On February 14, 1943, after the Russians recaptured Stalingrad, the frozen corpses of the retreating German war dead remained on the snow. The frozen corpses of German soldiers were dumped and left on the snowy ground after the defeat February 2.

On February 14, 1943, after the Russians retook Stalingrad, the frozen corpses of retreating German war dead remained on the snow. Bodies of German soldiers litter the snowy ground after the defeat of Nazi Germany's forces in the Stalingrad offensive on February 2, 1943. German soldiers were poorly supplied and equipped with cold-weather clothing at the end of the Stalingrad offensive, and many of them froze to death. In total, about 150,000 German soldiers died during the Stalingrad offensive. The scattered frozen bodies of German soldiers were abandoned and left for dead.

   In the summer of 1942, the Germans launched a major offensive into southern Russia, attempting to destroy the remnants of the Soviet army and capture the oil fields of the Caucasus. The first German invasion went well, and the German Sixth Army was ordered to occupy the city of Stalingrad. Soviet troops were forced by Stalin to defend the city, and all available soldiers and civilians were mobilized. The German Army Group of the South launched an attack southeastward toward the Don River from the direction of Kursk on June 28, and the siege of Stalingrad broke out.

　Stalingrad was in ruins after being heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe, and the mopping-up campaign lasted several months; by October 1942, most of the city of Stalingrad had fallen into German hands. Soviet troops clung to the banks of the Volga River, carrying vital stockpiles of supplies. Close combat reduced the city's remaining buildings to rubble, and on October 14, with their backs to the Volga, the Soviet forces were most threatened.

 　The Soviets built up new forces on both sides of the city of Stalingrad, and in November 1942 they surrounded the Germans and launched a major offensive. Forbidden by Nazi Hitler to desert, the German Sixth Army surrendered on February 2, 1943, as the exhausted remnants surrendered, ending the Stalingrad Offensive. The Germans lost a total of approximately 500,000 men, including about 91,000 prisoners of war, during the Stalingrad Offensive. Of the approximately 91,000 German POWs, only about 5,000 returned home after their captivity. Already weakened by disease, starvation, and lack of medical care during the siege, German soldiers were sent to labor camps throughout the Soviet Union, where most died of exhaustion and malnutrition. The number of casualties far exceeded those of the fierce fighting of World War I. It was estimated that the Axis forces suffered about 850,000 casualties and the Soviets about 1.2 million, for a total of around 2 million. The city was reduced to a pile of rubble, and the approximately 600,000 residents who lived there before the war began were reduced to approximately 9,800 at the end of the war.