Stalingrad: Start of Operation Winter StormOn December 12, 1942, General Manstein begins the German attempt to liberate General Paulus' 6th Army surrounded in Stalingrad. General Hoth's LVII Panzer Corps attempts to break through the pocket.
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Moscow: Soviet counter-offensive beginsOn December 5, 1941, the Red Army launched the winter counter-offensive prepared by generals Zukov and Vasilevsky. Zhukov has secretly amassed substantial reinforcements in three fronts, Kalinin, Western and South-Western, assembling a force of 1,100,000 men, 15 armies, 774 tanks and 1,000 aircraft to reinforce the Soviet attack: compared to the German forces few tanks , lack of artillery and ammunition available only for assault units. The offensive plays on speed and surprise.
Moscow: Exhaustion of the German winter offensiveOn December 4, 1941, the "last wave" of the German offensive of Army Group Center against Moscow, which began on December 2, ended. The Germans came so close to the capital that they could "see the Kremlin towers lit by the setting sun."
Stalingrad: Operation Uranus beginsOn November 19, 1942, the Soviet counter-offensive code-named Operation Uranus began. Vatutin's South-Western Front and Rokossovsky's Don Front rush forward against the Romanian 3rd Army and German reserves.
The secretly amassed attacking Soviet forces totaled one million men, 14,000 heavy guns, 979 tanks, and 1,350 aircraft. The operation was successful and on 22 November the two arms of the Soviet pincers closed at the village of Kalach. Within the pocket 260,000 Axis soldiers remain. Moscow: November 7 military paradeOn November 7, 1941, by order of Stalin, despite the fact that the Germans are 65 km away from the capital, the traditional parade for the 24th anniversary of the October Revolution takes place regularly on Red Square. At the end the troops march directly towards the front.
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