COBI Battle of Stalingrad Set 2061

COBI's Battle of Stalingrad set contains 76 blocks making six figures and a brick campfire: a Red Army sniper with a scoped Mosin-Nagant, two Soviet infantrymen with a PPSh-41 and an SVT-40, a German MG-42 gunner, and two Wehrmacht infantrymen with an MP-40 and a Kar98k, one in winter camouflage. All markings are printed; the set contains no stickers.

Why the encirclement worked

Stalingrad is remembered as fighting room by room through a ruined city, and that part is accurate. What decided it happened somewhere else.

By November 1942 the German Sixth Army had most of its strength committed inside the city. Holding the long flanks on the open steppe either side of it were Romanian, Italian and Hungarian armies — fewer anti-tank guns, less armour, longer frontages. When the Soviet counter-offensive opened on 19 November it did not attack the city at all. It struck both flanks, broke through in days, and closed the ring behind the Sixth Army.

The street fighting that has given the battle its name was, in that sense, the trap: it drew the strongest German formations into rubble where their advantages counted for least, and left the weakest troops holding the ground that mattered. Around 250,000 men were encircled. Roughly 91,000 surrendered in February 1943, and about 6,000 of them came home.

In the COBI range

Part of the Historical Collection WWII figure series, alongside D-Day (2058A), German infantry (2060), Monte Cassino (2063) and Berlin (2064).

Specifications

Pieces: 76 · Figures: 6 · Age: 5+ · Also included: brick-built campfire