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The Battle of Stalingrad was an important turning point for the Russian army and was a very long and excruciating battle
between the German Sicth Army and the Fourth Panzer Army, totaling about 290,000 troops, against the Sobiet Red Army led by
General Aleksandr M. Vasilyevsky.The battle of Stalingrad lasted from August 1942 to February 1943. Many Historians disagree
about whether the battle of Stalingrad was a turning point in World War 2. But the common agreement between the historians
is that the Soviet victory at Stalingrad caused the Wehrmacht was in retreat until it was driven from the Soviet's territory.
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The German dictator, Adolf Hitler, ordered General Friedrich Paulus, the commander of the German Sixth Army, to capture
Stalingrad, an important industrial and communications center straddling the Volga River. Hitler's plan for Stalingrad was
to have it serve as a base for a German invasion of the Caucasus region where rich oil reserves could be tapped for the German
war effort and denied to the Soviet Union.
Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, ordered his forces to defend Stalingrad at all costs, he demanded that the soldiers
of the Red Army were to take "not a step back". In late August he caalled on his two best military professionals: General
Zhukov, who had organized a counteroffensive to defend Moscow, the Soviet capital, in December 1941, and the army chief of
the General Staff, General Vasilyevsky to deal with the situation at Stalingrad. The Soviets proposed to wear the enemy
down by locking German troops into a battle for the city while the Red Army assembled the means for a counterattack.
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