Destruction of 6th Army at Stalingrad, Images of War

A pictorial history of the last months of Nazi Germany’s 6th Army at the Battle of Stalingrad during World War II.

The scale of death and destruction during the Battle of Stalingrad during late 1942 and early 1943 remains unprecedented in the history of warfare.

The annihilation of General von Paulus’s 6th Army epitomized the devastating defeat of Hitler’s ambition to conquer Stalin’s Soviet Union. After the successful Operation Blue offensive, the 6th Army reached the River Volga north of Stalingrad in summer 1942. With overextended supply lines and facing steely opposition, increasingly desperate attempts to seize the city repeatedly failed. Slowly 6th Army became encircled. The German High Command attempted several relief attempts, notably Field Marshal von Manstein’s “Winter Storm,” but all were defeated by the tenacity of the enemy and the Russian winter. To their credit, the men of the 6th Army fought to the end, but by February 1943, the last pockets of German resistance were either destroyed or had surrendered.

Thanks to a superb collection of unpublished photographs, this entry in the Images of War series provides an absorbing insight into the dramatic events of the last months of the 6th Army’s doomed existence.