Operation Uranus

Operation Uranus was the Soviet Army's massive military pincers movement which successfully surrounded and defeated the Wehrmacht's 6th Army, in the city of Stalingrad, during World War II. Under the overall command of Georgy Zhukov, it was launched on November 19, 1942, with the encirclement successfully being finished a few days later, on November 23.

The German 6th Army was under Friedrich Paulus and belonged to Army Group B. At the end of Case Blue, not only the German forces got trapped between the jaws of the Soviet's pincers but also two Romanian armies, which had been deployed in that sector of the Eastern Front. This is how the Germans lost the Battle of Stalingrad.

Summary

The Soviets had decided to set in motion Operation Uranus when the German 6th Army moved into Stalingrad in pursuit of the Russian 62nd and 64th Army that had just escaped a German encirclement maneuver. The reason for Friedrich von Paulus failing to encircle the Red Army's forces was to due to the fact that the 6th Army's vanguard had slowed down their march as they had outstretched their logistic supply lines. There was also a lack of coordination with the Wehrmacht's 4th Panzer Army; both forces belonged to Army Group B.

The two Soviet Army Groups that carried out the main two encirclement spearheads were the Southwest Front, which had concentrated all their forces to the north of Stalingrad, and the Stalingrad Front, which had deployed their units to the south on the shore of the Volga River. The former constituted the northern jaw of the pincers, while the latter was the southern jaw, respectively. Meanwhile, the Don Front's armies, deployed between these two Army Groups, carried out only secondary punches westwards into German-held territory.

To defeat the Germans and Romanians trapped in this encirclement, the Soviets employed about 850 tanks, most of them T-34s, 14,000 field artillery pieces, and about 1.2 million men. After vicious fighting, punching through the Romanian and German lines, the spearheads of the Southwest Front's 5th Tank Army and the Stalingrad Front's 51st and 57th Army managed to link up the arms of the encirclement at Kalach.

Below, Russian troops and T-34 tanks heading towards Kalach to close the jaws of the pincers.

Below, map of the Volga River and Stalingrad, showing the positions of the three Russian Fronts and the directions of the attacks.