The first in a three-book series examining the Stalingrad campaign,
one of the most decisive military operations in World War II that set
the stage for the ultimate defeat of the Third Reich.
After failing to defeat the Soviet Union with Operation Barbarossa in
1941, Adolf Hitler planned a new campaign for the summer of 1942 that
was intended to achieve a decisive victory: Operation Blue (Case
Blau). In this new campaign, Hitler directed that one army group
(Heeresgruppe A) would advance to seize the Soviet oilfields in the
Caucasus, while the other (Heeresgruppe B) pushed on to the Volga River.
The expectation was for a rapid victory--instead, German forces had to
fight hard just to reach the outskirts of Stalingrad, and then found
themselves embroiled in a protracted urban battle amid the ruins of a
devastated city on the Volga. The Soviet Red Army was hit hard by the
initial German offensive but held onto the city and then launched
Operation Uranus, a winter counteroffensive that encircled the German
6. Armee at Stalingrad. Despite a desperate German relief operation, the
Red Army eventually crushed the German forces and hurled the remnants of
the German southern front back in disorder.
This first volume in the Stalingrad trilogy covers the period from 28
June to 11 September 1942, including operations around Voronezh. The
fighting in the Don Bend, which lasted weeks, comprised some of the
largest tank battles of World War II--involving more armor than the
tanks employed at Prokhorovka in 1943.
