses on the outer edge of Stalingrad, where on August 17 the enemy was temporarily stopped.

The headquarters of the Supreme Command systematically strengthened the troops of the Stalingrad direction. By the beginning of August, the German command also introduced new forces into the battle (the 8th Italian army, the 3rd Romanian army). After a short break, having a significant superiority in forces, the enemy resumed the offensive along the entire front of the external defensive circuit of Stalingrad. After fierce battles on 23 August, his troops broke through to the Volga north of the city, but could not capture it on the move. On August 23 and 24, German aviation undertook a fierce massive bombardment of Stalingrad, turning it into ruins.

Build up forces, the German troops on September 12 came close to the city. Fierce street fighting unfolded, which continued almost around the clock. They walked for every block, lane, for every house, for every meter of land. On October 15, the enemy broke through to the area of ​​the Stalingrad Tractor Plant. On November 11, German troops made a last attempt to capture the city.

They managed to break through to the Volga south of the Barricades plant, but they could not achieve more. By continuous counterattacks and counterattacks by the troops, Soviet troops minimized the enemy's successes, destroying his manpower and equipment. On November 18, the advance of German troops was finally stopped along the entire front, the enemy was forced to go over to the defensive. The enemy's plan to capture Stalingrad failed.

© East News / Universal Images Group / Sovfoto

© East News / Universal Images Group / Sovfoto

Even in the course of the defensive battle, the Soviet command began to concentrate forces to launch a counteroffensive, preparations for which were completed in mid-November. By the beginning of the offensive operation, Soviet troops had 1.11 million people, 15 thousand guns and mortars, about 1.5 thousand tanks and self-propelled artillery installations, over 1.3 thousand combat aircraft.

The enemy opposing them had 1.01 million men, 10.2 thousand guns and mortars, 675 tanks and assault guns, 1216 combat aircraft. As a result of the massing of forces and equipment in the directions of the main strikes of the fronts, a significant superiority of Soviet troops over the enemy was created - on the Southwestern and Stalingrad fronts in people - 2-2.5 times, artillery and tanks - 4-5 or more times.

The offensive of the Southwestern Front and the 65th Army of the Don Front began on November 19, 1942, after an 80-minute artillery preparation. By the end of the day, the defense of the 3rd Romanian army had been broken through in two sectors. The Stalingrad Front launched its offensive on November 20.

Striking the flanks of the main enemy grouping, the troops of the Southwestern and Stalingrad fronts on November 23, 1942, closed the ring of its encirclement. It included 22 divisions and more than 160 separate units of the 6th army and partly the 4th tank army of the enemy, with a total number of about 300 thousand people.

On December 12, the German command made an attempt to unblock the encircled troops with a strike from the area of ​​the village of Kotelnikovo (now the city of Kotelnikovo), but did not achieve the goal. On December 16, the Soviet troops launched an offensive in the Middle Don, which forced the German command to finally abandon the release of the encircled group. By the end of December 1942, the enemy was defeated in front of the outer front of the encirclement, its remnants were thrown back 150-200 kilometers. This created favorable conditions for the liquidation of the grouping surrounded at Stalingrad.

To defeat the encircled troops by the Don Front under the command of Lieutenant General Konstantin Rokossovsky, an operation was carried out under the code name "Ring". The plan provided for the successive destruction of the enemy: first in the western, then in the southern part of the encirclement ring, and later - the dismemberment of the remaining grouping into two parts by a strike from west to east and the elimination of each of them. The operation began on January 10, 1943. On January 26, the 21st Army joined the 62nd Army in the Mamayev Kurgan area. The enemy group was split into two parts. On January 31, the southern grouping of forces, led by Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, ceased resistance, and on February 2, the northern grouping, which was the end of the destruction of the encircled enemy. During the offensive from January 10 to February 2, 1943, over 91 thousand people were taken prisoner, about 140 thousand were destroyed.

During the Stalingrad offensive operation, the German 6th Army and the 4th Panzer Army, the 3rd and 4th Romanian armies, and the 8th Italian Army were defeated. The total losses of the enemy amounted to about 1.5 million people. For the first time in the war years, national mourning was declared in Germany.

The Battle of Stalingrad made a decisive contribution to achieving a radical turning point in the Great Patriotic War. The Soviet armed forces seized the strategic initiative and held it until the end of the war. The defeat of the fascist bloc at Stalingrad undermined the credibility of Germany on the part of its allies and contributed to the intensification of the Resistance movement in European countries. Japan and Turkey were forced to abandon plans for active actions against the USSR.

The victory at Stalingrad was the result of the unyielding fortitude, courage and mass heroism of the Soviet troops. For military distinctions shown during the Battle of Stalingrad, 44 formations and units were given honorary names, 55 were awarded orders, 183 were reorganized into guards. Tens of thousands of soldiers and officers have been awarded government awards. 112 of the most distinguished soldiers became Heroes of the Soviet Union.

In honor of the heroic defense of the city, the Soviet government established on December 22, 1942, the medal "For the Defense of Stalingrad", which was awarded to more than 700 thousand participants in the battle.

On May 1, 1945, in the order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Stalingrad was named a hero city. On May 8, 1965, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War, the hero city was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal.

The city has over 200 historical sites associated with its heroic past. Among them are the memorial ensemble "To the Heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad" on the Mamayev Kurgan, the House of Soldiers' Glory (Pavlov's House) and others. In 1982 the Panorama Museum "Battle of Stalingrad" was opened.

The day of February 2, 1943, in accordance with the Federal Law of March 13, 1995, "On the Days of Military Glory and Memorable Dates of Russia" is celebrated as the day of military glory of Russia - the Day of the defeat of Nazi troops by Soviet troops in the Battle of Stalingrad.

Material prepared on the basis of informationopen sources

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Introduction

On April 20, 1942, the battle for Moscow ended. The German army, whose offensive seemed unstoppable, was not only stopped, but also thrown back from the capital of the USSR by 150-300 kilometers. The Nazis suffered heavy losses, and although the Wehrmacht was still very strong, Germany no longer had the ability to attack simultaneously in all sectors of the Soviet-German front.

While the spring thaw lasted, the Germans developed a plan for the 1942 summer offensive, codenamed Fall Blau - "Blue Option". The initial target of the German attack was the oil fields of Grozny and Baku with the possibility of further developing an offensive against Persia. Before deploying this offensive, the Germans were going to cut off the Barvenkovsky ledge - a large bridgehead captured by the Red Army on the western bank of the Seversky Donets River.

The Soviet command, in turn, was also going to conduct a summer offensive in the zone of the Bryansk, Southern and Southwestern fronts. Unfortunately, despite the fact that the Red Army was the first to strike and at first the German troops were able to push back almost to Kharkov, the Germans managed to turn the situation in their favor and inflict a major defeat on the Soviet troops. In the sector of the Southern and Southwestern Fronts, the defense was weakened to the limit, and on June 28 Herman Hoth's 4th Panzer Army broke through between Kursk and Kharkov. The Germans went to the Don.

At this point, Hitler, by personal order, made a change to the Blue Variant, which subsequently cost Nazi Germany dearly. He split Army Group South in two. Army Group "A" was supposed to continue the offensive in the Caucasus. Army Group B was to reach the Volga, cut off the strategic communications linking the European part of the USSR with the Caucasus and Central Asia, and capture Stalingrad. For Hitler, this city was important not only from a practical point of view (as a large industrial center), but also purely for ideological reasons. Taking the city, which bore the name of the main enemy of the Third Reich, would be the greatest propaganda achievement of the German army.

The alignment of forces and the first stage of the battle

Army Group B, advancing on Stalingrad, included the 6th Army of General Paulus. The army consisted of 270 thousand soldiers and officers, about 2200 guns and mortars, about 500 tanks. From the air, the 6th Army was supported by the 4th Air Fleet of General Wolfram von Richthofen, numbering about 1,200 aircraft. A little later, towards the end of July, the 4th Panzer Army of Hermann Goth was transferred to Army Group B, which included the 5th, 7th and 9th Army and the 46th Motorized Army on July 1, 1942. housing. The latter included the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich.

The Southwestern Front, renamed Stalingrad on July 12, 1942, consisted of about 160,000 personnel, 2,200 guns and mortars, and about 400 tanks. Of the 38 divisions that were part of the front, only 18 were fully completed, while the rest had from 300 to 4000 people. The 8th Air Army, which operated together with the front, was also significantly outnumbered by von Richthofen's fleet. With these forces, the Stalingrad Front was forced to defend an area more than 500 kilometers wide. A separate problem for the Soviet troops was the flat steppe terrain, in which enemy tanks could operate at full strength. Taking into account the low manning of units and formations of the front with anti-tank weapons, this made the tank threat critical.

The German offensive began on July 17, 1942. On this day, the vanguards of the 6th Army of the Wehrmacht entered into battle with units of the 62nd Army on the Chir River and in the area of ​​the Pronin farm. By July 22, the Germans pushed the Soviet troops back almost 70 kilometers, to the main line of defense of Stalingrad. The German command, hoping to take the city on the move, decided to encircle the Red Army units near the villages of Kletskaya and Suvorovskaya, seize the crossings across the Don and develop an offensive against Stalingrad without stopping. For this purpose, two shock groups were created, advancing from the north and south. The northern group was formed from units of the 6th army, the southern - from the units of the 4th tank army.

The northern group, striking on July 23, broke through the defense front of the 62nd Army and surrounded its two rifle divisions and a tank brigade. By July 26, the advance units of the Germans reached the Don. The command of the Stalingrad Front organized a counterattack, in which the mobile formations of the front reserve, as well as the 1st and 4th tank armies, which had not yet completed their formation, took part. Tank armies were the new regular structure of the Red Army. It is not clear who exactly put forward the idea of ​​their formation, but in the documents, the head of the Main Armored Directorate, Ya.N. Fedorenko, was the first to voice this idea to Stalin. In the form in which the tank armies were conceived, they did not last long enough, subsequently undergoing serious restructuring. But it is a fact that it was at Stalingrad that such a staff unit appeared. The 1st Panzer Army struck from the Kalach area on July 25, and the 4th - from the villages of Trykhostrovskaya and Kachalinskaya on July 27.

Fierce fighting in this area lasted until August 7-8. It was possible to unblock the encircled units, but it did not work to defeat the advancing Germans. The development of events was negatively influenced by the fact that the level of training of the personnel of the armies of the Stalingrad Front was low, and a number of mistakes in the coordination of actions made by the commanders of the subunits.

In the south, Soviet troops managed to stop the Germans near the settlements of Surovikino and Rychkovsky. Nevertheless, the Nazis were able to break through the front of the 64th Army. To eliminate this breakthrough, on July 28, the Headquarters of the Supreme Command ordered, no later than the 30th, by the forces of the 64th Army, as well as two infantry divisions and a tank corps, to strike and defeat the enemy in the area of ​​the village of Nizhne-Chirskaya.

Despite the fact that the new units entered the battle on the move and their combat capabilities suffered from this, by the specified date the Red Army managed to press the Germans and even create a threat to their encirclement. Unfortunately, the Nazis managed to bring fresh forces into battle and provide assistance to the group. After that, the fighting flared up even hotter.

On July 28, 1942, another event occurred that cannot be left off-screen. On this day, the famous Order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR No. 227, also known as "Not a step back!", Was adopted. He significantly toughened penalties for unauthorized retreat from the battlefield, introduced penal units for guilty fighters and commanders, and also introduced barrage detachments - special units that were involved in the detention of deserters and their return to service. This document, for all its rigidity, was adopted by the troops quite positively and really reduced the number of disciplinary violations in military units.

At the end of July, the 64th Army was still forced to withdraw beyond the Don. German troops captured a number of bridgeheads on the left bank of the river. In the area of ​​the village of Tsymlyanskaya, the Nazis concentrated very serious forces: two infantry, two motorized and one tank division. The headquarters ordered the Stalingrad front to drive the Germans to the western (right) bank and restore the defense line along the Don, but it was not possible to eliminate the breakthrough. On July 30, the Germans launched an offensive from the village of Tsymlyanskaya and by August 3, they had significantly advanced forward, capturing the Remontnaya station, the station and the city of Kotelnikovo, the village of Zhutovo. On the same days, the 6th Romanian corps of the enemy went to the Don. In the zone of operations of the 62nd Army, the Germans launched an offensive on August 7 in the direction of Kalach. Soviet troops were forced to withdraw to the left bank of the Don. On August 15, the 4th Soviet Tank Army had to do the same, because the Germans were able to break through its front in the center and split the defenses in half.

By August 16, the troops of the Stalingrad Front withdrew beyond the Don and took up defenses on the outer boundary of the city fortifications. On August 17, the Germans resumed the onslaught and by the 20th were able to capture the crossings, as well as the bridgehead in the area of ​​the settlement of Vertyachy. Attempts to discard or destroy them were unsuccessful. On August 23, the German group, with the support of aviation, broke through the defense front of the 62nd and 4th tank armies and advanced to the Volga with advance units. On this day, German aircraft made about 2000 sorties. Many quarters of the city were in ruins, oil storage facilities were on fire, about 40 thousand civilians were killed. The enemy broke through to the Rynok - Orlovka - Gumrak - Peschanka line. The struggle went under the walls of Stalingrad.

Fights in the city

Having forced the Soviet troops to retreat almost to the outskirts of Stalingrad, the enemy threw six German and one Romanian infantry divisions, two tank divisions and one motorized one against the 62nd Army. The number of tanks in this grouping of the Nazis was approximately 500. At least 1000 aircraft supported the enemy from the air. The threat of taking over the city became tangible. To eliminate it, the Supreme Command Headquarters handed over to the defenders two well-manned armies (10 rifle divisions, 2 tank brigades), re-staffed the 1st Guards Army (6 rifle divisions, 2 Guards rifle divisions, 2 tank brigades), and also subordinated the 16th air army.

On September 5 and 18, the troops of the Stalingrad Front (September 30 it will be renamed Donskoy) carried out two major operations, thanks to which they managed to weaken the German onslaught on the city, pulling back about 8 infantry, two tank and two motorized divisions. Again, it was not possible to carry out a complete defeat of the Nazi units. Fierce battles for the internal defensive line continued for a long time.

Urban battles began on September 13, 1942 and continued until November 19, when the Red Army launched a counteroffensive as part of Operation Uranus. On September 12, the defense of Stalingrad was entrusted to the 62nd Army, which was transferred under the command of Lieutenant General V.I. Chuikov. This man, who before the beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad was considered insufficiently experienced for the military command, set up a real hell for the enemy in the city.

On September 13, six German infantry, three tank and two motorized divisions were stationed in the immediate vicinity of the city. Until September 18, there were fierce battles in the central and southern parts of the city. South of the railway station, the enemy's onslaught was contained, but in the center the Germans drove out the Soviet troops up to the Krutoy ravine.

The battles for the station on 17 September were extremely fierce. During the day, he changed hands four times. Here the Germans left 8 burned tanks and about a hundred killed. On September 19, the left wing of the Stalingrad Front tried to strike in the direction of the station with a further attack on Gumrak and Gorodishche. The advance could not be carried out, however, a large enemy grouping was shackled by the battles, which made things easier for the units fighting in the center of Stalingrad. In general, the defense here was so strong that the enemy did not manage to reach the Volga.

Realizing that it was not possible to achieve success in the center of the city, the Germans concentrated their troops to the south to strike in an eastern direction, towards Mamayev Kurgan and the village of Krasny Oktyabr. On September 27, Soviet troops launched a preemptive attack, operating in small infantry groups armed with light machine guns, gas bottles, and anti-tank rifles. Fierce fighting lasted from September 27 to October 4. These were the very Stalingrad city battles, from the stories about which the blood runs cold even in a person with strong nerves. Here battles were fought not for streets and neighborhoods, sometimes not even for entire houses, but for individual floors and rooms. The guns fired with direct fire almost at point-blank range, incendiary mixture and fire from short distances were used. Hand-to-hand fights have become commonplace, as in the Middle Ages, when cold weapons ruled on the battlefield. In a week of continuous fighting, the Germans advanced 400 meters. Even those who were not intended for this had to fight: builders, soldiers of pontoon units. The Nazis were gradually starting to fizzle out. The same desperate and bloody battles raged at the Barrikady plant, at the village of Orlovka, on the outskirts of the Silikat plant.

In early October, the territories occupied by the Red Army in Stalingrad were so reduced that they were shot through with machine-gun and artillery fire. Support for the fighting troops was carried out from the opposite bank of the Volga with the help of literally everything that could float: cutters, steamers, boats. German aircraft continuously bombed the crossings, making this task even more difficult.

And while the soldiers of the 62nd Army pinned down and ground the enemy troops in battles, the High Command was already preparing plans for a large offensive operation aimed at destroying the Stalingrad group of the Nazis.

"Uranus" and Paulus' surrender

By the time the Soviet counteroffensive began at Stalingrad, there were, in addition to Paulus's 6th Army, also von Salmuth's 2nd Army, Gotha's 4th Panzer Army, Italian, Romanian and Hungarian armies.

On November 19, the Red Army, with the forces of three fronts, launched a large-scale offensive operation, codenamed Uranus. It was opened by about three and a half thousand guns and mortars. The artillery barrage lasted for about two hours. Subsequently, it was in memory of this artillery preparation that the day of November 19 became the professional holiday of the gunners.

On November 23, a circle of encirclement closed around the 6th Army and the main forces of the 4th Panzer Army of Hoth. On November 24, about 30 thousand Italians surrendered near the village of Raspopinskaya. By November 24, the territory occupied by the encircled Nazi units occupied about 40 kilometers from west to east, and about 80 kilometers from north to south. Further "compaction" advanced slowly, as the Germans organized a dense defense and literally clung to every piece of land. Paulus insisted on a breakthrough, but Hitler categorically forbade it. He still did not lose hope that he would be able to help the surrounding people from the outside.

The rescue mission was entrusted to Erich von Manstein. Army Group "Don", which he commanded, was to release the besieged army of Paulus in December 1942 with a blow from Kotelnikovsky and Tormosin. On December 12, Operation Winter Thunderstorm began. Moreover, the Germans did not go on the offensive with full strength - in fact, by the time the offensive began, they were able to deploy only one Wehrmacht tank division and the Romanian infantry division. Subsequently, two more incomplete tank divisions and a number of infantry joined the offensive. On December 19, Manstein's troops clashed with the 2nd Guards Army of Rodion Malinovsky, and by December 25 the "Winter Thunderstorm" had died out in the snow-covered Don steppes. The Germans rolled back to their original positions, suffering heavy losses.

Paulus's group was doomed. It seemed that the only person who refused to admit it was Hitler. He was categorically against retreat when it was still possible, and did not want to hear about surrender when the mousetrap finally and irrevocably slammed shut. Even when Soviet troops captured the last airfield from which the Luftwaffe planes supplied the army (extremely weak and unstable), he continued to demand resistance from Paulus and his people.

On January 10, 1943, the final operation of the Red Army began to liquidate the Stalingrad group of the Nazis. It was called The Ring. On January 9, the day before it began, the Soviet command issued an ultimatum to Friedrich Paulus, demanding surrender. On the same day, by accident, the commander of the 14th Panzer Corps, General Hube, arrived in the cauldron. He conveyed that Hitler demands to continue resistance until a new attempt to break through the encirclement from the outside. Paulus complied with the order and rejected the ultimatum.

The Germans resisted as best they could. The Soviet offensive was even stopped from 17 to 22 January. After regrouping, units of the Red Army went on the attack again and on January 26, Hitler's forces were split into two parts. The northern group was located in the area of ​​the Barricades plant, and the southern, which included Paulus himself, was located in the city center. Paulus's command post was located in the basement of the central department store.

On January 30, 1943, Hitler conferred the rank of Field Marshal on Friedrich Paulus. According to the unwritten Prussian military tradition, field marshals never surrendered. So from the Fuhrer's side, it was a hint of how the commander of the surrounded army should have ended his military career. However, Paulus decided that it was better not to understand some of the hints. On January 31 at noon Paulus surrendered. It took two more days to eliminate the remnants of Hitler's troops in Stalingrad. On February 2, it was all over. The Battle of Stalingrad is over.

About 90 thousand German soldiers and officers were captured. The Germans lost about 800 thousand killed, 160 tanks and about 200 aircraft were captured.