Initially, Adolf Hitler ordered the forces had in Southern Russia (Army Group "South") to attack the Caucasus, with the aim of seizing the region's large quantities of oil, which would allow the Germans to continue the war. However, Hitler decided to divide Army Group "South" into two groups: Army Group "A" and Army Group "B"...
According to the plan of Operation "Cyan" (or "Blue"), Army Group "A", under the command of Field Marshal Wilhelm List, undertook the operation in the Caucasus, while Army Group "B", under the command of Field Marshal Maximilian von Weichs, undertook the attack on Stalingrad. Army Group "B" consisted of von Paulus' 6th Army and Hermann Hoth's 4th Panzer Army, as well as allied units.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
On August 23, 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (known as the "Non-Aggression Pact"). The pact obliged the two countries not to attack each other. However, on June 22, 1941, the forces of the Third Reich invaded the Soviet Union, violating the terms of the agreement.
In 1942, the German war industry increased the production of aircraft, tanks and other types of weapons and in this way managed to cover, in large part but not completely, the losses suffered on the Eastern Front. The following table shows the production of weapons in the years 1941 and 1942.
At the end of the article you will also find the English Version of the movie Enemy at the Gates
This version is most assuredly NOT going to be taken down anytime soon.
Strategy Germans
On April 5, 1942, Adolf Hitler signed "Directive 41", according to which, the German forces had to achieve the following objectives:
· To break up the Soviet forces in the south of the country.
· To understand the oil sources of the Caucasus.
· To occupy the rich rural areas of the Don and the Kuban.
· To destroy Soviet lines of communication and create conditions that would allow the Germans to win the war.
The Germans drew up a plan, which they divided into three parts. During the execution of the first part, the German forces in the Crimea and Kharkov would receive munitions and straighten the front line - this would allow the Wehrmacht to send more forces to execute the main part of Operation Blue (German: Blau ).
Later, the Germans would attack Voronezh and send part of the troops south, with the intention of encircling the Soviet forces on the Don. After the collapse of the Soviets on the Don, the Germans intended to capture Stalingrad, the South Volga and the Caucasus and send reinforcements to Army Group "North" besieging Leningrad.
Soviets
In March 1942, the General Staff of the Soviet Union believed that the Wehrmacht would attempt a new strike on the German-Soviet front. War intelligence reported that the Germans were preparing for an attack on the south of the USSR. However, the intelligence reports were not complete, so the USSR General Staff considered that the Wehrmacht would hold the main forces in the central direction (Moscow).
For this reason, the Red Army concentrated its strategic reserves in the regions of Kalinin, Tula, Tabov, Borisoglebsk, Gorky, Stalingrad and Saratov - the General Staff considered that it could use them in the southwestern and western directions of the front. On April 8, 1942, the Supreme Commander of the Soviet Armed Forces, Joseph Stalin, ordered the commanders of several fronts to attack and force the Wehrmacht to use all its reserves.
In this way, Stalin wanted to ensure victory of the USSR in the war in 1942. Later, however, the execution of this plan proved impossible. The Red Army had major problems, such as the lack of experienced commanders in the corps and the difficulty of forming corps - the formation of corps was decreasing due to the level of manufacture of new types of weapons.
Opponents' Pre-Conflict Operations
To implement their plan, the Wehrmacht had to secure the southern flank, which would assist during the attack on Stalingrad. Also, as academician Alexander Samsonov reports, the Wehrmacht also needed the participation of General Erich von Manstein's 11th Army, which was halted due to Soviet resistance in the Crimea. To achieve its goal, the Wehrmacht had to capture Sevastopol and the Kerch Peninsula at all costs.
On December 26, 1941, the Red Army captured Kerch, while on December 30, the Soviets entered Theodosia. However, the forces of the Crimean Front failed to capture the Crimean Peninsula. The Germans took advantage of the failure of the Red Army. On January 15, 1942, the Germans counterattacked and recaptured Theodosia. They also forced the Soviets to retreat to the Ak-Monaisk Isthmus, which was the narrowest point of the Kerch Peninsula.
The Red Army moved several forces to the Kerch Peninsula, but failed to retake it. This failure resulted in the weakening of the forces of the Crimean Front. At the same time, on January 7, the battle of Demyansk (Novgorod region) began. On February 25, the forces of the North-Western Front, under the leadership of General P. A. Kurochkin, managed to encircle six German divisions, which had 100,000 soldiers.
However, the Germans continued to resist in Demyansk thanks to the help of the air force, which regularly supplied the encircled divisions. On April 23, General Bush's 16th Army attacked "from the outside", pushed back the Soviets and reached Demyansk thanks to the so-called "Ramushevsky Corridor" (this corridor was in operation until the end of 1942).
The Germans could encircle the Soviet positions on the Seliger and Veliki Luki rivers from the south and from the north. The Red Army tried several times to retake the area, but failed. However, the 16th Army suffered heavy losses and was unable to assist the Wehrmacht forces at Rzhev and Vyazma, which were planning to attack the Seliger and Veliki Luki (Pskov) rivers.
On 8 May, von Manstein's 11th Army, Wolfram von Richthofen's 8th Air Corps, and forces of the 4th Air Fleet attacked the Kerch Peninsula. At the same time, the Germans transported a small force in boats to the Gulf of Theodosia. On May 20, the Germans completely occupied Kerch and captured more than 170,000 Red Army soldiers and officers, more than 3,000 guns, 350 tanks and a large number of munitions.
While these were taking place on the Kerch Peninsula, on May 12, the forces of the South-Western Front of Marshal Semyon Tymoshenko attacked Kharkiv, with the aim of liberating the city (Operation "Frederick"). Initially, the Soviets had the upper hand, however, the lack of organization of the attack caused enough problems for the Red Army and on May 17, the superiority passed into the hands of the Germans.
The Germans attacked from the north and from the south the forces of the Southern Front, however, the General Staff of the USSR did not order the forces of the South-Western Front to stop the attack and did not take appropriate measures. The wrong decisions of the leadership of the Red Army allowed the Germans to encircle the forces of the Southern and South-Western Fronts and capture more than 200,000 Red Army soldiers and commanders, more than 1,000 tanks and 2,000 guns. Only 25% of the forces of the 6th and 9th Soviet Armies managed to escape.
Supremacy in the southern sector of the German-Soviet front passed into the hands of the Wehrmacht. At the end of June, the Germans attacked Donbass. At the same time, on June 28, the 2nd German Army, the 4th Panzer Army and the 2nd Hungarian Army joined the "Weichs" Group and attacked the left wing of the Bryansk Front. At this point, the Soviets had almost twice as many soldiers and twice as many tanks, but they had almost the same number of guns.
On June 28, as mentioned above, Group "Weichs" attacked the left wing of the Bryansk Front. In the area were the forces of the Voronezh Front of General Vatutin, the forces of the Southern Front of General Malinovsky, the forces of the Bryansk Front of General Golikov, and the forces of the South-Western Front of Marshal Tymoshenko.
The Germans broke the Soviet resistance in Kursk and within 7 days covered the distance of 150-170 kilometers. On July 5, the Germans captured Voronezh. During the week-long conflict, the Germans captured 88,000 Soviet soldiers. The Red Army lost 1007 tanks and 1688 guns. At the same time, Sevastopol fell into the hands of the Germans.
During the German attack, the left wing of the Wehrmacht forces opened up. The leadership of the Red Army tried to take advantage of this and ordered the Bryansk Front (7 tank corps) to attack. However, the Bryansk Front did not receive air support, so the German air force destroyed most of the Soviet tanks.
Despite their victory at Voronezh, the Germans failed to extend the northern flank of their attack due to resistance from Soviet reserves. In the center, von Paulus's 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army, on 10 July, captured Kantemirovka and built bridgeheads on the east bank of the Don River. Then, the Germans attacked from the southeast direction and found themselves in the corridor between the Don and the Northern Donets. In less than a month, the 4th Panzer Army reached north of Rostov (across the Don) and the 6th Army reached near Stalingrad.
As for the southern wing of the German attack, the 1st Panzer Army reached Millerovo, and on July 25 (a week after the start of the fighting at Stalingrad) it was on the Don - between Novocherkassk and Tsimlianska. The 17th Army launched its offensive from the Stalino area in early July. On 17 July, the left wing of the 17th Army captured Vorosilovgrad, while the right wing found itself on the Don on all sides of Rostov.
During the fighting in Voronezh, the Soviets lost 568,000 soldiers (many of them captured), 2,436 tanks, 13,176 guns and 783 aircraft. On the other hand, the Germans lost about 60-70 thousand soldiers. On July 17, the General Staff of the Third Reich decided to implement the plan of Operation Blue. Thus began one of the greatest battles in history, the Battle of Stalingrad.
POWERS AND ALLIANCES
Later, the Germans would attack Voronezh and send part of the troops south, with the intention of encircling the Soviet forces on the Don. After the collapse of the Soviets on the Don, the Germans intended to capture Stalingrad, the South Volga and the Caucasus and send reinforcements to Army Group "North" besieging Leningrad.
Soviets
In March 1942, the General Staff of the Soviet Union believed that the Wehrmacht would attempt a new strike on the German-Soviet front. War intelligence reported that the Germans were preparing for an attack on the south of the USSR. However, the intelligence reports were not complete, so the USSR General Staff considered that the Wehrmacht would hold the main forces in the central direction (Moscow).
For this reason, the Red Army concentrated its strategic reserves in the regions of Kalinin, Tula, Tabov, Borisoglebsk, Gorky, Stalingrad and Saratov - the General Staff considered that it could use them in the southwestern and western directions of the front. On April 8, 1942, the Supreme Commander of the Soviet Armed Forces, Joseph Stalin, ordered the commanders of several fronts to attack and force the Wehrmacht to use all its reserves.
In this way, Stalin wanted to ensure victory of the USSR in the war in 1942. Later, however, the execution of this plan proved impossible. The Red Army had major problems, such as the lack of experienced commanders in the corps and the difficulty of forming corps - the formation of corps was decreasing due to the level of manufacture of new types of weapons.
Opponents' Pre-Conflict Operations
To implement their plan, the Wehrmacht had to secure the southern flank, which would assist during the attack on Stalingrad. Also, as academician Alexander Samsonov reports, the Wehrmacht also needed the participation of General Erich von Manstein's 11th Army, which was halted due to Soviet resistance in the Crimea. To achieve its goal, the Wehrmacht had to capture Sevastopol and the Kerch Peninsula at all costs.
On December 26, 1941, the Red Army captured Kerch, while on December 30, the Soviets entered Theodosia. However, the forces of the Crimean Front failed to capture the Crimean Peninsula. The Germans took advantage of the failure of the Red Army. On January 15, 1942, the Germans counterattacked and recaptured Theodosia. They also forced the Soviets to retreat to the Ak-Monaisk Isthmus, which was the narrowest point of the Kerch Peninsula.
However, the Germans continued to resist in Demyansk thanks to the help of the air force, which regularly supplied the encircled divisions. On April 23, General Bush's 16th Army attacked "from the outside", pushed back the Soviets and reached Demyansk thanks to the so-called "Ramushevsky Corridor" (this corridor was in operation until the end of 1942).
The Germans could encircle the Soviet positions on the Seliger and Veliki Luki rivers from the south and from the north. The Red Army tried several times to retake the area, but failed. However, the 16th Army suffered heavy losses and was unable to assist the Wehrmacht forces at Rzhev and Vyazma, which were planning to attack the Seliger and Veliki Luki (Pskov) rivers.
While these were taking place on the Kerch Peninsula, on May 12, the forces of the South-Western Front of Marshal Semyon Tymoshenko attacked Kharkiv, with the aim of liberating the city (Operation "Frederick"). Initially, the Soviets had the upper hand, however, the lack of organization of the attack caused enough problems for the Red Army and on May 17, the superiority passed into the hands of the Germans.
The Germans attacked from the north and from the south the forces of the Southern Front, however, the General Staff of the USSR did not order the forces of the South-Western Front to stop the attack and did not take appropriate measures. The wrong decisions of the leadership of the Red Army allowed the Germans to encircle the forces of the Southern and South-Western Fronts and capture more than 200,000 Red Army soldiers and commanders, more than 1,000 tanks and 2,000 guns. Only 25% of the forces of the 6th and 9th Soviet Armies managed to escape.
On June 28, as mentioned above, Group "Weichs" attacked the left wing of the Bryansk Front. In the area were the forces of the Voronezh Front of General Vatutin, the forces of the Southern Front of General Malinovsky, the forces of the Bryansk Front of General Golikov, and the forces of the South-Western Front of Marshal Tymoshenko.
The Germans broke the Soviet resistance in Kursk and within 7 days covered the distance of 150-170 kilometers. On July 5, the Germans captured Voronezh. During the week-long conflict, the Germans captured 88,000 Soviet soldiers. The Red Army lost 1007 tanks and 1688 guns. At the same time, Sevastopol fell into the hands of the Germans.
During the German attack, the left wing of the Wehrmacht forces opened up. The leadership of the Red Army tried to take advantage of this and ordered the Bryansk Front (7 tank corps) to attack. However, the Bryansk Front did not receive air support, so the German air force destroyed most of the Soviet tanks.
As for the southern wing of the German attack, the 1st Panzer Army reached Millerovo, and on July 25 (a week after the start of the fighting at Stalingrad) it was on the Don - between Novocherkassk and Tsimlianska. The 17th Army launched its offensive from the Stalino area in early July. On 17 July, the left wing of the 17th Army captured Vorosilovgrad, while the right wing found itself on the Don on all sides of Rostov.
During the fighting in Voronezh, the Soviets lost 568,000 soldiers (many of them captured), 2,436 tanks, 13,176 guns and 783 aircraft. On the other hand, the Germans lost about 60-70 thousand soldiers. On July 17, the General Staff of the Third Reich decided to implement the plan of Operation Blue. Thus began one of the greatest battles in history, the Battle of Stalingrad.
The superiority of the T34 over German tanks was decisive for the outcome of the war
POWERS AND ALLIANCES
Germans
As mentioned above, Hitler decided to split Army Group "South" into two groups: Army Group "A" and Army Group "B". Army Group "A", under the leadership of Wilhelm List, undertook the offensive in the Caucasus (battle of the Caucasus) and had at its disposal 167,000 troops, 1130 tanks, 4540 guns and 1000 aircraft.
Army Group B, commanded by Maximilian von Weichs, had 270,000 troops, 3,000 guns, 500 tanks and 1,200 aircraft at its disposal. Army Group "B" consisted mainly of von Paulus' 6th Army and Hermann Hoth's 4th Panzer Army.
In Stalingrad, along with the German armies, the 8th Italian Army, the 2nd Hungarian Army, the 3rd and 4th Romanian Armies and the 369th Croatian Infantry Regiment would fight. According to Hans Doerr, the two army groups began the battles at Stalingrad and the Caucasus with 6 divisions less than they had at the start of the summer campaign - these losses had not been covered.
Soviets
After the defeats in Kharkov and Voronezh, the General Staff of the USSR ordered the creation of the Stalingrad Front on July 12, 1942. The Stalingrad Front was created on the basis of the South-Western Front. From the South-Western Front, the Stalingrad Front received the 21st and 8th Armies, while from the reserves of the USSR General Staff it received the 62nd, 63rd and 64th Armies.
Later, the 24th, 28th, 38th, 51st, 57th and 66th Armies (infantry) were included in the Stalingrad Front. Also included in the front were the 1st and 4th Armored Armies, the 1st Guards Army and the 16th Airborne Army. In terms of numbers, the Red Army fielded 187,000 soldiers, 2,200 guns, 400 tanks and 454 aircraft at Stalingrad. The leadership of the Soviet forces was assumed by Marshal Simeon Tymoshenko.
On May 26, 1942, while the battles in the Crimea and Kharkov were raging, the Soviet Union and Great Britain signed an alliance agreement against Nazi Germany and its European Allies. However, the Soviets were forced to fight at Stalingrad, without the support of the Anglo-Americans.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited Moscow in mid-July 1942 to tell Stalin that Great Britain and the US would not open a second front. Some historians report that the Anglo-Americans intended to ally with the Third Reich to seize the oil resources of the Caucasus - although they had no plan in the event of a Soviet victory.
The City of Stalingrad Before the Battle
Volgograd (Russian: Волгогра́д: Валгаграт) or Stalingrad is a city in Russia, the capital of Volgograd Oblast. It has a population of 1,012,000 inhabitants. The city was founded in 1589 under the name Tsaritsyn (Russian: Царицын), which it carried until 1925. Then it was renamed, in honor of Joseph Stalin, to Stalingrad (Сталинград) (Stalin's city).
In 1961, the city changed its name again, taking its current name, thanks to the Volga River, which runs through it. It stretches 80 kilometers from north to south on the western banks of the Volga River and has a population of 1.011 million people. The city became famous for the resistance and extensive damage it received during the Battle of Stalingrad during World War II.
The first name of the city, Tsaritsyn, was mentioned for the first time by the English explorer Barry in 1579, but not for the city but for the island in the Volga River. The origin of the name comes from the Turkish "Sary-Su" (yellow water). The date of the foundation of the city is considered to be July 2, 1589, when the name Tsaritsyn was first used in an official document for the castle.
The castle is located just above the confluence of the rivers on the right bank. It soon became the nucleus of a commercial establishment. Before the Tsarina at the "mouth" of the river there was a camp of the Queen of the Golden Horde. In 1607 the castle defected from the royal army, but the revolution was suppressed 6 months later. In 1608 the city got its first stone church - Saint John the Baptist.
At the beginning of the 17th century the castle had a permanent strength of 350-400 people. In 1670 the fortress was captured by Stepan Razin's men, who retreated a month later. In 1708, the fortress fell into the hands of the Cossack Kondraty Bulavin. In 1717 it was plundered by the Crimean Tatars and Kubans. In 1774, Yemelan Pugachev unsuccessfully besieged the city.
In 1619 customs were established in Tsaritsyn. In 1708 it was included in the Kazan province, in 1719 in Astrakhan and in 1779 in the Saratov region. In 1773 the city became provincial, and in 1780 it was included in the province of Saratov. According to sources, in 1720 the population of the city was 408 people.
19th and 20th Century
Tsaritsyn became an important river port and trading center in the 19th century. The population grew rapidly. In 1807 less than 3 thousand people lived in Tsaritsyn - in 1900 it had 84,000. The first railroad came to the city in 1862. The first theater opened in 1872, and the first cinema in 1907. In 1913, streetcar service began, and electric lighting was installed downtown.
During the Russian Civil War, Tsaritsyn was occupied by the Bolsheviks. In 1918 it was besieged by forces of Atamanos Krasnov. Three attacks were repelled. In June 1919, however, it was occupied by troops of General Anton Ivanovich Denikin, who abandoned the city in 1920.
The city was renamed Stalingrad on April 10, 1925. In 1931, the German colony of Sarpeta was incorporated into the city, making it the largest city in area. The first institute was opened in 1930, a year before the inauguration of the Pedagogical Institute.
During World War II
under Stalin, the city became industrialized as a center for heavy industry and transhipment by land and sea. During the Battle of Stalingrad 2 million Russian and German soldiers died as well as over 40,000 civilians. The city was almost demolished, but repair works began almost immediately to drive the Germans out of the city. Stalingrad was awarded the Hero City award in 1945 for this battle.
The most important event in the history of the city was the Second World War. The Battle of Stalingrad began on July 17, 1942, and in August the city was hit by bombing that caused severe damage to buildings. The fighting in the center of the city was perhaps the fiercest ever seen by mankind, as some areas changed hands as many as 13 times. In the end, the German attackers were unable to break through the Russian defenses, who counter-attacked.
Stalingrad was one of the largest industrial centers of the Soviet Union. When Operation Barbarossa began, the city became one of the largest arsenals in the southeastern USSR. The city's factories built and repaired tanks and other weapons of war. Before the start of the battle, 445,000 people lived in Stalingrad (of which 325,000 worked) and there were 126 factories.
The city's agricultural tractor factory produced half of the USSR's agricultural tractors. The "Red October" plant (Krasny Oktiabr) produced 775.8 tons of steel per year and 584,300 tons of rolled steel. In 1961 the city changed its name to Volgograd (Volga city) in the context of de-Stalinization implemented by Nikita Khrushchev.
As mentioned above, Hitler decided to split Army Group "South" into two groups: Army Group "A" and Army Group "B". Army Group "A", under the leadership of Wilhelm List, undertook the offensive in the Caucasus (battle of the Caucasus) and had at its disposal 167,000 troops, 1130 tanks, 4540 guns and 1000 aircraft.
Army Group B, commanded by Maximilian von Weichs, had 270,000 troops, 3,000 guns, 500 tanks and 1,200 aircraft at its disposal. Army Group "B" consisted mainly of von Paulus' 6th Army and Hermann Hoth's 4th Panzer Army.
In Stalingrad, along with the German armies, the 8th Italian Army, the 2nd Hungarian Army, the 3rd and 4th Romanian Armies and the 369th Croatian Infantry Regiment would fight. According to Hans Doerr, the two army groups began the battles at Stalingrad and the Caucasus with 6 divisions less than they had at the start of the summer campaign - these losses had not been covered.
Representation of the situation
Soviets
After the defeats in Kharkov and Voronezh, the General Staff of the USSR ordered the creation of the Stalingrad Front on July 12, 1942. The Stalingrad Front was created on the basis of the South-Western Front. From the South-Western Front, the Stalingrad Front received the 21st and 8th Armies, while from the reserves of the USSR General Staff it received the 62nd, 63rd and 64th Armies.
Later, the 24th, 28th, 38th, 51st, 57th and 66th Armies (infantry) were included in the Stalingrad Front. Also included in the front were the 1st and 4th Armored Armies, the 1st Guards Army and the 16th Airborne Army. In terms of numbers, the Red Army fielded 187,000 soldiers, 2,200 guns, 400 tanks and 454 aircraft at Stalingrad. The leadership of the Soviet forces was assumed by Marshal Simeon Tymoshenko.
On May 26, 1942, while the battles in the Crimea and Kharkov were raging, the Soviet Union and Great Britain signed an alliance agreement against Nazi Germany and its European Allies. However, the Soviets were forced to fight at Stalingrad, without the support of the Anglo-Americans.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited Moscow in mid-July 1942 to tell Stalin that Great Britain and the US would not open a second front. Some historians report that the Anglo-Americans intended to ally with the Third Reich to seize the oil resources of the Caucasus - although they had no plan in the event of a Soviet victory.
The City of Stalingrad Before the Battle
Volgograd (Russian: Волгогра́д: Валгаграт) or Stalingrad is a city in Russia, the capital of Volgograd Oblast. It has a population of 1,012,000 inhabitants. The city was founded in 1589 under the name Tsaritsyn (Russian: Царицын), which it carried until 1925. Then it was renamed, in honor of Joseph Stalin, to Stalingrad (Сталинград) (Stalin's city).
In 1961, the city changed its name again, taking its current name, thanks to the Volga River, which runs through it. It stretches 80 kilometers from north to south on the western banks of the Volga River and has a population of 1.011 million people. The city became famous for the resistance and extensive damage it received during the Battle of Stalingrad during World War II.
The first name of the city, Tsaritsyn, was mentioned for the first time by the English explorer Barry in 1579, but not for the city but for the island in the Volga River. The origin of the name comes from the Turkish "Sary-Su" (yellow water). The date of the foundation of the city is considered to be July 2, 1589, when the name Tsaritsyn was first used in an official document for the castle.
The castle is located just above the confluence of the rivers on the right bank. It soon became the nucleus of a commercial establishment. Before the Tsarina at the "mouth" of the river there was a camp of the Queen of the Golden Horde. In 1607 the castle defected from the royal army, but the revolution was suppressed 6 months later. In 1608 the city got its first stone church - Saint John the Baptist.
At the beginning of the 17th century the castle had a permanent strength of 350-400 people. In 1670 the fortress was captured by Stepan Razin's men, who retreated a month later. In 1708, the fortress fell into the hands of the Cossack Kondraty Bulavin. In 1717 it was plundered by the Crimean Tatars and Kubans. In 1774, Yemelan Pugachev unsuccessfully besieged the city.
In 1619 customs were established in Tsaritsyn. In 1708 it was included in the Kazan province, in 1719 in Astrakhan and in 1779 in the Saratov region. In 1773 the city became provincial, and in 1780 it was included in the province of Saratov. According to sources, in 1720 the population of the city was 408 people.
19th and 20th Century
Tsaritsyn became an important river port and trading center in the 19th century. The population grew rapidly. In 1807 less than 3 thousand people lived in Tsaritsyn - in 1900 it had 84,000. The first railroad came to the city in 1862. The first theater opened in 1872, and the first cinema in 1907. In 1913, streetcar service began, and electric lighting was installed downtown.
During the Russian Civil War, Tsaritsyn was occupied by the Bolsheviks. In 1918 it was besieged by forces of Atamanos Krasnov. Three attacks were repelled. In June 1919, however, it was occupied by troops of General Anton Ivanovich Denikin, who abandoned the city in 1920.
The city was renamed Stalingrad on April 10, 1925. In 1931, the German colony of Sarpeta was incorporated into the city, making it the largest city in area. The first institute was opened in 1930, a year before the inauguration of the Pedagogical Institute.
During World War II
under Stalin, the city became industrialized as a center for heavy industry and transhipment by land and sea. During the Battle of Stalingrad 2 million Russian and German soldiers died as well as over 40,000 civilians. The city was almost demolished, but repair works began almost immediately to drive the Germans out of the city. Stalingrad was awarded the Hero City award in 1945 for this battle.
The most important event in the history of the city was the Second World War. The Battle of Stalingrad began on July 17, 1942, and in August the city was hit by bombing that caused severe damage to buildings. The fighting in the center of the city was perhaps the fiercest ever seen by mankind, as some areas changed hands as many as 13 times. In the end, the German attackers were unable to break through the Russian defenses, who counter-attacked.
Stalingrad was one of the largest industrial centers of the Soviet Union. When Operation Barbarossa began, the city became one of the largest arsenals in the southeastern USSR. The city's factories built and repaired tanks and other weapons of war. Before the start of the battle, 445,000 people lived in Stalingrad (of which 325,000 worked) and there were 126 factories.
The city's agricultural tractor factory produced half of the USSR's agricultural tractors. The "Red October" plant (Krasny Oktiabr) produced 775.8 tons of steel per year and 584,300 tons of rolled steel. In 1961 the city changed its name to Volgograd (Volga city) in the context of de-Stalinization implemented by Nikita Khrushchev.
In the spring of 1942 the German troops, which had invaded the USSR en masse and by surprise the previous summer, having failed to capture Moscow, were forced to retreat several kilometers from the forward positions they had occupied after their initial rush. It was estimated that the German forces were now operating on a gigantic front for which their forces were insufficient for a single advance. Therefore, the German command began to strike plans to advance certain points of the front with the aim of crushing the Red Army and occupying the entire country.
According to a survey by the Wehrmacht command, of the 162 German divisions employed on the Eastern Front, only 8 were fully ready to conduct any operation, 47 were capable of conducting limited offensive operations, and the remainder could either be employed only in defensive duties or partly in them. Nevertheless, the Nazi army was a very capable opponent, well equipped and with great operational experience.
The Oils of the Caucasus
After the war took an unpleasant turn for Germany in 1941, Hitler realized that he was in grave danger of being caught in a race of attrition with the USSR in which whoever possessed the strongest industrial base and the more reserves. The industrial centers of the USSR's Urals were known to be difficult to hit, and the Soviet Union's reserves, while unwieldy, were certainly vast if not inexhaustible. The Red Army had managed to save 1500 factories which were moved in the blink of an eye with all the workers and their equipment to the depths of the country. Although mighty, the Soviet socialist industrial giant had its vulnerabilities too. The supply of the required oil they needed came almost exclusively from the Caucasus where the fields of Maykop, Grozny and Baku were located. The routes used to move the oil were very limited and amounted to three: the Rostov railway line, the Tikhorshek-Stalingrad line and the Volga waterway, which used barges.
The idea of the German staff was to capture Rostov, Maykop and Grozny and advance the German forces to the Volga where they would cut the waterway. If the Wehrmacht's objectives were achieved the USSR would be weakened and the war in the East would be decisively decided. The staff's strategic rationale was translated into an operational plan on 03/28/1942. 89 divisions of Germans, Italians, Romanians and Hungarians would rush in late May from their positions on the Donets River to seize the rich deposits of the Caucasus. This company was codenamed Blau. The Red Army in the first offensive actions did not realize the extent of the German plans. Marshal Tymoshenko, preparing a recapture of Kharkiv with 640,000 men, ran into divisions of the 6th Army and 1st Panzer Army resulting in total defeat. 29 Red Army divisions were disbanded and some 240,000 prisoners were taken, who would soon experience the horrors of concentration camps and Nazism.
In this painful way, the Soviet staff became aware of the new plans of the Nazi troops. The continuation of the operations was assumed to be coordinated by the cool leader of the Stavka (Supreme Command Staff) General Alexander Vasilievsky.
On the Don
With the Red Army's resistance broken, the Nazi 6th Army under General Friedrich Paulus, and General Hoth's 4th Panzer Army, moved decisively towards Stalingrad. The 6th Army was a hardened force to be reckoned with that had participated in the mass murder of 33,771 Jews of Babi Yar. Hitler had even stated that the 6th Army could even attempt a raid in the skies. But Stalingrad was to be the historical grave of both the 6th Army and the entire Nazi plans for the occupation of the USSR.
At first, Paulus was delayed in reaching the west bank of the Don. Instead of charging in with the familiar blitzkrieg tactics, he focused his attention on large-scale liquidation operations. The Red Army, although retreating towards Stalingrad, continued to exert pressure on the German advance. With great self-sacrifice, the Don garrison with its 550 tanks held back the advance of the 6th Army allowing the infantry to retreat safely. The sight of the destroyed Soviet and German tanks that now filled the steppe made a vivid impression on the Germans. "They look like a huge herd of elephants," commented General Seidlitz.
Annoyed by the unprecedented Soviet resistance, Hitler ordered General Hot to operate immediately and assist Paulus' advance. The German tanks soon prevailed and Hoth reached near Kotelnikovo. Nevertheless, the Red Army had achieved its tactical retreat. But the report was not in his favor. The German command after the first victories against the Red Army was in an offensive fever. Within 3 weeks it had achieved all its strategic objectives and now only Stalingrad remained. Hitler, although he could effectively attempt to encircle Stalingrad, ordered its immediate occupation by the 6th Army and the occupation of the entire Soviet coastline on the Black Sea.
The problem that was not yet felt was that the new front now stretched 2,200 kilometers and its supply was becoming problematic. On the other hand, the Red Army had at its back the vast Siberian frontier where new armies were already being trained and socialist industry was reheating its factories. Such was the German dictator's confidence in the "Stalingrad" affair that he rested two of his divisions and filled their gaps with the 3rd and 4th Romanian Armies, the 2nd Hungarian and the 8th Italian.
A Red Army commissar urges the attack, holding a tokarev pistol that was considered a technological marvel in its day as it was the width of a matchbox
In the Soviet camp the situation looked serious. Convoy PQ-17 had just been destroyed in the Barents Sea, and the Allies did not seem interested in opening a new front, nor in establishing a supply chain from Persia. Stalin decided to reorganize his military staff. He preferred to replace the "staff" officers who had no field experience with more hardened officers who had been "baked" in war. Tymoshenko was relieved of command of the ND Front and replaced by General Gordov. In early August, the Stavka decided to divide the front into two sectors. The northern sector would be assigned to Gordov and included half of Stalingrad, and the southern sector was assigned to the highly capable 39-year-old general Andrei Yeremenko, who took over with his leg still injured. The new command faced first and foremost the retreating Soviet 62nd Army and the question of whether Stalingrad should be held or evacuated. To the thousands of messages that reached Yeremenko asking what to do now that the enemy is at the gates, Yeremenko gave only one answer: "Do your duty. Stop panicking."
Stalingrad: the fortress of the USSR
In 1942, Stalingrad was the third largest industrial city of the USSR. Its population amounted to 500,000 inhabitants. As a city it produced 25% of the Red Army's armored vehicles and was built along the west bank of the Volga. The numerous islets in the river were a place of recreation and the Stalingrad Conservatory was known for its beautiful architecture. The northern part of the city consisted of four modern industrial complexes. The first was the old Dzerzhinsky Tractor Factory which before the war produced tractors and now made tanks. Around it spread 300 workers' houses, with their own shops, schools, stadiums and theaters. The second complex was the "Odofragma" factory that produced small arms and ammunition. Next to it stretched the "Red October" steelworks, which was to become the grave of Nazism as it would be defended mainly by its workers. Finally, further south was the "Lazur" chemical factory, distinguished by its yellow bricks. South-west of the city dominated the impressive hill Mamayev Kurgan, where the inhabitants of the city played out and which, against the Nekrasovs, was a meeting place for lovers. The central public buildings were located in the central square of the city. The Pravda newspaper, the Gorky theater and the huge department stores for the time, Univermag. A highlight was the town's strange sculpture depicting a group of children dancing in circles around an alligator.
The southern outskirts of the city were chosen by Paulus for the first penetration into the city. But it was a labyrinth with many workers' houses and Russian churches. The Germans considered the capture of this point an easy task and did not pay attention to the large concrete granary that defined with its enormous height the boundaries of central and southern Stalingrad. But Stalingrad was not an easy task. Joseph Stalin himself had in 1918 defended the city against Denikin's White Guards with great success. Although Denikin captured the city the following year, Stalin managed to recapture it a few months later. Joseph Stalin and the Soviet people would now be called upon for the second time to defend their city and the achievements of the socialist revolution.
The alligator sculpture
Almost 200,000 of the city's citizens participated from the first days in organizing the city's defense. Volunteer corps of workers undertook the digging of trenches and trenches, and the Red October workers asked through their soviet and received permission to defend their factory. The Stavka turned its full attention to the defense of the city since it assumed, not incorrectly, that a capture of the city would lead to an overreach of Moscow.
On the afternoon of August 22, 1942, the enemy was at the gates
The Soviet PPSh-41 submachine gun. An excellent automatic weapon that was also used by the German army due to its high reliability. In many cases the Germans slightly modified it to accept the Parabellum bullets used by
Ante Portas
During their first assault on Stalingrad, the Wehrmacht was under the delusion that they would achieve a comfortable victory within hours. Wittersheim's 14th Panzer Corps marched to the east bank of the Don always aiming for Stalingrad. The commanders of the 16th Panzer Division marched en masse to the Volga in a temperature of 45 degrees reminiscent of the African campaign. The spectacle of the hundreds of vehicles was duly complemented by the German air force flying in formations of 100 aircraft towards the city. The Luftwaffe had 600 planes of each type available on the first day of bombing.
Soon the German command was surprised that the remnants of the 63rd Soviet Army were nowhere to be seen. Its retreat was complete and the so-called "Tatar Trench" was the only defensive bridgehead left in the middle of the Volga and Don, where an elite Soviet guard took on the mission of stopping the German forces. The resistance was soon broken by the heavy firepower of the German tanks.
At the moment when the first German tanks were approaching the city, the whole area was shaking from the relentless bombardment of the air force under the command of Wolfram Von Richthofen. Richthofen was the same man who leveled Belgrade killing 17,000 civilians and who a month later destroyed much of Chania and Heraklion. The first heavy attack caused incalculable destruction. Tongues of fire rose up to 500 meters above the city turning night into day. 300 kilometers away the plumes of smoke were still visible. The first attack claimed the lives of 40,000 civilians and Richthofen declared himself satisfied. The Soviet Air Force was also present in the conflict. Attempts by General Hryukin's 8th Air Army to intervene had little effect. At the end of the day her ships were decimated.
As the Nazi tanks approached the suburb of Rynok, they were met with heavy artillery fire from their right flank. The street fighting continued for hours and finally the German machine destroyed all 37 positions of the Soviet fighters. They were all workers. In the evening the German tanks reached the banks of the Volga where an unpleasant surprise awaited them. Soviet barges were still moving around carrying supplies and soldiers in defiance of the air force.
The next day German tanks attempted to advance towards the tractor factory but only got within 700 meters of it. The Soviet fire was riveting. They put both through the building and from the opposite hill. The defenders in a single night managed to establish a new protection zone of the city by enlisting all the available fighters of the 62nd Army which had not even spent 48 hours in the entire city. Thousands of citizens also participated in the defense. That forces unleashed by the Nazis on August 25th met the same fate, being pinned down and significantly weakened. In the following days the Red Army will also carry out offensive actions threatening the lines of communication of the 6th Army. The "war by all means" had begun. Cut off from the rest of the 6th Army, General Paulus was worried. After 5 days of continuous fighting he held only a 5 km strip of the west bank of the Volga. Hot's offense was having similar problems. But Stavka was also in turmoil. Coordination was difficult and the problem of the Nazi air force unsolved. The new models of Soviet planes were not yet in mass production, and conflicting reports came in from all over the city.
A few days later and Hoth's armored forces ran into serious obstacles. A large tank force of Major General Sumilov's 64th Armored Army had created an impenetrable wall. The fighting in the pocket of Hoth lasted several days. The commander of the 24th Panzer Brigade lost his life and thousands of other German soldiers. The Soviet fighters had decided to hold. Hoth chose to withdraw his forces seven days later and strike 45 kilometers southwest from where he could outflank the hills. This time Hot got luckier. The fortress of Gavrilovka was defended by infantry units and civilians, but they could not hold the German tanks for more than a few hours. Thus the outer ring of Stalingrad defenses was broken and the 64th was isolated from the 62nd Army. Back at the Soviet headquarters the Stavka officers were trying to keep their cool and the morale of the soldiers high. The wedge that Paulus' 6th Army could create in the gap opened by Hoth could prove fatal. The Soviet administration knew this and ordered Paulus to be delayed as long as possible. "Keep the forces of the 6th Army out at all costs". It was the order to all combat units.
Soviet soldiers cross the Volga by swimming or in wooden boats to cross amid shelling on the west bank
The brunt of this action was borne by the 1st Guards Army (known for its exceptional discipline) and the 24th Army. Thousands of Soviet soldiers fought furiously to hold the opening. The order was to hold out for at least 24 hours in order to collapse the 40,000 men who were in front of Hoth and who were now retreating into the city. The Soviets delayed Paulus and the 6th Army for 3 whole days! Thus the 6th Army arrived too late to take advantage of any success on the front.
August at Stalingrad
Fighting raged throughout August at Stalingrad. Yeremenko had now moved his staff to the Tsaritsa Gorge 10 meters below ground and the Political Commissar Nikita Khrushchev (the later CPSU General Secretary) had been added to the command. The situation was extremely stressful for the Soviet staff. The Germans, although they did not succeed in the advance-wedge, managed to advance in the southwestern sector of the city, the Luftwaffe continued to destroy aqueducts, and infrastructure facilities of the city, the largest part of which had been given over to the flames. The city center was leveled and at least 100 blocks were burning day and night. The massive bombardment impeded rapid armored advances but turned the city into a perfect ambush site which the Soviets would masterfully use to cut off the 6th Army's advance. Yeremenko undauntedly continued the effort to defend the city. 6,000 troops were ordered to be moved to the northern sector of the city and marines from the Far East Fleet were urgently called in to reinforce the fight. So when the 16th Panzer Brigade repeated its attack to the north of the city it was spectacularly repulsed. Now the front was completely split. In the north the Red Army had the ability to fight back while in the south they fought a stretch from the city to the outer Kalmyk steppes.
General Chuikov
Inside the city, street fights were daily. Groups of workers, soldiers and national guards fought house to house with the enemy. The division into small groups, although initially done objectively without an order from the Stavka, later became a standing tactic of the Red Army in Stalingrad. These groups achieved in some cases impressive results using everything from Molotov cocktails to cartridges against the Germans. Although their action was decisive, their coordination required a titanic effort from the administration. "Our radio operators have been sleepless for days." says Captain Yevgeni Lyutkin "many times we lost contact with the small groups. Some would contact us again days later after they had somehow magically achieved their goal, while others were lost forever to the Germans." There are thousands of known stories of heroism of the Soviet people in Stalingrad and thousands more are unknown.
A fallen German Hengel. The Soviets called it a "skeleton"
The War of the Mice
The second week of September opened with new successes for the Germans. The 4th Panzer Army on the 10th of the month also reached the Volga at the height of the granary. This fact meant that the Soviet 62nd Army was now completely cut off in the center of the city. The only channel of communication was the ferry, but they were constantly under fire from the German air force. Despite all his efforts, Hot always ran into the obstacles of the Soviet engineer and did not manage to significantly advance his forces inside the city. The situation in the north was also static. The 6th Army, which had already entered Stalingrad in its entirety, was in a hurry to take the city by storm. Joseph Stalin in September 1942 made a major change in his staff. He placed General Georgy Zhukov, the winner of Khalkhin Gol and Moscow, as the general coordinator of the defense of Stalingrad. Zhukov's prodigious abilities would soon become apparent. Zhukov initially limited himself to controlling the Stalingrad reserves. He was gathering strength for his upcoming plan of action.
Soviets in the ruins of a Stalingrad log cabin
Changes were also taking place at the Stalingrad headquarters. Yeremenko relieved Golikov's aide and 62nd Army commander Alexander Lopatin, who wanted the Red Army to withdraw from the city. He was replaced by the then-unknown Vasily Chuikov, whose skills would soon impress enemies and comrades alike. Chuikov had 6 depleted divisions, 55,000 men, 60 tanks, 700 mortars and guns with which to hold a 30 km front. Against him the Germans had 100,000 well-rested and well-equipped men, 500 tanks and over 1000 aircraft. Chuikov gave the following slogan: "Every German in Stalingrad must feel that he is living under the barrel of a Russian gun", this is exactly the tactic he would apply. The day after Chuikov took office, Paulus opened his new wave of offensive actions with a thunderous artillery barrage. A fresh raid by the planes of the Nazi machine flattened what was left standing in the southern sector and Paulus launched what he thought would be the "final attack". Three infantry divisions and two panzer regiments stormed the tractor factory. But the Soviets held their positions. 3000 Germans would meet their deaths that day. Chuikov, for his part, was evacuating 3,500 wounded on the eastern bank of the Volga. From October 19 and for the next three days, the Germans launched furious attacks on all fronts. The Red October factory, which had turned into a resort of serious conflict, passed by 20% into Nazi hands. By the end of the month Soviet fighters were at their limits. 90% of the west bank was occupied by the Germans. The Soviets maintained control of the Red October factory, the ferry, and the eastern exits of the Odofragma and Dzerzhinsky factories. Within the enemy zone individual but many groups of Chuikov's soldiers fought meter by meter, house by house, day by day.
Soviets in winter uniform on a city front
The rat war, as reported by the German administration, had begun. The Soviets were left with 20,000 men and little food supplies. Chuikov if they were not resupplied soon he would only have chocolates to feed his army. At the same time, street fights were raging in the city. Soviet soldiers were conducting a guerrilla war of positions with their snipers having the upper hand. Their squared military spades were converted into deadly weapons (Military regulation provided for the use of the sharpened spade as a weapon). The Germans were bleeding to clear a sector only to find the Soviets in the same positions the next morning. Soviet soldiers made sure to drill holes in the walls to easily pass from building to building.
Female members of the Red Army sniper squadron in Stalingrad
On the other hand, the German administration was in confusion. Paulus was trying to stabilize the German positions and at the same time launch a general decisive attack. This attack took place on November 10, 1943 at 3:30 am. Four specialized engineer battalions with 2,400 men attacked after an artillery preparation at the chemical plant. After 8 hours of fighting, the Germans found themselves inside the factory and tore up the floor to locate the basements where the Soviet soldiers were retreating. They tried to set fire to all the basements with gasoline, but they were fired upon by a group of marines from the ship "Kronstandi" who were accompanied by armed workers. In a few more hours the German operations had ceased leaving another 3,500 dead. Chuikov still held the city coolly. It normally had 9 brigades and a division but in a poor condition. He himself had developed a strange rash on his hands from the unbearable pressure and stress. On November 14 he will send an angry telegram to Yeremenko: "No ships have reached us. Supply deliveries have steadily decreased and we have received no reinforcements in men or ammunition." But Zhukov and the Stavka had not abandoned the defenders of Stalingrad...
48 hours after Chuikov's telegram, Stavka's reply came in terrifying fashion. The heavy artillery and rocket launchers of the Red Army battered the German positions. The city's defenders would soon be relieved. The plan of the Soviet leadership was extremely bold and cunning. For two months it had been painstakingly laid out and every little detail had been investigated. By fulfilling it, the Red Army would wrest all initiative from the Nazi forces. Central masterminds behind the planning were General Vasilievsky and General Zhukov. On the evening of Saturday, September 19, the plan to save the city was presented to Stalin in detail. The Soviet command had decided to deliver a crushing blow to the German forces, just as the Soviet air force was being reinforced with new aircraft. Taking command of the 62nd Army, the two generals would leave it with only the forces necessary to survive. Securing extensive reserves they will attempt an outer encirclement of the city of Stalingrad and cut off the 6th Army from the German rear. This move would create a state of siege on the besiegers. In order to act, however, the generals waited for the frost to harden the ground and facilitate the movement of chariots. The generals' hopes of achieving the plan rested on two factors:
The eastern wedge would be manned by the following forces: Romanenko's 5th Panzer Army with its brand new tanks, Chistyakov's 21st Army, Batov's 65th Army and they would await aircraft support. The space between the Don and the Volga would be covered by Galanin's 24th Army and Zhdanov's 66th Army. Further south Trufanov's 51st Army and Tolbukhin's 57th Army would take up position. The northern wedge would be taken over by Nikolai Vatutin with the 34th army. The entire operation would be supported by air with Rudenko's 16th Air Army and Hryukin's veteran but newly-refreshed 8th Air Army. Facing them were the Romanian 3rd Army, the Italian 8th Army and a little further the Hungarian 2nd Army. Inside the city remained Chuikov with the heroic 62nd army and Sumilov's 64th.
On November 6, everything was ready and the staff of the Stavka left Stalingrad. The next day, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the revolution, Stalin will declare: "Soon we will have a celebration in our own street."
Enterprise "Heaven"
At dawn on November 19, 3500 Russian guns forged by the Soviet people mercilessly hit the Romanian positions. Stavka has rightly assumed that the Romanians and Italians are a weak link in defense. The Romanian Kletskaya area is set on fire and confusion is caused to the Nazi forces. Thousands of Russians dressed in white with a variation of snow are coming in waves. Soon the T-34 tanks will break through the Romanian line. Chaos ensues. The 3rd army of the Romanians disintegrates disorderly. Irregular groups of Romanians flow south. The Cossack cavalry is mowing them down. The day is characterized by severe bad weather and is well chosen to prevent a possible intervention by the German air force. Until the evening the German staff does not have full knowledge of what has happened. The 5th Armored Army and the 21st Army have created a huge breach in the front that stretches for 75 kilometers. At 10:00 the next morning, Vatutin retaliated in the north of the city. Paulus directs his fire there. At the same time, Yeremenko unleashes the 57th, 64th and 51st armies south of the city. Few Germans guard the front along with elements of the Romanian 4th Army. In 3 hours Yeremenko counts 10,000 prisoners. The Soviet armies break through the 45 km long front and move with lightning speed towards Kalach. The 22nd Panzer tries to cleverly get in the way of General Rumanenko. She will lose 19 of her 22 tanks. On November 21st the two wedges unite in Kalach and fill the night sky with green flares.
At the same time, a rain of Katyusha rockets bombards the German positions inside the city. The rope is complete and Paulus is caught in the death trap. In the following days the Red Army systematically clears German enclaves throughout the perimeter. "We want the perimeter clean and orderly" is Zhukov's order. The operation comes to an end on November 24th. The Red Army has killed 95,000 Germans, captured 75,000 and liberated 213 villages and towns. Inside Stalingrad the Stavka believe they have trapped 85,000 Germans. Her information is incorrect. The Germans amount to 330,000! The Red Army has literally grabbed the Nazi tiger by the tail.
The 6th Army staff receives the news of the attack with disbelief. The realization of the tragedy will come when a regiment of the 6th Army tries a scouting mission to the south of the city and is literally wiped out. On 26 November Paulus will send a desperate report of the situation to Hitler who is traveling to Obersalzberg. To this the dictator will reply in two lines: "The front on the Volga must be held, supplies are coming from the air." Richthofen had 5 airfields inside the city and another 10 around the perimeter, but the 6th Army needed 750 tons of supplies per day to survive, which was clearly beyond the Luftwaffe's capabilities. Within the command of the 6th Army to which the remnants of 2 Romanian divisions and a Croatian regiment (369) had now been added the divisions had already begun. Despair prevailed and already some officers were talking about surrender. To this will be added a large climate of bad weather that will lower the temperature to -40 degrees. The men of the 6th Army now also had to deal with the cold.
According to a survey by the Wehrmacht command, of the 162 German divisions employed on the Eastern Front, only 8 were fully ready to conduct any operation, 47 were capable of conducting limited offensive operations, and the remainder could either be employed only in defensive duties or partly in them. Nevertheless, the Nazi army was a very capable opponent, well equipped and with great operational experience.
After the war took an unpleasant turn for Germany in 1941, Hitler realized that he was in grave danger of being caught in a race of attrition with the USSR in which whoever possessed the strongest industrial base and the more reserves. The industrial centers of the USSR's Urals were known to be difficult to hit, and the Soviet Union's reserves, while unwieldy, were certainly vast if not inexhaustible. The Red Army had managed to save 1500 factories which were moved in the blink of an eye with all the workers and their equipment to the depths of the country. Although mighty, the Soviet socialist industrial giant had its vulnerabilities too. The supply of the required oil they needed came almost exclusively from the Caucasus where the fields of Maykop, Grozny and Baku were located. The routes used to move the oil were very limited and amounted to three: the Rostov railway line, the Tikhorshek-Stalingrad line and the Volga waterway, which used barges.
In this painful way, the Soviet staff became aware of the new plans of the Nazi troops. The continuation of the operations was assumed to be coordinated by the cool leader of the Stavka (Supreme Command Staff) General Alexander Vasilievsky.
On the Don
With the Red Army's resistance broken, the Nazi 6th Army under General Friedrich Paulus, and General Hoth's 4th Panzer Army, moved decisively towards Stalingrad. The 6th Army was a hardened force to be reckoned with that had participated in the mass murder of 33,771 Jews of Babi Yar. Hitler had even stated that the 6th Army could even attempt a raid in the skies. But Stalingrad was to be the historical grave of both the 6th Army and the entire Nazi plans for the occupation of the USSR.
At first, Paulus was delayed in reaching the west bank of the Don. Instead of charging in with the familiar blitzkrieg tactics, he focused his attention on large-scale liquidation operations. The Red Army, although retreating towards Stalingrad, continued to exert pressure on the German advance. With great self-sacrifice, the Don garrison with its 550 tanks held back the advance of the 6th Army allowing the infantry to retreat safely. The sight of the destroyed Soviet and German tanks that now filled the steppe made a vivid impression on the Germans. "They look like a huge herd of elephants," commented General Seidlitz.
General Andrei Yeremenko. He turned Stalingrad from a crisis city into a fortress city in a few days.
A Soviet soldier treats a wounded man during a raid
A Red Army commissar urges the attack, holding a tokarev pistol that was considered a technological marvel in its day as it was the width of a matchbox
Edited real videos
Stalingrad: the fortress of the USSR
In 1942, Stalingrad was the third largest industrial city of the USSR. Its population amounted to 500,000 inhabitants. As a city it produced 25% of the Red Army's armored vehicles and was built along the west bank of the Volga. The numerous islets in the river were a place of recreation and the Stalingrad Conservatory was known for its beautiful architecture. The northern part of the city consisted of four modern industrial complexes. The first was the old Dzerzhinsky Tractor Factory which before the war produced tractors and now made tanks. Around it spread 300 workers' houses, with their own shops, schools, stadiums and theaters. The second complex was the "Odofragma" factory that produced small arms and ammunition. Next to it stretched the "Red October" steelworks, which was to become the grave of Nazism as it would be defended mainly by its workers. Finally, further south was the "Lazur" chemical factory, distinguished by its yellow bricks. South-west of the city dominated the impressive hill Mamayev Kurgan, where the inhabitants of the city played out and which, against the Nekrasovs, was a meeting place for lovers. The central public buildings were located in the central square of the city. The Pravda newspaper, the Gorky theater and the huge department stores for the time, Univermag. A highlight was the town's strange sculpture depicting a group of children dancing in circles around an alligator.
General Paulus commander of the 6th Army
The alligator sculpture
On the afternoon of August 22, 1942, the enemy was at the gates
Red Army soldiers rushing through the ruins of the city.
The Soviet PPSh-41 submachine gun. An excellent automatic weapon that was also used by the German army due to its high reliability. In many cases the Germans slightly modified it to accept the Parabellum bullets used by
Ante Portas
During their first assault on Stalingrad, the Wehrmacht was under the delusion that they would achieve a comfortable victory within hours. Wittersheim's 14th Panzer Corps marched to the east bank of the Don always aiming for Stalingrad. The commanders of the 16th Panzer Division marched en masse to the Volga in a temperature of 45 degrees reminiscent of the African campaign. The spectacle of the hundreds of vehicles was duly complemented by the German air force flying in formations of 100 aircraft towards the city. The Luftwaffe had 600 planes of each type available on the first day of bombing.
Soon the German command was surprised that the remnants of the 63rd Soviet Army were nowhere to be seen. Its retreat was complete and the so-called "Tatar Trench" was the only defensive bridgehead left in the middle of the Volga and Don, where an elite Soviet guard took on the mission of stopping the German forces. The resistance was soon broken by the heavy firepower of the German tanks.
At the moment when the first German tanks were approaching the city, the whole area was shaking from the relentless bombardment of the air force under the command of Wolfram Von Richthofen. Richthofen was the same man who leveled Belgrade killing 17,000 civilians and who a month later destroyed much of Chania and Heraklion. The first heavy attack caused incalculable destruction. Tongues of fire rose up to 500 meters above the city turning night into day. 300 kilometers away the plumes of smoke were still visible. The first attack claimed the lives of 40,000 civilians and Richthofen declared himself satisfied. The Soviet Air Force was also present in the conflict. Attempts by General Hryukin's 8th Air Army to intervene had little effect. At the end of the day her ships were decimated.
As the Nazi tanks approached the suburb of Rynok, they were met with heavy artillery fire from their right flank. The street fighting continued for hours and finally the German machine destroyed all 37 positions of the Soviet fighters. They were all workers. In the evening the German tanks reached the banks of the Volga where an unpleasant surprise awaited them. Soviet barges were still moving around carrying supplies and soldiers in defiance of the air force.
Germans fight a street battle in Stalingrad
Soviet soldiers cross the Volga by swimming or in wooden boats to cross amid shelling on the west bank
August at Stalingrad
Fighting raged throughout August at Stalingrad. Yeremenko had now moved his staff to the Tsaritsa Gorge 10 meters below ground and the Political Commissar Nikita Khrushchev (the later CPSU General Secretary) had been added to the command. The situation was extremely stressful for the Soviet staff. The Germans, although they did not succeed in the advance-wedge, managed to advance in the southwestern sector of the city, the Luftwaffe continued to destroy aqueducts, and infrastructure facilities of the city, the largest part of which had been given over to the flames. The city center was leveled and at least 100 blocks were burning day and night. The massive bombardment impeded rapid armored advances but turned the city into a perfect ambush site which the Soviets would masterfully use to cut off the 6th Army's advance. Yeremenko undauntedly continued the effort to defend the city. 6,000 troops were ordered to be moved to the northern sector of the city and marines from the Far East Fleet were urgently called in to reinforce the fight. So when the 16th Panzer Brigade repeated its attack to the north of the city it was spectacularly repulsed. Now the front was completely split. In the north the Red Army had the ability to fight back while in the south they fought a stretch from the city to the outer Kalmyk steppes.
General Chuikov
A fallen German Hengel. The Soviets called it a "skeleton"
The War of the Mice
The second week of September opened with new successes for the Germans. The 4th Panzer Army on the 10th of the month also reached the Volga at the height of the granary. This fact meant that the Soviet 62nd Army was now completely cut off in the center of the city. The only channel of communication was the ferry, but they were constantly under fire from the German air force. Despite all his efforts, Hot always ran into the obstacles of the Soviet engineer and did not manage to significantly advance his forces inside the city. The situation in the north was also static. The 6th Army, which had already entered Stalingrad in its entirety, was in a hurry to take the city by storm. Joseph Stalin in September 1942 made a major change in his staff. He placed General Georgy Zhukov, the winner of Khalkhin Gol and Moscow, as the general coordinator of the defense of Stalingrad. Zhukov's prodigious abilities would soon become apparent. Zhukov initially limited himself to controlling the Stalingrad reserves. He was gathering strength for his upcoming plan of action.
Soviets in the ruins of a Stalingrad log cabin
Female members of the Red Army sniper squadron in Stalingrad
The famous sniper Vasily Zaitsev. Although known from the Hollywood monstrosity, he comes third in the ranking of Stalingrad with Zepka and Simon Heicha first
"Soon we will celebrate in our own way"
48 hours after Chuikov's telegram, Stavka's reply came in terrifying fashion. The heavy artillery and rocket launchers of the Red Army battered the German positions. The city's defenders would soon be relieved. The plan of the Soviet leadership was extremely bold and cunning. For two months it had been painstakingly laid out and every little detail had been investigated. By fulfilling it, the Red Army would wrest all initiative from the Nazi forces. Central masterminds behind the planning were General Vasilievsky and General Zhukov. On the evening of Saturday, September 19, the plan to save the city was presented to Stalin in detail. The Soviet command had decided to deliver a crushing blow to the German forces, just as the Soviet air force was being reinforced with new aircraft. Taking command of the 62nd Army, the two generals would leave it with only the forces necessary to survive. Securing extensive reserves they will attempt an outer encirclement of the city of Stalingrad and cut off the 6th Army from the German rear. This move would create a state of siege on the besiegers. In order to act, however, the generals waited for the frost to harden the ground and facilitate the movement of chariots. The generals' hopes of achieving the plan rested on two factors:
- In the absence of serious reserves for the Wehrmacht
- On the ability of the 52nd Army to pin down the Germans inside Stalingrad
The eastern wedge would be manned by the following forces: Romanenko's 5th Panzer Army with its brand new tanks, Chistyakov's 21st Army, Batov's 65th Army and they would await aircraft support. The space between the Don and the Volga would be covered by Galanin's 24th Army and Zhdanov's 66th Army. Further south Trufanov's 51st Army and Tolbukhin's 57th Army would take up position. The northern wedge would be taken over by Nikolai Vatutin with the 34th army. The entire operation would be supported by air with Rudenko's 16th Air Army and Hryukin's veteran but newly-refreshed 8th Air Army. Facing them were the Romanian 3rd Army, the Italian 8th Army and a little further the Hungarian 2nd Army. Inside the city remained Chuikov with the heroic 62nd army and Sumilov's 64th.
On November 6, everything was ready and the staff of the Stavka left Stalingrad. The next day, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the revolution, Stalin will declare: "Soon we will have a celebration in our own street."
Enterprise "Heaven"
At dawn on November 19, 3500 Russian guns forged by the Soviet people mercilessly hit the Romanian positions. Stavka has rightly assumed that the Romanians and Italians are a weak link in defense. The Romanian Kletskaya area is set on fire and confusion is caused to the Nazi forces. Thousands of Russians dressed in white with a variation of snow are coming in waves. Soon the T-34 tanks will break through the Romanian line. Chaos ensues. The 3rd army of the Romanians disintegrates disorderly. Irregular groups of Romanians flow south. The Cossack cavalry is mowing them down. The day is characterized by severe bad weather and is well chosen to prevent a possible intervention by the German air force. Until the evening the German staff does not have full knowledge of what has happened. The 5th Armored Army and the 21st Army have created a huge breach in the front that stretches for 75 kilometers. At 10:00 the next morning, Vatutin retaliated in the north of the city. Paulus directs his fire there. At the same time, Yeremenko unleashes the 57th, 64th and 51st armies south of the city. Few Germans guard the front along with elements of the Romanian 4th Army. In 3 hours Yeremenko counts 10,000 prisoners. The Soviet armies break through the 45 km long front and move with lightning speed towards Kalach. The 22nd Panzer tries to cleverly get in the way of General Rumanenko. She will lose 19 of her 22 tanks. On November 21st the two wedges unite in Kalach and fill the night sky with green flares.
Sniper battles
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Stalingrad (2013) (Russian War Action) W/ English Subbed HD
Manstein
On December 9, when the Luftwaffe was struggling to deliver an average of 84 tons of supplies per day to the besieged, the first death of a German soldier from starvation occurred, many more would soon follow. This death tragically indicated that the 6th Army had been left on the promises of a staff that could not act effectively. A few days later, Paulus will formally request permission to surrender and face the German dictator's analgesia. Hitler will turn to the experienced Panzer Marshal Manstein to free Paulus' soldiers. Manstein was south of the Don with vague orders as to what to do. The order stated vaguely: "recapture the positions previously held by us and immobilize the enemy units". The realist Manstein will immediately perceive the impracticability of Hitler's orders. Thus he will concentrate all his forces on a single operation to extricate the 6th Army codenamed "Winter Storm". But his forces were far behind those of the Red Army. Having at his disposal 800 trucks with 3,000 tons of supplies for the 6th Army. Manstein first launched a first offensive in the west of the Red Army and later a general attack in the south. At the same time, an order was given to penetrate Hot, who were outside the cell with 13 panzer divisions. The western attack of the Germans was quite successful destroying 45 Soviet tanks, but the attack in the south was moving slowly as the Red Army defended strongly and bad weather prevented the advance. Hot, for his part, found himself up against the masterful Trufanov who made good use of the terrain to seriously delay the panzers.
Dead German from a sniper's bullet
Soviet soldiers in white camouflage storm Stalingrad
Frozen German in Stalingrad
German soldiers inspect a damaged Red Army T-34 near the city
The city
As far as Stalingrad was concerned, all that was left was the shadow of the city that was once considered the model of the Soviets. 99% of the building zone was completely destroyed. It is estimated that 1,250 cartridges, grenades and projectiles of all kinds had hit every meter of the city. 300 factory buildings, 41,500 homes and 113 schools and hospitals had been reduced to a shapeless pile of rubble. Of the 500,000 inhabitants only 2,515 timidly made their appearance after the siege was lifted. The rest were either dead, conscripted or refugees. The city with the use of the German prisoners was rebuilt more imposing and more beautiful than before in a period of 5 years. The shameful 20th Congress of the CPSU later changed its name to Volgograd.
Soviet snipers take positions
One hundred and twelve German dead during the last Red Army operations in the city.
The letter of a German soldier
With the victory of the Red Army thousands of letters from German soldiers were found in the city that were not sent to their recipients due to the difficult conditions of the 6th Army. The following is typical:
"All around me everything is falling apart, a whole army is falling apart, the day and night are full of fire. Four men are engaged in daily reports of the temperature and the clouds in the sky. I do not know much of war. No human creature he never died by my hand. But I know this: The other side would never show such a lack of understanding for their men. I'd like to count the stars for a few more decades, but I don't think I can now.
Exactly a soldier from Breslau is lying next to me. He has lost his hand and his nose. He said that they would not need any more tissues. When I asked him what he would do if they needed to shout, he replied: "No one here will have a chance to shout now. Soon others will be shouting over us. I'm still here with a normal pulse and a dozen cigarettes. I had soup two days ago and got a can of beef today. I'm locked in a cellar, burning furniture to keep warm. I am 25 years old. Now I will either die like a dog, or they will take me to Siberia.
Chuikov speaks to men of the 62nd Army
We marched here following orders. We kill by following orders, we starve by orders, we die by orders. We could have been gone a long time ago. But our great generals have not yet agreed. It will soon be late, if it isn't already late. One thing is certain, we will once again march under orders... Probably in the direction originally planned, but without weapons and under different command.
Here men shout, starve to death, freeze and die - it is nothing more than a biological function, like eating and drinking. They drop like flies. No one cares and no one helps them or buries them. Without arms or legs and without eyes, with their bellies open, they lie all around. It is a death fit only for a beast. Pavlov
's House
In September 1942, a group of 30 Soviet soldiers under the command of Sergeant Yakov Pavlov were ordered to occupy a four-story building in a strategic position in the center of Stalingrad, and in the ensuing battle, only four survived. Pavlov was led by the officers of his detachment who had previously been killed in the line of duty. After 9 hours of siege of the house, the Germans abandoned the building and Pavlov's group was reinforced with other men thus reaching 25. The next day there was a fierce siege of In their attempt to recapture it, they first used an armored tank, which the Russians burned with Molotov cocktails he held on stubbornly.
Pavlov's house
In the square in front of the small apartment building, so many corpses of German soldiers were piled up that Sergeant Pavlov and his men had to kick them aside to get a better view of the front. Pavlov had been staying with 7 men for the last few days. General Vasily Chuikov later boasted that more Germans were killed trying to capture "Pavlov's House" than were killed in the siege of Paris in 1940. Yakov Pavlov deservedly earned the nickname "landlord".
Pavlov's house as preserved today
Sergeant Pavlov was awarded the highest medals of the Soviet regime and was held up, and not unjustly, as an emblematic figure of Soviet resistance to the German invaders.
Years later, Yakov Pavlov, became a member of the Communist Party and served in the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic. He died in 1981. His funeral was attended by 5 of his last men and many citizens of Stalingrad.
The Sword of Stalingrad
During the Tehran Conference in November 1943, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill presented Joseph Stalin with honors a large sword. Crafted by an old British gunsmith, the sword was a gift from King George VI and was dedicated to the citizens of Stalingrad with the following phrase: "To the steel-souled citizens of Stalingrad, as a token of the gratitude of the British people."
Chuikov road warriors with snow variant
Joseph Stalin kissed the sword with obvious emotion and handed it over to US President Roosevelt to inspect. He exclaimed "And indeed they had hearts of steel." The sword later passed into the hands of Field Marshal Klimt Vorosilov and was placed in the Museum of the Battle of Stalingrad.
Stalingrad School of Street Fighting
With the consolidation of German and Soviet positions, a series of merciless street battles began in Stalingrad. As mentioned above, small detached but centrally directed groups of soldiers of the 62nd Army were conducting various small-scale operations in a sea of rubble. Shovels, pickaxes and improvised explosives will be used extensively in street fighting. The Soviet soldiers will soon become a terror to the conquerors.
Roosevelt inspects the Stalingrad sword
With the victory of the Red Army thousands of letters from German soldiers were found in the city that were not sent to their recipients due to the difficult conditions of the 6th Army. The following is typical:
"All around me everything is falling apart, a whole army is falling apart, the day and night are full of fire. Four men are engaged in daily reports of the temperature and the clouds in the sky. I do not know much of war. No human creature he never died by my hand. But I know this: The other side would never show such a lack of understanding for their men. I'd like to count the stars for a few more decades, but I don't think I can now.
Exactly a soldier from Breslau is lying next to me. He has lost his hand and his nose. He said that they would not need any more tissues. When I asked him what he would do if they needed to shout, he replied: "No one here will have a chance to shout now. Soon others will be shouting over us. I'm still here with a normal pulse and a dozen cigarettes. I had soup two days ago and got a can of beef today. I'm locked in a cellar, burning furniture to keep warm. I am 25 years old. Now I will either die like a dog, or they will take me to Siberia.
Chuikov speaks to men of the 62nd Army
Men of the 62nd Army hold a kitten found in the rubble.
's House
In September 1942, a group of 30 Soviet soldiers under the command of Sergeant Yakov Pavlov were ordered to occupy a four-story building in a strategic position in the center of Stalingrad, and in the ensuing battle, only four survived. Pavlov was led by the officers of his detachment who had previously been killed in the line of duty. After 9 hours of siege of the house, the Germans abandoned the building and Pavlov's group was reinforced with other men thus reaching 25. The next day there was a fierce siege of In their attempt to recapture it, they first used an armored tank, which the Russians burned with Molotov cocktails he held on stubbornly.
Pavlov's house
In the square in front of the small apartment building, so many corpses of German soldiers were piled up that Sergeant Pavlov and his men had to kick them aside to get a better view of the front. Pavlov had been staying with 7 men for the last few days. General Vasily Chuikov later boasted that more Germans were killed trying to capture "Pavlov's House" than were killed in the siege of Paris in 1940. Yakov Pavlov deservedly earned the nickname "landlord".
Pavlov's house as preserved today
Sergeant Pavlov was awarded the highest medals of the Soviet regime and was held up, and not unjustly, as an emblematic figure of Soviet resistance to the German invaders.
Years later, Yakov Pavlov, became a member of the Communist Party and served in the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic. He died in 1981. His funeral was attended by 5 of his last men and many citizens of Stalingrad.
Yakov Pavlov
The Sword of Stalingrad
During the Tehran Conference in November 1943, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill presented Joseph Stalin with honors a large sword. Crafted by an old British gunsmith, the sword was a gift from King George VI and was dedicated to the citizens of Stalingrad with the following phrase: "To the steel-souled citizens of Stalingrad, as a token of the gratitude of the British people."
Chuikov road warriors with snow variant
Joseph Stalin kissed the sword with obvious emotion and handed it over to US President Roosevelt to inspect. He exclaimed "And indeed they had hearts of steel." The sword later passed into the hands of Field Marshal Klimt Vorosilov and was placed in the Museum of the Battle of Stalingrad.
Joseph Stalin receives the sword
Stalingrad School of Street Fighting
With the consolidation of German and Soviet positions, a series of merciless street battles began in Stalingrad. As mentioned above, small detached but centrally directed groups of soldiers of the 62nd Army were conducting various small-scale operations in a sea of rubble. Shovels, pickaxes and improvised explosives will be used extensively in street fighting. The Soviet soldiers will soon become a terror to the conquerors.
Roosevelt inspects the Stalingrad sword
Wehrmacht officers call them "rats" to belittle their action, but the average German soldier knows. The life expectancy of any 62nd Army soldier in his first week of action in the city was hopelessly short. But if the soldier survived the first 7 - 10 days then his life expectancy increased dramatically. He had learned to survive in the ruins, to use every hole and turn every condition or object into a weapon. Red Army soldiers often referred to the 62nd Army as the "Stalingrad Road School" and its soldiers as "graduates". And it was indeed the 62nd Army that with 12,000 soldiers managed to hold back 220,000 of the best trained men of the Third Reich.
General Chuikov in the operations room. His hand is tied due to the terrible skin eczema he developed from excessive stress.
Unknown aspects of the Battle of Stalingrad
1. Spyrou Linardatou, "How we got to the 4th of August", p. 201, "Political and Literary Publications".
2. Spyrou Linardatou, "How we got to the 4th of August", p. 219, "Political and Literary Publications".
3. The KKE. Official Texts, vol. 4, p. 390, "Political and Literary Editions".
4. Grigoriou Dafni, "Greece between two wars", vol. B', p. 430, ed. "Ikaros".
5. Grigoriou Dafni, "Greece between two wars", vol. B', p. 183, "Ikaros" ed.
6. Ibid., p. 183.
7. HISTORIKA Eleftherotypias, August 3, 2000, p. 19.
8. Angelou Elefantis, "The promise of the impossible revolution", p. 281, "Foundation" ed.
9. Spyrou Linardatou, "August 4th", p. 112, "Foundation" ed.
10. Sources of the time raise the number of dead to over 20. (See Appeal of the Labor Aid of Greece): Giorgis Pikrou, "The roots of our popular movement". 1912 - 1936, p. 224, vol. 9, published by Karanasis.
11. Komninos Pyromaglou, "Georgios Kartalis and his era", vol. A', p. 107, "Historical Research" ed., 1965.
12. Grigoriou Dafni, "Greece between two wars", vol. B', p. 423, ed. "Ikaros".
13. Ibid., p. 467.
14. Telegram of the Greek embassy in Rome, dated 14/27 December 1914. Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by Georgiou Ventiris, "Greece of 1910 - 1920", pp. 267 - 268, ed. "Icarus".
15. Georgiou Ventiris, "Greece of 1910 - 1920", p. 81, "Ikaros" ed.
16. Spyrou Linardachou, "How we got to the 4th of August", p. 194, "Political and Literary Publications".
17. Sp. Linardatou, "How we got to the 4th of August", pp. 194 - 195, "Political and Literary Publications".
18. Grigoriou Dafni, "Greece between two wars", vol. B', p. 441, ed. "Ikaros".
19. Ibid., p. 443.
20. Grigoriou Dafni, "Greece between two wars", vol. B', p. 476, ed. "Ikaros".
- The Battle of Stalingrad also had a strange flavor of the Spanish Civil War. Ruben Ruiz Ibaruri, son of the famous Passionaria, was killed in Cotluban fighting in the ranks of the 35th Guards Rifle Division. Also four later Soviet marshals, Voronov, Malinovsky, Rokosofksi and Rodimchev had served as advisers to the democratic forces in Spain, as had General Sumilov who commanded the 64th Army.
- Soviet soldiers had a peculiar way of celebrating a decoration. They threw the medal into a mug of vodka which the hero had to drink and finally catch the medal with his teeth.
- When General Paulus himself was in Vinnytsia to meet officials of the German Central Command, he was asked how long he estimated it would take him to capture Stalingrad. He replied arrogantly: Ten days and then fourteen retraining.
- When Paulus realized the soft treatment the Soviets had reserved for him he cheered up. At a dinner with Voronov he even proposed a vodka toast saying: To those who defeated us, the Soviet army and its leadership.
- The Battle of Stalingrad was so fierce during September 1942 that it is estimated that the 6th Army consumed 25,000,000 rounds of ammunition alone
- One of the most legendary figures of the Soviet military is considered the mortar soldier Bezdiko, who was considered so adept at handling the mortar that he was said to be able to have six projectiles in the air at once.
- The children of Joseph Stalin, Klimt Voroshilov and Leonid Khrushchev served on the Stalingrad front in the Soviet Air Force.
- In late December 1942, German forces still held 35,000 Soviet troops near Stalingrad. The captives were in miserable condition, malnourished and sick. On one of the last days Paulus ordered the prisoners to be returned to the enemy. Instead the men of the lower command executed them all.
- In October 1942 Goebbels ordered the German authorities in all German cities to place signs in central places indicating the distance between them and Stalingrad.
- During one of the maintenance works of Mamaev Hill in 1963, two skeletons were found. One belonged to a Soviet and the other to a German soldier. From the position of the bodies it is believed that they were killed by stabbing each other and then their bodies were buried in dirt.
- In 1999 a veteran of the Afghanistan front who had survived after 5 years of fighting was killed on Mamaev Hill by stepping on an old German mine. He was the last victim of Stalingrad.
Enemy at the Gates
References:1. Spyrou Linardatou, "How we got to the 4th of August", p. 201, "Political and Literary Publications".
2. Spyrou Linardatou, "How we got to the 4th of August", p. 219, "Political and Literary Publications".
3. The KKE. Official Texts, vol. 4, p. 390, "Political and Literary Editions".
4. Grigoriou Dafni, "Greece between two wars", vol. B', p. 430, ed. "Ikaros".
5. Grigoriou Dafni, "Greece between two wars", vol. B', p. 183, "Ikaros" ed.
6. Ibid., p. 183.
7. HISTORIKA Eleftherotypias, August 3, 2000, p. 19.
8. Angelou Elefantis, "The promise of the impossible revolution", p. 281, "Foundation" ed.
9. Spyrou Linardatou, "August 4th", p. 112, "Foundation" ed.
10. Sources of the time raise the number of dead to over 20. (See Appeal of the Labor Aid of Greece): Giorgis Pikrou, "The roots of our popular movement". 1912 - 1936, p. 224, vol. 9, published by Karanasis.
11. Komninos Pyromaglou, "Georgios Kartalis and his era", vol. A', p. 107, "Historical Research" ed., 1965.
12. Grigoriou Dafni, "Greece between two wars", vol. B', p. 423, ed. "Ikaros".
13. Ibid., p. 467.
14. Telegram of the Greek embassy in Rome, dated 14/27 December 1914. Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by Georgiou Ventiris, "Greece of 1910 - 1920", pp. 267 - 268, ed. "Icarus".
15. Georgiou Ventiris, "Greece of 1910 - 1920", p. 81, "Ikaros" ed.
16. Spyrou Linardachou, "How we got to the 4th of August", p. 194, "Political and Literary Publications".
17. Sp. Linardatou, "How we got to the 4th of August", pp. 194 - 195, "Political and Literary Publications".
18. Grigoriou Dafni, "Greece between two wars", vol. B', p. 441, ed. "Ikaros".
19. Ibid., p. 443.
20. Grigoriou Dafni, "Greece between two wars", vol. B', p. 476, ed. "Ikaros".
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