Operation Little Saturn

The Battle of Stalingrad is considered by many experts and historians to have been the turning point in World War Two in Europe. After the Germans bust intent to get Moscow, the Sixth Army was order to take Stalingrad because this city had all the products Russia needed to survive, without them a big crisis will appear. Also because Stalingrad was Russia’s center of communications in the south as well as being a center for manufacturing, after attacking this city, they would attack Moscow again. From a strategic point of view it would have been imprudent to have left a major city unconquered in your rear as they advanced. 

The Battle for Stalingrad was fought during the winter of 1942 to 1943. That was an advantage for the Russian army because the Germans suits were not prepare for a cold climate. In September 1942, the German commander of the Sixth Army, General Paulus, assisted by the Fourth Panzer Army, advanced on the city of Stalingrad. His primary task was to secure the oil fields in the Caucasus and to do this, Paulus was ordered by Hitler to take Stalingrad. The Germans final target was to have been Baku. 

Operation Saturn, also known as Operation Little Saturn, was a Red Army operation on the Eastern Front of World War II that led to battles in the northern Caucasus and Donets Basin regions of the Soviet Union from December 1942 to February 1943. The success of this operation during the Battle of Stalingrad was launched on November 19 of 1942 and trapped over 300,000 troops of General Friedrich Paulus's German 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army in Stalingrad. To exploit this victory, the Soviet general staff planned a winter campaign of continuous and highly ambitious offensive operations, codenamed "Saturn". Later Joseph Stalin reduced his ambitious plans - due to his initial huge losses attacking the Axis troops - to a relatively small campaign codenamed "Operation Little Saturn". 

After the defeat of the Romanian Army around Stalingrad and the successful encirclement of the German Sixth Army, Stalin started a counter-offensive nicknamed "Operation Little Saturn" in order to enlarge the area controlled by the Soviet Army in eastern Ukraine until Kharkov and Rostov. 

The first stage was unleashed at December of 1942, an attempt to cut off the German Army in the Caucasus that had to be rapidly revised when General Erich von Manstein launched Operation Winter Storm on 12 December in an attempt to relieve the trapped armies at Stalingrad. While General Rodion Malinovsky's blocked the German advance on Stalingrad, the Operation Little Saturn was launched on 16 December. 

This operation consisted of a pincer movement which threatened to cut off the relieving forces. General Fyodor Isidorovich Kuznetsov's 1st Guards Army and General Dmitri Danilovich Lelyushenko's 3rd Guards Army attacked from the north, encircling 130,000 soldiers of the Italian 8th Army on the Don and advancing to Millerovo. 

With the relief column under threat of encirclement, Manstein had no choice but to retreat back to Kotelnikovo on 29 December, leaving the encircled Germans at Stalingrad to their fate. Of the 250,000 soldiers encircled 90,000 survived to be taken prisoner. Only 5,000 lived to return to Germany. 

The second stage of operations started on 13 January of 1943 with an attack by four armies of General Golikov's Voronezh Front that encircled and destroyed the Hungarian Second Army near Svoboda on the Don. As a consequence the Hungarian Second Army, as most other Axis armies ceased to represent a meaningful fighting force, in fact the German Sixth Army, encircled in Stalingrad, was destroyed on February 2 of 1943. 

On January 13 of 1943, the Soviets launched their second stage of Operation Saturn, where four armies of Soviet General Filipp Golikov's Voronezh Front attacked, encircled, and destroyed the Hungarian Second Army near Svoboda on the Don to the northwest of the Italians. 

Although the Alpini corps was ordered to hold the front at all costs, preparations for a general retreat began on January 15. On the evening of January 17, the commanding officer of the corps General Gabriele Nasci finally ordered the full retreat. 

At this point the Julia and Cuneense divisions were already heavily decimated and only the Tridentina division was still capable of conducting effective combat operations. 

Lucia Valdivia
Arianne Velez