Wednesday, November 19, 2008
This Day in the History of Turnings of the Tide
On this day in 1942, Soviet forces initiated Operation Uranus and took the offensive at the Battle of Stalingrad. They attacked the largely non-German troops on the flanks (Romanian, Italian and Croatian) and within a few weeks trapped the German 6th Army in the city. German forces had been surrounded by Soviet forces in late Autumn earlier in the war and had survived the Winter, supplied by air, until Spring came and a break-out was successfully mounted. It was not to be for the ill-fated 6th. Of the quarter million Germans who went into Stalingrad in Summer 1942, perhaps 10,000 returned to Germany many years after the war ended.
Labels: WWII history; European theater; Eastern Front
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 7:37 AM 
