Episode 2: In the early morning of November 19, 1942, one of the most moving chapters of World War II began.
A dense fog lay in the lowlands between the Don and the Volga.
At 5:20 a.m., several thousand Soviet guns and Stalin organs opened fire.
"It was breathtaking," Captain Gerard Dengler recalls with a shudder.
The Soviet attack hit the Germans at their most vulnerable point: in the rear of the front, where allied Romanians and Italians secured the flanks of the 6th Army.
Their resistance didn't last long.
Poorly equipped and doubting the sense of the campaign, the units of the "allies" surrendered to the overwhelming superiority.