Book Description

The New 2017 Revised Edition has been awarded the APMC Cultural Price at the Salon de l'Histoire in Paris. “We realized that the decisive battle had come and if we can survive it the Germans were unlikely to muster such powerful forces again." Thus wrote Lieutenant-General Vasily Chuikov, 62nd Army's Commander, about 14 October 1942. As hundreds of tons of steel where hurled against the Soviet defenders, the Germans unleashed a critical onslaught in what they perceived as their D-day for Stalingrad. This same day Hitler issued the winter standby directive to his troops on the eastern front. It read: "This year's summer and fall campaign, excepting the operations currently under way and several local offensives still contemplated, has been concluded." As for the "operations currently under way" 6th Army was ordered not only to continue, but also to strengthen its offensive. Although badly depleted for the most part, the divisions mustered by both sides in the industrial district of the city still embodied a considerable fighting potential. With regard to density, seldom in the history of wars such a small territory was contested by such a quantity of manpower, artillery and aircraft. After the equivalent of a full month of combats within the city, the culminating point was about to be reached. Towards mid- October, after having completed a restructuration of his attacking forces, Paulus moved the most able formations into line, expecting the entire front to collapse in the northern sector of Stalingrad, then to finish off 62nd Army's truncated remnants with an enveloping maneuver along the Volga, as was his intent from the beginning. The second volume of the "Stalingrad Battle Atlas" series covers 35 days of fighting within the city. It presents essential strategic and tactical information, including recently released archival data, and features specific maps for each day of active operations during this period. Synthesizing an extremely wide range of documents and information sources, this chronological atlas seeks to reach the maximal degree of precision in describing historical reality, rendering it through a standardized set of instruments: timeline, orders of battle, unit strength returns, tactical and strategic situation maps, contextual photos, quotes from key actors. It can be used as a reference manual for searchers, as well as a guide for those who want to know the basics: Who, When, Where. In 2015 the Russian Federal Archive Agency, in cooperation with the Ministry of Defense, the Russian Historical Society and the German Historical Institute in Moscow publicly released large archival funds of Soviet and German records. This new edition of the Stalingrad Battle Atlas series thus benefits from the most substantial set of available wartime documents. Main features: o Latest available documents from archives o Tactical & Strategic Maps o Order of Battle & Strength Returns 432 pages A new perspective of the legendary battle on the Volga