In the north, the city of Leningrad, besieged by the Germans, remained cut off from the rest of the Soviet Union, except for an 'ice road' across Lake Ladoga. In the winter of 1941-42 about a million people died there of starvation.

In the summer of 1942 Hitler made his main offensive in southern Russia. The Germans urgently needed oil supplies and Hitler wanted to seize the oilfields of the Caucasus and deprive the Russians of these valuable resources. The Germans made a drive southwards into the bend of the River Don. They moved swiftly across hundreds of kilometres of steppe (grassland) to the Caucasus Mountains. Hitler then decided to alter his original plan: he would not only take the Caucasus; he would also capture Stalingrad. Through trying to take both at the same time he got neither.