CHRONOLOGY
1941
22 June Three German army groups invade Soviet territory. No declaration of war is made beforehand.
3 July Stalin speaks on the radio to the Soviet people and declares that this is a ‘great patriotic war’.
2 October Operation Typhoon, the German offensive against Moscow, begins.
6 December The Soviet counter-offensive outside Moscow is orchestrated by General Georgy Zhukov.
1942
28 June Operation Blue begins - this is the start of the German summer offensive on the Eastern front.
14 July Martial law is declared in Stalingrad.
17 July Elements of the Soviet 62nd Army encounter forward units of the Sixth Army for the first time near the River Chir. The battle for Stalingrad is under way.
28 July Stalin’s ‘Not One Step Back’ order is issued to the Red Army.
15 August General Paulus’s Sixth Army reaches the west bank of the Don.
23 August General von Richthofen’s Fourth Air Fleet bombs Stalingrad; Panzer troops reach the Volga north of the city.
14 September The first German ground assault on Stalingrad is launched. Battles rage at the railway station and on Mamayev Kurgan. Rodimtsev’s 13th Guards Division crosses the Volga from the east bank with orders to hold off the Germans inside the city.
26 September The second German assault begins. It is directed against the factory district north of the city centre.
30 September The Germans are in possession of most of the city centre.
14 October A third German offensive drives the Russian defenders out of the Tractor Factory and the Barricades Factory.
22 October The German Sixth Army and the Russian 62nd Army fight for possession of the Red October Factory.
30 October The German assault on the factories grinds to a halt.
19 November Operation Uranus, the great Soviet counter-offensive at Stalingrad, is set in motion.
22 November Paulus’s army, a quarter of a million men, is surrounded between the Volga and the Don.
25 November Start of the German airlift to supply the Sixth Army.
12 December Operation Winter Storm: a German relief column strikes north from Kotelnikovo towards the encircled Sixth Army.
23 December The relief column stalls on the River Myshkova, short of the surrounded group.
1943
8 January The Soviet High Command issues an ultimatum to the Sixth Army: surrender or be destroyed.
10 January Operation Ring: the annihilation of the surrounded German forces at Stalingrad begins.
25 January The German forces are split into two pockets inside the city.
31 January Paulus surrenders inside the southern pocket.
2 February The northern pocket surrenders, and the battle for Stalingrad comes to an end.