Operation Uranus

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Vietnamese. (March 2024) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 952 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Vietnamese Wikipedia article at [[:vi:Chiến dịch Sao Thiên Vương]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|vi|Chiến dịch Sao Thiên Vương}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Operation Uranus
Part of the Battle of Stalingrad on the Eastern Front of World War II
Date 19–23 November 1942 Location Near Stalingrad (now Volgograd) 48°42′N 44°31′E / 48.700°N 44.517°E / 48.700; 44.517 Result Soviet victory Encirclement of the German 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army
Belligerents
Soviet Union	Germany  Italy  Romania
Commanders and leaders
Joseph Stalin Georgy Zhukov K. Rokossovsky Aleksandr Vasilevsky Nikolai Vatutin	Adolf Hitler Friedrich Paulus Walter Heitz Petre Dumitrescu
Strength
1,143,500 personnel (including reserve)[1] 894 tanks[1] 13,451 artillery pieces[1] 1,500 aircraft[2]	German: 400,000 personnel (6th Army and 4th Panzer Army)[3] unknown number of artillery pieces 732 aircraft (402 serviceable) Italian: unknown number of artillery pieces or aircraft[4] Romanian: 143,296-200,000 personnel[3] 827 artillery pieces 134 tanks unknown number of aircraft[4]
Casualties and losses
Unknown	Unknown, presumed heavy

Operation Uranus (Russian: Опера́ция «Ура́н», romanized: Operatsiya "Uran") was the codename of the Soviet Red Army's 19–23 November 1942 strategic operation on the Eastern Front of World War II which led to the encirclement of Axis forces in the vicinity of Stalingrad: the German Sixth Army, the Third and Fourth Romanian armies, and portions of the German Fourth Panzer Army. The Red Army carried out the operation at roughly the midpoint of the five-month long Battle of Stalingrad, aiming to destroy German forces in and around Stalingrad. Planning for Operation Uranus had commenced in September 1942, and developed simultaneously with plans to envelop and destroy German Army Group Center (Operation Mars) and German forces in the Caucasus.

Due to the length of the front lines created by the German 1942 summer offensive, which had aimed at taking the Caucasus oil fields and the city of Stalingrad, German and other Axis forces were over-extended. The German decision to transfer several mechanized divisions from the Soviet Union to Western Europe exacerbated their situation. Furthermore, Axis units in the area were depleted by months of fighting, especially those which had taken part in the struggle for Stalingrad. The Germans could only count on the XXXXVIII Panzer Corps, which had the strength of a single panzer division, and the 29th Panzergrenadier Division as reserves to bolster their Romanian allies guarding the German Sixth Army's flanks. These Romanian armies lacked the heavy equipment to deal with Soviet armor. In contrast, the Red Army deployed over one million personnel for the offensive. Soviet troop movements were not without problems: concealing their build-up proved difficult, and Soviet units commonly arrived late due to logistical issues. Operation Uranus was first postponed by the Soviet high command (Stavka) from 8 to 17 November, then to 19 November.

At 07:20 Moscow time on 19 November, Soviet forces assaulted the northern flank of the Axis forces at Stalingrad; attacks in the south began the next day. Although the Romanian units succeeded in repelling the first Soviet attacks, by the end of 20 November the Third and Fourth Romanian armies were in headlong retreat, as the Red Army bypassed several German infantry divisions. German mobile reserves proved too weak to parry the Soviet mechanized spearheads, while the Sixth Army did not react quickly or decisively enough to disengage German armored forces in Stalingrad and re-orient them to countering the impending threat. By late 22 November, the northern and southern Soviet forces linked up at the town of Kalach, encircling some 290,000 Axis personnel east of the Don River. Instead of attempting to break out of the encirclement, German leader Adolf Hitler decided to keep Axis forces in Stalingrad and to resupply them by air.