The Battle for the City of Stalingrad ranged across three large geographical areas divided into southern and central sectors as well as the Factory District in the north. By September 26, 1942 the German Sixth Army largely controlled the city's southern and central sectors following a brutal block by block fight that had lasted the entire month.
In southern Stalingrad the remnants from the Soviet 62nd Army's defenses (three rifle divisions, three rifle brigades, one tank brigade, and one rifle regiment - hardly equalling a fraction of their former size) had been pressed into a small strip of
General of Panzer Troops Friedrich Paulus's Sixth Army and Colonel General Hermann Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army spent September of 1942 battering the Soviet Southeastern Front's 62nd Army (commanded by Lieutenant General Anton Ivanovich Lopatin until relieved in mid-September by Lieutenant General Vasilii Ivanovich Chuikov) back into Stalingrad and to toward the Volga River. The initial German plan for taking Stalingrad had been for the XIV Panzer Corps to penetrate south along the Volga from where it had reached Stalingrad's northern suburbs late in the day on August 23rd.
