Stalingrad

The battle for Stalingrad became the focus of Hitler and Stalins determination to win the gruesome, vicious war on the eastern front. The citizens of Stalingrad endured unimaginable hardship; the battle, with fierce hand-to-hand fighting in each room of each building, was brutally destructive to both armies. But the eventual victory of the Red Army, and the failure of Hitlers Operation Barbarossa, was the first defeat of Hitlers territorial ambitions in Europe, and the start of his decline.