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WW2 Battle of Stalingrad During the Battle of Stalingrad, one of the most decisive victories against German troops during World War II, Soviet troops pushed German units into a full-scale retreat from the Eastern Front. German losses at Stalingrad revealed the fundamental mistake of the Third Reich in attempting to fight a two-front war against Russia in the east and Allied forces in the west. Stalingrad occupied a strategically vital area situated on the main rail and water communication lines along the Volga River in southern Russia. During the German invasion of Russia (Operation Barbarossa), it naturally became a key target of German forces advancing on Moscow via the southern plains of Russia. On August 19, 1942, the German Sixth Army under Gen. Friedrich von Paulus and the Fourth Panzer Army combined in a pincer attack on Russian troops. In response, Russian forces under Gen. Vasilii Chuikov forced the two German armies apart. Over time, however, Soviet troops were reduced to a narrow perimeter and were forced to hide behind city rubble blasted by heavy German guns. As German troops advanced into the suburbs, they suffered high casualties as a result of the effective defensive position occupied by Russian troops under Chuikov. Although the city was captured, it was never completely secured. A Russian counterattack developed on November 19. Code-named Uranus and planned by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, the attack was led by Gen. Aleksander Vasilevskii along the southwestern front near the Don River. In five days, Soviet troops, reinforced by Gen. Andrei Yeremenko's Stalingrad Front forces, had cut off the retreat of the German Sixth Army and encircled it. German counteroffensives failed to stem the Russian advance. Trapped within a circle 25 miles outside Stalingrad, the German troops slowly began to starve as they attempted more counteroffensives to little avail. The German Luftwaffe under Field Marshal Hermann Goering failed to deliver enough supplies to keep the army functioning. The cold Russian winter led to further deaths. The Russians offered terms of surrender in January, but the Germans refused. Hitler had ordered Paulus to continue fighting despite losing more than 200,000 men from his army of 300,000 troops. By January 30, when Paulus surrendered to Gen. Mikhail Shumilov, only 94,000 Germans remained. WW2 Although the German Fourth Panzer Army under Gen. Heinrich von Kleist had escaped over the Caucasus to fight another day, the German advance into the Soviet Union was now a slow retreat back to the fatherland. The German retreat would culminate in the capture of Berlin by the Allies in 1945. "Battle of Stalingrad." World History: The Modern Era. 2009. ABC-CLIO. 24 May 2009 <http://www.worldhistory.abc-clio.com>.