Stalingrad
On returning to Moscow, Chuikov was placed in command of the 64th Army (later 7th Guards), on the West bank of the Don river. The 64th Army took part in the fighting withdrawal to Stalingrad, and shortly before the Battle of Stalingrad itself began, Chuikov was made commanding general of the more important 62nd Army, which was to hold Stalingrad itself, with the 64th on its Southern flank.
It was at Stalingrad that Chuikov developed the important tactic of “hugging the enemy,” by which under-armed Soviet soldiers kept the German army so close to them as to minimize the superior firepower enjoyed by the Wehrmacht. Chuikov had witnessed firsthand the Blitzkrieg tactics the Nazis had used to sweep across the Russian steppe, so he used the Germans' carpet-bombing of the city to draw panzer units into the rubble and chaos where their progress was impeded. Here they could be destroyed with Molotov cocktails and Russian artillery operating at close range. This tactic also rendered the German Luftwaffe ineffective, since Stuka dive-bombers could not attack Red Army positions without firing upon their own forces.
After the victory at Stalingrad, the 62nd was redesignated as the Soviet 8th Guards Army. Chuikov then commanded the 8th Guards as part of 1st Belorussian Front and led its advance through Poland, finally heading the Soviet offensive which conquered Berlin in April/May 1945.
Chuikov's advance through Poland was characterized by massive advances across difficult terrain (on several occasions, the 8th Guards Army advanced over 40 miles in a single day). On May 1, 1945, Chuikov, who commanded his army operating in central Berlin, was the first Allied officer to learn about Adolf Hitler's suicide, being informed by General Hans Krebs who came to Chuikov's headquarters under a white flag. He accepted the surrender of Berlin's forces from General Helmuth Weidling.
Chuikov appeared in the documentary film Berlin (1945), directed by Yuli Raizman.
Read more about this topic: Vasily Chuikov