From 23 November 1942, German troops were surrounded by Soviet troops near Stalingrad, and the bodies of German soldiers killed on the prairie snow were scattered on the prairie snow and anti-tank guns were destroyed.

　　The Siege of Stalingrad, which broke out on June 28, 1942, began on November 23, 1942, when the Germans were surrounded near Stalingrad and the Soviets were killed on the prairie snow, with the bodies of German soldiers scattered and the weapons they fought with destroyed. German soldiers who did not leave their anti-tank positions until the end were killed in action and their bodies fell in the snow as Soviet artillery blasted them.　

　In mid-November 1942, a massive Soviet counteroffensive overwhelmed the German 6th Army on the outskirts of Stalingrad, and it was cornered along with its armored forces. The Soviet onslaught crushed satellite armies on both sides, and by mid-February 1943, Soviet units had temporarily invaded far beyond Kharkov in the Ukraine. The Germans finally held the Eastern Front temporarily at Donetsk in the Ukraine.

　The pincer attack by the Soviet forces had trapped some 230,000 German, Romanian, and Croatian soldiers and auxiliaries in pockets (cauldrons) in the bunkers of the Siege of Stalingrad on the front line to the steppes since November 23, 1942. In the pocket were about 10,000 surviving Soviet civilians and several thousand captured Soviet soldiers. Fifty thousand men of the Sixth Army were turned aside outside the pocket. The Soviets prevented the Germans from escaping on the inner siege front and prevented relief to the Germans on the outer siege front; an armored group attempted to escape in December but was thwarted. It quickly became impossible to adequately supply the 22 German divisions in the cauldron. Tens of thousands starved to death, froze to death, were wounded, and suffered epidemics.

　Under threat of siege even deep in the hinterland, and already forced to defend themselves in the Caucasus, the Germans withdrew through the steppes to Taganrog in January 1943. Most of them were pushed into the Kuban bridgehead. The German counterattack on the Neva River finally broke the blockade around Leningrad in mid-January, and on January 31 the Germans finally surrendered as Soviet troops closed in on the German headquarters in the ruined Gum department store. The remnants of the German army in Stalingrad also surrendered on February 2, leaving 91,000 exhausted, sick, and starving German soldiers as prisoners of war. Of the 91,000 German POWs, only 5,000 returned home after their captivity.