Russia will mark the 60th anniversary of the victory of the Great Patriotic War on Monday. The Battle of Stalingrad is one of the great battles of the war against Nazi Germany.

In July 1942, German dictator Adolf Hitler, who wanted Stalingrad, now called Volgograd, to serve as a base for a German invasion of the Caucasus region, ordered General Friedrich Paulus, commander of Nazi Germany's Sixth Army, to capture the city.

The five-month-long battle, which claimed more lives than any other single battle in World War II, ended in Nazi Germany's first major defeat and is regarded by some historians as one of the most decisive engagements in written history.

The battle started in August 1942 as Germany's Sixth Army launched a lightning offensive on the River Volga. By Sept. 3, the German forces had pushed Soviet troops back to the west bank of the Volga. Germany's carpet-bombings demolished the city into rubble, but the shattered buildings provided cover for Soviet soldiers.

The Soviet forces and the German troops were stuck in grueling hand-to-hand fighting in the ruins. By the end of October, the Germans were short of ammunition while the Soviet soldiers, under General Georgy Zhukov and General Aleksandr M. Vasilyevsky's lead, were replenished with troops, food, ammunition, tanks and guns.

The Soviet forces took the Germans by complete surprise on Nov. 19 with a counteroffensive -- known as Operation Uranus. German forces soon found themselves trapped in the city and their supply routes cut off by Soviet forces.

With Hitler's promised airlift of supplies failing to materialize and Soviet forces halting the relief operation to the German forces in late December, the Sixth Army began to run out of ammunition, fuel and food.

The Soviet forces launched their final offensive in January 1943, retaking Stalingrad one district at a time and forcing Paulus' troops to surrender on Feb. 2.

The battle, which gave a significant blow to Nazi Germany and halted the German advance into the Soviet Union, cost the lives of more than 1 million Soviet soldiers, 800,000 German, Romanian and Italian Axis troops and about 500,000 civilians, according to Russian figures.