The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II, beginning when Nazi Germany and its Axis allies attacked and became locked in a protracted struggle with the Soviet Union for control over the Soviet city of Stalingrad in southern Russia. The battle was characterized by fierce close-quarters combat and direct assaults on civilians in aerial raids; the battle epitomized urban warfare, being the single largest and costliest urban battle in military history. It was the bloodiest and fiercest battle of the entirety of World War II—and arguably in all of human history—as both sides suffered tremendous casualties amidst ferocious fighting in and around the city. The battle is commonly regarded as the turning point in the European theatre of World War II, as Germany's Oberkommando der Wehrmacht was forced to withdraw a considerable amount of military forces from other regions to replace losses on the Eastern Front. By the time the hostilities ended, the German 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army had been destroyed and Army Group B was routed. The Soviets' victory at Stalingrad shifted the Eastern Front's balance of power in their favour, while also boosting the morale of the Red Army.
Vasily Grigoryevich Zaitsev was a Soviet sniper during World War II.
Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Paulus was a German Generalfeldmarschall during World War II who is best known for his surrender of the German 6th Army during the Battle of Stalingrad. The battle ended in disaster for the Wehrmacht when Soviet forces encircled the Germans within the city, leading to the ultimate death or capture of most of the 265,000-strong 6th Army, their Axis allies, and collaborators.
Enemy at the Gates is a 2001 war film directed, co-written, and produced by Jean-Jacques Annaud, based on William Craig's 1973 nonfiction book Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad, which describes the events surrounding the Battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942–1943. The screenplay was written by Annaud and Alain Godard. The film's main character is a fictionalized version of Vasily Zaitsev, a sniper and Hero of the Soviet Union during World War II. It includes a snipers' duel between Zaitsev and a Wehrmacht sniper school director, Major Erwin König.
Sir Antony James Beevor, is a British military historian. He has published several popular historical works, mainly on the Second World War, the Spanish Civil War, and most recently the Russian Revolution and Civil War.
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.
Vasily Semyonovich Grossman was a Soviet writer and journalist. Born to a Jewish family in Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, Grossman trained as a chemical engineer at Moscow State University, earning the nickname Vasya-khimik because of his diligence as a student. Upon graduation, he took a job in Stalino in the Donets Basin. In the 1930s he changed careers and began writing full-time, publishing a number of short stories and several novels.
The 6th Army was a field army of the German Army during World War II. It is widely known for its defeat by and subsequent surrender to the Red Army at the Battle of Stalingrad on 2 February 1943. It committed war crimes at Babi Yar while under the command of Field Marshal Walther von Reichenau during Operation Barbarossa.
Tomas Venclova is a Lithuanian poet, prose writer, scholar, philologist and translator of literature. He is one of the five founding members of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group. In 1977, following his dissident activities, he was forced to emigrate and was deprived of his Soviet citizenship. Since 1980, he has taught Russian and Polish literature at Yale University. Considered a major figure in world literature, he has received many awards, including the Prize of Two Nations, and The Person of Tolerance of the Year Award from the Sugihara Foundation, among other honors.
Yunna Petrovna Morits (Moritz), is a Soviet and Russian poet, poetry translator and activist. She was a recipient of the Andrei Sakharov Prize For Writer's Civic Courage and the Golden Rose (Italy).
Mykola Platonovych Bazhan was a Soviet Ukrainian writer, poet, highly decorated political and public figure. He was an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1951), Distinguished Figure in Science and Technology of Ukrainian SSR (1966), Distinguished Figure in Arts of Georgian SSR (1964), People's Poet of Uzbek SSR.
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.
James E. Mace was an American historian, professor, and researcher of the Holodomor.
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.
Nikolay Dmitrevich Dyatlenko was a Ukrainian Soviet officer, interrogator and translator who was part of a team that attempted to deliver a message of truce to the German Sixth Army at the Battle of Stalingrad in January 1943. He also acted as the translator at the interrogation of Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus a few weeks later.
Stalingrad is a 2013 Russian war film directed by Fedor Bondarchuk. It was the first Russian movie released in IMAX. The film was released in September 2013 in Volgograd and October in Russia before its international release in subsequent months. The film was selected as the Russian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards, but it was not nominated. Stalingrad received the I3DS Jury Award for Russia in 2014.
The Second World War is a 2012 narrative history of World War II by the British historian Antony Beevor. The book starts with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and covers the entire Second World War. It ends with the final surrender of Axis forces.
Vasily Nikolaevich Gordov was a Soviet Army colonel general and Hero of the Soviet Union. Gordov commanded the Stalingrad Front between July and September 1942.
Tania Chernova was a Russian-American woman known for serving in the Red Army as a sniper during World War II. She traveled to Belarus to get her grandparents out of Russia, but upon arriving learned that German invaders had already killed them. After that, she joined the Soviet resistance on the Eastern Front, becoming an effective sniper.
Dan Healey is a Canadian and English historian and Slavist. He is a pioneer of the study of the history of homosexuality in Russia.
