Operation Winter Storm was certainly one of the most important events that took place during the bloody battle of Stalingrad. The city that represented the core of the Soviet defiance to Nazi Germany saw some of the worst fighting of the war.
This game-changing battle lasted for more than five months and one of its most dramatic moments was the unsuccessful German and Romanian offensive operation titled the Winter Storm. It was, in fact, an attempt to break the Soviet encirclement of more than 300,000 soldiers from the German 6th Army who were trapped in the city after the Soviet Operation Uranus.
An air bridge was established to supply the men within the city, but the Luftwaffe failed to distribute enough supplies to withstand the Soviet pressure. This attempt to aid the encircled men was a huge disaster as the Soviets managed to obtain air superiority on the sky above Stalingrad.
The Axis soldiers within the isolated pocket embarked in an attempt to coordinate a joint offensive with the troops just outside the encirclement on 12th of December, 1942. The operation lasted for 11 days and ended as an utter failure to relieve the trapped troops. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Axis troops were forced to retreat and the noose around the encircled troops began to tighten.
This reenactment was held on the 73rd anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad, on 2nd of February 2016, and was part of a series of reenactments that commemorated one of the biggest battles of the Second World War that took place in the city of Volgograd, which is the post-Soviet name of Stalingrad.