Battle of the Atlantic, 1939–1945
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- Operation ‘Torch’ , November 1942
Battle of Stalingrad – November 1942 - February 1943. The three-month battle is often seen to be the war’s turning point. After Stalingrad the German army would make no further advances in the USSR. Germans had been fighting in the Soviet Union since June 1941. Though they had been stopped by winter outside of Moscow and Leningrad, they just used that time to train and reinforce. In the summer of 1942, Germans headed to the south in hopes of capturing the Caucasus Mountains and Stalingrad – the major industrial center. When the Germans approached Stalingrad, they conquered it house by house in brutal hand to hand combat. By the end of September, they controlled nine tenths of the city, or what was left of it. Then winter set in. The Soviets used the opportunity to roll fresh tanks across the frozen landscape and begin a massive counterattack. The Soviet army closed around Stalingrad, trapping the Germans in and around the city and cutting off their supplies. The German situation was hopeless, but Hitler ordered them to stay. The fighting continued as winter turned Stalingrad into a frozen wasteland. The German commander finally surrendered at the end of January, 1943, and his troops surrendered two days later. In defending Stalingrad, the Soviets lost 1.1 million soldiers – more than all American deaths during the entire war. The Battle of Stalingrad was a struggle which almost completely destroyed the morale and defenses of both the German and Russian army. The Soviets continued to move the Germans west as other Allies pushed them east. Once the Soviets reached Berlin, it took an additional 10 days before Berlin finally surrendered. 
Operation ‘Torch’, November 1942 Rather than risking an invasion of German controlled Europe, the Allies decided to invade Axis-controlled North Africa instead. In November 1942 some 107,000 allied troops, mostly American, landed in Casablanca, Oran and Algiers in North Africa. From there they sped eastward, chasing the Afrika Korps (German tank corps) led by General Erwin Rommel, the legendary desert fox. After months of heavy fighting, the Afrika Korps surrendered in May 1943. Roosevelt, Churchill and their commanders met in Casablanca and decided that they would only accept unconditional surrender of Axis powers. The next step would be to invade Italy, a far less risky proposition than attacking mainland Europe. 
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