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December 1942 - Stalingrad, USSR: The Germans, trapped in the ruins of Stalingrad, faced the Russian winter of 1942 with no preparation. They lacked blankets, food, and medical supplies. The rubble yielded little in the way of supplies as the Luftwaffe had been highly effective at reducing the city. The Germans were trapped in their own doing. With the Volga River frozen, the Soviets could easily ship supplies across to their ever growing armies.

In an attempt to free the Sixth Army and successfully take the city, Hitler sent a relief army to Stalingrad to fight through the Soviet pincer. As it too was ill equipped for the winter, the relief effort failed. German officers, doubting Hitler's sanity by this point, attempted to persuade Paulus to disobey the Fuhrer's orders and try to break out of the city. He refused, holding fast to his leader's orders.

Outside of the city, the Soviets began to tighten the pincer, forcing the Germans to move closer to the heart of Stalingrad. They overran two airfields in the city that the Germans had been using to fly in supplies. Without supplies and with the Soviet Army moving ever closer, the Germans began running out of ammunition. Pushed back to the Volga River, the Sixth Army had switched places with the Soviet 62nd, which had been trapped in the same position two months earlier. Much like the 62nd, the Sixth ferociously held out, barricading themselves in the factories along the river. It was in a bombed out department store that Paulus made his final decision, becoming the first German Field Marshal to surrender in battle on January 31, 1943.

The Soviet Army took 91,000 Germans captive after the surrender, most needing medical attention and all emaciated from lack of food. Twenty-two German generals were captured in Stalingrad, the most of any battle of the war to that point. The prisoners of war were moved to concentration camps in Siberia to serve out the duration of the war and past. By 1955, the last of the German POWs from the Battle of Stalingrad were released. Of the 91,000 captured, only 5,000 lived to be released, a testament to the deplorable conditions Soviet prisoners faced.

The Battle of Stalingrad claimed the lives of over two million people, both soldier and civilian. The battle proved to be a turning point in the war. After the Soviet victory, the Germans began falling back along the entire Eastern Front. A year and a half later, the Western Allies began closing in from the Western Front. Slightly over two years after the massive Nazi loss at Stalingrad, the war in Europe was over, Germany defeated. Today a large statue sits atop the Mamayev Kurgan as a remembrance of those who perished in the battle. On the hill around it, remnants of the battle can still be found.

Chris Stanwick, Editor