The Battle of Stalingrad

The German summer offensive of 1942 carried the Wehrmacht toward the Volga and the oil regions of the Caucasus, but Hitler’s determination to seize Stalingrad drew the Sixth Army into a prolonged urban battle. Corrigan follows the struggle through street fighting, Soviet reinforcement across the Volga and Operation Uranus, the counter-offensive that surrounded Friedrich Paulus’s army and cut it off from effective relief.

The surrender in February 1943 destroyed a major German field army and shattered the aura of unstoppable German victory in the east. Corrigan assesses the decisions of Hitler, Stalin and their commanders alongside the logistical and operational realities of the campaign, explaining why Stalingrad became both an immense human catastrophe and a strategic shift in the wider war against Nazi Germany.