Romanian armies in the Battle of Stalingrad and 635 tanks, the German 57th Panzer Corps and the Romanian Fourth Army and on 29 December, the 57th Panzer had to abandon Kotelnikovo, which sealed the fate of the Axis troops in Stalingrad. On 15 January 1943, came another devastating blow: The Hungarian 2nd Army was encircled and eventually destroyed, with 147,971 casualties. On 2 February 1943, the resistance of Axis troops in Stalingrad ceased. Out of the 91,000 prisoners taken by the Soviets, 3,000 were Romanian. These were the survivors of the 20th Infantry Division, 1st Cavalry Division and "Colonel Voicu" Detachment. The Romanian Army lost 158,854 men
Battle of Stalingrad later by General Maximilian von Weichs. The start of "Case Blue" had been planned for late May 1942. A number of German and Romanian units that were to take part in "Blau", however, were besieging Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula. Delays in ending the siege pushed back the start date for "Blau" several times, and the city did not fall until the end of June. Operation Fridericus I by the Germans against the "Isium bulge", pinched off the Soviet salient in the Second Battle of Kharkov, and resulted in the envelopment of a large Soviet force between 17 May and