On June 1942, Germany’s Army Group South started an offensive called Case Blue or Plan Blue.  The idea was to sprint out off eastern Ukraine, across the Russian steppe, and into the Caucasus to capture the oil fields there.  As part of this big effort, the German Sixth Army attempted to capture the city of Stalingrad on the Volga River.  The Sixth Army reached Stalingrad in August.  The fighting was ferocious.  In November the Soviets launched offensives of their own north and south of Stalingrad.  Those two pincers linked up and trapped the Germans in a cauldron.  Fighting continued in Stalingrad but now winter was closing in.  Starvation and the cold exacted a toll as harsh as the Soviets.  Despite Hitler’s attempts to resupply the Sixth Army by air and his exhortations to fight to the last, what was left of the German Sixth Army surrendered in late January 1943.  There was no way for Hitler and his propagandists to spin this crushing defeat.  Antony Beevor tells the story of history’s largest land battle and arguably the turning point of World War Two in “Stalingrad.”

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