Battle of Stalingrad | History, Summary, Location, Deaths, & Facts
Battle of Stalingrad, (July 17, 1942–February 2, 1943), successful Soviet defense of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd), Russia, USSR, during World War II.
contemplate
The turning point of the battle came with a huge Soviet counteroffensive, code-named Operation Uranus (November 19–23), which had been planned by Generals Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, Aleksandr Mikhailovich Vasilevsky, and Nikolay Nikolayevich Voronov. It was launched in two spearheads, some 50 miles (80 km) north and south of the German salient whose tip was at Stalingrad. The counteroffensive utterly surprised the Germans, who thought the Soviets incapable of mounting such an attack. The operation was a “deep penetration” maneuver, attacking not the main German force at the forefront of the battle for Stalingrad—the 250,000 remaining men of the Sixth Army and Fourth Panzer Army, both formidable foes—but instead hitting the weaker flanks. Those flanks were vulnerably exposed on the open steppes surrounding the city and were weakly defended by undermanned, undersupplied, overstretched, and undermotivated Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian troops. The attacks quickly penetrated deep into the flanks, and by November 23 the two prongs of the attack had linked up at Kalach, about 60 miles (100 km) west of Stalingrad; the encirclement of the two German armies in Stalingrad was complete. The German high command urged Hitler to allow Paulus and his forces to break out of the encirclement and rejoin the main German forces west of the city, but Hitler would not <anchor>contemplate</anchor> a retreat from the Volga River and ordered Paulus to “stand and fight.” With winter setting in and food and medical supplies dwindling, Paulus’s forces grew weaker. Hitler declared that the Sixth Army would be supplied by the Luftwaffe, but the air convoys could deliver only a fraction of the necessary supplies.
Contemplate Definition & Meaning | Britannica Dictionary
Contemplate Definition & Meaning \| Britannica Dictionary

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# contemplate

1 ENTRIES FOUND:


- [contemplate (verb)](/dictionary/contemplate)

contemplate /ˈkɑːntəmˌpleɪt/verb

contemplates;contemplated;contemplating

contemplate

/ˈkɑːntəmˌpleɪt/

verb

contemplates;contemplated;contemplating

Britannica Dictionary definition of CONTEMPLATE

**1**

**a**\[\+ object\]:to think deeply or carefully about (something)

- I stopped to _contemplate_ \[= _ponder_\] what might have happened.

- He _contemplated_ the meaning of the poem for a long time.

- Life without them is too awful to _contemplate_. \[=too awful to even think about\]


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**b**\[no object\]:to think deeply

- I'd like some time to just sit and _contemplate_.


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**2**

\[\+ object\]:to think about doing (something):[consider](/dictionary/consider)

- She's _contemplating_ moving to the city. = She's _contemplating_ a move to the city.

- They're _contemplating_ marriage. \[=they're thinking about getting married\]


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**3**

\[\+ object\]:to look carefully at (something)

- She stood and quietly _contemplated_ the scene that lay before her.


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