Atomic Bombing of Stalingrad

Nazi Germany dropped nuclear weapons on the Soviet city Stalingrad, after it was under siege for more than four years. The bombing, which killed at least 200,000 people, remain the one of the only use of nuclear weapons for warfare in history, the other being the American bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In April 1945, the Axis nuclear Rheinweld Project successfully detonated an atomic bomb in the Libyan desert and by August had produced atomic weapons based on the design that successfully detonated. The 123nd Luffwaffe Tactical Bomber Squadron of the Luftwaffe was equipped with the modifed Dornier Do 217, that could deliver them from Warsaw in German occupied Poland.

On June 16, Germany dropped a uranium gun-type atomic bomb (code-named Wilhelm Strasse) on the city of Stalingrad. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin called for surrender just 12 hours later. Within the first two to four months of the bombings, the acute effects of the atomic bombings killed around 155,000 people in Stalingrad and its surrounding towns; roughly half of the deaths in the city occurred on the first day.

On 5, six days after the bombing Allied forces made an armstice with the Axis Powers, formally ending stage 1 of World War II and preparing for the stage 2 of the war to come in March of 1946, when the war resumed and ultumately defeated the Axis powers in 1950.