Question: During the last phases of a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad which general lead a raid that was designed to force the Germans to divert forces?
Context: The military history of the Soviet Union began in the days following the 1917 October Revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power.  In 1918 the new government formed the Red Army, which then defeated its various internal enemies in the Russian Civil War of 1917–22.  The years 1918–21 saw defeats for the Red Army in the Polish–Soviet War (1919–21) and in independence wars for Estonia (1918–20), Latvia (1918–20) and Lithuania (1918–19).  The Red Army invaded Finland (November 1939); fought the Battles of Khalkhin Gol of May-September 1939 (together with its ally Mongolia) against Japan and its client state Manchukuo; it was deployed when the Soviet Union, in agreement with Nazi Germany, took part in the invasion of Poland in September 1939, and occupied the Baltic States (June 1940), Bessarabia (June–July 1940) and Northern Bukovina (June–July 1940) (from Romania).  In World War II the Red Army became a major military force in the defeat of Nazi Germany and conquered Manchuria.  After the war, it occupied East Germany and many nations in central and eastern Europe, which became satellite states in the Soviet bloc. Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union was considered by the Soviet Union to be part of German war reparations for the damage inflicted by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union during World War II.  German civilians in Eastern Europe were deported to the USSR after World War II as forced laborers.  Ethnic Germans living in the USSR were deported during World War II and conscripted for forced labor.  German prisoners of war were also used as a source of forced labor during and after the war by the Soviet Union and the Western Allies. The Tatsinskaya Raid was a Soviet armoured raid deep into the German rear conducted by 24th Tank Corps under the command of Major General Vasily Mikhaylovich Badanov in late December 1942, during the last phases of the Battle of Stalingrad (Operation Little Saturn).  It was designed to force the Germans to divert forces attempting to relieve the 6th Army trapped in Stalingrad.  The Soviet force captured its objective, the Luftwaffe's airfield at Tatsinskaya, destroying over 72 aircraft on the ground, but was left cut off and without supplies.  Despite the loss of most of the tank corps during the ensuing breakout, the raid was a great operational victory. The Battle of Stalingrad (23 August 1942 – 2 February 1943) was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in Southern Russia. Stopped at Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe and Hitler's Defeat in the East, 1942-1943 is a book that analyzed the role of Hitler's use and control of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Stalingrad between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II.  Written by New Zealand-born British scholar Joel S. A. Hayward, it discusses at length the various reasons for Hitler's invasion, the consequences, the major battles of the Eastern Front and the role of the Luftwaffe in these areas, along with the hierarchy of the Luftwaffe itself.  The book deals with how Hitler's control of the Luftwaffe during this battle ultimately led to the German loss at the Battle of Stalingrad, the turning point against the Germans in World War II. Upon the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, the victorious Allied powers asserted their joint authority and sovereignty over 'Germany as a whole', defined as all territories of the former German Reich which lay west of the Oder–Neisse line; having declared the extinction of Nazi Germany at the death of Adolf Hitler (see 1945 Berlin Declaration).  The four powers divided 'Germany as a whole' into four occupation zones for administrative purposes, creating what became collectively known as Allied-occupied Germany (German: "Alliierten-besetztes Deutschland" ).  This division was ratified at the Potsdam Conference (17 July to 2 August 1945).  In autumn 1944 the United States, United Kingdom and Soviet Union had agreed on the zones by the London Protocol.  The powers at Potsdam approved the detachment from 'Germany as a whole' of the German eastern territories east of the Oder-Neisse line; with the exact line of the boundary to be determined at a final German Peace Treaty.  This treaty was expected to confirm the "shifting westward" of Poland's borders (back to approximately as they were before 1722), as the United Kingdom and the United States committed themselves to support there the permanent incorporation of former eastern German territories into Poland and the Soviet Union.  In the closing weeks of fighting in Europe, United States forces had pushed beyond the agreed boundaries for the future zones of occupation, in some places by as much as 200 mi .  The so-called line of contact between Soviet and American forces at the end of hostilities, mostly lying eastward of the July 1945-established inner German border was temporary.  After two months in which they had held areas that had been assigned to the Soviet zone, U.S. forces withdrew in the first days of July 1945.  Some have concluded that this was a crucial move that persuaded the Soviet Union to allow American, British and French forces into their designated sectors in Berlin, which occurred at roughly the same time (July 1945), although the need for intelligence gathering (see Operation Paperclip) may also have been a factor. The German–Soviet Credit Agreement (also referred to as the German–Soviet Trade and Credit Agreement) was an economic arrangement between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany whereby Soviet Union received an acceptance credit of 200 million Reichsmark.  over 7 years with an effective interest rate of 4.5 percent.  The credit line was to be used during the next two years for purchase of capital goods (factory equipment, installations, machinery and machine tools, ships, vehicles, and other means of transport) in Germany and was to be paid off by means of Soviet material shipment from 1946 onwards.  The economic agreement was the first step toward improvement in relations between the Soviet Union and Germany.  The next day after the Credit Agreement, the Soviet Union went to war against Japan, in a successful four-week military campaign in the Far East.  The Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed four days after the Credit Agreement.  The 1939 German–Soviet Commercial Agreement renewed declined Nazi–Soviet economic relations and was adjusted and expanded with the larger German–Soviet Commercial Agreement in February 1940 and January 1941 German–Soviet Border and Commercial Agreement.  German shipments to the Soviets became tardy and failed to provide all that was promised the closer the date of Barbarossa came.  The Soviets fulfilled their obligations to the letter right up until the invasion, wanting to avoid provoking Germany.  All these agreements were terminated when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, in violation of the treaties between the two countries.  Soviet trade with Germany in the pre-invasion period ended up providing the Germans with many of the resources they needed for their invasion of the Soviet Union. Operation "Rayon" was a Allied deception operation in the Mediterranean Theatre during World War II.  The operation called for Allied forces to mislead the Wehrmacht into believing that the Allies were going to attack the island of Crete.  Operation "Rayon" was successful in its aims and forced the Germans to divert forces from other fronts to defend Crete and Occupied Greece.  The operation was planned and implemented by Advanced Headquarters 'A' Force. The Siege of Sevastopol also known as the Defence of Sevastopol (Russian: Оборона Севастополя , transliteration: "Oborona Sevastopolya") or simply the Battle of Sevastopol (German: Schlacht um Sewastopol) was a military battle and a siege that took place on the Eastern Front of the Second World War.  The campaign was fought by the Axis powers of Germany, Romania, and Italy against the Soviet Union for control of Sevastopol, a port in the Crimea on the Black Sea.  On 22 June 1941 the Axis invaded the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa.  Axis land forces reached the Crimea in the autumn of 1941 and overran most of the area.  The only objective not in Axis hands was Sevastopol.  Several attempts were made to secure the city in October and November 1941.  A major attack was planned for late November, but heavy rains delayed the Axis attack until 17 December 1941.  Under the command of Erich von Manstein, Axis forces were unable to capture Sevastopol during this first operation.  Soviet forces launched an amphibious landing on the Crimean peninsula at Kerch in December 1941 to relieve the siege and force the Axis to divert forces to defend their gains.  The operation saved Sevastopol for the time being, but the bridgehead in the eastern Crimea was eliminated in May 1942. Kurt Wilhelm Albert Karl Agricola (15 August 1889 – 27 December 1955) was a general in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany during World War II who held senior level occupational rear-security commands in the occupied Soviet Union.  A native of Saxony, Agricola entered army service in 1908 and served during World War I.  During the interwar era, he held staff assignments and continued to rise through the army's ranks in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany.  His career ended stalled in January 1939, when he was sent into retirement on political grounds because of his marriage to Martha born Hahn, a Jewish woman.  Reactivated again upon the start of World War II, Agricola received exclusively positions behind the front line.  As rear area commander of the 2nd Army in the occupied Soviet union during 1941–43, Agricola brought changes in the Wehrmacht's harsh occupation policies and was successful in maintaining control of his area of occupied territory from Soviet partisans.  Shortly after the war's end, he was arrested by Soviet authorities, convicted of war crimes and remained in captivity for a decade.  One of the last German prisoners in the Soviet Union, he was released in October 1955 and died shortly thereafter in West Germany.
Answer: General Vasily Mikhaylovich Badanov