MAPS OF HISTORY · ON THIS DAY · NOVEMBER 19 · Operation Uranus begins at Stalingrad (1942)ON THIS DAY · 19 NOVEMBER 1942
Operation Uranus begins at Stalingrad
Operation Uranus: Soviet pincers smash the flanks at Stalingrad and snap shut behind the Sixth Army. The war has a hinge.
19 NOVEMBER 1942 · THE WAR ROOM — WW2, 1936–1945 These maps are reconstructed from published sources · US War Department — Atlas of the World Battle Fronts (1945) · Cliopatria v0.2.1 — dated political boundaries · Regional history institute — Italian annexations of1941, Fiume province and Krk · IGM Fiume, 1:25,000, sheet53B II SE — boundary established in1924 · Natural Earth — physical reference geography · Yugoslavia (1929–1939) location map — international frontier and Adriatic coast · Treaty of Rome (1924), division of Fiume and west-bank boundary · Murli / rowanwindwhistler — Slovakia border changes, 1938–1945 · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — The Holocaust in Slovakia · US Military Academy — The War in Eastern Europe (1952), maps7 and15 · Slovak Nation’s Memory Institute — The First Vienna Award
Source details United States War Department, General Staff,1945. US Army official work; public domain Cliopatria contributors / Seshat Global History Databank. CC BY4.0 · Dated polity and constituent territory selections; campaign-dependent occupation overlays reconstructed separately. Regional history institute — Italian annexations of1941, Fiume province and Krk. Historical geographic facts consulted; source prose and artwork not republished Istituto Geografico Militare, Fiume (printed1946; 1927 survey with1931–1940 updates), reproduced by Istituto regionale per la storia della Resistenza e dell’Età contemporanea nel Friuli Venezia Giulia. Independent reconstruction from graticule coordinates and boundary observations; archive page reserves artwork rights.. Geographical-fact reconstruction; original archive artwork not distributed Natural Earth. Public domain NordNordWest/Wikipedia. Converted from the published SVG to WGS84; eastern Italian regional territory extracted. Source cites Velhagen & Klasings Großer Volksatlas (1938).. CC BY-SA 3.0 Germany 1924 agreement interpreted alongside the regional history institute and City of Rijeka’s explanation of the Donja/Gornja Drenova division.. Historical geographic facts; citation only Murli; SVG adaptation by rowanwindwhistler (2021). CC BY-SA 2.5; derived geographic paths under the same license · Georeferenced actual published vector regions using eight printed city positions; no map artwork or labels in the atlas. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — The Holocaust in Slovakia. Historical chronology consulted; no source prose or artwork republished Department of Military Art and Engineering, United States Military Academy,1952. US federal government work; public domain maps Slovak Nation’s Memory Institute — The First Vienna Award. Historical territorial chronology consulted; no source artwork or prose republished The moving front follows the source-map position for 1942-11 /1943-07. The source date is kept separate from the chapter anchor; manual registration has the precision of a regional map.
The source’s 1943 bridgehead is the nearest regional reference for the Tunisian campaign footprint in November 1942, though it does not resolve the exact front that month. After the May 1943 surrender, the area is Allied-controlled.
Slovak territory is reconstructed from the published 1938–1945 border-change map, which separates the client state from Hungarian and German annexations. This regional source does not resolve small northern frontier changes or survey-level detail. After August 1944, German military occupation supersedes the client-state fill.
The eastern Italian frontier uses the published 1930s regional map and a reconstruction of the 1924 Fiume boundary. Source conquests after April 1941 remain separately dated.
The dates of published political outlines retain the resolution available in their sources. Military fronts and operational perimeters have their own source and method records.
proxy: Late 1942–May 1943 campaign component; dated control by chapter · reconstruction: 1936–1942 · reconstruction: 1939–1944 · reconstruction: 1941–1944 · reconstruction: 1942-11 /1943-07 · reconstruction: 1942.9 · reconstruction: 1942–1942 · reconstruction: 1942–1943 · reconstruction: 1942–1945 · trace: 1942-11 /1943-07 · vector: 1912–1955 · vector: 1936–1944 · vector: 1936–1945 · vector: 1938–1972 · vector: 1939–1944 · vector: 1939–2023 · vector: 1940–1942 · vector: 1940–1943 · vector: 1941–1943 · vector: 1941–1944 · vector: 1942–1942 · vector: 1942–1943 · vector: 1942–1945
Layer records and reconstruction methods
The moment in context The German offensive of 1942, Case Blue, had a practical object: the Caucasus oil fields. Germany lacked secure fuel for a long war, and taking the oil promised to help sustain it. The advance also brought German forces to Stalingrad, on the Volga. The city guarded a transport route and covered the flank of the Caucasus operation; its name made it a prize in a contest of prestige between Hitler and Stalin. Forces committed to the city could not also be concentrated on the oil fields. Germany secured neither objective.
From Stalingrad and El Alamein , chapter 9 of The War Room — WW2, 1936–1945 (NOV 1942).
Teach this in 5 minutes Why it happened — Oil and the Volga. Germany needed secure fuel, and Case Blue aimed at the oil of the Caucasus. Stalingrad also mattered: it stood on the Volga and covered the…The turn — Operation Uranus, 19–23 November. Between 19 and 23 November, Soviet pincers broke through the overstretched Romanian-held flanks and met near Kalach. The Sixth Army was surrounded.…What it changed — A German army lost. The loss of a complete German field army carried a political shock as well as a military cost. Germany declared three days of mourning; occupied…Then ask the room: Why did Hitler refuse to let the Sixth Army attempt a breakout? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
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