RUSSTAL071
First Legion
The sheer scale and horror of the Eastern Front sends shivers down your spine. Further, of the countless battles on the eastern front, none serve to capture the imagination like the Battle of Stalingrad. Fought over a six month period of near constant fighting, it was certainly amongst the largest and fiercest battles of the entire war and served as a turning point and the end of the myth of invincibility of the German Wehrmacht. The Russian 62nd Army under General Chuikov fought as valiantly a defense as any army before or since in the history of warfare. For the beleaguered Soviet defenders, retreat wasn't option - only victory or death. With their backs to the Volga, the Russian army stood fast, gripping tenaciously to smaller and smaller pockets of territory making the heroic sacrifice as the bait as part of a larger russian strategy that become known as Operation Uranus, the counterattack which would cut off the German 6th Army and seal their fate in the rubble of the gutted city.
As came to be seen, this was a task for which they were well suited. While the German Wehrmacht dominated their Soviet adversaries on the open steppes of mother Russia, in the rubble and debris of the shattered city, the battle became and infantryman's war and the Russians were the masters of this type of combat, giving rise to the "Stalingrad Academy of Streetfighting."
Defending by day and infiltrating and counterattacking by night, the Russians kept the Germans under constant pressure and eventually sapped the combat strength of the 6th Army which simply could not finish them off. The Russian defense of the city and subsequent counterattack and victory served to mark a turning point in the war and set the Soviets on the inevitable path to victory.