February 2nd

What:
German 6th Army surredners at Stalingrad

Where:
Stalingrad

Year:
1943



Information and Significance
On February 2nd, 1943, the German sixth army surrendered at Stalingrad onto the Red Army. For years the allies had been battered by Nazi assaults. Warsaw, France, Kiev and Dieppe had been major defeats for the allies. The Soviet armed forces had been pushed back hundreds of miles. Then came Stalingrad. In one day the Germans had overrun all of Denmark. In that time they had barely even touched Stalingrad. It took two days for them to capture all of Luxembourg. Little more had been accomplished in that time. The Netherlands were overrun in four days. Then Germans had captured only tiny portions of the city in that time. Belgium fell in eighteen days, Poland in twenty-eight and France in just thirty-eight days, but within all of those amounts of time Stalingrad still hadn't fallen. Eventually, the germans did manage to capture most of the city. However, at the last minute thousands of Red Army troops cut through Germany's allies' lines the Italians, Hungarians and Rummanians. They encircled the city within hours. Despite a desperate air lift campaign the Germans eventually were eventually starved into submission. The German's officially surrendered only several weeks later. More than two hundred thousand Axis soldiers were killed, and another four-hundred thousand taken prisoner. It provided the first major defeat of the Germans since the war began. It raised Allied morale, and it was the turning point in World War II in Europe. This victory and American and British successes in North Africa, Sicily and Italy made for a change in the tide of the war against Hitler's Third Reich.