The three-month battle is often seen to be the war's turning point. After Stalingrad the Wehrmacht would make no further advances in the USSR. The mid-November 1942 mobile operation to cut off the city demonstrated for the first time the skill of the rebuilt Red Army.

The capitulation of the Sixth Army in the Stalingrad pocket on 31 January was the first major German surrender. Both the German leadership and the population of occupied Europe realised the significance of what had happened: the Third Reich was now on the defensive.