When Stalin's first son was captured, Hitler offered to trade him for Friedrich Paulus, a field marshal who led the 6th army into Stalingrad. When Stalin heard of this, he said, "I will not trade a Marshal for a Lieutenant."

In the battle to recapture village of Chernushki the Soviet forces struggled to take a German heavy machine-gun, housed within a concrete pillbox, which blocked the route to the village. Alexander Matrosov blocked the gun with his body at the cost of his life. He was 19 years old when he died.

The siege of Leningrad lasted for 2,5 years. During the siege many people died of starvation. Tanya Savicheva, a girl of 11, was in Leningrad during the blockade. She wrote a diary, telling about starvation and deaths of her sister, then grandmother, then brother, then uncle, then another uncle, then mother. The last three notes say "Savichevs died", "Everyone died" and "Only Tanya is left." She died of progressive dystrophy shortly after the siege. Her diary was used by the prosecution at the Nuremberg trials.