Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943

Stalingrad deals with a significant episode in the conflict between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany during the Second World War (1939-1945). The wartime antagonism of these two major European powers was influenced by historical factors—in particular, the First World War and its aftermath.

Tsarist Russia and Imperial Germany had been direct combatants during the First World War (1914-1918)—when the Allied powers of Russia, France, Britain, the United States, Italy, and Japan fought against Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria, known as the Central Powers. The socialist revolution within Russia at this time led to the collapse of Tsarist Russia. Russia’s new Bolshevik government, desperate to withdraw from the unsuccessful and costly war, signed a secret bilateral agreement, the Brest-Litovsk Treaty of 1917, which ended hostilities between Russia and Germany by ceding huge swathes of Russian land in Eastern Europe. This treaty was annulled in 1918 when the Allied powers defeated the Axis powers. This disputed territory formed part of Germany’s sense of grievance in the decades following the First World War, as Germany was obliged to accept punitive conditions under the Treaty of Versailles in 1918.

In 1922, the communist Soviet Union (USSR) was formed, covering a vast area of Eurasia.