Soviet Union
By early February 1943, it was clear that the German Sixth Army, trapped in Stalingrad, would have to surrender. Hitler promoted General Friedrich Paulus, who was in charge of the German forces in the area, to Field Marshal in the vain hope it would deter him from surrendering, because never before had a German Field Marshal surrendered. It did not, and Paulus surrendered completely on 2 February. Though Stalingrad was destroyed and millions of casualties resulted, the Sixth Army collapsed as a viable fighting force. Amazingly 10,000 residents remained throughout the entire period of fighting undisturbed. Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels responded with his Sportpalast speech to the German people, wherein he admitted the danger facing the Nazi regime. Some historians cite Stalingrad, and Goebbels' speech, as the European war's turning point.
After the victory at Stalingrad, the Red Army launched eight offensives during the winter, many concentrated along the Don basin near Stalingrad, which resulted in initial gains until German forces were able to take advantage of the weakened condition of the Red Army and regain the territory it lost.
In July, the Wehrmacht launched a much-delayed offensive against the Soviet Union at Kursk. Their intentions were known by the Soviets, and the Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle of the war, ended in a massive Soviet counter-offensive that threw the exhausted German forces back.
In August Hitler agreed to a general withdrawal to the Dnieper line.
As September proceeded into October, the Germans found the Dnieper line impossible to hold as the Soviet bridgeheads grew and grew, and important Dnieper towns started to fall, with Zaporozhye the first to go, followed by Dnepropetrovsk.
Early in November the Soviets broke out of their bridgeheads on either side of Kiev and recaptured the Ukrainian capital.
First Ukrainian Front attacked at Korosten on Christmas eve. The Soviet advance continued along the railway line until the 1939 Polish-Soviet border was reached.
Italy and the Balkans
Mid-1943 brought the fifth and final German Sutjeska offensive against the Yugoslav Partisans.
On 10 July 1943 the Allies invaded Sicily in Operation Husky, capturing the island in a little over a month.
On 25 July Benito Mussolini was fired from office by the King of Italy, allowing a new government to take power.
The Allies invaded mainland Italy on 3 September 1943. Italy surrendered to the Allies on 8 September. The Germans however, took over the fight, forcing the Allies to a complete halt in the winter of 1943-44 at the Gustav Line south of Rome.
East Asia and the Pacific
On January 2 Buna, New Guinea was captured by the Allies.
Australian and U.S. forces undertook the prolonged campaign to retake the occupied parts of the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, experiencing some of the toughest resistance of the war. The rest of the Solomon Islands were retaken in 1943.
American authorities declared Guadalcanal secure on 9 February,
In February 1943 Chindits struck rear Japanese areas in Burma.
The Nationalist Kuomintang Army, under Chiang Kai-shek, and the Communist Chinese Army, under Mao Zedong, both opposed the Japanese occupation of China but never truly allied against the Japanese. Conflict between Nationalist and Communist forces emerged long before the war; it continued after and, to an extent, even during the war, though more implicitly. The Japanese and its auxiliary Indian National Army had captured most of Burma, severing the Burma Road by which the Western Allies had been supplying the Chinese Nationalists. This forced the Allies to create a large sustained airlift, known as "flying the Hump". U.S.-led and trained Chinese divisions, a British division and a few thousand U.S. ground troops cleared the Japanese forces from northern Burma so that the Ledo Road could be built to replace the Burma Road. Further south the main Japanese army in the theatre were fought to a standstill on the Burma-India frontier by the British Fourteenth Army (the "Forgotten Army"), which then counter-attacked, and having recaptured all of Burma was planning attacks towards Malaya when the war ended.
In November U.S. Marines won the Battle of Tarawa. This was the first heavily opposed amphibious assault in the Pacific theater. In 1943 the American submarine fleet began sinking Japanese shipping faster than Japan could replace its losses
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