Eastern front May 1942; Wikimedia Commons
(The battle took place in the small orange area with two arrows in the area of Ukraine)
The Soviet winter counteroffensive of 1941-42 succeeded in preventing the Germans from taking Moscow. Exhausted, both sides paused. Then Joseph Stalin, convinced that the German offensive would soon collapse, decided to launch a new spring offensive on the Eastern Front. The May 1942 attack at Kharkov was an initial success, but ferocious Wehrmacht fighting, the arrival of the Luftwaffe and Soviet errors turned the battle into a debacle for the Russian forces.
Read more: Second Battle of Kharkov – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.