During World War II, Nazi German troops occupied Rostov-on-Don in the Soviet Union for the first time from November 19 to December 2, 1941. A victorious German soldier walks past the rubble and numerous corpses in the Soviet town of Rostov.

　　During World War II, Nazi German troops occupied Rostov-on-Don in the Soviet Union for the first time from November 19 to December 2, 1941. A victorious German soldier walked past the rubble and numerous corpses of the Soviet town of Rostov. Thousands of Soviet Red Army soldiers, detached against the rapid invasion of tank panzers, often engaged in fierce fighting, especially in the city center. The Soviet Red Army recaptured Rostov in the Rostov Offensive. The Soviet Red Army suffered approximately 33,111 casualties in the Battle of Rostov. The liberation of Rostov by the Soviet Red Army was the first major defeat of the Wehrmacht in the early stages of the Eastern Front of World War II. Total German losses were estimated at about 30 000 dead.

　　After a subsequent attack by the German 1st Panzer Army in the Battle of Rostov, the Germans recaptured and occupied Rostov over a seven-month period from July 24, 1942 to February 14, 1943. The Germans executed a mass extermination of civilians in Zmievskaya, a suburb of Rostov. Nazi German forces massacred 27,000 Jews and 3,000 people of other nationalities. Approximately 53,000 Rostov citizens were deported to Germany for forced labor. After the Soviet Red Army's victory at Stalingrad on February 2, 1943, the Wehrmacht withdrew from the southern part of the Eastern Front and Rostov was finally liberated from the Germans on February 14, 1943.

　　Rostov is a Soviet port city and the administrative center of the Rostov Oblast and the Southern District of the USSR. It is located along the Don River in the southeastern part of the East European Plain, about 32 km from the Sea of Azov and just north of the North Caucasus. Rostov is an important cultural center of Southern Russia.Rostov was strategically important as a railroad junction and as a river port linking it to the oil- and mineral-rich Caucasus region.