War on the Eastern Front - German gains in Russia are over-turned, with Soviet troops finally grinding out a victory in Stalingrad and going on the offensive

Until the autumn of 1942, the German army was consistently victorious. Europe lay under German domination, from France in the west to the Volga River in the east; from the Arctic Circle in Norway to the shores of North Africa. The battle for the city of Stalingrad proved a decisive psychological turning point, ending a string of German victories in the summer of 1942 and beginning the long retreat westward that would end with Nazi Germany's surrender in May 1945.

Int he summer of 1942 the German Sixth Army under General Friedrich von Paulus was ordered to take Stalingrad, an industrial center and obstacle to Nazi control of the precious Caucasian oil wells. In August, the German Sixth Army made advances across the Volga River while the German Fourth Air Fleet reduced Stalingrad to a burning rubble, killing over 40,000 civilians. In early September, General Paulus ordered the first offensives into Stalingrad, estimating that it would take his army about 10 days to capture the city. 


However, Soviet General Vasily Zhukov used the ruined city to their advantage, transforming destroyed buildings and rubble into natural defensive fortifications. In a method of fighting the Germans began to call the Rattenkrieg, or “Rat’s War,” brutal street fighting bogged the Germans down as the Soviet's poured more and more men into struggle to hold the city. 


In mid-November 1942, the Soviet army launched a massive counteroffensive, which involved 500,000 Soviet troops, 900 tanks, and 1,400 aircraft. Within three days, the entire German force of more than 200,000 men was encircled.



After the victory at Stalingrad, the Soviet army remained on the offensive, liberating most of the Ukraine, and virtually all of Russia and eastern Belorussia during 1943.


The Battle of Kursk was a significant turning point, involving some 6,000 tanks, two million men, and 5,000 aircraft.  The Soviets were victorious, and ended the last large-scale German offensive on the Eastern Front, but at a heavy cost.

In early July, Germany and the USSR had concentrated their forces near the city of Kursk in western Russia, where a 150-mile-wide Soviet pocket  jutted 100 miles into the German lines. The German attack began on July 5, and 38 divisions, nearly half of which were armored, began moving from the south and the north. However, the Soviets had better tanks and air support than in previous battles, and in bitter fighting Soviet antitank artillery destroyed as much as 40 percent of the German armor, which included their new Mark VI Tiger tanks. After six days of warfare concentrated near Prokhorovka, south of Kursk, the German Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge called off the offensive, and by July 23 the Soviets had forced the Germans back to their original positions.


SOURCE: History.comHistory.com

Further Reading


The Atlantic - The Eastern Front

Facing Stalingrad - Portraits of German and Soviet Survivors

Spiegel - Revisiting Stalingrad

Warfare History Network - Battle of Kursk: The Eastern Front’s Turning Point


Allies invade Italy -  Americans and British land in Sicily and then the Italian mainland, forcing their way through the 'soft underbelly of Europe' and prompting the Italian surrender and overthrowing of Mussolini



In Rome, the Allied conquest of Sicily, a region of the kingdom of Italy since 1860, led to the collapse of Mussolini’s government. Early in the morning of July 25, he was forced to resign by the Fascist Grand Council and was arrested later that day. On July 26, Marshal Pietro Badoglio assumed control of the Italian government. The new government promptly entered into secret negotiations with the Allies, despite the presence of numerous German troops in Italy.

On September 3, Montgomery’s 8th Army began its invasion of the Italian mainland and the Italian government agreed to surrender to the Allies. By the terms of the agreement, the Italians would be treated with leniency if they aided the Allies in expelling the Germans from Italy. Later that month, Mussolini was rescued from a prison in the Abruzzo Mountains by German commandos and was installed as leader of a Nazi puppet state in northern Italy.

In October, the Badoglio government declared war on Germany, but the Allied advance up through Italy proved to be a slow and costly affair, typified by the bloody battles at Anzio and  Monte Cassino. Rome fell in June 1944, at which point a stalemate ensued as British and American forces threw most of their resources into the Normandy invasion. In April 1945, a new major offensive began, and on April 28 Mussolini was captured by Italian partisans and summarily executed.

SOURCE: History.com

Further Reading


History.com - Italian Campaign

Thought Co - Invasion of Italy

Business Insider - Allied Forces First Thrust into the 'Soft Underbelly of Europe'

Magnum Photos - Robert Capa's pictures of Operation Husky: the Allied Invasion of Sicily