The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II where Nazi Germany and its allies unsuccessfully fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia. The battle was characterized by fierce close-quarters combat and direct assaults on civilians in air raids, as the battle epitomized urban warfare, with it also being the single largest and costliest urban battle in the history of warfare. It was the bloodiest and fiercest battle of the entire Second World War, and arguably in all of history, as both sides suffered tremendous casualties and endured ferocious fighting. Today, the Battle of Stalingrad is commonly regarded as the turning point in the European theatre of war, as the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht was forced to withdraw considerable military forces from other areas to replace losses on the Eastern Front. The battle ended with the destruction of Germany's 6th Army and its 4th Panzer Army, and the rout of Army Group B. The Soviet victory energized the Red Army and shifted the balance of power in the favour of the Soviets.
Vasily Grigoryevich Zaitsev was a Soviet sniper during World War II.
Urban warfare is warfare in urban areas such as towns and cities. Urban combat differs from combat in the open at both the operational and the tactical levels. Complicating factors in urban warfare include the presence of civilians and the complexity of the urban terrain. Urban combat operations may be conducted to capitalize on strategic or tactical advantages associated with the possession or the control of a particular urban area or to deny these advantages to the enemy. It is considered to be arguably the most difficult form of warfare.
Hiwi, the German abbreviation of the word Hilfswilliger or, in English, auxiliary volunteer, designated, during World War II, a member of different kinds of voluntary auxiliary forces made up of recruits indigenous to the territories of Eastern Europe occupied by Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler reluctantly agreed to allow recruitment of Soviet citizens in the Rear Areas during Operation Barbarossa. In a short period of time, many of them were moved to combat units.
Georg Ludwig Heinrich Nicolaus von Below was an officer in the German Luftwaffe and an adjutant to Adolf Hitler.
Blondi was Adolf Hitler's German Shepherd, a gift as a puppy from Martin Bormann in 1941. Hitler kept Blondi even after his move into the Führerbunker located underneath the garden of the Reich Chancellery on 16 January 1945.
David M. Glantz is an American military historian known for his books on the Red Army during World War II and as the chief editor of The Journal of Slavic Military Studies.
Stalingrad is a narrative history written by Antony Beevor of the battle fought in and around the city of Stalingrad during World War II, as well as the events leading up to it. It was first published by Viking Press in 1998. The book won the first Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson History Prize and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature in 1999.
Werner Haase was a professor of medicine and SS member during the Nazi era. He was one of Adolf Hitler's personal physicians. After the war ended, Haase was made a Soviet prisoner of war. He died while in captivity in 1950.
Bruno Bräuer was a general in the paratroop forces of Nazi Germany during World War II. He served as a commander on Crete and then commanded the 9th Paratroop Division. After the war, he was convicted of war crimes and executed, along with Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller, on the anniversary of the Axis invasion of Crete.
Peter Högl was a German officer holding the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer who was a member of one of Adolf Hitler's bodyguard units. He spent time in the Führerbunker in Berlin at the end of World War II. Högl died from wounds received during the break-out on 2 May 1945 while crossing the Weidendammer Bridge under heavy fire in Berlin.
Theoderich Heinrich August Wilhelm von Dufving (1907–2001), known as Theodor von Dufving, was a German officer of the Wehrmacht during the Second World War.
Else Krüger was Martin Bormann's secretary from the end of 1942 until 1 May 1945. She was born in Hamburg-Altona.
The Führer Headquarters, abbreviated FHQ, were a number of official headquarters used by the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and various other German commanders and officials throughout Europe during World War II. The last one used, the Führerbunker in Berlin, where Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945, is the most widely known headquarter. Other notable headquarters are the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia, where Claus von Stauffenberg in league with other conspirators attempted to assassinate Hitler on 20 July 1944, and Hitler's private home, the Berghof, at Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden, where he frequently met with prominent foreign and domestic officials.
Berlin: The Downfall 1945 is a narrative history by Antony Beevor of the Battle of Berlin during World War II. It was published by Viking Press in 2002, then later by Penguin Books in 2003. The book achieved both critical and commercial success. It has been a number-one best seller in seven countries apart from Britain, and in the top five in another nine countries. Together this book and Beevor's Stalingrad, first published in 1998, have sold nearly three million copies.
As Allied troops entered and occupied German territory during the later stages of World War II, mass rapes of women took place both in connection with combat operations and during the subsequent occupation of Germany by soldiers from all advancing Allied armies, although a majority of scholars agree that the records show that a majority of the rapes were committed by Soviet occupation troops. The wartime rapes were followed by decades of silence.
Rudolf Weiß was a German officer appointed personal adjutant for the Army's Personnel Department Chief, a position he held until the end of World War II. Further, he was stationed in the Führerbunker in April 1945.
Charlotten Bridge in Spandau links the old town of Spandau on the west bank of the Havel with the east bank.
The 79th Guards Rifle Division was an infantry division of the Red Army during World War II.
The 91st Rifle Division was an infantry division of the Red Army and Soviet Army, formed twice. The division was first formed in 1939, fought in the Winter War, and was destroyed in the Vyazma Pocket during the Battle of Moscow. It was reformed in December 1941 and fought in the Battle of Stalingrad and the Crimean Offensive, earning the honorific "Melitopol" and the Order of the Red Banner. The division was downsized into a brigade postwar but became a division again in 1953. It became a motor rifle division in 1957.
United Kingdom 
British Army 
