Aarushhh/wikipedia-simple-splitted huggingface dataset:
The Knights of the Round Table were characters in the legends about King Arthur. They were the best knights in King Arthur's kingdom, and lived in King Arthur's castle, Camelot. They were called the Knights of the Round Table because of a special table that was in Camelot, that was round instead of rectangular. This meant that everyone who sat around it was seen as trustworthy and equal.

Code of Chivalry 
In order to become a Knight of the Round Table, a knight had to prove he was chivalrous (polite) enough. In the legend, the knights swore a Code of Chivalry, which is much like an oath is today. This meant that they promised to uphold the rules given to them once they became a Knight of the Round Table.

Sir Thomas Malory wrote a book based on the legend of King Arthur. It was called Le Morte d'Arthur. In it, he wrote his version of the Code of Chivalry:
To never do outrage nor murder (not to assault or murder anybody)
 Always to flee treason (do not commit treason, a crime against your country or king)
 To by no means be cruel but to give mercy unto him who asks for mercy (Do not be mean. Grant mercy to those who ask, even in combat.)
 To always do ladies, gentlewomen and widows succor ('succor' is an old word for help; this means that the knight must promise to help women if they need it.)
 To never force ladies, gentlewomen or widows (never 'harm' women.)
 Not to take up battles in wrongful quarrels for love or worldly goods (do not ever join in fights over anything less than God or country)
 To fear God and maintain His Church

List of the Knights of the Round Table 
In different stories, there are different numbers of knights, ranging from 12 to more than 150. The Winchester Round Table shows 25 Knights. The most commonly mentioned in literature include:

This is a list of other knights mentioned as being Knights of the Round Table.
References in other works

Kingsman: The Secret Service 
In the 2014 movie, Kingsman: The Secret Service, each of the Kingsman agents is named after one of the knights of the Round Table. Gary "Eggsy" Unwin, the main character, has the code name 'Galahad'. This is also the code name of Harry Hart, Eggsy's mentor. Roxy Morton, the only female Kingsman, has the codename 'Lancelot'. 'Arthur' is the codename for the leader of Kingsman, while 'Merlin' is the codename for their trainer and tech coordinator. These characters are also mentioned in "Kingsman: The golden circle", the second part of the franchise.
One of the fictional Fate media franchise's most well known characters, "Saber" aka Artoria Pendragon, is a female character based on King Arthur. In the mobile game Fate/Grand Order, she alongside various other Knights of the Round Table (Lancelot, Gawain, Bedivere, Tristan), as well as Mordred, can be summoned as usable characters. Additionally, in Fate/Grand Order, Sir Galahad is the Heroic Spirit that was summoned into the body of another character in the game, Mash Kyrielight, and therefore is the one to bestow her his powers.

Related pages
Round Table

Other websites 
Timeless Myths page for Knights of the Round Table 

Arthurian legend
Fictional knights
The executive is the branch of government that is responsible for the day-to-day management of the state. (Executive is short for executive branch or executive power.)

Under the doctrine of the separation of powers, the executive is not supposed to make laws (role of the legislature), nor to interpret them (role of the judiciary). The executive is supposed to put the laws into action.

The executive is led by the head of government. The head of government is assisted by a number of ministers, who usually have responsibilities for particular areas (e.g. health, education, foreign affairs), and by many government employees or civil servants.
In a presidential system, this person (the President) may also be the head of State, but in a parliamentary system, he or she is usually the leader of the largest party in the legislature and is most commonly termed the Prime Minister (Taoiseach in the Republic of Ireland, (Federal) Chancellor in Germany and Austria). In France, executive power is shared between the President and the Prime Minister and this system has been reproduced in a number of former French colonies. Switzerland and Bosnia and Herzegovina have similar systems.

Related pages
 Constitution
 Constitutional economics
 Political economy

Government-related organizations
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a group of scientists chosen by governments and other large groups from around the world who study the way that humans are making the Earth heat up unnaturally. The group was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), two organizations of the United Nations.

The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President of the United States Al Gore who won for working on the same problems.

A lot of IPCC work is publishing reports about the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),  an international agreement that human inventions and chemistry may make the Earth too hot to live on. The UNFCCC was the beginning of the Kyoto Protocol. Members of the IPCC read, write, and calculate as much as they can. Only member states of the WMO and UNEP may be members of IPCC.
A lot of professors trust the IPCC work.
IPCC Reports 
The first IPCC report was published in 1990. More was added to that report in 1992. The second report was published in 1995, the third was published in 2001, and a fourth in 2007. Each report is in three books called Working Groups 1, 2 and 3. Most times "the IPCC report" means the Working Group I report, which is about basic climate change.

IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007 
The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) was completed in early 2007. Like earlier IPCC reports, it contains four reports, three of them from its working groups.
Working Group 1 was about the "Physical Science Basis of Climate Change."
The Working Group 1 report was published on February 2 2007 and revised on February 2007. There was also a February 2 2007 press release.  The full Working Group 1 report was published in March. The main report says:
 Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
 Most of the increase in globally averaged temperatures since the middle of the 20th century is very likely to be caused by humans using gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and CFCs.
 Warming and sea level rise will continue for centuries, even if greenhouse gas was not used any more, the amount of warming and sea level rise depends on how much fossil fuel is burnt for the next 100 years (pages 14 and 18).
 The chance that global warming and rising sea levels is natural is less than 5%.
 World temperatures could rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 °C (2.0 and 11.5 °F) during the 21st century (table 3) and:
 Sea levels may rise by 18 to 59 cm (7.08 to 23.22 in) [table 3].
Both past and future carbon dioxide production will continue to make global warming and sea level rise for more than a thousand years.
 Carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere have increased a lot because of human activities since 1750
The Summary for Policymakers for the Working Group 2 (IPCC wg2 ) report was published on April 6, 2007.
The Summary for Policymakers for the Working Group 3 report  was published on May 4, 2007.

IPCC Third Assessment Report: Climate Change 2001 

The Third Assessment Report (TAR) contains four reports, three of them from its working groups:
 Working Group 1: The Scientific Basis
 Working Group 2: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
 Working Group 3: Mitigation
 Synthesis Report

The "headlines" from the Summary for Policymakers in The Scientific Basis were:
More scientists are believing in a warming world and other changes in climate (The average global temperature has increased during the 20th century by about 0.6 °C; Temperatures have risen during the past four decades in the lowest 8 kilometers of the atmosphere; Snow and ice have decreased)
 Emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols due to human activities continue to change the atmosphere in ways that are expected to affect the climate
 More scientists believe future climate change can be predicted. Climate prediction has improved but not enough
 There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming over the past 50 years was caused by humans
 Humans will continue to change atmosphere in the 21st century
 Global average temperature and sea level are projected to rise by the IPCC SRES scenarios
The estimate for the climate sensitivity was 1.5 to 4.5 °C; and the average temperature was predicted to increase by 1.4 to 5.8 Celsius degrees between 1990 and 2100, and the sea level was predicted to rise between 0.1 and 0.9 meters.  The range of predictions is based on different levels of human carbon dioxide production. Each perdiction has different possible outcomes.

Changing scientists reports 

MIT professor Richard Lindzen, who works for the IPCC Working Group 1, claims some of the IPCC reports are wrong. He told the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that he was unhappy about the Executive Summary based on his work in May 2001. He said that he told the IPCC they were making mistakes and the Working Group 1 report said that meant they were "making improvements".

Professor Lindzen said:
The Working Group 1 report said:
  Coupled models can provide credible simulations of both the present annual mean climate and the climatological seasonal cycle over broad continental scales for most variables of interest for climate change. Clouds and humidity remain sources of significant uncertainty but there have been incremental improvements in simulations of these quantities.
 Confidence in the ability of models to project future climates is increased by the ability of several models to reproduce the warming trend in 20th century surface air temperature when driven by radiative forcing due to increasing greenhouse gases and sulphate aerosols. However, only idealised scenarios of only sulphate aerosols have been used.

IPCC Second Assessment Report: Climate Change 1995
Climate Change 1995, the IPCC Second Assessment Report (SAR), was finished in 1996. It was made in four parts:
 A synthesis to help interpret UNFCCC article 2.
 The Science of Climate Change (Working Group 1)
 Impacts, Adaptations and Mitigation of Climate Change (Working Group 2)
 Economic and Social Dimensions of Climate Change (Working Group 3)

Each of the working groups was made by its own working group, and each has a Summary for Policymakers (SPM) that is a list of agreements by governments. The Summary for Policy Makers of the Working Group 1 report says:
Greenhouse gas has continued to increase
 CFC aerosols make radiation in the atmposphere
 Climate has changed over the past century (air temperature has increased by between 0.3 and 0.6 °C since the late 19th century; this is almost the same as the 1990 report).
 The evidence is that humans are changing the Earths climate (a lot of extra work was done since the 1990 report to see the difference between natural climate change and human changes, for example: the effects of aerosol gases)
 Climate is will continue to change in the future
 We cannot be sure of how much human effects will happen in future

Changing what the scientists say 

Three scientists involved in climate research believe that the IPCC reports do not accurately summarize the state of knowledge.
On December 20, 1995, Reuters news agency claimed a British scientist Keith Shine, one of IPCC's most important authors, talking about the Policymakers' Summary, said: "We produce a draft, and then the policymakers go through it line by line and change the way it is presented.... It's peculiar that they have the final say in what goes into a scientists' report". Keith Shine did not say what differences the changes make.

Frederick Seitz, a physicist of Rockefeller University, said the IPCC report was not good, writing "I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report". He opposed it in the Leipzig Declaration of S. Fred Singer's Science and Environmental Policy Project.

Professor Seitzs comments were opposed by the presidents of the American Meteorological Society and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, who wrote about an effort by some people make it seem that humans had not changed the climate. Special insert .
S. Fred Singer said that :
 Chapter 8 was changed;
 Three important parts — the views of the authors, contributors, and reviewers —  should have been put in the Summary but they were deleted;

Benjamin D. Santer, Lead Author of Chapter 8 of 1995 IPCC Working Group 1 report, said :
 The purpose was to produce the best possible and most clear report of the science, and was under his full control.
 None of the changes were politically motivated.

Economic report 

The Second Assessment Report was the only one with a chapter on the economic effect of climate change. This part of the report was thought to be unfair because the value of life in poorer countries was less.

IPCC Supplementary Report: 1992 
The 1992 supplementary report was an update of the 1990 report, requested for the Framework Convention on Climate Change at the Earth Summit (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
It did not make any important changes to the 1990 report. It claimed the prediction methods in the First Assessment Report, were now improved, but did not include aerosol or ozone changes.

IPCC First Assessment Report: 1990 
The IPCC first assessment report was completed in 1990, and used to make the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The Working Group 1 report says:
 We are certain there is a natural greenhouse effect...; humans are making the greenhouse effect stronger by releasing these gases: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, CFC gases and nitrous oxide gas. These gases trap heat on the Earth.
 We calculate that: ...CO2 has been responsible for over half the stronger greenhouse effect; gases that stay in the air for a long time need to be used 60% less to stop making the greenhouse effect even stronger
 We predict: global temperature during the [21st] century will rise by 0.3 oC per decade (but possibly between 0.2 to 0.5 oC per decade); this is more warming than the past 10,000 years; Some other sudies predict that temperature will rise between 0.2 oC and 0.1 oC per decade.
 The predictions are not exact because we do not yet understand the effects of clouds, ice sheets, oceans and other important parts.
We believe that world temperature has increased by 0.3 to 0.6 oC over the last 100 years...; This warming does not appear to be caused by humans but it is possible that humans have caused this warming. We will not be sure how much of the warming has been caused by humans for a decade or more.
IPCC structure 
The Chairperson of the IPCC is Rajendra K. Pachauri, elected in May 2002; before that Robert Watson headed the IPCC. The chairperson is helped by an elected Bureau including vice-chairpersons, Working Group co-chairpersons and a Secretariat (see below).

The IPCC Panel is made of people from governments and other groups.  Scientific experts are preferred. Meetings of the IPCC and IPCC Working Groups are held by members of governments. Non-Governmental and Intergovernmenta Organizations may be allowed to attend as observers. Meetings of the IPCC Bureau, workshops, experts and lead authors are by invitation only. 350 government officials and climate change experts visited the 2003 meeting. The meeting report  says there were 322 persons in attendance at meetings with about seven-eighths of visitors being from governments.

Major groups
Major groups 

There are several major groups:
 IPCC Panel: Meets about once a year and controls the organization. The Panel is the IPCC corporate entity.
 Chairperson: Elected by the Panel.
 Secretariat: Controls all activities.  Supported by UNEP and WMO.
 Bureau: Elected by the Panel.  Chaired by the Chair.  30 members include IPCC Vice-Chairpersons, Co-Chairpersons and Vice-Chairpersons of Working Groups and Task Force.
 Working Groups: Each has two Co-Chairpersons, one from a richer country and one from a poorer country, and a technical support unit.
 Working Group 1: Studies the science of the climate system and climate change.
 Working Group 2: Studies the effects and dangers of human activity in relation to climate change and gives ideas for how to change human activity.
 Working Group 3: Studies options for limiting greenhouse gas and other ways to reduce climate change.
 Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories
The IPCC receives funding from UNEP, WMO, and its own Trust Fund which gets money from governments.

Contributors 
People from over 130 countries contributed to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report over 6 years.  These people included more than 2500 scientific expert reviewers, more than 800 contributing authors, and more than 450 lead authors.

The Working Group 1 report of 2007 (including the summary for policy makers) included contributions by 600 authors from 40 countries, over 620 expert reviewers, a large number of government reviewers, and representatives from 113 governments.

Activities 
The IPCC activities are controlled by the WMO Executive Council and UNEP Governing Council to support the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
In April 2006, the IPCC released the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report or AR4. Reports of the workshops held so far are available at the IPCC website.
 Working Group 1  :
 Report was finished during February of 2007  .
 By May 2005, there had been 3 AR4 meetings, the only public information was the meeting locations, an author list, one invitation, one agenda, and one list of presentation titles.
 By December 2006, governments were reviewing the Summary for Policy Makers.
 Working Group 2  :
 Report was finished in mid-2007.
 In May 2005, there had been 2 AR4 meetings, with no public information released.
 One meeting with Working Group 3 workers had taken place, with a published report.
 Working Group 3  :
 Report was to be finished in mid-2007.
 In May 2005, there had been 1 AR4 meeting, with no public information released.
The AR4 Synthesis Report (SYR) was finalized in November 2007. Documentation on the meetings for the AR4 are available  , the outlines for the Working Group 1 report  and a provisional author list .

The IPCC also supports other activities, such as the Data Distribution Centre Welcome to the IPCC Data Distribution Centre and the National Greenhouse Gas Inventories Programme IPCC - Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. This involves estimating greenhouse gas based on the levels of fuel used, industrial production and so on.

The IPCC also answers questions from the UNFCCC Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA).

Publications

Preparation of the reports 
The IPCC reports are a collection of peer reviewed and published science.  Each IPCC report explains improvements to the previous report and also explains where more research is needed.
There are usually three stages in the review :
 Expert review (6–8 weeks)
 Government/expert review
 Government review of: Summaries for Policymakers, Overview Chapters, and Synthesis Report
Review comments are open to the public for at least five years.

There are several ways to agree what goes into the reports:
 approval: Line by line agreement.
 Working Group Summaries for Policymakers are approved by their Working Groups.
 Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers is approved by Panel.
 adoption: Section by section (and not line by line) agreement.
 Panel adopts Overview Chapters of Methodology Reports.
 Panel adopts IPCC Synthesis Report.
 acceptance: No line by line discussion. Most people agree.
 Working Groups accept their reports.
 Task Force Reports are accepted by the Panel.
 Working Group Summaries for Policymakers are accepted by the Panel after group approval.
The Panel controls what the IPCC agrees on to meet standards. The Panel's approval process has been criticized for changing what the experts put in the Reports.

Authors 
Each chapter has a lot of authors who are responsible for writing and editing the material. A chapter usually has two "Coordinating" Lead Authors who control what words go in their chapter, ten to fifteen Lead Authors, and a larger number of Contributing Authors. The Lead Authors put together the work of the other authors and report to the Working Group chairs. Lead Authors write sections of chapters. Contributing Authors prepare text, graphs and data.

Authors are chosen from a list of researchers prepared by governments, other important groups, the Working Group/Task Force Bureaux, and other experts (, 4.2.1,2). The group of Coordinating Lead Authors and Lead Authors for a section or chapter of a Report is expected to have many different views and to have people from different parts of the world.
Nobel Peace Prize 2007 
In December 2007, the IPCC was awarded The Nobel Peace Prize 2007 "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."  The award is shared with Former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore for his work on climate change and the documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

Criticism of IPCC
In January 2005 Christopher Landsea resigned from work on the IPCC AR4, saying that it was "both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound" because of Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research's idea that global warming was contributing to recent hurricane activity.  Roger A. Pielke who published Landsea's letter writes: "How anyone can deny that political factors were everpresent in the negotiations isn't paying attention", but says that "Despite the pressures, on tropical cyclones they figured out a way to maintain consistency with the actual balance of opinion(s) in the community of relevant experts." He continues "So there might be a human contribution (and presumably this is just to the observed upwards trends observed in some basins, and not to downward trends observed in others, but this is unclear) but the human contribution itself has not been quantitatively assessed, yet the experts, using their judgment, expect it to be there
. In plain English this is what is called a 'hypothesis' and not a 'conclusion.' And it is a fair representation of the issue."
"Hockey stick" graph 

The IPCC Third Assessment Report showed a graph labeled "Millennial Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction" from a paper by Mann, Bradley and Hughes (MBH98) often called the "Hockey Stick Graph". This graph was different to the IPCC First assessment report which showed global temperature for the past 1000 years, and higher temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period. The graph was thought to show that temperatures between 1000 and 1900 were very different. This was criticized in an article by Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick. In a 2006 letter to Nature, Bradley, Hughes and Mann claimed the original article had said that they could not be exact.

Risks 
Some critics say the IPCC reports underestimate dangers, understate risks, and report only the lowest risks.
On February 1, 2007, the night before publication of IPCCs report on climate, a study was published saying that temperatures and sea levels have been rising at or above the speed the IPCC reported in 2001.  The study compared IPCC 2001 predictions of temperature and sea level change with what actually happened.  Over the six years, the actual temperature rise was near the top end of the range given by IPCC's 2001 prediction and the actual rise was more than the top of the range the IPCC predicted.

An example of scientific research which has indicated that predictions by the IPCC have uderstated risks is a study on rises in sea levels.

Political influence on the IPCC has been shown by the release of a memo by ExxonMobil to the Bush administration, and its effects on the IPCCs leadership. The Bush administration, at the request of ExxonMobil, wanted rid of Robert Watson, a climate scientist and IPCC chairperson, and to have him replaced by Pachauri, who was seen at the time as more friendly to industry.
IPCC process 

In 2005, the UK House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs produced a report on the economics of climate change. It commented on the IPCC process:
"We have some concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC process, with some of its emissions scenarios and summary documentation apparently influenced by political considerations.  There are significant doubts about some aspects of the IPCCs emissions scenario exercise, in particular, the high emissions scenarios.  The Government should press the IPCC to change their approach. There are some positive aspects to global warming and these appear to have been played down in the IPCC reports; the Government should press the IPCC to reflect in a more balanced way the costs and benefits of climate change.  The Government should press the IPCC for better estimates of the monetary costs of global warming damage and for explicit monetary comparisons between the costs of measures to control warming and their benefits. Since warming will continue, regardless of action now, due to the lengthy time lags.

Related pages
 Global warming

Notes and references
Other websites 
 The IPCC website
 IPCC Organisation 
 
 IPCC publications 
 IPCC AR4 WG1 Report Available for Purchase 
 Summaries for Policymakers (SPMs) of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report:
 ,
 
 
 A summary of the Fourth Assessment Report SPMs by GreenFacts.
 IPCC article  at the Encyclopedia of Earth - General overview of the IPCC
 Climate Change - What Is the IPCC by Jean-Marc Jancovici
 Climate Change Freeview Video Interview 2006 - Sherwood Rowland, Nobel Laureate (1995) for work on ozone depletion discusses climate change. Provided by the Vega Science Trust.
 «UN scientist backs '350' target for CO2 reduction», AFP, August 25 2009

1988 establishments
International environmental organizations
United Nations specialized agencies
Climate change
The Zimmermann Telegram (also called the Zimmermann Note) was a telegram sent to Mexico from Germany on January 16, 1917.  It was what made America enter World War I.  It is named for the German man who sent it, Arthur Zimmermann.  Zimmermann was the German Foreign Secretary (took care of things with other countries).  Zimmermann sent it to the German ambassador in the United States, Johann von Bernstorff. Bernstorff then sent it to the German ambassador in Mexico, Heinrich von Eckardt.
The telegram's message was:
FROM 2nd from London # 5747.
"We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare. We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral. In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The settlement in detail is left to you. You will inform the President of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the United States of America is certain and add the suggestion that he should, on his own initiative, invite Japan to immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and ourselves. Please call the President's attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England in a few months to make peace." Signed, ZIMMERMANN
The telegram told the ambassador to ask the Mexicans to join the war on the German side by attacking America. Germany promised to help Mexico take back land the United States had taken from Mexico in the Mexican–American War. These places were Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Germany wanted Mexico to enter the war so America would be too busy to help the enemies of Germany.  Mexico was already busy with the Mexican Revolution and did not like the idea.
The British secretly got the telegram. They were able to decode the telegram. They held on to the telegram until February 24, 1917. They gave it to President Woodrow Wilson of the United States of America.  President Wilson published the telegram so the people would know about it.  The telegram made the American people angry.  Wilson asked  the United States Congress for a Declaration of war against Germany.  Congress accepted the request on April 2, 1917. The United States of America announced war on Germany on April 6, 1917. Americans were already angry over German submarines sinking ships, but this telegram is what made America come into the war.

Other websites 
 Failed Diplomacy: the Zimmermann Telegram 
 The life and death of Charles Jastrow Mendelsohn and the breaking of the code. 

World War I
The Battle of Stalingrad (1942-1943) was fought during the Second World War between Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler and the Soviet Union led by Joseph Stalin . They were fighting for control of the city of Stalingrad. Germany got support from Italy, Hungary, Croatia and Romania . The battle was fought between 23 August 1942 and 2 February 1943. It was one of the most important battles of the war because it marked the end of Germany's advances.  Hitler even blamed his defeat partly on Stalingrad. The Battle of Stalingrad has often been recorded as an example of how brutal a war can be.   It is reported that, due to limited supplies, soldiers and civilians had to resort to eating rats, mice, and even cannibalism.

Stalingrad, now Volgograd, was a city on the Volga River.  It was an important industrial city, and the Volga was an important transport route.  Hitler also wanted to capture Stalingrad because it was named after Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, thus it would embarrass him.
In June 1942, Adolf Hitler launched an attack in southern Russia.  By the end of July the German army had reached Stalingrad.  With bombs and fire the German Luftwaffe turned the city into ruins.  However, the rubble made hiding places from which Russian snipers could attack the Germans.  Hitler and Stalin sent in large numbers of soldiers. They both ordered that anyone who retreated would be shot on the spot for treason.

On 19 November 1942, the Red Army launched an attack which surrounded the Stalingrad area, pinching off the German salient.  Hitler ordered the army to stay there.  The German air force tried to supply them by air.  By February 1943, the German forces in Stalingrad had no ammunition and food.  Rather than freeze, they surrendered, knowing the Soviets were usually cruel to their prisoners.
The battle lasted five months, one week, and three days. 1.6 million people dead or wounded in battle were reported.  There were more Russian deaths than German, but it was a victory for the Russians.  They had killed so many Germans that Hitler's overall plan to conquer the Soviet Union, started with Operation Barbarossa, was seriously weakened.  Also, the Germans failed to get control of Russian oil fields.

About one quarter of the German Sixth Army's soldiers were Eastern European volunteers called HIWIs.  The Battle of Stalingrad was the largest and deadliest battle in the history of warfare.

Background 
By the spring of 1942, the German Operation Barbarossa did not defeat the Soviet Union.  The war was still going well for the Germans: the U-boat offensive in the Atlantic had been very successful and Rommel had just captured Tobruk.
In the east, they had captured land including Leningrad in the north and  Rostov-on-Don in the south. There were a number of places where Soviet attacks had pushed the Germans back (to the northwest of Moscow and south of Kharkov) but this did not threaten the Germans. Hitler was confident that he could beat the Red Army after the winter of 1941. Even though Army Group Centre had heavy losses near Moscow the previous winter, 65% of its infantry had not fought and had been rested and given new equipment. Army Groups North and South had also not had a hard time over the winter.  Stalin was expecting German summer attacks to again be directed against Moscow.
The Germans decided that their summer campaign in 1942 would be directed at the southern parts of the Soviet Union. The Germans wanted to destroy Stalingrad's industries. The Germans also wanted to block the Volga River. The river was a route between the Caspian Sea and northern Russia. Capturing the river would make it hard for the Soviets to use the river to transport goods.

The German operations were initially very successful. On July 23, 1942, Hitler changed the goals for the 1942 attack. He made occupying Stalingrad one of the goals. The city was important, because it was named after Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union. The Germans thought that if they captured Stalingrad, it would help the northern and western parts of the German armies to attack Baku. The Germans wanted to capture Baku because it had a lot of oil.

The Soviets were aware of the German plan to attack. The Soviets ordered that anyone strong enough to hold a rifle be sent to fight.

Attack on Stalingrad
On the 23 of August the 6th Army reached the edge of Stalingrad. They were following the 62nd and 64th Armies, which had gone back into the city. Kleist later said after the war:
 The capture of Stalingrad was [a place] where we could block an attack...by Russian forces coming from the east.

The Soviets had enough warning of the German attack to move all the city's grain, cattle, and railway cars across the Volga.  But most civilian residents stayed in the city. The city lacked food even before the German attack. The Luftwaffe air attacks made the Soviets unable to use the River Volga to bring supplies into the city. Between 25 and 31 July, 32 Soviet ships were sunk in the River Volga.

The battle began with the heavy bombing of the city by Luftflotte 4. A 1,000 tons of bombs were dropped. Much of the city turned to rubble. Some factories continued to produce goods.
Stalin moved troops to the east bank of the Volga. All the regular ferries were destroyed by the Luftwaffe. The Luftwaffe also attacked troop barges. Many civilians were moved out of the city across the Volga. Stalin prevented most civilians from leaving the city because he thought that this would make the Soviet armies fight harder. Civilians, including women and children, were told to dig trenches.  Massive German bombing on 23 August caused a firestorm. It killed thousands and turned Stalingrad into rubble and ruins. Between 23 and 26 August, 955 people were killed and another 1,181 wounded from the bombing. 

The Soviet Air Force, the Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily (VVS), was destroyed by the Luftwaffe. The Soviets lost 201 aircraft between 23 and 31 August. They brought in another 100 aircraft in August. The Soviets continued to bring new planes into Stalingrad in late September, but they were destroyed by the Germans.
The city was briefly defended by the 1077th Anti-Aircraft Regiment, an all-women's regiment that was actually able to halt an entire German division due to their massive firepower. The Germans eventually swarmed and killed them, but were shocked to discover that this whole time they were being held back by young women that seemed fresh out of high school. In the battle, the NKVD organized  "Workers' militias" who were often sent into battle without rifles.

By the end of August, Army Group South (B) had reached the Volga. By 1 September, the Soviets could only supply their forces in Stalingrad by crossing the Volga under constant bombing by artillery and aircraft.

On 5 September, the Soviet 24th and 66th Armies organized an attack against XIV Panzer Corps. The Luftwaffe helped stop the attack by attacking Soviet artillery and soldiers. The Soviets had to pull back. Of the 120 tanks the Soviets had sent into battle, 30 were lost to air attack.
The Soviets were always being attacked by the Luftwaffe. On 18 September, the Soviet 1st Guards and 24th Army attacked VIII Army Corps . VIII. Fliegerkorps sent Stuka dive-bombers to prevent the Soviets from advancing. The Soviet attack was stopped. The Stukas destroyed 41 of the 106 Soviet tanks that were destroyed that morning. German  Bf 109s destroyed 77 Soviet aircraft.
In the wrecked city, the Soviet 62nd and 64th Armies, which included the Soviet 13th Guards Rifle Division, used houses and factories to hide in.

Fighting in city was very violent. Stalin's Order No. 227 of 27 July 1942 decreed that all commanders who retreated without being told to do so would have to go to a military tribunal.84-5 "Not a step back!" was the slogan. The Germans attacking Stalingrad had many dead and wounded.
Germany reaches the Volga
After three months of slow advance, the Wermacht finally reached the river banks. The Germans captured 90% of the ruined city and split the Soviet forces into two parts. Ice on the Volga river made it impossible for the Soviets to bring in supplies by boat.

Soviet counter-offensives

German troops were not ready for fighting during the winter of 1942. The  Stavka did a number of attacks between November 19, 1942 and February 2, 1943. These operations started the Winter Campaign of 1942-1943 (19 November 1942 – 3 March 1943), which involved 15 armies.

Operation Uranus: the Soviet offensive 

In autumn, the Soviet generals Georgy Zhukov and Aleksandr Vasilevsky gathered their soldiers in the north and south of the city.  The northern side was defended by Hungarian, and Romanian troops.  The Don river had never been defended well by the German side.  The Soviet plan was to attack and surround the German forces in the Stalingrad region.
The operation was code-named "Uran". It started with Operation Mars, aimed at Army Group Center.

On 19 November 1942, the Red Army launched Operation Uranus. The attacking Soviet units under the command of Gen. Nikolay Vatutin consisted of three armies. This included a total of 18 infantry divisions, eight tank brigades, two motorized brigades, six cavalry divisions and one anti-tank brigade. The Soviets pushed past the Romanian Third Army. The response by the Wehrmacht was disorganized. Bad weather prevented air attacks against the Soviets.

On 20 November, a second Soviet offensive (two armies) was launched to the south of Stalingrad against the Romanian 4th Army Corps. The Romanians were overrun by large numbers of tanks. The Soviet forces moved west and made a ring around Stalingrad.

Sixth Army surrounded
About 265,000 German, Romanian, Italian soldiers, the 369th (Croatian) Reinforced Infantry Regiment, and other troops including 40,000 Soviet volunteers fighting for the Germans. were surrounded. There were 210,000 Germans on 19 November 1942. There were also around 10,000 Soviet civilians and several thousand Soviet soldiers the Germans had taken captive during the battle. Not all of the 6th Army was trapped; 50,000 were not surrounded. Of the 210,000 Germans surrounded, 10,000 remained to fight, 105,000 surrendered, 35,000 left by air and the remaining 60,000 died.

The Red Army formed two defensive groups. Field Marshal Erich von Manstein told Hitler not to order the 6th Army to break out. Manstein thought that he could break through the Soviet troops and free the 6th Army.p451 After 1945, Manstein says he told Hitler that the 6th Army must break out. The American historian Gerhard Weinberg said that Manstein lied.p1045
Manstein was told to attack Stalingrad in Operation Winter Storm (Unternehmen Wintergewitter). He thought that this attack could work if the 6th Army was supplied through the air.

Adolf Hitler had said on 30 September 1942 that the German army would never leave the city. At a meeting shortly after the Soviets formed a ring around the Germans, the German army chiefs wanted to try to escape to the west of the Don. Hitler thought that the Luftwaffe could supply the 6th Army with an "air bridge". This would allow the Germans in the city to fight while a new force was assembled. A similar plan had been used a year earlier at the Demyansk Pocket.

The director of Luftflotte 4, Wolfram von Richthofen, tried to get this decision stopped. The forces under 6th Army were almost twice as large as a regular German army unit, plus there was also a corps of the 4th Panzer Army trapped in the city. The maximum  they could deliver a day was far less than the minimum  needed.
The Luftwaffe was able to deliver an average of  of supplies per day. The most successful day, 19 December, delivered  of supplies in 154 flights. In the early parts of the operation, more fuel was shipped than food and ammunition because the Germans thought they could escape from the city. Transport airplanes also flew out sick or wounded men from the city. The German attack did not reach the 6th Army. The air supply operation continued. The 6th Army slowly starved. 160 German transport aircraft were destroyed and 328 were heavily damaged. Some 266 Junkers Ju 52s were destroyed.

Final stages
Final stages

Operation Winter Storm 
Soviet forces grouped together around Stalingrad. Violent fighting to attack the Germans began. Operation Winter Storm (Operation Wintergewitter), the German attempt to rescue the trapped army from the south, was at first successful. By 19 December, the German Army had pushed to within 48 km (30 mi) of Sixth Army's positions. Some German officers asked Paulus go against  Hitler's orders and try to escape out of the Stalingrad. Paulus refused. On 23 December, Manstein's forces had to defend themselves from new Soviet attacks.

Operation Little Saturn 

On 16 December, the Soviets launched Operation Little Saturn.  It attempted to make a hole through the Axis army (mainly Italians) on the Don and capture Rostov. The Germans set up a defence of small units. 15 Soviet divisions—supported by at least 100 tanks—attacked the Italian Cosseria and Ravenna Divisions. The Soviets never got close to Rostov because of the Italian defence.
The German attempt to break through to Stalingrad was stopped and Army Group A was told to come back from the Caucasus.

The 6th Army could no longer hope to escape. The 6th Army did not have enough fuel. As well, the German soldiers have found it very hard to break through the Soviet lines on foot in the cold winter conditions.

Soviet victory 

The Germans retreated from the suburbs of Stalingrad to the city itself.  The loss of the two airfields, at Pitomnik on 16 January 1943 and Gumrak on the night of 21/22 January, meant an end to air supplies and to the flying out the wounded. The third and last runway was at the Stalingradskaja flight school, which had the last landings and takeoffs on the night of 22–23 January.  After that, there were no landings except for air drops of ammunition and food.
The Germans were now not only starving, but running out of ammunition. They continued to fight because they thought the Soviets would execute any Germans who surrendered.  A Soviet group (Major Aleksandr Smyslov, Captain Nikolay Dyatlenko and a trumpeter) carried an offer to Paulus: if he surrendered within 24 hours, he would receive a guarantee of safety for all prisoners, medical care for the sick and wounded, prisoners allowed to keep their personal belongings, food rations, and be sent to any country they wanted after the war.  Paulus was ordered not to surrender by Hitler, so he did not respond.

On 30 January 1943, the 10th anniversary of Hitler coming to power, Goebbels said "The heroic struggle of our soldiers on the Volga should be a warning for everybody..." Also on that day Hitler promoted Paulus to Generalfeldmarschall. Since no German Field Marshal had ever been taken prisoner, Hitler assumed that Paulus would fight on or kill himself.
The next day, the southern group in Stalingrad was defeated by the Soviets. Soviet forces reached the entrance to the German headquarters. General Schmidt surrendered the headquarters. Paulus said he had not surrendered and refused to order the remaining German forces to surrender.

Four Soviet armies attacked the remaining northern group. On 2 February, General Strecker surrendered. Around 91,000 tired, ill, wounded, and starving prisoners were taken, including 3,000 Romanians (the survivors of the 20th Infantry Division, 1st Cavalry Division and "Col. Voicu" Detachment). The prisoners included 22 generals. Hitler was angry and said that Paulus should have killed himself, but instead "he prefers to go to Moscow."  Paulus was Roman Catholic and therefore did not.
Aftermath 
The German public was not officially told of the loss until the end of January 1943, though positive media reports had stopped in the weeks before the announcement. Stalingrad marked the first time that the Nazi government publicly admitted a failure in its war effort. It was a major defeat where German losses were almost equal to those of the Soviets. Prior losses of the Soviet Union were generally three times as high as the German ones. On 31 January, German state radio played the Adagio movement from Anton Bruckner's Seventh Symphony, followed by the announcement of the defeat at Stalingrad.

On 18 February, Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels gave the Sportpalast speech in Berlin, encouraging the Germans to accept a total war.
Out of the nearly 110,000 German prisoners captured in Stalingrad, only about 6,000 ever returned. They were sent to prisoner camps and later to labour camps all over the Soviet Union. Some 35,000 were eventually sent on transports, of which 17,000 did not survive. Some were kept in the city to help rebuild.

Some senior officers were taken to Moscow and used for propaganda purposes. Some of them joined the National Committee for a Free Germany. Some, including Paulus, signed anti-Hitler statements that were broadcast to German troops. Paulus testified for the prosecution during the Nuremberg Trials. He remained in the Soviet Union until 1952, then moved to Dresden in East Germany. General Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach offered to raise an anti-Hitler army from the Stalingrad survivors, but the Soviets did not accept. It was not until 1955 that the last of the 5-6,000 survivors were repatriated (to West Germany).

Other information
Other information

Orders of battle
During the defence of Stalingrad, the Red Army used six armies (8th, 28th, 51st, 57th, 62nd and 64th Armies) in and around the city. An additional nine armies in the final attack on the Germans. The nine armies used for the final attack were the 24th Army, 65th Army, 66th Army and 16th Air Army from the north as part of the Don Front offensive and 1st Guards Army, 5th Tank, 21st Army, 2nd Air Army and 17th Air Army from the south as part of the Soviet Southwestern Front.

Casualties
Counting how many people were killed and wounded in the battle of Stalingrad is hard. One way is to only count the fighting within the city and suburbs. Another way of counting is to count all the fighting on the southern part of the Soviet-German front from the spring of 1942 to the winter of 1943. Different scholars have made different estimates depending on how widely you consider the battle.
The Axis had from 500,000 to 850,000 casualties (killed, wounded, captured) among all branches of the German armed forces and its allies and only 5-6,000 returned to Germany by 1955. The remainder of the POWs died in Soviet captivity.

On 2 February 1943, the fighting of Axis troops in Stalingrad stopped. Out of the 91,000 prisoners taken by the Soviets, 3,000 were Romanian.

The Red Army had a total of 1,129,619 total casualties; 478,741 men killed or missing and 650,878 wounded. These numbers are for the whole Don region; in the city itself 750,000 were killed, captured, or wounded.

Anywhere from 25,000 to 40,000 Soviet civilians died in Stalingrad and its suburbs during a single week of aerial bombing by Luftflotte 4 as the German 4th Panzer and 6th Armies got close to the city; the total number of civilians killed in the regions outside the city is unknown.