area in order to create a new starting position for Army Group South. While IR 211 supported the 294th Infantry Division in defensive tasks in Ternowaja, the other two regiments moved into their starting lines. Meanwhile, the Red Army broke through with a massive infantry and tank deployment as well as numerically superior deployment of personnel and materials near Peremoga east and southeast of Kharkov and tied up large parts of the German units. Units of the 71st Infantry Division defended the area north of Izium on the Donets. The German formations succeeded, inter alia, to encircle the 6th and 57th Soviet Armies. The resulting spring battle of Kharkov from May 17 to 24, 1942 ended with the defeat of the Red Army. This was followed by taking up the defensive positions on the babka. Then the division advanced through Nikolayevka into the Oskol sector. The unit took part in pursuit battles via Belovodsk, Morozovskaya, the Tschir to the Don at the Generalow sector. Further defensive battles developed to the west of Kalatsch. From August 1942 the infantrymen of the 71. ID crossed the Don, took Karpovka and Rossoschka until they finally reached Stalingrad. Advance on Stalingrad 1942 On September 3, 1942, General Friedrich Paulus had the following armed forces available for the conquest of Stalingrad: 30,000 soldiers of the LI. Army Corps (389th, 295th and 71st Infantry Divisions) and 50,000 soldiers of the 4th Panzer Army, XXXXVIII. Panzer Corps and IV Army Corps (24th Panzer Division, 14th PD, 29th Motorized Infantry Division, 94th Infantry Division and the Romanian 20th Infantry Division); a total of 80,000 soldiers. The LI. Army Corps with the 71st Infantry Division under Major General Alexander von Hartmann was to fight its way through the western and northwestern suburbs to Stalingrad. This route was the shortest and easiest from the outer to the inner defensive ring of Stalingrad. On the evening of September 3, 1942, the 71st and 295th Infantry Division moved east, capturing Gumrak station in the fight against the Soviet 2nd Tank Corps (Major General Andrey Kravchenko) and the Soviet 112th Rifle Division (Colonel Ivan Yermolkin). They drove the 23rd Tank Corps under Major General A. F. Popov and the 399th Rifle Division under Colonel Nikolai Grigoryevich Travnikov to the east towards Konnaia station. The aim was to concentrate the main forces for the attack on the Gorodishche and Mamayev Hills. Infantry Regiments 211