The five-month Battle of Stalingrad was the German military's first major loss. The battle began in September 1942, when the German Sixth Army attempted to capture the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd), an important Soviet industrial center on the Volga River in Russia. Soviet forces halted this German offensive, and, in a series of hard-fought military actions, forced the surrender of the German Sixth Army. The defeat of Germany at Stalingrad resulted in the loss of some 200,000 German lives and shattered the myth of German invincibility. This loss, the first of a series of military setbacks for the Axis, is considered by some to be the turning point of the war.
