The conditions under which the fighters of both sides took part in the battle were particularly extreme.
For the Soviets surrounded in Stalingrad, the main tactical difficulty was the obstacle constituted by the Volga, making crossings to supply the troops perilous. At many points, the German army could reach by direct fire, machine gun or cannon, the convoys of heterogeneous boats operating the junction. A large number of soldiers arriving as reinforcements were thus killed during the crossing. This was made even more difficult when the first ice broke in November.
Soviet command posts on the West Bank were dangerously close to the fighting. On at least one occasion, the close guard of Vasili Chuikov, commander of the 62nd Army, had to fight against a German attack. At the height of the German advance, the Soviet bridgeheads on the western bank were only a few hundred meters deep, forcing the Katyushas to fall back to the far end of the bank to fire on the German front lines. .
The extreme hardness of the fighting prompted the majority of Russian fighters to consume large quantities of vodka. Each unit having to receive a ration per soldier, many unit commanders concealed the losses, so that the living could share the rations of the dead. On several occasions, Russian soldiers ingested anti-freeze fluid and other chemicals containing alcohol, which cost the lives of several of them.