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The Battle of Stalingrad (23 August 1942 -- 2 February 1943)was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in the south-western Soviet Union.

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This quote shows how Stalin would order his men not to retreat and to keep fight the war.

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This quote shows, how the Germans supplies and food were starting diminish.

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"We’ve eaten all the horses. I’d even eat cat: cat meat can be tasty. The squaddies look like corpses or zombies, searching for anything to eat. They don’t even try to duck from the Russian shells – they haven’t the strength to run or hide." Wilhelm Hoffman,
German soldier

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The Battle of Stalingrad was a brutal military campaign between Russian forces and those of Nazi Germany and the Axis powers during World War II. The battle is infamous as one of the largest, longest and bloodiest engagements in modern warfare: From August 1942 through February 1943, more than two million troops fought in close quarters - and nearly two million people were killed or injured in the fighting, including tens of thousands of Russian civilians. But the Battle of Stalingrad (one of Russia's important industrial cities) ultimately turned the tide of World War II in favor of the Allied forces.

Prelude to the Battle of Stalingrad

In the middle of World War II - having captured territory in much of present-day Ukraine and Belarus in the spring on 1942 - Germany's Wehrmacht forces decided to mount an offensive on southern Russia in the summer of that year.

Under the leadership of ruthless head of state Joseph Stalin, Russian forces had already successfully rebuffed a German attack on the western part of the country - one that had the ultimate goal of taking Moscow - during the winter of 1941-42. However, Stalin's Red Army had suffered significant losses in the fighting, both in terms of manpower and weaponry.

Stalin and his generals, including future Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev, fully expected another Nazi attack to be aimed at Moscow. However, Hitler and the Wehrmacht had other ideas.

They set their sights on Stalingrad, because the city served as an industrial center in Russia, producing, among other important goods, artillery for the country's troops. The Volga River, which runs through the city, was also an important shipping route connecting the western part of the country with its distant eastern regions.

Ultimately, Adolf Hitler wanted the Wehrmacht to occupy Stalingrad, seeing its value for propaganda purposes, given that it bore Stalin's name. For similar reasons, the Russians felt a special need to protect it.

When Hitler proclaimed that upon taking Stalingrad all of the city's male residents would be killed and its women deported, the stage was set for a bloody, hard-fought battle. Stalin ordered all Russians strong enough to hold a rifle to take up arms in defense of the city.

The 6th Army of the Wehrmacht began their assault on August 23, 1942.

Battle of Stalingrad Begins

Russian forces were initially able to slow the German Wehrmacht's advances during a series of brutal skirmishes just north of Stalingrad. Stalin's forces lost more than 200,000 men, but they successfully held off German soldiers.

With a firm understanding of Hitler's plans, the Russians had already shipped much of the stores of grain and cattle out of Stalingrad. However, the city's 400,000-plus residents were not evacuated, as the Russian leadership believed their presence would inspire troops.

Within a few days of launching its attack, Germany's Luftwaffe air force had rendered the Volga River impassable to shipping and had sunk several Russian commercial vessels in the process. From late August through the end of the assault, the Luftwaffe conducted dozens of air strikes on the city.

The number of civilian casualties is unknown. However, it's believed that tens of thousands were killed, and that tens of thousands more were captured and forced into slave labor in camps in Germany.

By September, the Luftwaffe essentially had control of the skies over Stalingrad, and the Russians were getting desperate. Workers in the city not involved in war-related weapons production were soon asked to take up fighting, often without firearms of their own. Women were enlisted to dig trenches at the front lines.

And yet, the Russians continued to suffer heavy losses. By the fall of 1942, Stalingrad was in ruins.

'Not a Step Back!'

Despite heavy casualties and the pounding delivered by the Luftwaffe, Stalin instructed his forces in the city to not retreat, famously decreeing in Order No. 227: "Not a step back!" Those who surrendered would be subject to a trial by military tribunal and face possible execution.

With fewer than 20,000 troops in the city and less than 100 tanks, Stalin's generals finally began sending reinforcements into the city and surrounding areas. Fighting raged in the streets of Stalingrad, with both sides using snipers poised on the roofs of the city's buildings.

Russian generals Georgy Zhukov and Aleksandr Vasilevsky organized Russian troops, augmented by forces from allies Romania and Hungary, in the mountains to the north and west of the city. From there, they launched a counterattack, famously known as Operation Uranus.

Although they again sustained significant losses, Russian forces were able to form what in essence was a defensive ring around the city by late November 1942, trapping the nearly 300,000 German and Axis troops in the 6th Army. This effort became the subject of a propaganda film produced after the war, The Battle of Stalingrad.

With the Russian blockade limiting access to supplies, German forces trapped in Stalingrad slowly starved. The Russians would seize upon the resulting weakness during the cold, harsh winter months that followed.

Russian Winter Sets In

As Russia's brutal winter began, Soviet generals knew the Germans would be at a disadvantage, fighting in conditions to which they weren't accustomed. They began consolidating their positions around Stalingrad, choking off the German forces from vital supplies and essentially surrounding them in an ever-tightening noose.

Thanks to Russian gains in nearby fighting, including in Rostov-on-Don, 250 miles from Stalingrad, the Axis forces - mostly Germans and Italians - were stretched thin. Through Operation Little Saturn, the Russians began to break the lines of mostly Italian forces to the west of the city.

At this point, German generals abandoned all efforts to relieve their beleaguered forces trapped in Stalingrad. Still, Hitler refused to surrender even as his men slowly starved and ran out of ammunition.

Battle of Stalingrad Ends

By February 1943, Russian troops had retaken Stalingrad and captured nearly 100,000 German soldiers, though pockets of resistance continued to fight in the city until early March. Most of the captured soldiers died in Russian prison camps, either as a result of disease or starvation.

The loss at Stalingrad was the first failure of the war to be publicly acknowledged by Hitler. It put Hitler and the Axis powers on the defensive, and boosted Russian confidence as it continued to do battle on the Eastern Front in World War II.

In the end, many historians believe the Battle at Stalingrad marked a major turning point in the conflict. It was the beginning of the march toward victory for the Allied forces of Russia, Britain, France and the United States.

In February 2018, Russians gathered in what is now known as Volgograd to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the conclusion of the battle that had ravaged their city.

Sources

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. "75th Anniversary Of Victory In The Battle Of Stalingrad." rferl.org.

Barnes, T. (2018). "Russians take to streets in their thousands to mark 75 years since Battle of Stalingrad. Independent.co.uk.

BBC World Service: Witness. "The battle of Stalingrad." BBC.co.uk.

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The Battle of Stalingrad was a brutal military campaign between Russian forces and those of Nazi Germany and the Axis powers during World War II.

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Does The battle of Stalingrad show heroism?

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Does The battle of Stalingrad show heroism?

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The battle of Stalingrad did have some heroism. Yakov Pavlov fought with a group of 30 men in a fortified apartment building. "He killed more germans than the German army lost during the invasion of Paris. " He held off the apartment building.

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great bravery

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After Germany had given up on Britain, they decided it was time to turn on their "allies". Germany broke their nonaggression pact with Russia and went at war with them. Germany attacked many Russian cities until they got to Stalingrad. Russia, fought for seven months until they surrounded Germany and they surrendered. They were able to defeat them, because of Germany's lack of supplies, they weren't ready for the harsh weather conditions, and because Hitler wouldn't let them back down. The battle of Stalingrad was thought to be one of the worst battles of WWII because there were over 2 million casualties.

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This connects to the essential question because the battle of Stalingrad, was one of the deadliest battles during WWII. The war itself, was an unjust war.

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Did World War II follow the principles of a "just war"? Why do so many people call World War II "the good war"?

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Contents

1. Leading up to World War II

2. Outbreak of World War II (1939)

3. World War II in the West (1940-41)

4. Operation Barbarossa (1941-42)

5. World War II in the Pacific (1941-43)

6. Toward Allied Victory in World War II (1943-45)

7. World War II Ends (1945)

8. PHOTO GALLERIES

The instability created in Europe by the First World War (1914-18) set the stage for another international conflict-World War II-which broke out two decades later and would prove even more devastating. Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi Party) rearmed the nation and signed strategic treaties with Italy and Japan to further his ambitions of world domination. Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939 drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, and World War II had begun. Over the next six years, the conflict would take more lives and destroy more land and property around the globe than any previous war. Among the estimated 45-60 million people killed were 6 million Jews murdered in Nazi concentration camps as part of Hitler's diabolical "Final Solution," now known as the Holocaust.

Leading up to World War II

The devastation of the Great War (as World War I was known at the time) had greatly destabilized Europe, and in many respects World War II grew out of issues left unresolved by that earlier conflict. In particular, political and economic instability in Germany, and lingering resentment over the harsh terms imposed by the Versailles Treaty, fueled the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi) Party.

After becoming Reich Chancellor in 1933, Hitler swiftly consolidated power, anointing himself Führer (supreme leader) in 1934. Obsessed with the idea of the superiority of the "pure" German race, which he called "Aryan," Hitler believed that war was the only way to gain the necessary "Lebensraum," or living space, for that race to expand. In the mid-1930s, he began the rearmament of Germany, secretly and in violation of the Versailles Treaty. After signing alliances with Italy and Japan against the Soviet Union, Hitler sent troops to occupy Austria in 1938 and the following year annexed Czechoslovakia. Hitler's open aggression went unchecked, as the United States and Soviet Union were concentrated on internal politics at the time, and neither France nor Britain (the two other nations most devastated by the Great War) were eager for confrontation.

Outbreak of World War II (1939)

In late August 1939, Hitler and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, which incited a frenzy of worry in London and Paris. Hitler had long planned an invasion of Poland, a nation to which Great Britain and France had guaranteed military support if it was attacked by Germany. The pact with Stalin meant that Hitler would not face a war on two fronts once he invaded Poland, and would have Soviet assistance in conquering and dividing the nation itself. On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland from the west; two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany, beginning World War II.

On September 17, Soviet troops invaded Poland from the east. Under attack from both sides, Poland fell quickly, and by early 1940 Germany and the Soviet Union had divided control over the nation, according to a secret protocol appended to the Nonaggression Pact. Stalin's forces then moved to occupy the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and defeated a resistant Finland in the Russo-Finish War. During the six months following the invasion of Poland, the lack of action on the part of Germany and the Allies in the west led to talk in the news media of a "phony war." At sea, however, the British and German navies faced off in heated battle, and lethal German U-boat submarines struck at merchant shipping bound for Britain, sinking more than 100 vessels in the first four months of World War II.

World War II in the West (1940-41)

On April 9, 1940, Germany simultaneously invaded Norway and occupied Denmark, and the war began in earnest. On May 10, German forces swept through Belgium and the Netherlands in what became known as "blitzkrieg," or lightning war. Three days later, Hitler's troops crossed the Meuse River and struck French forces at Sedan, located at the northern end of the Maginot Line, an elaborate chain of fortifications constructed after World War I and considered an impenetrable defensive barrier. In fact, the Germans broke through the line with their tanks and planes and continued to the rear, rendering it useless. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was evacuated by sea from Dunkirk in late May, while in the south French forces mounted a doomed resistance. With France on the verge of collapse, Benito Mussolini of Italy put his Pact of Steel with Hitler into action, and Italy declared war against France and Britain on June 10.

On June 14, German forces entered Paris; a new government formed by Marshal Philippe Petain (France's hero of World War I) requested an armistice two nights later. France was subsequently divided into two zones, one under German military occupation and the other under Petain's government, installed at Vichy. Hitler now turned his attention to Britain, which had the defensive advantage of being separated from the Continent by the English Channel.

To pave the way for an amphibious invasion (dubbed Operation Sea Lion), German planes bombed Britain extensively throughout the summer of 1940, including night raids on London and other industrial centers that caused heavy civilian casualties and damage. The Royal Air Force (RAF) eventually defeated the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) in the Battle of Britain, and Hitler postponed his plans to invade. With Britain's defensive resources pushed to the limit, Prime Minister Winston Churchill began receiving crucial aid from the U.S. under the Lend-Lease Act, passed by Congress in early 1941.

Operation Barbarossa (1941-42)

By early 1941, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria had joined the Axis, and German troops overran Yugoslavia and Greece that April. Hitler's conquest of the Balkans was a precursor for his real objective: an invasion of the Soviet Union, whose vast territory would give the German master race the "Lebensraum" it needed. The other half of Hitler's strategy was the extermination of the Jews from throughout German-occupied Europe. Plans for the "Final Solution" were introduced around the time of the Soviet offensive, and over the next three years more than 4 million Jews would perish in the death camps established in occupied Poland.

On June 22, 1941, Hitler ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union, codenamed Operation Barbarossa. Though Soviet tanks and aircraft greatly outnumbered the Germans', their air technology was largely obsolete, and the impact of the surprise invasion helped Germans get within 200 miles of Moscow by mid-July. Arguments between Hitler and his commanders delayed the next German advance until October, when it was stalled by a Soviet counteroffensive and the onset of harsh winter weather.

World War II in the Pacific (1941-43)

With Britain facing Germany in Europe, the United States was the only nation capable of combating Japanese aggression, which by late 1941 included an expansion of its ongoing war with China and the seizure of European colonial holdings in the Far East. On December 7, 1941, 360 Japanese aircraft attacked the major U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, taking the Americans completely by surprise and claiming the lives of more than 2,300 troops. The attack on Pearl Harbor served to unify American public opinion in favor of entering World War II, and on December 8 Congress declared war on Japan with only one dissenting vote. Germany and the other Axis Powers promptly declared war on the United States.

After a long string of Japanese victories, the U.S. Pacific Fleet won the Battle of Midway in June 1942, which proved to be a turning point in the war. On Guadalcanal, one of the southern Solomon Islands, the Allies also had success against Japanese forces in a series of battles from August 1942 to February 1943, helping turn the tide further in the Pacific. In mid-1943, Allied naval forces began an aggressive counterattack against Japan, involving a series of amphibious assaults on key Japanese-held islands in the Pacific. This "island-hopping" strategy proved successful, and Allied forces moved closer to their ultimate goal of invading the Japanese homeland.

Toward Allied Victory in World War II (1943-45)

In North Africa, British and American forces had defeated the Italians and Germans by 1943. An Allied invasion of Sicily and Italy followed, and Mussolini's government fell in July 1943, though Allied fighting against the Germans in Italy would continue until 1945.

On World War II's Eastern Front, a Soviet counteroffensive launched in November 1942 ended the bloody Battle of Stalingrad, which had seen some of the fiercest combat of the war. The approach of winter, along with dwindling food and medical supplies, spelled the end for German troops there, and the last of them surrendered on January 31, 1943.

On June 6, 1944-celebrated as "D-Day"-the Allied began a massive invasion of Europe, landing 156,000 British, Canadian and American soldiers on the beaches of Normandy, France. In response, Hitler poured all the remaining strength of his army into Western Europe, ensuring Germany's defeat in the east. Soviet troops soon advanced into Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania, while Hitler gathered his forces to drive the Americans and British back from Germany in the Battle of the Bulge (December 1944-January 1945), the last major German offensive of the war.

An intensive aerial bombardment in February 1945 preceded the Allied land invasion of Germany, and by the time Germany formally surrendered on May 8, Soviet forces had occupied much of the country. Hitler was already dead, having committed suicide on April 30 in his Berlin bunker.

World War II Ends (1945)

At the Potsdam Conference of July-August 1945, U.S. President Harry S. Truman (who had taken office after Roosevelt's death in April), Churchill and Stalin discussed the ongoing war with Japan as well as the peace settlement with Germany. Post-war Germany would be divided into four occupation zones, to be controlled by the Soviet Union, Britain, the United States and France. On the divisive matter of Eastern Europe's future, Churchill and Truman acquiesced to Stalin, as they needed Soviet cooperation in the war against Japan.

Heavy casualties sustained in the campaigns at Iwo Jima (February 1945) and Okinawa (April-June 1945), and fears of the even costlier land invasion of Japan led Truman to authorize the use of a new and devastating weapon-the atomic bomb-on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. On August 15, the Japanese government issued a statement declaring they would accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, and on September 2, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur accepted Japan's formal surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

World War II proved to be the most devastating international conflict in history, taking the lives of some 35 to 60 million people, including 6 million Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis. Millions more were injured, and still more lost their homes and property. The legacy of the war would include the spread of communism from the Soviet Union into eastern Europe as well as its eventual triumph in China, and the global shift in power from Europe to two rival superpowers-the United States and the Soviet Union-that would soon face off against each other in the Cold War.

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PHOTO GALLERIES

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Leading up to World War II Outbreak of World War II (1939) World War II in the West (1940-41) Operation Barbarossa (1941-42) World War II in the Pacific (1941-43) Toward Allied Victory in World War II (1943-45) World War II Ends (1945) PHOTO GALLERIES The instability created in Europe by the First World War (1914-18) set the stage for another international conflict-World War II-which broke out two decades later and would prove even more devastating.

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The Battle Of Stalingrad. The deadliest and most important battle in human history

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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/World-War-II-military-deaths-in-Europe-by-theater-year.png/655px-World-War-II-military-deaths-in-Europe-by-theater-year.png The Battle Of Stalingrad. The deadliest and most important battle in human history 96% of all axis military in the war in Europe from 1941 to 1944 died on the Eastern Front. Including 95% of Nazis from 41 to 44.. The battle of Stalingrad shocked every citizen of Nazi-Germany-Austria, Romania, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Axis friends.

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This battle connects the just war theory because it was a unjust war.

Some examples of how this battle violates the just war theory are the fact that Germany and Russia, were neutral at the time, and had a nonaggression pact, to not fight each other, yet Germany still attacked them. Also, there were thousands of civilians and POW's that were killed.
Finally, Hitler didn't have a legitament reason to fight the war, except for the fact that the city was named after Stalin. Hitler would refuse to surrender, even though he knew there was no chance he would win.