List of battles by casualties in the context of "Stalingrad"

The French invasion of Russia, also known as the Russian campaign, the Second Polish War, and in Russia as the Patriotic War of 1812, was initiated by Napoleon with the aim of compelling the Russian Empire to comply with the continental blockade of the United Kingdom. Widely studied, Napoleon's incursion into Russia remains a focal point in military history, recognized as among the most devastating military endeavors to ever unfold. In a span of fewer than six months, the campaign exacted a staggering toll, claiming the lives of nearly a million soldiers and civilians.

Beginning on 24 June 1812, the initial wave of the multinational Grande Armée crossed the Neman River, marking the entry from the Duchy of Warsaw into Russia. Employing extensive forced marches, Napoleon rapidly advanced his army of nearly half a million individuals through Western Russia, encompassing present-day Belarus, in a bid to dismantle the disparate Russian forces led by Barclay de Tolly and Pyotr Bagration totaling approximately 180,000–220,000 soldiers at that juncture. Despite losing half of his men within six weeks due to extreme weather conditions, diseases and scarcity of provisions, Napoleon emerged victorious in the Battle of Smolensk. However, the Russian Army, now commanded by Mikhail Kutuzov, opted for a strategic retreat, employing attrition warfare against Napoleon compelling the invaders to rely on an inadequate supply system, incapable of sustaining their vast army in the field.

The siege of Leningrad was a military blockade undertaken by the Axis powers against the city of Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg) in the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front of World War II from 1941 to 1944. Leningrad, the country's second largest city, was besieged by Germany and Finland for 872 days, but never captured. The siege was the most destructive in history and possibly the most deadly, causing an estimated 1.5 million deaths, from a prewar population of 3.2 million. It was not classified as a war crime at the time, but some historians have since classified it as a genocide due to the intentional destruction of the city and the systematic starvation of its civilian population.

In August 1941, Germany's Army Group North reached the suburbs of Leningrad as Finnish forces moved to encircle the city from the north. Land routes from Leningrad to the rest of the Soviet Union were cut on 8 September 1941, beginning the siege. The Germans decided to bomb the city and starve its inhabitants rather than attempt to capture it; many residents starved during the winter of 1941–1942. Supplies were delivered to city by air, by ship over Lake Ladoga, or over the Road of Life, a highway built on the lake when it was frozen. A Red Army offensive opened a narrow land corridor to Leningrad on 18 January 1943, but the siege was not fully broken until 27 January 1944.

The Battle of the Somme (French: Bataille de la Somme; German: Schlacht an der Somme), also known as the Somme offensive, was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British Empire and the French Republic against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on both sides of the upper reaches of the river Somme in France. The battle was intended to hasten a victory for the Allies. More than three million men fought in the battle, of whom more than one million were either wounded or killed, making it one of the deadliest battles in human history.

The French and British had planned an offensive on the Somme during the Chantilly Conference in December 1915. The Allies agreed upon a strategy of combined offensives against the Central Powers in 1916 by the French, Russian, British and Italian armies, with the Somme offensive as the Franco-British contribution. The French army was to undertake the main part of the Somme offensive, supported on the northern flank by the Fourth Army of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). When the Imperial German Army began the Battle of Verdun on the Meuse on 21 February 1916, French commanders diverted many of the divisions intended for the Somme and the "supporting" attack by the British became the principal effort. British forces comprised a mixture of wartime volunteers from the Territorial Force and Kitchener's Army with the remains of the pre-war army.

The Battle of Changping (長平之戰) was a military campaign during the Warring States period of China that was fought between the two strongest military powers of the central plains, the State of Qin, State of Zhao northwest of present-day Gaoping). After a bitter two-year stalemate stretching 262 to 260 BC, the battle ended in a decisive victory for Qin forces. A vast majority of Zhao captives were ruthlessly executed, an unrecoverable loss of manpower and strategic reserve that permanently crippled the State of Zhao.

It is known as the greatest and longest battle of human antiquity. Infamous for being one of the deadliest battles in human history, several hundred thousand soldiers were buried alive in the aftermath. The main historical records for the events of this period is sourced from the Records of the Grand Historian, written more than a century later, which estimated roughly 450,000 dead on the Zhao side and 250,000 dead on the Qin side. Emperor Xuanzong of Tang (685–762) later built a temple over a collection of some of the human remains, and scattered bones and mass graves continue to be discovered on the site today.

The Brusilov offensive (Russian: Брусиловский прорыв, romanized: Brusilovskiĭ proryv, lit. 'Brusilov's breakthrough'), also known as the June advance, or Battle of Galicia-Volhynia, of June to September 1916 was the Russian Empire's greatest feat of arms during World War I and among the most lethal offensives in world history. The historian Graydon Tunstall called the Brusilov offensive the worst crisis of World War I for Austria-Hungary and the Triple Entente's greatest victory, but it came at a tremendous loss of life. It was arguably the most successful offensive in the entirety of the First World War. The victory contributed to a morale upsurge among the Russian troops. In 1917, Nicholas II planned a general offensive along the entire front to end the Central Powers. After the victory, the Petrograd conference (ru) was held at which the post-war structure of the world was discussed. Even despite the losses, the Russian armies were still being reinforced with new forces, the number of weapons increased, and new railways were being built.The offensive's success led Russia's allies to reconsider their positions on postwar territorial concessions, including the status of Anatolia and the Bosphorus Strait.

The offensive involved a major Russian attack against the armies of the Central Powers on the Eastern Front. Launched on 4 June 1916, it lasted until late September. It took place in eastern Galicia (present-day northwestern Ukraine), in the Lviv and Volyn Oblasts. The offensive is named after the commander in charge of the Southwestern Front of the Imperial Russian Army, General Aleksei Brusilov. The largest and most lethal offensive of the war, the Brusilov offensive had far-reaching effects. It relieved German pressure on French forces at Verdun, and helped to relieve the Austro-Hungarian pressure on the Italians. It inflicted irreparable losses on the Austro-Hungarian Army and finally induced Romania to enter the war on the side of the Entente. The human and material losses on the Russian side also greatly contributed to the onset of the Russian Revolution the following year. It was the largest battle in World War I according to the total losses and forces of the parties.