Eastern Front
1942–1943: The counter-offensive at Stalingrad
November 1942 – March 1943 · 3 battles
On 19 November 1942 the Red Army struck at the weak flanks of the German forces at Stalingrad, held by Romanian troops. Within four days the pincers of Operation Uranus closed at Kalach, trapping the whole of Paulus’s 6th Army and part of the 4th Panzer Army. Manstein’s relief attempt stalled in December, the offensive on the middle Don shattered the Italian army, and in January and February 1943 further blows destroyed the Hungarian army and liberated Kursk, Rostov and Kharkov. The encircled troops at Stalingrad capitulated at the turn of January and February. The offensive died away in March, when Manstein retook Kharkov in a counter-attack; but the initiative on the Eastern Front had passed to the Soviet side.
- 19–23 November 1942Key battleOperation UranusFrom 19 to 23 November 1942 the Red Army broke the Romanian front on the Don and south of Stalingrad and encircled Paulus's 6th Army near Kalach.
- 12–23 December 1942Operation Winter StormFrom 12 to 23 December 1942 Hoth's panzer corps tried to break through from Kotelnikovo to the 6th Army in Stalingrad. It came to a halt on the Myshkova.
- 19 February – 15 March 1943Third Battle of KharkovOn 19 February – 15 March 1943 Manstein smashed the overextended Soviet armies between the Donets and the Dnieper and retook Kharkiv, then Belgorod on 18 March.