Romanian Armies in the Battle of Stalingrad

Battle of Stalingrad
Part of World War II
Romanian troops in the Don-Stalingrad area, 1942
Date 19 November 1942 - 2 February 1943 Location Stalingrad, USSR Result Decisive Soviet victory
Belligerents
Romania  Germany  Hungary  Italy Croatia	Soviet Union
Commanders and leaders
Petre Dumitrescu Constantin Constantinescu	Georgy Zhukov
Units involved
North: 3rd Army South: 4th Army	North: 1st Guards Army 5th Tank Army 21st Army 65th Army 3rd Guards Army South: 51st Army 57th Army
Strength
North: 152,492 men South: 75,580 men	448,631+ men 10,819 artillery pieces 1,183 tanks 790 aircraft
Casualties and losses
158,854 casualties heavy losses in artillery and armor	Heavy 150 tanks

Two Romanian armies, the Third and the Fourth, were involved in the Battle of Stalingrad, helping to protect the northern and southern flanks respectively of the German 6th Army as it tried to conquer the city of Stalingrad, defended by the Soviet Red Army in mid to late 1942. Overpowered and poorly equipped, these forces were unable to stop the Soviet November offensive which punched through both flanks and left the 6th Army encircled in Stalingrad. The Romanians suffered enormous losses, which effectively ended their offensive capability on the Eastern Front for the remainder of the war.

Following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939, Romania lost almost one third of its territory without a single shot being fired, as Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were annexed by the Soviet Union on June 28, 1940, after Romania yielded to a Soviet ultimatum. As a result, King Carol II was forced to abdicate in September 1940, and General Ion Antonescu rose to power.

In October, Romania joined the Axis and expressed its availability for a military campaign against the Soviet Union, in order to recapture the provinces ceded in June. After a highly successful summer campaign in 1941 as part of Army Group South, the Romanian Armed Forces regained the territory between the Prut and Dniestr rivers. General Antonescu decided to continue to advance alongside the Wehrmacht, disregarding the Romanian High Command's doubts over the possibility of sustaining a mobile warfare campaign deep inside Soviet territory. In October 1941, the Romanian Fourth Army occupied Odessa after a protracted siege which caused more than 80,000 casualties on the Romanian side, severe destruction and many casualties among the civilian population (the Odessa massacre). The spring and summer of 1942 saw the Third and Fourth Romanian Armies in action in the Battle of Crimea and the Battle of the Caucasus. By the fall of 1942, the two armies were poised to join the attack on Stalingrad.

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