Video | 80 years of Stalingrad, the battle in which the USSR stopped Hitler

This February 2 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, the turning point that changed the course of World War II.

When Hitler ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the Nazis had encountered virtually no resistance in their expansion into Europe.

That changed in the USSR and, above all, in the city that bore the name of the communist leader, Josef Stalin.

The historian Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas, an expert on the eastern front of the world conflict or German-Soviet war, explains in the video that accompanies this news item the keys to the battle of Stalingrad.

“Stalingrad was probably the most important battle of World War II.

An entire German Army, more than 200,000 soldiers, were practically annihilated.

The German Army rarely took the initiative again," explains Núñez Seixas in the video, which also shows the best-known historical images of the battle, such as those of the Soviet soldiers who closed the clamp on the city on the Volga or that of the Nazis displaying the white flag at their surrender.

Strategic or symbolic value?

The decision to attack Stalingrad responded to the objective of avoiding a future Soviet counteroffensive that could reach Rostov and isolate the German troops trying to conquer the oil fields of the Caucasus.

But there are historians who doubt its strategic value and highlight the symbolic aspect: Hitler wanted to conquer the city named after Stalin at all costs, while for the Soviet leader it was the place where he had forged his fame as a commander during the Russian Civil War.

In this video you will find:

• Interview with the historian Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas

  , author of 'Volver a Stalingrado.

  The Eastern Front in European Memory, 1945-2021′.

• Historical images

  of Hitler, Stalin, the Nazi invasion of the USSR and the Battle of Stalingrad.

• Animated maps

  of the main military operations related to the Battle of Stalingrad;

  Operation Barbarossa, Operation Blue, Operation Uranus and Operation Ring.