Operation Donnerschlag

During World War II, the German military planned or undertook an operation named Donnerschlag ("Thunderclap" in German).

The December 1942 German Army plan called for a breakout from the besieged city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) by the German Sixth Army and there meet up with the relief Operation Wintergewitter. Donnerschlag was to be the code word for the commencement of Operation Wintergewitter. The operation was downgraded and converted into a defensive stance after Hermann Göring's boast that the Luftwaffe would resupply the surrounded troops at Stalingrad. This effort eventually failed totally, and the Sixth Army, encircled by the Red Army as a result of Operation Uranus, surrendered in early February 1943.

Battle of Stalingrad

Airfields
Axis order of battle
Red Army order of battle
Bombing of Stalingrad in World War II
German commanders
German units

Operations

Nazi Germany	Donnerschlag Winter Storm

Soviet Union	Little Saturn Ring Saturn Uranus

Formations

Army groups
and fronts

	B Centre Don

	Don Southwestern Stalingrad Voronezh

Armies

Axis	German 4th Panzer German 6th Hungarian 2nd Italian 8th Romanian 3rd and 4th

	1st Guards 2nd Guards 3rd Guards 21st 51st 62nd 64th 65th

Corps

XIV Panzer
XL Panzer
XLVIII Panzer
IV
VIII
XI
LI
8th Air

Tank	1st 4th 13th 16th 24th 26th

others	4th Mechanised 13th Mechanised 3rd Guards Cavalry 4th Cavalry 8th Cavalry

Divisions

Panzer	6th 14th 16th 17th 22nd 24th

Infantry	3rd Motorised 29th Motorised 60th Motorised 5th 44th 71st 76th 79th 94th 100th 113th 295th 297th 305th 371st 376th 384th 389th

Guards Rifle	13th 15th 33rd 35th 36th 37th 39th

Rifle	38th 45th 62nd 64th 91st 93rd 95th 112th 138th 157th 169th 173rd 181st 193rd 196th 204th 214th 221st 248th 284th 302nd 308th 422nd 685th

others	414th Anti-Tank 149th Artillery 60th Cavalry 81st Cavalry

Notable participants

Nazi Germany	Adolf Hitler Alexander Edler von Daniels Hermann Göring Wilhelm Hoffman Hermann Hoth Hans-Valentin Hube Erwin König Erich von Manstein Friedrich Paulus Wolfram von Richthofen Arthur Schmidt Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach Karl Strecker

Romania	Constantin Constantinescu-Claps Petre Dumitrescu Mihail Lascăr

Other Axis members	Viktor Pavičić (Croatia) Italo Gariboldi (Italy) Gusztáv Jány (Hungary)

Soviet Union	Joseph Stalin Hazi Aslanov Vasily Badanov Vasily Chuikov Nikolay Dyatlenko Sasha Filippov Peter Gitelman Vasily Grossman Nikita Khrushchev Dmitry Lelyushenko Rodion Malinovsky Yakov Pavlov Alexander Rodimtsev Konstantin Rokossovsky Alexander Shcherbakov Semyon Timoshenko Aleksandr Vasilevsky Nikolay Voronov Erich Weinert Andrei Yeremenko Vasily Zaytsev Georgy Zhukov

Significant locations

Barmaley Fountain Barrikady Factory Grain Elevator Gumrak Kalach Mamayev Kurgan Pavlov's House Pitomnik Airfield Red October Steel Factory River Don River Volga Tatsinskaya Airfield Tsaritsa Gorge Stalingrad Tractor Factory

In memoriam

The Motherland Calls Stalingrad Madonna Sword of Stalingrad Battle of Stalingrad in popular culture

See also Battle of the Caucasus
Battle of Kursk
Battle of Nikolayevka
Case Blue
Operation Barbarossa
Second Battle of Kharkov
Third Battle of Kharkov
Volgograd

Famous quotes containing the word operation:

“You may read any quantity of books, and you may almost as ignorant as you were at starting, if you don’t have, at the back of your minds, the change for words in definite images which can only be acquired through the operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena of nature.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)