Russia Marked the 70th Anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad - Saturday Feb 2,2013

Russia marked the 70th anniversary of the epic 200-day Battle of Stalingrad on Saturday with a military parade and a gun salute.

 

Some 200 survivors of the battle laid red carnations at a monument to the hundreds of thousands who died at Stalingrad.

 

 The festivities concluded with an 18-gun salute by World War Two cannons


Battle of Stalingrad

The Battle of Stalingrad was a major and decisive battle of WWII in which Nazi Germany and its allies (Romania,Hungary,Italy and Croatia)fought the Soviet Union for the control of the City of Stalingrad(presently Volvograd)

The battle took place between August 23, 1942 and February 2, 1943
 

The 6-month Battle of Stalingrad came to an end on Feb 2, 1943 with the humiliating surrender of senior-most commander, Field Marshal Paulus. The German forces razed Stalingrad to the ground and captured 90 percent of the city in fierce hand-to-hand fighting before the Red Army in a pincer counter-offensive encircled and destroyed the Nazi’s largest Sixth Army, whose strength exceeded 1,000,000 men at the peak of the battle.

It was the longest and bloodiest battles of World War Two, with at least 1.2 million people killed and almost as many wounded on both sides. More than 90,000 Nazi troops were taken prisoner. The epic battle opened a string of Red Army victories that two years later led to the fall of Berlin