Operation Uranus was the codename of the Soviet Red Army's 19–23 November 1942 strategic operation on the Eastern Front of World War II which led to the encirclement of Axis forces in the vicinity of Stalingrad: the German Sixth Army, the Third and Fourth Romanian armies, and portions of the German Fourth Panzer Army. The Red Army carried out the operation at roughly the midpoint of the five-month long Battle of Stalingrad, aiming to destroy German forces in and around Stalingrad. Planning for Operation Uranus had commenced in September 1942, and developed simultaneously with plans to envelop and destroy German Army Group Center and German forces in the Caucasus. The Red Army took advantage of the German army's poor preparations for winter, and the fact that its forces in the southern Soviet Union were overstretched near Stalingrad, using weaker Romanian troops to guard their flanks; the offensive's starting points were established along the section of the front directly opposite Romanian forces. These Axis armies lacked heavy equipment to deal with Soviet armor.
Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko was a Soviet military commander and Marshal of the Soviet Union.
Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Vasilevsky was a Soviet career-officer in the Red Army who attained the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1943. He served as the Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces (1942-1945) and Deputy Minister of Defense during World War II, and as Minister of Defense from 1949 to 1953. As the Chief of the General Staff from 1942 to 1945, Vasilevsky became involved in planning and coordinating almost all the decisive Soviet offensives in World War II, from the Stalingrad counteroffensive of November 1942 to the assaults on East Prussia, Königsberg and Manchuria.
The 6th Army was a field army unit of the German Wehrmacht during World War II (1939–1945). It was widely remembered for being the most highly decorated German army unit until its defeat by the Red Army at the Battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942–1943. It also acquired a reputation for the war crimes that it committed under the command of Field Marshal Walther von Reichenau during Operation Barbarossa.
Konstantin Konstantinovich (Xaverevich) Rokossovsky was a Soviet and Polish officer who became a Marshal of the Soviet Union, a Marshal of Poland, and served as Poland's Defence Minister from 1949 until his removal in 1956 during the Polish October. He became one of the most prominent Red Army commanders of World War II.
Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky was a Soviet military commander in World War II, Marshal of the Soviet Union, and Minister of Defence of the Soviet Union in the late 1950s and 1960s. He contributed to the major defeat of Nazi Germany at the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Budapest. During the post-war era, he made a pivotal contribution to the strengthening of the Soviet Union as a military superpower.
Andrey (Andrei) Ivanovich Yeryomenko was a Soviet general during World War II and, subsequently, a Marshal of the Soviet Union. During the war, Yeryomenko commanded the Southeastern Front during the Battle of Stalingrad in summer 1942 and planned the successful defense of the city. He later commanded the armies responsible for the liberation of Western Hungary and Czechoslovakia in 1945.
The Second Battle of Kharkov or Operation Fredericus was an Axis counter-offensive in the region around Kharkov against the Red Army Izium bridgehead offensive conducted 12–28 May 1942, on the Eastern Front during World War II. Its objective was to eliminate the Izium bridgehead over Seversky Donets or the "Barvenkovo bulge" which was one of the Soviet offensive's staging areas. After a winter counter-offensive that drove German troops away from Moscow but depleted the Red Army's reserves, the Kharkov offensive was a new Soviet attempt to expand upon their strategic initiative, although it failed to secure a significant element of surprise.
The first Battle of Smolensk was a battle during the second phase of Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, in World War II. It was fought around the city of Smolensk between 10 July and 10 September 1941, about 400 km (250 mi) west of Moscow. The Ostheer had advanced 500 km (310 mi) into the USSR in the 18 days after the invasion on 22 June 1941.
Case Blue was the German Armed Forces' name for its plan for the 1942 strategic summer offensive in southern Russia between 28 June and 24 November 1942, during World War II. The objective was to capture the oil fields of Baku, Grozny and Maikop for two purposes: to enable the Germans to re-supply their low fuel stock and also to deny their use to the Soviet Union, thereby bringing about the complete collapse of the Soviet war effort.
The 1st Panzer Army was a German tank army that was a large armoured formation of the Wehrmacht during World War II.
Nikolay Nikolayevich Voronov was a Soviet military leader, chief marshal of the artillery (1944), and Hero of the Soviet Union. He was commander of artillery forces of the Red Army from 1941 until 1950. Voronov commanded the Soviet artillery during the Battle of Stalingrad and was the Stavka representative to various fronts during the Siege of Leningrad and the Battle of Kursk. He also fought in the Russian Civil War, the Polish-Soviet War and the Battle of Khalkin Gol, as well as serving as an advisor to the Spanish Republican Army during the Spanish Civil War.
Ivan Khristoforovich Bagramyan, also known as Hovhannes Khachaturi Baghramyan, was a Soviet military commander and Marshal of the Soviet Union of Armenian origin.
Russian military deception, sometimes known as maskirovka, is a military doctrine developed from the start of the 20th century. The doctrine covers a broad range of measures for military deception, from camouflage to denial and deception.
The 51st Army was a field army of the Red Army that saw action against the Germans in World War II on both the southern and northern sectors of the front. The army participated in the Battle of the Kerch Peninsula between December 1941 and January 1942; it was destroyed in May 1942 with other Soviet forces when the Wehrmacht launched an operation to dislodge them from the peninsula. The army fought in the Battle of Stalingrad during the winter of 1942–43, helping to defeat German relief attempts. From late 1944 to the end of the war, the army fought in the final cutting-off of German forces in the Courland area next to the Baltic. Inactivated in 1945, the army was activated again in 1977 to secure Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the army continued in existence as a component of the Russian Ground Forces. The army was active during two periods from 1941 until 1997.
In Soviet historiography, Stalin's ten blows were the ten successful strategic offensives conducted by the Red Army in 1944 during World War II. The Soviet offensives drove the Axis forces from Soviet territory and precipitated Nazi Germany's collapse.
The Red Army's 60th Army was a Soviet field army during the Second World War. It was first formed in reserve in the Moscow Military District in October 1941, but soon was disbanded. It was formed a second time in July 1942, and continued in service until postwar. The 60th Army was commanded by Gen. Ivan Danilovich Chernyakhovsky for much of the war, and it was while in this command that he proved himself worthy to be promoted to the rank of General of the Army and command of a Front at the age of 38 years. Elements of the army went on to, among other things, liberate the Auschwitz concentration camp.
The Kirovograd offensive was an offensive by the Red Army's 2nd Ukrainian Front against the German 8th Army in the area of Kirovograd in central Ukraine between 5 and 16 January 1944. It took place on the Eastern Front of World War II and was part of the wider Dnieper–Carpathian offensive, a Soviet attack against Army Group South that aimed to retake the rest of Ukraine that fell to Germany in 1941.
The 1940 formation of the 160th Rifle Division was an infantry division of the Red Army, formed as part of the prewar buildup of forces, based on the shtat of September 13, 1939. The division completed its formation at Gorki in the Moscow Military District and at the time of the German invasion of the Soviet Union was in the same area, assigned to the 20th Rifle Corps in the Reserve of the Supreme High Command. It was moved west by rail to join the 13th Army of Western Front in the first days of July 1941 in the Mogilev area. At the end of the month the division was assigned to the reserves of Central Front before becoming part of Operations Group Akimenko in the reserves of Bryansk Front. In mid-September it was encircled and forced to break out; in the process it lost its commanding officer, much of its command staff and so many men and heavy weapons that it was briefly written off. Its number was reallocated to the 6th Moscow Militia Division and for the next 18 months there were two 160th Rifle Divisions serving concurrently. By the start of Operation Typhoon at the end of September it was in Operations Group Ermakov; while falling back to southwest of Kursk it managed to avoid encirclement but remained barely combat-effective due to its heavy losses.
The 205th Rifle Division was twice formed as an infantry division of the Red Army after a motorized division of that same number was destroyed in the first days of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The first formation was based on the shtat of July 29, 1941 and it then remained for nine months in the far east of Siberia training and organizing before it was finally sent by rail to the Stalingrad region in July 1942. It was assigned to the 4th Tank Army which was attempting to hold a bridgehead west of the Don River based on Kremenskaya and Sirotinskaya. This soon came under attack by elements of German 6th Army as a preliminary to its advance on Stalingrad itself and during August the division was encircled and destroyed.
