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No. 166 £5.00
9 770306 154103
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STALINGRAD
SPECIAL ISSUE
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NUMBER 166© Copyright After the Battle 2014Editor: Karel MargryEditor-in-Chief: Winston G. RamseyPublished byBattle of Britain International Ltd.,The Mews, Hobbs Cross House,Hobbs Cross, Old Harlow,Essex CM17 0NN, EnglandTelephone: 01279 41 8833Fax: 01279 41 9386E-mail: [email protected]: www.afterthebattle.comPrinted in Great Britain byWarners Group Publications PLC,Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH.After the Battle is published on the 15thof February, May, August and November.LONDON STOCKIST for the After the Battle range:Foyles Limited, 107 Charing Cross Road,London WC2H 0EB. Telephone: 020 7437 5660.Fax: 020 7434 1574. E-mail: [email protected] site: www.foyles.co.ukUnited Kingdom Newsagent Distribution:Warners Group Publications PLC,Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PHAustralian Subscriptions and Back Issues:Renniks Publications Pty LimitedUnit 3, 37-39 Green Street, Banksmeadow NSW 2019Telephone: 61 2 9695 7055. Fax: 61 2 9695 7355E-mail: [email protected]. Website: www.renniks.comCanadian Distribution and Subscriptions:Vanwell Publishing Ltd.,622 Welland Avenue, St. Catharines, OntarioTelephone: (905) 937 3100. Fax: (905) 937 1760Toll Free: 1-800-661-6136E-mail: [email protected] Zealand Distribution:Dal McGuirk’s “MILITARY ARCHIVE”, PO Box 24486,Royal Oak, Auckland 1345, New ZealandTelephone: 021 627 870. Fax: 9-6252817E-mail: [email protected] States Distribution and Subscriptions:RZM Imports Inc, 184 North Ave., Stamford, CT 06901Telephone: 1-203-324-5100. Fax: 1-203-324-5106E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.rzm.comItalian Distribution:Milistoria s.r.l. Via Sofia, 12-Interporto,1-43010 Fontevivo (PR), ItalyTelephone: ++390521 651910. Fax: ++390521 619204Dutch Language Edition:SI Publicaties/Quo Vadis, Postbus 188,6860 AD OosterbeekTelephone: 026-4462834. E-mail: [email protected]
CONTENTSSTALINGRAD 2Front Cover: The main memorial to the 1942-43Battle of Stalingrad in present-day Volgograd is onthe Mamayev Kurgan, the hill that overlooks the cityand played such a crucial role in the struggle. Thisstatue is called ‘Hold on until Death’ and the face ofthe warrior rising from the water (symbolising thatof the Volga river) was modelled after that ofLieutenant-General Vasily Chuikov, the commanderof the 62nd Army, which so heroically defendedStalingrad. In the back ground, crowning the hilltop,stands the gigantic ‘Motherland Calls’ statue, 85metres high. The memorial park was dedicated in1967. (Alexander Trofimov)Back Cover: In 1999, the Volksbund DeutscheKriegsgräberfürsorge established a German WarCemetery on a barren tract of land at Rossoshka,35 kilometres north-west of Stalingrad. Remains ofGerman soldiers recovered from cemeteries andmass graves from all over the area are being re-interred there. The cemetery at present containsover 56,000 individual graves with blocks of stoneinscribed with the names of a further 120,000missing. (Janelf)Acknowledgements: The Editor would like to thank thedirectorate and staff of the State Panoramic Museum‘Battle of Stalingrad’ in Volgograd for helping AlexTrofimov with his research and for making availablephotos from their archive. He also extends his greatappreciation to Jason Mark of Leaping HorsemanBooks for his expert help and for supplying photosfrom his personal collection. In particular, we acknowl-edge our debt to Jason’s groundbreaking and master-ful book Angriff. The German Attack on Stalingrad inPhotos (Sydney, 2008). Mark Holoboski would like toacknowledge the help and support of Vladimir Kalgin,Sergei Petrunin and Russell Schulke over the years.Photo Credit Abbreviations: AKG — Archiv fürKultur und Geschichte; ANP — AlgemeenNederlands Persbureau; BA — Bundesarchiv; BA-MA — Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv; IWM —ImperialWar Museum; NIOD — Nederlands Instituut voorOorlogsdocumentatie, Amsterdam; SZ — Süd -deutsche Zeitung Photo; USNA — US NationalArchives.
The city that bore Stalin’s name was originally named Tsaritsyn. Its roots date backto the late 16th century when a fortress was built near the confluence of the Volgaand Tsaritsa rivers to defend the unstable southern border of the country. A smalltrading settlement soon grew up and this became the nucleus of the town. In the19th century, the location became an important river port and commercial centre, itspopulation expanding rapidly from 3,000 people in 1807 to 84,000 in 1900. The firstrailway was constructed to the town in 1862 and the first steel mill opened in 1875.During the Russian Civil War, the city was besieged by counter-revolutionary ‘White’forces. The Soviet defenders under Josef Stalin repulsed three assaults, and after theWhites finally captured the city in June 1919, Stalin led a brilliant counter-attack inJanuary 1920, winning a pivotal victory in the revolution. To honour his role in itsdefence, the city was renamed Stalingrad in 1925. Under Stalin, the city became acentre of heavy industry, its new industrial plants exporting tractors, guns, textiles,timber and chemicals to all parts of the Soviet Union. By 1939 the city of 500,000inhabitants stretched over 25 kilometres along the Volga’s west bank. Representa-tive of the modern metropolis was the Square of Fallen Heroes in the city centre.
Ever since the start of After the Battle over 40 years ago, we have wanted to do a featureon the battle of Stalingrad — the most-famous and most-crucial battle fought on theEastern Front, decisive for the outcome of the entire war. However, in all these years,the problems of presenting the story in our customary ‘then and now’ format seemedinsurmountable. Not only was it difficult to find enough photographs that stood achance of being matched up but, more importantly, we were acutely aware that the cityof Stalingrad had been largely destroyed in the months-long struggle and one wouldneed expert knowledge of the rebuilt metropolis (which in 1961 had its name changedto Volgograd) in order to pinpoint the comparisons. So we are therefore immensely fortunate to have established contact with Alexander Trofimov, seen here outside thecity’s State Panoramic Museum ‘Battle of Stalingrad’. Alexander, who is married withtwo daughters and works for a metal-trading company, was born in Volgograd in 1970and has lived there all his life. Ever since he was a youngster, he has been fascinated bythe momentous struggle that occurred in his home city and he has spent years studyingthe details of the ferocious combat that took place there and exploring the battleground— not only in the city proper but also on the wide steppe outside. He knows virtuallyevery corner of the former battlefield and we could not wish to have a better expert tomatch up the photos of the battle. His photographic contribution to this story is suchthat our American author, Mark Holoboski, another long-time student of the battle,agreed to share authorship of this special issue with him.
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XANDER TROFIMOV
In classic accounts of the Second WorldWar, the Battle for Stalingrad has beenviewed as the great turning point of the con-flict, which gains even greater interest giventhe fact that the battle, which came to besynonymous with street fighting anddestruction, was never supposed to happen.There certainly was to be an urban fight thatyear, but much farther north at Leningrad(see After the Battle No. 123). While theassertion that Stalingrad being the turningpoint has been the subject of recent debate,with some historians choosing instead to citethe later Battle of Kursk as the definitiveloss of German initiative in the East, it can-not be understated that the loss of both Stal-ingrad and of the German 6. Armee, in thedramatic fashion in which it occurred, wasthe first true systemic shock to the Germanleadership, military and citizenry during theconflict. Even more vital to the Allied cause,the battle served as a tremendous moraleboost for a resurgent Red Army that hadhardly known anything more than defeatand retreat during the previous year and ahalf. By the time of the surrender of theStalingrad pocket on the icy morning of Feb-ruary 2, 1943, the once stumbling and off-balance Russian bear was finally awake, andon all fours. The prospect of a Nazi empirein the East dissipated with each quenchingember of the still-glowing ruins of Stalin-grad.
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The battle of Stalingrad formed one of the decisive turningpoints in the Second World War. The advance of the Germanarmies to the great city on the Volga in August 1942; thestubborn and heroic defence of the besieged and shell-bat-tered city against overwhelming German superiority by theSoviet 62nd Army in September-November; and the subse-quent encirclement and demise of the 6. Armee in the winter
of 1942-43, ending in total capitulation on February 2, 1943,decisively turned the scale of the conflict on the EasternFront. After Stalingrad there could be only one end to thewar. Symbolic for the German catastrophe on the Volga isthis image of German POWs being marched past one of themost iconic buildings of the struggle: the heavily embattledGrain Elevator in the southern part of the city.
STALINGRADBy Mark Holoboski and Alexander Trofimov
Right: A perfect match, taken by AlexTrofimov seven decades after the battle.
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In 1942 Stalingrad was a sprawling indus-trial and transportation hub running for 25kilometres along the western bank of theVolga river, not dissimilar in shape to that ofa question mark. By the time the German 6.Armee arrived, its population had doubledbecause of the influx of refugees from thewestern regions to a total of around 900,000.The city was the location of three of thelargest armaments factories in the SovietUnion. In the north there was the pride ofSoviet industry, the great Dzerzhinsky Trac-tor Works, churning out its famed ‘chisel-nosed’ T-34 tanks in great quantities. Thencame the Barrikady Gun Factory laden withartillery barrels while in the south, producingsmall arms and metal parts, was the RedOctober Plant.
In transportation terms, being situated onthe mighty Volga and, to a lesser extent, onrail lines running to the Caucasus, centralAsia, the greater Moscow region andbeyond, Stalingrad was indeed an important
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The advance on Stalingrad began in earnest with the Germanarmies crossing the Don river. Before sunrise on August 21, theLI. Armeekorps of the 6. Armee launched two amphibiousassaults across the Don some 60 kilometres north-west of Stalin-grad, the 76. Infanterie-Division on the left establishing a bridge-head near Akimovskiy and the 295. Infanterie-Division on the rightanother one near Lutchenskiy. Engineers immediately began con-
struction of pontoon bridges at both sites, the idea being to pushall three divisions of the XIV. Panzerkorps — the 16. Panzer-Divi-sion and the 3. and 60. Infanterie-Divisions (mot.) — across for thefinal drive to Stalingrad. The bridge at Lutchenskiy was completedin the afternoon of the 21st and the one at Akimovskiy the follow-ing morning. Here panzers of Panzer-Abteilung 103, the tank unitof the 3. Infanterie-Division, cross the span on the 23rd.
The locations where armies crossed rivers and built bridges are usually well documented in the unit reports and records, making it relatively easy to find thesites, especially when there are distinctively-shaped ridges lining the river as occurshere near Lutchenskiy. This is the view from the east bank.
The battle area between the Don river and Stalingrad. ThisGerman intelligence map shows the Soviet defences in front of
the city as they appeared on August 3. We have indicated theplaces that feature in our story.
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warehousing and trans-shipment port. Some30 million tons of goods (timber, oil, coal,grain and heavy industrial products) weremoved annually over the Volga during its sixice-free months, and with its network ofcanals and tributaries, could reach industrialand population centres ranging from the oil-fields of the Caucasus to the northern sea-ports of Leningrad and Archangel. In effect,the Volga connected the White, Black,Baltic, Barents and Caspian Seas, which wasstrategically vital for such a landlocked coun-try as the Soviet Union. Even more signifi-cant to many strategic planners and laymenalike, was the fact that the Volga was the lastgreat natural obstacle to the landmass ofAsia, being a mere 150 kilometres from theRussia-Kazakh stan border, and over 2,000kilo metres from Berlin.Indeed, one of the first panzer crewmen to
set foot on the shores of the Volga in lateAugust would later recall: ‘And then, sud-denly, a broad silvery ribbon, the Volga. Weknew this was the goal. The ultimate goal ofthe war maybe. And beyond the Volga, tothe east, we saw the vast deep forests stretch-ing into the horizon shrouded in mystery.And then this boundless view into theexpanse of Asia, nothing but forests . . .forests, steppes and endlessness. It was anexciting feeling.’An old proverb states that ‘Russia can
only be conquered if the enemy crosses theVolga’, and while the notion of setting footupon Asian soil might have seemed a roman-tic dream to many, Hitler’s true goal for 1942was to conquer the oilfields in the SovietCaucasus to the west of the Caspian Sea andsouth of Stalingrad. As long as German linesadvanced close enough to shut down its vastindustrial output, the actual occupation ofStalin’s city was initially considered by theFührer as being unnecessary.
THE GERMAN 1942 SUMMEROFFENSIVEHitler’s summer campaign to conquer
Caucasian oil began on the morning of June28, 1942. The plan called for a north-to-southbreakthrough of the Soviet defences, stag-gered over several days. Operation ‘Blau I’ would be the assault by
Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bocks’sHeeresgruppe Süd. Comprising the 2.Armee, 6. Armee, 4. Panzer-Armee and theHungarian Second Army, they wouldemerge from their jump-off positions justeast of Kursk and Belgorod and headtowards Voronezh and the River Don.
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Left: In late August, PK photographer Schüller from Luftwaffe-Kriegsberichter-Kompanie 8 pictured a motorcycle combina-tion on what the Germans called the Donhöhenstrasse (DonHeights Road) on the river’s west bank. The sign on the rightpoints to the three bridges across the Don. The northernmostcrossing, at Akatov, leading into a bridgehead captured by the384. Infanterie-Division on August 15-16, was little used, theposition being maintained largely to protect the other two
bridgeheads further south. All traffic and supplies for the divi-sions of the XIV. Panzerkorps fighting east of the Don werechannelled through the bridges at Akimovskiy and Lutchen-skiy. Right: Normally pictures taken in the endless steppe ofRussia stand little chance of being matched up but the signenabled Alex to locate this one with certainty. This is the oldDonhöhenstrasse, looking north at the turn-off to Lutchenskiy(the official Russian name of the village is Luchenskiy).
On the morning of August 23, the 16. Panzer-Division attacked to break out of theDon bridgehead, spearheading the advance of XIV. Panzerkorps. Bursting throughthe strong Russian defences, the panzers rolled forward against little opposition andby early afternoon were approaching Stalingrad. A screen of 37 anti-tank guns,emplaced near the northern suburbs of Spartanovka, Rynok and Latashinka (andoperated by female gun crews), tried to hold up the advance but was smashed by thepanzers and panzergrenadiers in close combat. In the early evening, at 1835 hours,the lead units of the 16. Panzer-Division reached the banks of the Volga just north ofthe city. Here the crew of an SdKfz 232 heavy armoured car from Kradschützen-Bataillon 16 scours the opposite bank from the high ground overlooking the river.
Right: The same spot on the Volga’swest bank near Latashinka.
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Although the 6. Armee, commanded byGeneral der Panzertruppen Friedrich Paulus,was delayed two days due to heavy rain, theSoviet defences were easily cracked and aslow withdrawal began back to the Don, justover 250 kilometres from the front lines. According to the master plan, ‘Blau II’
would see the next unit to the south ofPaulus — the 1. Panzer-Armee underGeneral oberst Ewald von Kleist — begin itsdrive eastwards from south of Kharkov. Itwas to link up with Generaloberst HermannHoth’s 4. Panzer-Armee and Paulus’s 6.Armee coming down the west bank of theDon to surround a large Soviet force in anencirclement battle. Operation ‘Blau III’ would feature
Heeresgruppe Süd being divided and re-titled as Heeresgruppe A under Generalfeld-marschall Wilhelm List and Heeresgruppe Bunder Generaloberst Maximilian Freiherrvon Weichs. The two panzer armies (part ofHeeresgruppe A) would strike out for Stalin-grad, the 4. Panzer-Armee hugging the bendin the upper Don and the 1. Panzer-Armeethe lower one, while the 6. Armee (part of
Heeresgruppe B) would be left to managethe prisoners captured during the secondstage of the offensive. This third phase wouldalso see the introduction of two more Ger-man armies, Generaloberst Richard Ruoff’s17. Armee, and Generaloberst Erich vonManstein’s 11. Armee, fresh in from theCrimean campaign, as well as the ItalianEighth Army under Generale di ArmataItalo Gariboldi. These latter formationswould also be incorporated into Heeres-gruppe B with the task of capturing Rostov,so opening the gateway to the Caucasus oil-fields. By the end of ‘Blau III’, it was plannedthat a defensive line would have been estab-lished along the west bank of the Don fromthe Voronezh region (2. Armee) to the Stal-ingrad region (6. Armee) with various Axisarmies in between. This would then coverHeeresgruppe A’s plunge into the Caucasusand its intended capture of the oil cities ofMaikop, Grozny and Baku (the still unwrit-ten plan ‘Blau IV’).With the meagre resources that the Ger-
mans had at their disposal, it was a trulyambitious undertaking to reach the gates of
Stalingrad and the oil capital of Baku beforethe onset of winter. Ironically, while the Ger-mans had been underestimating Sovietstrength in early 1942, Stavka (the SovietArmed Forces High Command) had beenoverestimating that of the Germans. How-ever the realities were dire. Germany hadalready burned through her precious oilreserves during the earlier campaign in 1941and did not have nearly enough for a full-front offensive in 1942 — the whole reasonfor Operation ‘Blau’ in the first place.Indeed, Hitler even conceded that if he didnot acquire the Caucasus oilfields in 1942, hewould have to end the war. Likewise, after 1941 the German Army
was drained of both personnel and equip-ment which had forced the abandonment of afull-scale offensive in 1942. While better-quality equipment was on its way, many vet-erans of the Polish and French campaignswere now incapacitated or dead, beingreplaced with green replacements. One of thereasons ‘Blau’ had to take place in stages wasbecause Heeresgruppe Süd was still in theprocess of rebuilding its formations and not
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Two days later, on August 25, 75 kilometres to the west, the71. Infanterie-Division of the XXIV. Panzerkorps launched yetanother assault across the Don river near the town of Kalach.By noon, they had established a large bridgehead and by early
evening, despite interruption by Soviet mortar fire, engineershad erected a pontoon bridge, thus opening up a second frontagainst Stalingrad for the 6. Armee. This picture was takenfrom the west bank.
Alexander found the site of the pontoon bridge near the village of Berezovskiy, five kilometres north of Kalach.
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all would be ready by June 28. At the sametime, Hitler felt that the delay in starting‘Blau II’ would give the fresh replacementsvital adjustment time to build confidence forthe coming offensive. So in terms of person-nel, quality had decreased in the Wehrmachtwhile it had risen in its opponent. Equipmentwise, most of the panzers from
1941 had been destroyed and the entire inven-tory had to be built up from scratch. Grantedthese were higher-quality models, but the samewas true for the Red Army and they weregreatly out-producing the Germans. As regardsthe 75mm-calibre battle tank — the standardof the time — the Soviet Union was producingon average 1,265 T-34 and KV models permonth, while the Germans were only achieving73 new Panzer IV Ausf. F2(G). On June 28,Heeresgruppe Süd only possessed little morethan a 100 and the other two German armygroups combined had even less. If one adds inthe excellent StuG III, the number of 75mm-calibre AFVs goes up to 124 per month for1942, and if the Marders are included, one getsto 163 per month. The main battle tank for theWehrmacht in Operation ‘Blau’ would have tobe the obsolete Panzer III although at least bynow it had been fitted with the more powerful50L60 KwK 39 gun, 2,605 Panzer IIIs havingbeen produced in 1942. As far as the RedArmy was concerned, one must also not forgetthat for 1942 it produced nearly 5,000 45mm-gunned T-70s and received yet even moretanks via Lend-Lease. Nevertheless the victory fever which the
campaigns of 1939-41 had infected the Ger-man leadership (and rank and file for thatmatter) was still very much alive in 1942 — itwas almost as if the major setback at Moscowduring the previous winter had just not hap-pened. However, while Hitler was underesti-mating the Soviets, he was greatly overesti-mating the Western Allies, constantly fearinga landing that summer. The formations held inFrance included the 6., 7. and 10. Panzer-Divi-sions, the 1., 2. and 3. SS-Divisions as well aslater expansion of the Infanterie-DivisionGrossdeutschland. Also, not only was Hitlerreturning panzer divisions to France fromRussia to rebuild, he was also sending vitalnew war production there at the very timethat it was desperately needed in the East. To make matters worse for the Germans,
on June 19 a German staff officer, MajorJoachim Reichel, operations chief of the 23.Panzer-Division, crash-landed behind enemylines carrying maps and notes on Operation‘Blau I’, thus presenting Stalin with theentire plan for the upcoming offensive.While standard accounts tell us that Stalindismissed this as enemy propaganda, andthat he was still taken by surprise, there isreason to believe that this incident may havehad a profound effect on Soviet decision-making in the early part of the offensive.Naturally the ‘Reichel Affair’ caused greatconsternation on the German side and in anattempt to minimise the damage, the code-names of the three phases of ‘Blau’ werechanged to ‘Braunschweig’, ‘Clausewitz’ and‘Dampfjammer’ respectively.
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Right: Meanwhile, the XXXXVIII. Panzer -korps of the 4. Panzer-Armee, which hadalready crossed the Don much furtherdownstream at the end of July, was com-ing up from the south-west, joining up withthe right flank of the 6. Armee on Septem-ber 3. Their lead units, the 14. and 24.Panzer-Divisions, occupied positions over-looking the southern half of Stalingrad.This machine-gun post, manned by troopsof the 24. Panzer-Division, is positioned onwhat the Germans called the ‘Kalkberge’(limestone mountains), a small rise over-looking the southern hillside suburb ofMinina. When this picture was taken, onSeptember 4, the high ground formed asmall bulge in the front line and was underenemy fire from three directions.
A 7.62cm Marder III self-propelled gun belonging to the 3. Kompanie of Panzerjäger-Abteilung 670 rolls up the slope of the Kalkberge to take up firing position near thecomplex of buildings known as the Leather Factory. Panzerjäger-Abteilung 670, anarmy troop unit, had two companies of Marders, each with six vehicles, and one com-pany equipped with the lighter-armed 4.7cm Panzerjäger I Ausf. B. In the two weeksthat the unit was attached to the 24. Panzer-Division (September 3-14), it knockedout a total of 32 Soviet tanks: 22 T-34s, two KV-1s, three T-60s, two T-70s and twoT-28s, plus one KV-1 damaged.
Volgograd has grown considerably since the war and new houses now occupy thevalley of the river Elshanka and much of the slope of the Kalkberge. Alex took hiscomparison near the Sadovaya Railway Station, looking south towards Minina onthe far side of the valley.
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At the same time in Moscow, a radicalchange had taken place in the Soviet attitudetowards their conduct in the face of futureGerman offensives. Unfortunately for theGerman strategic planners, it took place at atime when Hitler had become the final
arbiter in his army’s affairs while Stalin wasbeginning to listen to his generals. Neveragain would he allow a catastrophic encir-clement of his forces to the extent that theSoviet Union suffered multiple times in 1941or, more recently in May, during South-
Western Front’s misfired counter-offensiveat Kharkov (see After the Battle No. 112).The Soviets were finally going to parry theBlitzkrieg and deny Hitler his massive encir-clements he so needed to bring the RedArmy to heel in 1942.
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This city plan of Stalingrad was produced by the Reichsamt fürLandesaufnahme (Reich Survey and Mapping Office), on thebasis of aerial photographs in September 1942. We have indicated the main locations that featured in the battle.[1] Dzerzhinsky Tractor Factory. [2] Barrikady Gun Factory.
[3] Red October Factory. [4] Schnellhefter Block. [5] RailwayLoop (‘The Tennis Racket’). [6] Lazur Chemical Plant.[7] Mamayev Kurgan (Hill 102). [8] Central Train Station.[9] Square of Fallen Heroes (‘Red Square’). [10] Tsaritsa River.[11] Southern Train Station. [12] Grain Elevator.
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THE START OF THE OFFENSIVE(June 28-July 23)Despite Germany’s disadvantaged posi-
tion in the war, on June 28, 1942 itsBlitzkrieg machine functioned like old times.Hoth’s 4. Panzer-Armee slashed its waytowards the Don and Voronezh and encir-cled the Soviet 40th Army very early on.Although the advance was difficult in someplaces, for the most part Hoth was smoothlyon his way to Voronezh over 150 kilometresaway. Stalin was convinced that the Nazi goalfor 1942 would be the conquest of Moscow,and had therefore placed his most-powerfulreserves further back between the capitaland Voronezh. As a result, the city fell onJuly 6 without a fight. This served Bock wellbecause Hitler was adamant that Hoth mustnot get tied down in street-fighting. Hisinstructions were, take it if it is easy, but donot lose any time over it. The problem which arose however was in
the grey area as both Bock and Hoth soonfound themselves in an ever-increasing sea ofred armour and extricating themselves wasproving difficult. As German forces wereapproaching the city, Stalin had been direct-ing tank units to converge on the area. Thisled in early July to one of the largest series oftank battles of all time, drawing in threepanzer divisions (the 9., 11. and 24.) andthree motorised infantry divisions (the 3.,16., and Grossdeutschland) against 11 Soviettank corps (the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 7th, 11th, 13th,16th, 17th, 18th, 24th and 25th) and severalindependent tank brigades in a two-weekconflict covering over a 1,000 square kilome-tres. With his 40th Army encircled midway
between Kursk and Voronezh, and the Ger-mans poised to capture the latter within days,Stalin ordered a counter-attack using histrump card: Major-General Alexander Liz-iukov’s 5th Tank Army comprising over 600
tanks. Although with the advantage of airsuperiority the German attack brushed asideall the Soviet armour outside the city, on July6 the 5th Tank Army was poised to strikefrom north-east of Voronezh into the Ger-man left flank. In addition, Stalin had placedthe 3rd Tank Army behind the assault unit tobe ready to exploit any successful break-through, and committed two additional tankcorps, the 18th and 25th, close to the cityitself. Thus, on top of the 800 or so Soviettanks that they had battled over the pastweek, both Bock and Hoth unknowingly hadanother 1,000 tanks arrayed against them, setto strike the closer they drew to Voronezh. In the event, the Soviet offensive was set
off prematurely, and units were sent into bat-
tle independently, thus deprived of eachother’s mutual support. While the battlelasted for nine days, the Soviet counter-attack never placed German forces in seriousjeopardy. Unbeknown to him, however, thisfutile attack launched by Stalin set intomotion a chain of events that would radicallyalter German planning and set the stage forthe dramatic showdown to come at Stalin-grad.The Soviet Voronezh offensive effectively
tied down Hoth’s 9. and 11. Panzer-Divisionsindefinitely, as well as the 3. Infanterie-Divi-sion (mot.) until the 14th, and while the Divi-sion Grossdeutschland and the 24. Panzer-Division were able to extricate themselveson the 9th, they were soon out of fuel. In the
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The all-out German assault on the city of Stalingrad proper beganon September 13, the XXXXVIII. Panzerkorps of the 4. Panzer-Armee attacking into the city’s southern districts and theLI. Armeekorps of the 6. Armee thrusting into the central district.For clarity’s sake we will follow the battle from south to north,beginning with the attack by the 24. Panzer-Division into the por-tion of the city south of the Tsaritsa river. Following up on the ini-tial attack by the 94. Infanterie-Division, this push began at 0300hours on September 15. For this operation the division wasdivided into two combat groups. Gruppe Edelsheim, led by Oberst
Maximilian von Edelsheim, the commander of Panzergrenadier-Regiment 26, was to make a swift thrust into the city and capturethe city’s southern railway station, while Gruppe Hellermannunder Oberstleutnant Vollrath von Hellermann of Panzer-grenadier-Regiment 21 would endeavour to secure positions tothe east and north. Here tanks of Panzer-Regiment 24, part ofGruppe Edelsheim, turn left at the Voropovono-Stalingrad railway(which formed the boundary with the 94. Infanterie-Division to thesouth) to proceed eastwards into the city. The picture was takenby Kriegsberichter Geller of Panzer-Propaganda-Kompanie 694.
The tanks started out from near the Leather Factory and with the railway line form-ing an easy reference point, Alex had no trouble in pinpointing the location.
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end, the Germans took 70,000 prisoners butthe bulk of the Soviet units opposing the 6.Armee escaped to fight another day. Stalindid not wait for ‘Blau II’ to begin: as soon asthe 4. Panzer-Armee began its assault on the28th, he began to allow a flexible defence —or rather retreat — for the units on the Briansk and South-Western Fronts.On July 13 von Bock was sacked by Hitler
for having allowed his 4. Panzer-Armee tobecome mired in a tank battle north ofVoronezh while he should have been pro-ceeding south-east to cut off the Soviets con-fronting Paulus, although how 1,000 RedArmy tanks were supposed to be containedwithout intervention from Hoth’s panzersremains a mystery. Contrary to his rationalefor having relieved von Bock, Hitler nowallowed himself to sink ever deeper intodelusion and convinced himself that the lowbag of prisoners confirmed that the Sovietswere on their last legs. When the armourfrom two of the three tank brigades from the18th Tank Corps captured intact insideVoronezh was found to have been aban-doned by their crews, the Germans saw it asa further indication that the Soviet field com-mands were having genuine trouble.
The Führer now inserted himself evenmore directly into the operations of his twosouthern army groups, and on the 16th relo-cated his headquarters from East Prussia tothe Ukrainian city of Vinnitsa.With von Bock’s dismissal, Hitler contin-
ued to chase shadows by ordering the 4.Panzer-Armee to awkwardly cut across theline of 6. Armee’s eastward advance, to drivesouth and assist the 1. Panzer-Armee in creating a vast encirclement in the vicinity ofRostov — a move shrugged off as unneces-sary by the latter army. When this attempt also yielded a low
count of prisoners, Hitler issued his DirectiveNo. 45 of July 23, which replaced the original‘Blau III’ concept in its entirety. Instead ofthe two panzer armies making a dash for thecity on the Volga, they would now bediverted south across the lower Don anddrive for the three oil cities. The new Opera-tion ‘Edelweiss’ would now be the priority,and in its wake would follow three otherarmies: the 17. Armee, the Rumanian ThirdArmy, and eventually Manstein’s 11. Armee
as soon as it arrived from the Crimea. Thus, agrand total of five armies under Heeres-gruppe A were now set to initiate history’sfirst mechanised oil war in earnest. In contrast, the now supply-starved
Heeresgruppe B received the secondary andless-interesting mission (Operation ‘Fischrei-her’) of securing not only Stalingrad on the
Volga but Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea aswell. The strike force would consist ofPaulus’s 6. Armee and, as it advancedtowards its objectives, it would drop off theHungarian Second and Italian EighthArmies as left-flank protection along thewestern bank of the Don, leaving the 2.Armee at Voronezh.
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Right: Having reached the first houses ofStalingrad, the tanks of Panzer-AbteilungLancken (Major Dietrich von der Lancken,commander of the III. Abteilung of Panzer-Regiment 24, exercised tactical commandof all the regiment’s panzers) wait whilethe infantry — the I. Bataillon of Panzer-grenadier-Regiment 26 — clear the streetsof the settlement. On the hill in the back-ground is the suburb of Minina, objectiveof the neighbouring 94. Division.
The same spot on what is today Morflotskaya Street, looking south to Minina. Alexpinpointed the location with the help of present-day inhabitants of the street whoremembered the war from stories told by their parents. To gain the same height ofthe wartime photographer, he climbed onto a lorry.
The grenadiers have completed their cleaning-out operationsand the panzers move forward to join up with them. Most ofthe vehicles in this particular column belonged to the panzerregiment’s 5. Kompanie under Oberleutnant Gert-Axel Weidemann.
Looking west down Beloglinskaya Street in the Voroshilovkijdistrict. Few of the wooden houses in the settlements thatsprawled over this part of Stalingrad remain, most of themhaving been destroyed in the subsequent battle or beenreplaced by brick houses in post-war years.
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Hitler’s offensive was now split and if onewas to look for a specific moment when Ger-many sealed its fate in the East and,inevitably, in the entire war, a strong casewould have to be made for the implementa-tion of Directive No. 45 on July 23. In the actof sending both panzer armies south over thelower Don and into the Caucasus to chasethe Soviets to the mountains near Grozny,the Germans lost critical supplies and, mostimportant of all, irreplaceable time to neu-tralise Stalingrad, something that could havebeen achieved had the original tenets of‘Blau III’ been adhered to in mid to late July.In the original planning of the summer cam-paign, the German leadership only regardedStalingrad as an industrial and communica-tions centre that had to be liquidated. It wasnot until the German forces began theirdrive into the Caucasus that GeneraloberstFranz Halder, the Chief of the German Gen-eral Staff, began to see Stalingrad as the keyto the entire operation. Stalin did not allow the Germans any
room to compensate for their mistake. Aweek after the issuance of Directive No. 45,when Paulus and his 6. Armee had clashedinto two new Soviet reserve armies and twonew tank armies in the Great Bend of theDon, the entire German leadership includingHitler suddenly realised the importance ofStalingrad, and the battle for that city wastruly joined. No German presence in theCaucasus could ever be secure with RedArmy formations standing before Stalingrad,and it was also realised that by taking thecity, a Red Army presence in the Caucasuswould be virtually untenable. Whoever con-trolled Stalingrad would eventually win theCaucasus but not holding the city wouldjeopardize all the German endeavours in thesouth.
Unlike the Germans, Stalin had playedthis game before in the Russian Civil War of1917-22 in this very region and he knew thata large army before Stalingrad was like adagger aiming at the jugular of the Caucasus,namely Rostov. Hitler and his generalswould become painfully aware that they sim-ply did not have the forces to aggressivelyadvance in two diverging directions at thesame time. Immediately after learning of theRed Army build-up in the Don Bend justwest of Kalach, the 4. Panzer-Armee wasinstantly turned north-east towards Stalin-grad in support of Paulus. Heeresgruppe Bwas given priority in supplies and air supportand now it was Heeresgruppe A’s turn toplay a subsidiary role. The rapid advance tothe oil cities had come to an embarrassinghalt.
THE APPROACH TO STALINGRAD(July 24-September 2)In mid-July the Red Army began its
defensive plan for Stalingrad by creating anew Stalingrad Front, its command trans-ferred from Marshal of the Soviet UnionSemyon Timoshenko to Lieutenant-GeneralVasily Gordov on July 23. Stalin reinforcedthe theatre with three fresh reserve armies(the 63rd, 62nd, 64th), the latter two (com-manded by Major-General Vladimir Kol-pakchi and Lieutenant-General VasilyChuikov, respectively) being placed on thewest bank of the Don to block any directGerman advance to the city. In addition, twonew tank armies, the 1st and the 4th, wereformed and headed for deployment in theDon Bend.
Stalingrad itself was prepared for battleby the evacuation of livestock and food sup-plies, and the construction of bunkers,trenches and gun emplacements. Two days
after Directive No. 45 was issued, the 6.Armee was dead in its tracks for lack of sup-plies, and was to remain so until the end ofthe first week of August, but now it was upagainst the new Stalingrad Front. This com-prised seven armies, three of them freshreserve armies and two in the process of con-version to tank armies, as well as the 8th AirArmy. Paulus’s force of 290 panzers was thusfacing over 1,200 Red Army tanks with moreon the way. The Stalingrad offensive got off to an
inauspicious start as Paulus’s army soon wasstruggling in front of stiffening resistance.The lead units encountered the main line ofresistance of the Soviet 62nd and 64thArmies on July 23. Although seriously lowon fuel and supplies, Paulus began to unseatKolpakchi’s right flank and push himtowards the Don to reach the strategic bridgeover the river at Kalach. Significant Sovietarmoured forces were sent to the Kalachbridgehead to bolster the position and by the24th plans had been formulated for acounter-attack by the 1st and 4th TankArmies, which included the 133rd and 158thHeavy Tank Brigades. Between July 25 and28, 550 Soviet tanks were committed in theoffensive to relieve the 62nd Army, beinghammered mercilessly by the Luftwaffe onthe open steppe while Paulus tried to hold onto and even complete his encirclement of the62nd Army. One of the lesser known battles of the
Eastern Front, the Battle of the Don Bend,which began on July 23 and lasted until thefinal Soviet pockets of resistance beforeKalach were eliminated on August 11, fea-tured many interesting strengths and weak-nesses on both sides. The veteran and under-strength Germans were critically short ofboth fuel and ammunition and had to be
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Left: As Gruppe Edelsheim reaches the southern railway sta-tion around 1600 hours they pass close to what wouldbecome perhaps the most iconic building of the Battle of Stal-ingrad: the Grain Elevator, seen rising here in the back-ground. It lay in the sector of the neighbouring 94. Divisionbut they were held up and still a long way from it. However,realising its tactical importance, Gruppe Edelsheim sent a
small force across the divisional boundary to take control ofthe building, which they found unoccupied. Right: New ware-houses and densely planted trees today make it impossible totake a comparison from the exact same spot where thephoto grapher, Kriegsberichter Thiede, stood in 1942. This isthe best match possible, taken from a point near the southernrailway station.
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supplied by air, while the Russians werevastly over-strength in armour but short ontactical experience on the battlefield. Inaddition, accounts of Red Army personnelabandoning equipment and fleeing battle,echoing similar stories from Voronezh, Ros-tov and the Caucasus, were reaching both theGerman and Soviet leadership. A better-sup-plied German or a more-experienced Russ-ian would have brought the battle to an ear-lier conclusion but, as neither was the case,the combat dragged on until August 11. On July 31, several days after the great
Russian armoured counter-attack against thestalled 6. Armee, and having seen the seriousresistance Paulus had run into at Kalach,Hitler revised Directive No. 45 and orderedthe 4. Panzer-Armee to relocate to Heeres-gruppe B and support Paulus’s drive on thecity from his southern flank. As the pressure increased in the Don
Bend, Stalin finally reacted regarding the dis-cipline and motivation problems in the Red
Army and on July 28 issued his Order No.227, aptly titled ‘Not A Step Back!’. Fromnow on, each Front would receive up to threepunishment battalions, court-martials of offi-cers retreating would be immediately con-vened, and well-armed blocking detachments
would be instituted to ‘supervise’ less-reli-able units. Cowards or panic-mongers wouldbe shot on the spot. At the same time, Kol-pakchi was relieved of his command andLieutenant-General Anton Lopatin assumedcontrol of the very troubled 62nd Army.
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However, German tenure of the huge silo was short-lived. Led bySenior-Lieutenant Polyakov, a group of 27 soldiers from the Soviet10th Rifle Brigade attacked in the late afternoon and recapturedthe building, eliminating the last German defenders, who hadholed up on the second floor, early on the 16th. Shortly after, Infan-terie-Regiment 267 of the 94. Division arrived in the area andlaunched an immediate attack in the hope of regaining the storagetower. However, every assault was driven off with heavy losses.Infanterie-Regiment 274 took over on the 17th, but with equally little success, so a decision was taken to pummel the building intosubmission with artillery and Stuka dive-bombers. Howitzers,8.8cm flak guns (from Flak-Abteilung 602) and heavy mortars werehauled into the area and began an uninterrupted pounding of thestructure. Here a 10.5cm l.F.H.18 from Artillerie-Regiment 194 has
just fired off a round. In spite of the devastating fire unleashedagainst them, the Russian defenders cooped up inside the elevator(which also included remnants of the 35th Guards Rifle and 10thNKVD Divisions, reinforced during the night of September 16/17by naval troops of the 92nd Rifle Brigade ferried across the river)stubbornly held on for four more days, resisting numerous assaultswith tanks and flame-throwers, and it was not until the evening ofSeptember 21 that a surprise attack from the north-west by Infan-terie-Regiment 274 managed to rush the building, forcing the survivors of the Soviet garrison to break out. The 29. Infanterie-Division (mot.), which by then held the southern half of the cordonaround the structure, took 104 of them prisoner but several smallgroups of Russians managed to escape across the river. By midnight, the grain elevator was finally in German hands.
Right: Built in 1940 of reinforced con-crete, measuring 90 metres in length,50 metres wide and 35 metres high, thesilo survived the five-month battle rela-tively intact. The damage to its base,concrete pillars and the many shellholes that punctured its walls wererepaired after the war and the buildingcontinues to be utilised today for the storage of grain.
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Although by July 30 the Soviet counter-attack had run its course, the lack of provi-sions still prevented the 6. Armee fromregaining the initiative. The battle of theKalach bridgehead (and the vital bridgeitself) began on the morning of August 7with the XIV. and XXIV. Panzerkorps slic-ing behind the Soviet defenders with theirbacks to the Don river. The panzers hadmade contact by late afternoon, and a mop-ping-up operation then began with the assis-tance of the LI. Armeekorps resulting in afurther 50,000 prisoners being captured.Lopatin’s 62nd Army was sent reeling acrossthe Don, trying to regain its balance to formanother defensive line in front of the city.The loss of hundreds of tanks added to thehuge number already lost since Kharkov inMay, and by the time the 62nd Army took upits defensive positions in Stalingrad proper amonth later, none of its original five rifledivisions and two tank brigades existed. The6. Armee was equally weakened and the lossof the irreplaceable veteran infantry wouldbe sorely missed a few weeks later inside thecity limits. While Lopatin had been decimated to his
immediate north, Chuikov (now deputy toMajor-General Mikhail Shumilov of the 64thArmy) had been able to skilfully fight a seriesof delaying actions in the face of the supply-starved 4. Panzer-Armee. Initially occupyingpositions on the Chir river and lower DonBend, he moved his 64th Army to new posi-tions on the Myshkova river as the 62ndArmy was overrun, and the XXXXVIII.Panzerkorps (General der Panzer truppenWerner Kempf) of Hoth’s 4. Armee appeareddeep in his left flank at Abganerovo Station.It was now clear to the Soviet leadership thatthe German panzer army was going toadvance up the Simovniki-Tinguta corridor(the same corridor that Manstein would lateruse in his attempt to rescue Paulus’s force inlate December) towards the city, but when thelead elements of Hoth’s panzers reachedTinguta on August 5, they came up against aseries of fortified hills. The 4. Panzer-Armeestalled at this point until a wide flankingmanoeuvre was conducted to the east in con-junction with the 6. Armee forcing the Don tothe north. This gained Hoth another 20 kilo-metres. Meanwhile, Paulus had forced the Don to
the north of Kalach at Vertyachiy and Pesko-vatka and sent his XIV. Panzerkorps on adaring direct thrust to the Volga. Hoth onthe other hand would now have to re-deployhis mobile units from east of Tinguta to thewest and strike north from Myshkova toencircle the remnants of the 62nd Army andChuikov’s 64th Army well outside of the city. Like Hoth, Paulus began his advance on the
morning of August 21. The 295. Infanterie-Division seized a 25-square-kilometre bridge-head across the Don at Vertyachiy, and within24 hours the XIV. Panzerkorps (General derInfanterie Gustav von Wieters heim) wasrolling across two 20-ton bridges. At 0430 onSunday, August 23, the 16. Panzer-Division(Generalleutnant Hans-Valentin Hube) setout for the northern city limits, some
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Right: It was in the area immediately westof the southern railway station that oneof the best-known images to come out ofStalingrad was made. Taken by Kriegs-berichter Geller, it shows two veteranNCOs, both armed with sub-machineguns, in a crater in what appears to bea front-line combat situation. German propaganda exploited this picture to thefull, using it in numerous publications.
However, a sequence of photos taken by Geller’s colleague PK Leutnant HeinrichSautter, who was working alongside Geller together with a cine cameraman, revealsthat what looks like a genuine combat situation was in reality a staged scene. The PKteam met the panzergrenadiers from Gruppe Edelsheim as they were escortingSoviet POWs to the rear and asked them to pose for them in a large bomb crater, towhich they gladly obliged. This shot by Sautter shows Geller in the foreground justbefore or after exposing the famous frame. Far less dramatic than the other photo, itreveals that the road ahead is empty. The fact that Sautter himself is standing out inthe open is a clear indication of the lack of any danger from enemy fire.
Right: Alex found the spot on Vokzal-naya Street, today Militionera Bukhan -tseva Street. The tram lines have beenrepaired. The buildings shown left andright have gone but Alex confirmed thespot using wartime aerial photographs.
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Left: As they moved forward into the southern part of the city,the Germans encountered numerous Soviet tanks, hastilythrown into the battle in an attempt to stop the enemy advance.This T-34 was knocked out near Kazanskaya Church, a fewblocks north-west of the southern railway station. At the start ofthe battle on September 13, the 62nd Army had some 105 tanks(78 T-34s, 17 KV-1s and ten T-70s) in Stalingrad: in the city southof the Tsaritsa were the 26th and 133rd Tank Brigades with 35
tanks (the 26th had 18 T-34s and the 133rd 17 KV-1s, so the tankseen here most likely belonged to the 26th). In the central dis-trict were the 6th and 6th Guards Tank Brigades with 37 tanks,and near the Red October Factory in the north were the 27th and189th Tank Brigades with 33 tanks. However, many of theseAFVs were immobile and could only be used as fixed firingpoints. Right: Before the war this area was named Vozrozh-deniya (Renaissance) Square but today it is Kuznetskaya Street.
Above: Kriegsberichter Heine picturedmen from a machine gun companyadvancing along a dual tram-line. The broken ground is evidence of the massivetactical air and artillery support thataccompanied the attack into the city.Right: This photo has previously beenidentified as having been taken in the 71.Division sector further north but Alex haspositively located it to the part of the citysouth of the Tsaritsa river. The troopswere moving south along VokzalnayaStreet, today Militionera BukhantsevaStreet — the same street as where the pic-tures on the page opposite were taken.The present photo was taken just short ofthe intersection with NovouznenskayaStreet, i.e. some 1,200 metres north of theother location, and west of the railwayline. This means that these troops weremost likely from the 24. Panzer-Division(the 94. Infanterie-Division was responsi-ble for clearing everything east of the rail-way line). The second building from theright on the slope still exists today butunfortunately it is hidden by the newhousing erected in the foreground.
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Just on the other side of the railway, at the intersection ofSocialisticheskaya and Barrikadnaya Street, an 8.8cm gun hasbeen set up, its barrel trained north to protect against
armoured counter-attacks from that side. Barrikadnaya Streetwas in the sector to be cleaned by the 94. Infanterie-Divisionand led east towards the Volga.
The red building, a fire-station, has survived all the subsequent fighting and all post-war redevelopments in the city centre.
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60 kilometres distant, with the Luftwaffe mer-cilessly pounding all that stood in his path. Bylate afternoon, the citizens themselves werefinally involved in the battle as the first raidtook place. Not since the Blitz two years ear-lier had the Luftwaffe unleashed such poweragainst a civilian population. Over 1,600 sor-ties pounded the city to create panic andchoke the roads to try to prevent supplies
reaching the front. As successful as this raidwas — only three aircraft were lost — the 6.Armee would soon pay dearly as they foughttheir way into this city of rubble.
By nightfall, Hube’s 16. Panzer-Divisionhad reached the Volga with the 3. and 60.Infanterie-Divisions (mot.) desperately try-ing to protect his narrow supply corridor tothe Don crossings at Vertyachiy. Before mid-
night, Hube received a personal order fromHitler to hold the Volga bank under all cir-cumstances. The three divisions of the XIV.Panzerkorps soon found themselves as isolated islands in an ever-increasing bom-bardment from Soviet artillery and groundassaults on their flanks. That night anotherheavy raid was mounted against the city bythe Luftwaffe.
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Over the following days, the 24. Panzer-Division slowly foughtits way northwards until they reached the gorge of the Tsaritsa, thus securing the southern part of the city. Here,machine-gun teams from Gruppe Hellermann march north
towards the river. The central city lies beyond. The heavysmoke billowing from one of the burning oil tanks at theDzerzhinsky Tractor Factory in northern Stalingrad firmly datesthis picture to September 17.
Alex’s comparison was taken looking north-east from an abandoned cemetery on a hill in the Dar-Gora district of Stalingrad.
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While the Red Army was putting intensepressure on the northern corridor, the South-Eastern Front commander, Colonel-GeneralAndrei Yeremenko, pressed into serviceover 100,000 civilians and deployedarmoured trains on the city’s periphery. Thecivilian reinforcements were used for theconstruction of strong points and fortifica-tions, and even proved effective at blockingGerman attacks until regular troops arrived.Factory workers continued to join thedefence lines and some took newly-builtT-34s (often without paint or gunsights)directly from the Dzerzhinsky TractorWorks into action. After Yeremenkoallowed the evacuation of 200,000 childrenand elderly to the safety of the east bank, theonly local bridge over the Volga was demol-ished. There would be no retreat . . . thearmy would fight to the last in the city.
Over the next few days, Hube tried in vainto advance into northern Stalingrad, even ashis northern and western flanks came underintensifying Soviet pressure. Meanwhile, his
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Right: The attack by the LI. Armeekorpsinto the central part of the city on Sep-tember 13 fielded two divisions: the 71.Infanterie-Division on the right and the295. Infanterie-Division on the left. Themission of the 71. Division was toadvance directly through the central city,across the marshalling yards of the Cen-tral Train Station and on to the ferrydocks on the Volga shore. Advancing onthe division’s right flank, Infanterie-Regi-ment 191 aimed for the station and theSquare of Fallen Heroes beyond. As itmoved down Kubanskaya Street, theregiment was held up by this underpassblown by the Soviet defenders to createan obstacle.
Stalingrad’s central district. We have marked the streets andlocations that feature in our photos. [1] Kubanskaya Street.[2] Parkhomenko Street. [3] Central Train Station. [4] Nail
Factory. [5] Kurskaya Street. [6] Krasnoznamenskaya Street.[7] Square of Fallen Heroes. [8] Univermag Department Store.[9] Hulzonov Statue. [10] Palace of Physical Culture and Sport.
Right: This has previously been identifiedas being a tram-line bridge along Vokzal-naya Street south of the Tsaritsa, but itis actually the railway bridge on Kuban-skaya Street, just south-west of the Central Train Station.
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isolated panzer division bled to death,deprived of manpower, ammunition andfuel. By August 28 he had made preparationfor an emergency and unauthorised with-drawal towards the Don but fortunately thetimely arrival of a relief column from the 3.Infanterie-Division (mot.) (GeneralmajorHelmuth Schlömer) made his retreat unnec-essary — at least for the time being. By lateafternoon, a fierce Russian attack tore a five-kilometre gap between Hube and his west-erly neighbour. Hube’s corps commander,General von Wietersheim, then radioedPaulus that his position on the Volga wasuntenable and that he would have to pullback by nightfall but Paulus forbade therequest. As Russian resistance closer to theDon was starting to whither, replenishmentwould soon be possible and the 60. Infan-terie-Division (mot.) (Generalmajor Otto
Kohlermann) was able to link up with thetwo isolated divisions of the panzer corpstwo days later. On August 27, Stalin appointed General
of the Army Georgi Zhukov as DeputySupreme Commander of the Red Army(second in rank only to Stalin himself) andsent him to the besieged city two days later,just as Kempf’s XXXXVIII. Panzerkorpsrenew ed its offensive from the south. Kempfmade good progress, having bypassed thestrong points around Beketovka to the east,and by the following morning he was only 40kilometres south of the XIV. Panzerkorps’
Volga corridor. Von Weichs, the Heeres-gruppe B commander, immediately sentinstructions to Paulus to get his panzersmoving south to complete the encirclementof Lopatin and Chuikov. However, althoughhe was fearfully aware of the consequences,intense pressure on the Volga corridor’snorthern flank convinced Paulus not to gam-ble on sending his panzers to the south tolink-up with Kempf. By September 1 thewindow of opportunity had closed andLopatin’s 62nd Army had escaped into thecity. The fight for Stalin’s city would now belong and hard.
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The battle for the Central Train Station began on September 14.The terminal building — seen here on fire in the background —changed hands several times but remained in Soviet possessionafter the 1st Battalion of the 42nd Guards Regiment of the 13thGuards Rifle Division recaptured it in a night counter-attack onthe 15th. Over the next few days, bitter fighting took place inand around the building. The battle see-sawed across the bigsquare in front, the Guardsmen finally being pushed back to a
building known as the Nail Factory at the south-eastern endwhere they stubbornly held out despite being surrounded onthree sides. The fountain that stood in the centre of the square,featuring a parapet mounting frogs and a group statue of sixchildren dancing around a crocodile, became the quintessentialimage of this part of the battlefield. This picture, taken by photo -grapher Emmanuil Evzerikhin of the TASS news agency, madethe fountain the symbol of the devastated, yet undefeated city.
Right: After the war the old railway sta-tion was pulled down and a new andmuch larger terminal, built in Stalinistarchitectural style, was completed justnorth of the old building in 1951-54. Aspart of this redevelopment, the fountainwas removed and it was not untilAugust 23, 2013 — the 71st anniversaryof the start of the Stalingrad battle —that a replica was unveiled by RussianPresident Vladimir Putin. However, thenew fountain was placed some 50metres nearer to the station and built ona higher base. Also, on the new statuethe figures of the children are not exactlythe same as on the original, and the circle of dancers has been turned clock-wise a little, hence a comparison thatlines up the children not only shows thestation very much closer, but at a differ-ent angle as well.
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THE GERMAN ATTACK INTO THE CITY(September 3-October 13)By September 3, Paulus’s and Hoth’s
armies had linked up and formed a unitedfront less than eight kilometres west of thecity. Stalin was meanwhile pushing Zhukovto launch a major counter-attack with the 1stGuards, 24th and 66th Armies against theGerman forces to the west of Rynok. Proba-bly Stalin was not that optimistic over theoutcome but he desperately wanted to divertGerman attention away from the city. OnSeptember 5 the attack commenced underZhukov’s personal supervision but with lim-ited results. For the next week, Sovietground attacks were launched by day whileSoviet bombers raided German rear areas bynight. Thus Zhukov bought precious time forYeremenko to deploy his 62nd and 64thArmies in the trenches and fortifications onthe outskirts of the city.
On the evening of September 12 Zhukovwas back in Moscow conferring with Stalinand the Red Army Chief-of-Staff, Colonel-General Alexander Vasilevsky, on the diresituation confronting Yeremenko. Duringthe meeting, the two generals had quietly dis-cussed the prospect of finding ‘another wayout’. Stalin overheard this remark anddemanded a plan by the following evening.The two generals spent all the next daydevising a scheme to plough through theweak Rumanian forces on Paulus’s andHoth’s flanks to encircle the German forcesfighting for Stalingrad. The seed for the Stal-ingrad pincer had been sown but it would bemid-November before the necessary reserveforces could be put in place. On the German side, while Paulus was
pre-occupied with stabilising his front west ofRynok, Hoth had driven a wedge betweenthe 62nd and 64th armies, so isolating the
former in the city. Just as the XXXXVIII.Panzerkorps (14. and 24. Panzer-Divisions,29. Infanterie-Division (mot.) and 94. Infan-terie-Division) began its advance into thesouthern sector of the city on the 12th,Lopatin was replaced by Chuikov as com-mander of the 62nd Army. It was on this day that Hitler summoned
Paulus and von Weichs to the WehrwolfFHQu at Vinnitsa. Despite the anxieties con-veyed by his two generals, Hitler demandeda major assault on the city centre the verynext day to augment the attack that wasalready underway in the southern suburbs.All objections raised by Weichs and Paulus— increasing Soviet reserves and attacks;exposed Rumanians on the flanks, and awithering 6. Armee -– were swept aside bythe Führer. The two men returned to theVolga that night to prepare for the followingday. The attack was on.
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Left: Gunners from the 13. (schwere) Kompanie of Infanterie-Regiment 191 have set up their 15cm s.I.G. M33 artillery piece ina building on Kommunisticheskaya Street, on the southern sideof Railway Station Square. The half-ruined building in the fore-front, is the Kommunalschikov House (House of Experts of
Municipal Services). The three-storied building seen on the farleft is the Nail Factory (see the map on page 17). Right: The sameview today, looking south-east from Kommunisti cheskayaStreet into Gogol Street. The building that was the Nail Factoryin 1942 today houses a telecommunications company.
Left: Russian prisoners of war marching to the rear onKommunis ticheskaya Street in late September 1942, picturedby Kriegsberichter Herber. In all, the 71. Division took some
3,600 prisoners during its assault into the city. Right: The sameview looking south down Kommunisticheskaya. The apart-ment building in the background still stands.
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At 0445 hours on the morning of the 13th,Paulus unleashed the assault elements of hisLI. Armeekorps (General der ArtillerieWalther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach), in co-ordi-nation with massed tactical air and artillerystrikes on suspected Soviet strong points. Theplan consisted of the 295. Infanterie-Division(Generalmajor Rolf Wuthmann) advancingeastwards to the Mamayev Kurgan (Hill 102)— the strategic hilltop overlooking the city —while the 71. Infanterie-Division (General-major Alexander von Hartmann) moveddirectly through the central city to the ferrydocks. Each was to be supported by a StuGbattalion. Units in the north were either con-sidered too weak to join in the attack, or were
already committed to defending furiousSoviet counter-attacks in that area. Chuikov’s forces were in no better shape.
While his 62nd Army was rich in divisionsand tank brigades on paper, in reality themajority of these were mere shadows of theirformer selves. He entered the battle with54,000 men and 105 tanks, his strongest unitbeing the 10th NKVD Division (ColonelAlexander Sarayev). This unit was flush withconscripted workers’ militias and three of itsfive regiments were already spread out alongthe entire defence perimeter. The German attack made good progress
over the open ground west of the city, muchof which was now in ruins, and there can beno doubt that every German soldier rapidly
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Left: As his troops approached the railway yards at a pointnorth of the central railway station around noon on September14, Oberstleutnant Fritz Roske, the commander of Infanterie-Regiment 194, spotted a number of Katyusha rocket-launchers(type BM-8-24 mounted on a T-40 light tank chassis) on Park-homenko Street, just south-west of the station, firing to thewest. He quickly called forward two 5cm PaK anti-tank gunsand they in no time knocked out three of the so-called ‘StalinOrgans’ plus two Soviet tanks. The destroyed vehicles later got
further chewed up in an artillery barrage, as evidenced by thispicture taken a few weeks later. The building seen in the back-ground was a vodka distillery. Right: Parkhomenko Street (seethe map on page 17) was known as Donskaya Street until the1930s but still appeared under its old name on some wartimemaps. It runs one block west of the station, parallel with therailway lines. The old distillery, on the corner of Parkhomenkoand Kubanskaya Streets, survives in mid-distance on the right-hand side. The view is looking south-west.
Right: Once beyond the rail yards, the axisof the 71. Division attack was along twomain streets leading down to the river,Kievskaya Street and Kurskaya Street.The infantry was supported by assaultguns of Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 244.Here a StuG III Ausf. B rolls along Smolen-skaya Street, a side street of Kurskaya,loaded with troops from the I. Bataillon ofInfanterie-Regiment 194, pictured byKriegsberichter Heine on September 16.
Left: Today, Smolenskaya Street nolonger exists, having disappeared withthe redevelopment of the housingbetween Mira Street and Lenin Avenue.However, the house with the balconyseen on the left in the wartime picturesurvives, tucked away between the mod-ern buildings so Alex had to take hiscomparison from closer in.
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Here two of the StuGs (the one closest to the camera is thesame vehicle as seen in the previous picture) roll eastwardsdown Kurskaya (see the map on page 17) escorted by infantry.
At 1515 hours that afternoon, after overcoming several resis-tance nests and bypassing others, the force reached the banksof the Volga.
Kurskaya Street has been renamed Port Saïd Street. After the war, new buildings were erected along most of its length.
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advancing toward the Volga just over threekilometres away now thought that this mustbe the end of the war. Communications toChuikov’s HQ on the Mamayev Kurgan hadalready been cut by the afternoon of the13th, forcing him to relocate to the ‘TsaritsynBunker’ just under a kilometre south of theUnivermag department store. By noon onthe 14th, the 71. Infanterie-Division hadadvanced to the Central Train Station fromwhere the combat had to be fought buildingby building with vast amounts of rubbleblocking streets to panzers and forcing theminto Soviet kill zones. Chuikov’s strategy wasto abandon the traditional line of resistanceand instead to fortify specific buildings to actas breakwaters against the German on -slaught. Commanders were instructed to stayas close to the enemy as possible to help neu-tralise the Stuka attacks. Casualties on both sides now rose rapidly
as the battle descended into a bitter strugglefor individual offices, staircases and cellars,and soon even the sewers became battle-grounds as storm-troopers tried to outflankeach other and emerge in the enemy’s rear.Precision rifle fire and 88mm flak guns nowgave way to the sub-machine gun, grenade,flame-thrower and spade. By nightfall on the14th, the 71. Infanterie-Division had a nar-row foothold on the Volga and was barelyholding the now-exposed ferry sites underintense pressure from NKVD units. Duringthe chaos, Germans advancing down theTsaritsa Gorge even managed to bringChuikov’s bunker under direct fire, forcinghim on the 14th to consider yet another relo-cation. On von Hartmann’s left flank, the 295.
Infanterie-Division had overrun Stalingradairfield and was engaged in a vicious battlefor the Mamayev Kurgan hilltop againstfanatical Soviet resistance from the 112thRifle Division (Lieutenant-Colonel VasilySokolov) and 269th NKVD Regiment. Allalong the front, from the hilltop of the burialground extending southwards to Minina, thecity was engulfed in an incredible, intenseinferno, a never-ending cycle of Germanassault followed by Soviet counter-attack.With Chuikov’s centre on the verge of col-lapse and the Luftwaffe sending in hundreds
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Right: Shortly after Infanterie-Regiment194 reached the banks of the Volga,Heine photographed a trio of soldiersfrom the I. Bataillon patrolling alongKurskaya Street. Considering that theyare very close to the front line, the menlook remarkably unconcerned. The build-ing on the right housed the school of theKIM (Communist Youth International),the youth section of the Comintern,which existed from 1919 to 1943.
The school block was later enlarged but the original building still stands: it is the partseen at the far end of the façade. Today it is no longer a Communist training institutebut a secondary school named Lyceum No. 5 ‘Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin’. It standsalong the stretch of Port Saïd Street between the Central Train Station and the inter-section with Mira Street.
Left: A little further on, the patrol turned left off KurskayaStreet to walk across a large expanse of ruins. The buildings inthe background were in the sector held by the regiment’sIII. Bataillon but they were unoccupied, the shortage of men
forcing the Germans to only set up defences in buildings righton the forward line along the riverbank where they were underheavy counter-attacks from the Soviets. Right: Now just a non-descript side street in central Volgograd.
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of sorties each day, he received supportdirectly from Stalin. On the 13th, the Sovietdictator ordered the 13th Guards Rifle Divi-sion (Major-General Alexander Rodimtsev)to cross the river and the following day hemet with Chuikov to receive his orders: leaveall heavy weapons on the east bank and bring10,000 guardsmen over with only their per-sonal weapons, anti-tank rifles and mortars,and clear out the central part of the city.
With burning barges illuminating the river,the ex-paratroopers brought their first ele-ments (the 1st Battalion of the 42nd GuardsRifle Regiment) ashore that evening whileunder fire from von Hartmann’s infantry,just a 100 metres away. Immediately theycharged the enemy positions and, togetherwith the NKVD garrison, secured a bridge-head for the rest of the division to follow. At2000 hours on the 14th, two regiments of thedivision (the 34th and 39th) began crossingand immediately set out to their objectives,stretched out from the city centre to theMamayev Kurgan hilltop.Battles raged throughout the night at
strong points like the fortified House of Spe-cialists, the Beer Factory, and the StateBank. Chuikov’s plan was to commit oneregiment each to the city centre and theMamayev Kurgan area, and to retain onebattalion in reserve at his bunker on theTsaritsa Gorge. However, on the followingmorning, the Germans began a new concen-trated offensive in the south at Minina, as
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Left: Having completed their sweep of the area the men returnalong Kurskaya in the direction of the railway yards. Althoughthis well-known series of pictures show all the hallmarks ofhaving been staged for the benefit of the photographer, theremarkable thing about them is that on the one hand they
were taken so close to the front line, while on the other theyclearly lack any sense of danger. Right: Amazingly, the three-storied housing block in the centre with the distinctive balconies still stands. This is one of just two original buildingswhich still survive along Kurskaya.
Right: A little to the rear, at the intersec-tion of Kurskaya and SaratovskayaStreets, the crew of a 5cm PaK have setup their gun to guard against enemycounter-attacks from the side street. Thepiece was placed on the south-east cor-ner of the crossroads and its barrel ispointing south-west into Saratovskaya.The shadow thrown by the gun showsthat the photo was taken just after sun-rise. However, the gun’s parent unit isunsure: it could belong either to the 14.Kompanie of Infanterie-Regiment 194 (theregimental heavy weapons company) orto the 3. Kompanie of Panzerjäger-Abteilung 171 (the divisional anti-tankbattalion). Note the abandoned Russiananti-tank gun across the street.
Left: Saratovskaya Street is today namedMira Street. On the far left is again the former KIM School, the only original build-ing to survive around this inter section.
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The battle in central Stalingrad continued unabated for almosttwo weeks as the Germans launched one attack after the otherin an attempt to reach the banks of the Volga on a wide front.Throughout this period the infantry attacks were supported byassault guns of StuG-Abteilung 244. On September 24, two ofits long-barrelled StuGs (commanded by Leutnant Ullrich
Hempel and Oberwachtmeister Karl Pfreundtner respectively)were assigned to support Aufklärungs-Abteilung 171 (of the71. Division) and the II. Bataillon of Infanterie-Regiment 276 (ofthe 94. Division) in a push along the Tsaritsa’s north bank onthe LI. Armeekorps’ right flank. Here Hempel’s gun heads forthe railway underpass south of the Central Train Station.
This spot on Golubinskaya Street is one of the very rare locations in present-day Volgograd that has hardly changed since 1942.
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well as in the city centre which tied Rodimt-sev’s men down. His guardsmen, strugglingto gain a foothold on the west bank, werebeing hammered relentlessly by dive-bombers, while the Central Train Station,which had been conquered and re-conqueredmore than ten times since noon the previousday, changed hands yet another four timesduring the 15th. By nightfall, the guardsmenhad managed to push the Germans back1,000 metres and had re-occupied RedSquare and the train station.Meanwhile Chuikov had lost contact with
the forces on Mamayev Kurgan and thatevening he still had no idea who was in con-trol of this strategic location. However, inaddition to the successes in the centre,Rodimtsev’s newly-arrived third regiment(the remainder of the 42nd) had now beendeployed to reinforce the river bank. Acounter-attack was now mounted against theGermans on the hill using the remnants of the112th Rifle Division, a battalion of the 13thGuards, and the 62nd Army’s last ten KV-1tanks of the 113th Heavy Tank Brigade.Casualties in the city were staggering. The
Germans had taken frightful losses in thepast two days and the 13th Guards alone hadlost 6,000 men. Entire units were beingwiped from Chuikov’s order of battle yet thefighting raged on with ever-increasing inten-sity. Early on the morning of the 16th,Chuikov’s counter-attack on the MamayevKurgan began and succeeded in relieving thebeleaguered remnants of the NKVD on theeast face of the hill and displacing the 295.Infanterie-Division from the hillcrest. Seven kilometres to the south, battle
groups from the 24. Panzer-Division (Gen-eralmajor Arno von Lenski) and 94. Infan-terie-Division (Generalleutnant Georg Pfeif-fer) were involved in smashing Sovietresistance near the southern train station,while the 29. Infanterie-Division (mot.)(Generalmajor Max Fremery) and 14.Panzer-Division (Generalmajor FerdinandHeim) were clearing the Russians from theLeather Factory in Kuporosnoye. Thedefenders in the south were augmented bythe presence of an armoured train yet by the16th the Soviets had retreated to the Grain
Elevator. This massive concrete structuredominated the whole of the city south of theTsaritsa Gorge, and it quickly moved high onthe German list of objectives as from thisvantage point, accurate artillery fire could be
brought down on every German unit operat-ing to the east and south of Minina. As the 24. Panzer-Division struck north
through the railway yard to link up with vonHartmann, the 94. Infanterie-Division ran
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Right: Having passed underneath the rail-way, the two StuGs faced Krasnoznamen-skaya Street, a long straight avenue lead-ing down to the river (see map on page17). Leutnant Hempel’s gun, No. 202, hastaken up a shielded position behind thebuilding on the left. As he emerged fromunder the underpass, Pfreundtner (fromwhose vehicle this picture was taken)spotted a T-34 in the distance and imme-diately proceeded to knock it out. Smokecan be seen billowing up from thedestroyed vehicle.
The appearance of Krasnoznamenskaya Street today is a world apart from what itlooked like in 1942, even the tram lines having changed.
Left: The tank knocked out by Pfreundtner was pictured byKriegsberichter Herber some time later. The fact that thehatches are still closed is an indication that the crew was
unable to escape and probably still lie dead inside the vehicle.Right: This is the same spot on Krasnoznamenskaya Street butnot one of the wartime buildings has survived.
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Another tank, this time a T-70, was knocked out at the easternend of Lenin Street, just a few hundred metres short of theVolga. By the time Kriegsberichter Heine took this picture, in
late September or early October, the Germans had erected asheet-iron fence across the street in order to prevent Sovietobservation from the east bank.
Earlier this photo was thought to have been taken on TheatreSquare in southern Stalingrad but although none of the
wartime buildings remain at this location, Alex is positive thatit was taken here in Lenin Street in the central district.
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into increasing difficulties with Soviet troopsin the Grain Elevator. Although by the 16ththey were only 30 strong (the 35th GuardsRifle Division began the battle with 250men), they were causing a real headache forthe Germans. Following an urgent call forhelp, the 92nd Naval Rifle Brigade arrivedthat night and was immediately dispatched toRodimtsev’s left flank with a platoon beingsent to reinforce the Grain Elevator.For the next few days, the defenders in the
huge silo stalled the 94. Infanterie-Divisionand thus left the right flank of the 24.Panzer-Division exposed to a counter-attackas it sliced its way north. After a German
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Right: On September 27, the 71. Infan-terie-Division finally secured the Volgabank along the entire divisional front andthe 94. Infanterie-Division overcame thefinal resistance by the Soviet 42nd and92nd Rifle Brigades around the mouth ofthe Tsaritsa, the last remnants of the latter escaping across the river. Thatsame day, Kriegsberichter Pilz picturedmen — either from Infanterie-Regiment276 of the 94. Division or from Infanterie-Regiment 211 of the 71. Division — dugin on the river embankment, just northof the Tsaritsa river, in the shadow of theMonument to Victor Holzunov (1905-39),a famous dive-bomber pilot, squadroncommander in the Spanish Civil War andHero of the Soviet Union. Note themachine-gun team in the foregroundwho are armed with the brand newMG42 that had just been introduced. Itsexcellent reliability and high rate of firewould earn it the reputation of being thebest machine gun to come out of theSecond World War.
Right: For some reason, the statue ofHolzunov was turned 90 degrees after1945. The avenue on which it stands wasnamed Stalin Embankment during thewar but has since been re-christenedEmbankment of the 62nd Army. Thisspot is just a little distance north of theriverside end of KrasnoznamenskayaStreet (see map on page 17).
Left: Another 500 metres further north on Stalin Embankment,gunners have set up a 5cm PaK anti-tank gun in front of thePalace of Physical Culture and Sport. Its barrel is trained acrossthe Volga. Above: This photo has previously been identified ashaving been taken at the Palace of Culture in Skulpturny Parkin northern Stalingrad but this is not correct. The addition ofcolumns with heavy stone plinths has considerably altered theappearance of the Sport Palace’s façade but it is the samebuilding. Today it functions as a musical theatre. The gunstood on the south-east corner.
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call to surrender was rejected, on the 18ththe Germans brought up 88mm flak gunsand 105mm howitzers and began pulverisingthe structure. On the following day the Ger-mans made ten assaults with infantry andtanks but all were to no avail. The Sovietresistance had held yet the defenders hadtaken losses. The grain had caught fire chok-
ing those inside; water both for the men aswell as for cooling the machine guns hadbeen depleted, and supplies of anti-tank rifleammunition and grenades were nearly fin-ished. Also, the only radio was out of action.After two more days of shelling, the Ger-mans again went forward with 12 tanks and200 assault troops. When the two Soviet
Maxim machine guns were finally put out ofaction, the defence started to crumble.Although the Germans managed to enterpart of the building, it was still difficult tolocate and eliminate the defenders but thatevening those remaining withdrew for lackof ammunition. Only a few men are knownto have survived.
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Left: The Univermag department store on the Square of FallenHeroes (which the Germans referred to as Roter Platz — RedSquare) was a key building throughout the battle. Fighting for thesquare broke out on September 15 as Infanterie-Regiment 194 (71.Division) grappled with tanks from the 6th Tank Brigade whichLieutenant General Chuikov of the 62nd Army had hastily sum-moned from the southern suburbs on the 14th to block the Ger-man advance from the Central Train Station. Fighting around thesquare continued for several days. On September 21, the Germansrenewed their assault, encircling the 1st Battalion of the 42ndGuards near the Univermag, where Senior-Lieutenant Fedoseyev,the battalion commander, had set up his command post. The fol-lowing day they captured the building, annihilating Fedoseyev’sCP and forcing the remnants of the battalion to withdraw further
to the Volga. On September 26, after the last pockets of resistancein the city centre had finally been destroyed, Hauptmann KarlFricke, commander of the I. Bataillon of Infanterie-Regiment 191,assisted by a few of his men, personally raised the Reichskriegs-flagge over the entrance of the gutted building. It would remain flying there until the final German capitulation four months later.On January 26, 1943, faced with the inexorable shrinking of hisencircled army’s perimeter, General der Panzertruppen FriedrichPaulus, the commander of the 6. Armee, would set up his com-mand post in the basement of this building. Right: The Univermagwas repaired after the war. However, today it is completelymasked at the front by the large Intourist Hotel that was built onthe north-east corner of the square, and can now only be seenfrom Ostrovsky Street which leads off beside the hotel.
Left: Hauptmann Fricke also authorised the establishment of asmall cemetery on a strip of parkland just outside the Univer-mag. ‘Here rest the fallen of I./I.R. 191. They died so that Ger-many will live’, says the sign in this picture taken by Soviet warphotographer Georgi Zelma after the German capitulation in
February 1943. Between September 14 and 26 alone, the 71.Division had suffered a total of 208 men killed. Right: The ceme-tery plot is now occupied by a modern annex built against theside wall of the Univermag. Under the circumstances, this is thebest match possible, looking west down Ostrovsky Street.
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After the fall of the silo on the 21st, Sovietreinforcements poured into the city underthe cover of darkness. By now the 92ndNaval Brigade had been cut off and lay isolated along with the 42nd Rifle Brigadeand 270th NKVD Regiment with their backsto the Volga on a miniscule strip of land justsouth of the Tsaritsa. As the 29. Infanterie-Division (mot.) and 94. Infanterie-Divisionkept them penned in against the river, Ger-man air and artillery pounded the pocketmercilessly. Chuikov had relocated his com-mand post on the 17th to a position 800metres north of the landing stage at the RedOctober Factory and now had received addi-tional reinforcements, namely the 95th RifleDivision (Colonel Vasily Gorishny); the137th Tank Brigade with just over a dozen T-60 tanks; the 284th Siberian Rifle Division(Colonel Nikolai Batyuk), and the 193rdRifle Division (Major-General FedorSmekhotvorov). These badly needed unitswere immediately rushed to the three activeareas of the fighting: the Grain Elevator, theCentral District, and the Mamayev Kurgan,the 95th Rifle Division successfully gainingcontrol of the hilltop on September 19. See-saw battles raged daily during this
time for control of the train station, RedSquare and the central docks, with one sidegaining up to several hundred metres, only tolose it the following day. This continued untilthe 26th when Paulus, confident that the cap-ture of the docks was within his grasp, tookpressure off Rodimtsev and redeployed the24. Panzer-Division to augment plannedattacks on the Mamayev Kurgan and RedOctober Workers’ Settlements.
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Left: On October 16, General Paulus carried out an inspection ofthe 71. Division which by then was responsible for holding theentire Volga frontage in central and southern Stalingrad. As partof his tour he visited a battalion command post in the Univermagwhich was then in the sector occupied by Infanterie-Regiment194. Here he is seen in the street outside the building (L-R):General major Alexander von Hartmann, the commander of the71. Division; an unidentified battalion commander (perhaps
Hauptmann Fritz Dobberkau of the I. Bataillon of Infanterie-Regi-ment 194); General Paulus, and Oberst Johannes Schmidt, thecommander of Infanterie-Regiment 191. The building seen in thebackground is one of the many so-called Houses of Specialists inthe city, in this case the House of Employees of Cultural Events.Right: The same view today, looking east down Ostrovsky Street,with the Univermag on the right. What remains of the formerHouse of Specialists is today the Hotel Old Stalingrad.
Left: Bordering on the eastern side of Square of Fallen Heroes was a large park, whichduring the battle became covered with trenches and dugouts. Bitter fighting took placeall around the area — between Infanterie-Regiment 191 (71. Division) and the ever-dwindling Soviet defenders from the 272nd NKVD Regiment (10th NKVD Division) and42nd Guards Rifle Regiment (13th Guards Rifle Division) — between September 14 and27, an endless series of small-scale close-quarter attacks and counter-attacks, inter-spersed with Stuka dive-bombing. After the fighting had ceased, Kriegsberichter Bauer-Altvater pictured a fallen Soviet soldier near one of the underground shelters. The viewis looking south, into Pushkin Street. Right: Death no longer lurks among the trees. Theentrance to ulitsa Pushkina is today spanned by an arch.
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The second phase of the battle began onSeptember 27, when the 24. Panzer-Divisionplus the 389. Infanterie-Division (General -leutnant Erwin Jaenecke) and the newly-arrived 100. Jäger-Division (Generalleut-nant Werner Sanne) began a strong attacktowards the summit of Hill 102; towards theworkers’ settlements to the west of the fac -tories, and shortly thereafter towards theOrlovka pocket in the north. With massed
dive-bombers at his disposal, Paulus dealt asevere blow to the Soviet defenders in thetarget areas; so severe that Chuikov lateradmitted thinking: ‘One more battle likethat and we’ll be in the Volga’. By evening,the Germans had taken the vital summit ofHill 102, and had the workers’ settlementsunder intense pressure. Chuikov counter-attacked the summit with elements of the95th and 284th Rifle Divisions supported by
all the available assets the Red Air Forcecould muster. By the time the battle endedthe top of the hill had been reduced to a noman’s land, accessible only to the dead anddying. On the 29th, battle was finally joined in the
Orlovka salient, as Paulus threw parts of the389. Infanterie-Division and 60. Infanterie-Division (mot.) against the Russian forcesthere. To the south of Orlovka, the three
German divisions in the vast wooded area tothe west of the factories began a slow andsystematic advance to the Red October andBarrikady plants.While the German onslaught against
Orlovka and the factories continued,Chuikov received additional reinforcementsduring the first four days of October. Thesecomprised the 37th Guards Rifle Division(Major-General Viktor Zholudev); 39thGuards Rifle Division (Major-GeneralStepan Guriev), and the 308th (Siberian)Rifle Division (Colonel Leonti Gurtiev),supplemented by the light tanks of the 84th
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Left:Attacking on the left wing of the LI. Armeekorps, the 295. Infan-terie-Division began its assault on the northern parts of the centraldistrict on September 13. Its right-hand force, Infanterie-Regiment518, made good progress and pushed into the city on the 14th,reaching the banks of the Volga at 1500 hours. That day, General-major Rolf Wurthmann (left) met with Oberst Otto Korfes, the
regimental commander (right), who was understandably elatedabout the achievement of his men. They are on Khoperskaya Street,about a kilometre west of the railway line. Right: This part of Stalin-grad has changed so radically that Khoperskaya Street does noteven exist anymore. The nine-storey apartment block that hasreplaced the ruined buildings is No. 8 Dvinskaya Street.
Left: After the war the shape of theMamayev Kurgan changed considerablyafter thousands of tons of rubble fromthe city was dumped on its summit, rais-ing its height by some 16 metres andinfilling many of the ravines on theslopes, including the Dolgiy Balka (LongRavine) seen here. Despite the changes,Alex is still certain that his comparison iscorrect. He lined it up with Ternopol-skaya Street, which is on the right inboth pictures. The view is looking south.
Right: Protruding between the central andnorthern parts of the city, and overlookingthe whole metropolis, was the MamayevKurgan heights (also known as Hill 102). Avital strategic position, it was clear toboth sides that whoever held the summitwould have control over the city. Todefend it, the Soviets had built strongdefensive lines on the slopes, composedof trenches, barbed wire and minefields.The first German unit to launch an attackon the hill was Infanterie-Regiment 516 ofthe 295. Division. On the morning of Sep-tember 14, Kriegsberichter Herber pic-tured men of the regiment climbing thesouth-western slopes on their way toseize a large part of the hill. However,unknown to them, a battalion from the42nd Guards Regiment of the 13th GuardsRifle Division was about to cross theVolga that same evening and, beingrushed to the spot, would succeed in hold-ing on to the northern slope. Thus began abitter battle for possession of the hillwhich changed hands several times.
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Tank Brigade (the heavier tanks beingunable to cross the river due to loss of thelarger ferries).Except in the Orlovka salient, by October
6 the fighting had subsided as the Germandivisions gradually wore themselves out onthe approaches to the factories that had beenconverted into formidable fortresses. Never-
theless, on the 7th, Paulus launched a power-ful local attack which managed to gain 300metres of ground towards the Tractor Fac-tory.
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On September 16 two Soviet regiments stormed the MamayevKurgan and fought their way to the summit where bloody hand-to-hand fighting took place, with huge casualties on both sides. OnSeptember 27, the newly-arrived 100. Jäger-Division attacked andrecaptured half of the hill but the Soviet defenders — the 95th andthe 284th Rifle Divisions — managed to maintain their own
positions on the northern and eastern slopes. After another day ofcostly but fruitless fighting the 100. Division handed the missionback to the 295. Division. The Soviet garrison held out on the keystronghold for four more months — until January 26, 1943 — whentroops from the 21st Army relieved them. This picture, obviously astaged propaganda shot, was taken shortly afterwards.
Alex lined up his comparison by referring to the bend in the Volga. The view is looking east towards the Red October Factory.
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GERMAN ATTACK ON THE FACTORIES(October 14-26)A lull of several days now set in as the
Germans prepared for a massive assaultscheduled for the 14th. Chuikov used thisprecious breathing space to prepare hisdefences and launch limited spoiling attacksalthough these ultimately failed to draw theGermans out of their positions. On his rightflank he placed the 124th, 149th and theseverely weakened 115th Rifle Brigades, andthe 282nd NKVD Regiment. This group wasresponsible for the Rynok-Spartanovka area.To their south, the Tractor Factory wasdefended by the 37th Guards Rifle Divisionthat had recently arrived plus elements of the84th Tank Brigade, 20 light T-70s havingarrived on the evening of the 4th. Theremainder of the tank brigade defended theBarrikady complex along with the reinforced112th Rifle Division, the 308th which hadjust arrived, and remnants of the 95th RifleDivision. Chuikov deployed two of the freshformations, the 39th Guards and 193rd RifleDivisions, on the western approaches to theRed October factory, which had halted theGerman eastward drive in its tracks.Batyuk’s battered 284th Rifle Division clungonto the eastern slopes of Hill 102, andRodimtsev’s surviving guardsmen retainedcontrol of their narrow strip of land extend-ing into the northern part of Central District,yet what strength Chuikov had in manpower,he lacked in equipment. By mid-October, the 62nd Army had
approximately 40 tanks left, the majoritybeing light T-70s. While he could expect littlesupport from the air force for the comingenemy assault, he did have access to power-
ful artillery assets deployed on the east bankof the river as well as four regiments oftracked BM-8-24 Katyusha rocket-launcherswithin the city itself. After having just barely escaped from the
German’s clutches at the Tsaritsa, and hav-
ing narrowly avoided incineration when thefuel tanks above his HQ were hit during abombing attack, by October 5 Germanartillery had identified Chuikov’s commandpost forcing him to relocate 450 metres to thenorth along the riverbank.
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In late September the struggle for the city shifted north, the Ger-mans now aiming to capture the three large factory complexesalong the Volga shore and their associated workers’ settlements.The new offensive began in earnest on October 14, with the mas-sive attack by the three divisions of Gruppe Jaenecke (14. Panzer-Division and 305. and 389. Infanterie-Divisions) towards the north-ernmost of the three plants, the Dzerzhinsky Tractor Factory. Thatday, a PK photographer from Luftwaffe-Kriegsberichter-Kompanie
(mot.) z.b.V., Sonderführer Josef Ollig, followed an assault groupoperating on the right flank of the attack. A mixed force, made up ofmen from reinforced Infanterie-Regiment 577 of the 305. Divisionand panzergrenadiers from the 14. Panzer-Division, they formed upin the VTUZ higher technical school, a complex of brick buildings afew hundred metres distant from the south-west corner of theDzerzhinsky Factory, where they waited while artillery softened upthe target. H-Hour — 0730 hours — is only minutes away.
Between the VTUZ School and the group’s objective — the brickworks south of theTractor Factory — lay an open area covering several hundred metres.
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DZERZHINSKYTRACTOR FACTORY
BRICKWORKS
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VTUZ SCHOOL
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Meanwhile, even though his artilleryammunition stocks were dangerously lowfrom the extended supply lines, Paulusplanned to renew his attack on October 14,given the fact that he had just been grantedthe 14. Panzer-Division and 305. Infanterie-Division (Generalmajor Kurt Oppenlän-der) to spearhead the assault. Also the 79.Infanterie-Division (Generalmajor RichardGraf von Schwerin) was due to arrive anyday.
Paulus assembled the 14. Panzer-Division
and the 305. and 389. Infanterie-Divisionsinto ‘Gruppe Jaenecke’ (named after Gen-eral Jaenecke of the 389. Division) with thegoal of capturing the Tractor Factory andthen turning south to take the BarrikadyGun Factory. To their south, the 24. Panzer-Division and 100. Jäger-Division wouldlaunch limited attacks to the east in order toput pressure on Chuikov’s front while themain attack flanked him from his right. Inthe north, the 94. Infanterie-Division and 16.Panzer-Division would march towards
Spartanovka. The two remaining infantrydivisions (the 71. and 295.) stationed in thecentral sector were deemed ‘no longer capa-ble of offensive actions’ and would simplyprotect their areas from Rodimtsev’s guards-men and the threat of a Soviet amphibiouslanding to the south.
Directly in the path of the intended attackstood the Soviet 37th Guards and 95th RifleDivisions, and the 117th Rifle Regiment(39th Rifle Division). The 112th Rifle Divi-sion covered their right flank, and the
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As they wait for the signal to attack, the men look up to Stukasdiving down on enemy positions. These images, used in countlesspublications, have come to epitomise the German infantrymen inthe battle of Stalingrad — combat-hardened veterans, laden withweapons and equipment, yet apprehensive at what is coming.
Amazingly, in spite of the destruction, the complex of buildingswhere these famous pictures were taken still survives. It con-sists of three blocks on Demyan Bedny Street. They all lookalike but Alex is sure he has identified the correct one. This isthe northernmost block, seen from the courtyard.
Left: Turning around, Ollig pictured the centre and southernblocks of the school. Smoke from an explosion — either fromSoviet counter-fire or from a near-miss from the German pre-liminary bombardment — is drifting away. A Horch staff carstands parked next to the ruined centre block. The shot well
illustrates that the VTUZ school lay completely exposed in awide open expanse ploughed up by artillery. Right: Today, thecomplex, now in use as a private school for infants, lies in adensely-built-up suburban area, and the view from the court-yard is further limited by trees that have matured.
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Left: As H-Hour approaches, the troops go forward to join upwith their panzer support. On the right is the Horch car seen in
the previous shot. Right: The damage to the school buildinghas been repaired.
Left: The men congregate at the end of the middle block. Theywill shortly move out into the open to advance across the openground towards their objective, the brickworks to the south of
the Dzerzhinsky Factory. Right: The peaceful scene today beliesthe fact that this was once a hotly-contested and bloody battle-ground.
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remnants of several infantry brigades wereentrenched outside Spartanovka. Proceedingsouth from the 95th Rifle Division’s posi-tions were the 308th Rifle Division coveringany direct eastward advance to the Bar-rikady complex, and the 193rd Rifle and 39thGuards Rifle Divisions further south guard-ing the Red October factory. The remainderof the defence line consisted of the 284th
Rifle Division covering ‘the Tennis Racket’,so named after the peculiarly-shaped railwayloop just south of the factories. Protectingthe left flank were the remaining guardsmenof Rodimtsev’s division.
The battle had been very severe andbetween September 13 and Paulus’s mid-October offensive, his army had sufferednearly 20,000 casualties. In sharp contrast,
Chuikov had taken approximately 60,000casualties but had received over 50,000 rein-forcements during the same period. Never-theless, the morning of the October 14 sawalmost 100,000 men deployed against eachother on an urban front bisecting Stalingradfor 12 kilometres. While Paulus was criticallyshort of infantry, he still hoped it would becompensated by his advantage in tanks and
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Meanwhile, a few hundred metres further north, Infanterie-Regiment 578 of the 305. Division, supported by an armouredcombat group from the 14. Panzer-Division, was attacking theworkers’ settlement of the Dzerzhinsky Factory, prior to mov-ing in on the plant itself. Here tanks and half-tracks of the
Kampfgruppe (led by Major Bernard Sauvant, the commanderof the I. Abteilung of Panzer-Regiment 36) have stopped on thewestern edge of the settlement, waiting for the infantry ofPanzergrenadier-Regiment 103 to clear the multi-storied apart-ment buildings.
The street seen in the wartime photo was named Vtoraya Kolcevaya Street in 1942 but since the war the whole area has
been re-developed creating new streets. This is now the intersec-tion of Shurukhina Street and Street of the 95th Guards Division.
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airpower. If the fighting in Stalingrad hadbeen considered ‘savage’ by this time, anattack of unprecedented ferocity was nowabout to unfold.Having relocated to a forward command
and observation post in Gorodishche, sixkilometres from the front lines, during theearly morning hours of the 14th, Paulus wasstill able to witness the opening phase of thebattle. Exactly at sunrise that October morn-ing, the first of thousands of Luftwaffe tacti-cal air support sorties struck the Tractor Fac-tory with pinpoint precision. After theprimary targets were hit from the air, Ger-man artillery began a continuous effort tosuppress enemy positions as elements ofseven divisions initiated their advance inlight rain. By the following day Soviet forceshad been squeezed into a small perimeternear Spartanovka, and by nightfall the Trac-tor Factory had been occupied.
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Left: The workers’ settlement was fiercely defended by the 37thGuards Division and the panzergrenadiers needed seven hoursof intense street-fighting from building to building before thearmoured vehicles could pass through the rubble-filled streets.Note the transformer station on the right. Right: The housingblocks in this area all look alike and Alex spent an inordinate
amount of time trying to identify the correct comparison. Hesettled on this one in Borby Street, one block south of Street ofthe 95th Guards Division, mainly because of the presence of atransformer-station (outside his picture to the right), as this isthe only one in the entire neighbourhood, but he makes noclaim that his comparison is 100 per cent certain.
While the main force moved on to the factory, other elementsof Infanterie-Regiment 578 dug in on the edge of the settle-ment to hold the captured ground. In the lee of the building on
the right stand two assault guns from StuG-Abteilung 245,which together with StuG-Abteilung 244 supported the 305.Division in this attack.
Right: A fence prevented Alex from mov-ing back further but this is the sameblock at No. 3 Shurukhina Street. Theview is east.
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By Chuikov’s own admission, the 14th wasthe most critical day during the entire battleof Stalingrad. Once again he had to removeunits from his order of battle and once againhis headquarters ended up a couple of hun-dred metres from the front line.That evening Nikita Khrushchev, the polit-
ical commissar of the Stalingrad Front, calledChuikov for a situation report. With the 37thGuards Rifle Division overrun, and the 112thRifle Division and northern brigades cut offfrom the main bridgehead, he said that hehad to concede the loss of the Tractor Fac-tory if there was to be any hope of holdingthe remainder of the city. Help for the belea-guered defenders would have been uselessanyway for communications had brokendown so completely that Chuikov could onlyissue the order by runner: ‘Fight with every-thing you’ve got, but stay put!’ Even the unitguarding his own HQ was thrown into thefray when the 95th Rifle Division was out-flanked leaving a gaping hole right next tohis command post on the river bank behindthe Barrikady. That evening, one regiment ofthe 138th Rifle Division (Colonel Ivan Lyud-nikov) was ferried across and sent immedi-ately into battle near the point of the break-through. On the morning of the 16th, Gruppe
Jaenecke turned south towards the Bar-rikady factory and had occupied half of it bynoon despite the Soviets having been rein-forced by the last two regiments of the 138thRifle Division. By the time the factory hadfallen on the 17th, the Germans were con-vinced that the city would now be takenwithin days. However, the substantial Ger-
37
Right: At 1415 hours, the spearhead of the14. Panzer-Division broke through theSoviet defence and, pushing ahead, pene-trated into the grounds of the tractor fac-tory near the main gate. By the end of theday, Infanterie-Regiment 578 had reachedthe western edge of the plant as well.Here a machine gunner from the regi-ment’s III. Bataillon, in position just westof the main gate, faces south, ready forany enemy counter-attack.
Right: He was dug in along Kul-tarmeyskaya Street, which since hasbeen renamed Opolchenskaya Street.The building — named Stalin School No.3 in 1942 — has been repaired and is stilla secondary school today.
Left: Just a little to the south, and across the road from the fac-tory, stood another secondary school, named after SergoOrdzhonikidze, a veteran Bolsevik, member of the Politburoand close associate of Stalin, who had died in 1937. It too washeavily damaged in the fighting. Above: Today, it is known asSchool No. 12.
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man advance had now brought them underthe full weight of the Soviet artillery locatedon the east bank while fresh Soviet units con-tinued to arrive on the western shore. Nowthe German units were pounded by heavyartillery of a calibre and concentration hith-erto unseen from 152mm and larger siegeartillery and repeated salvoes of Katyusharockets.The weather also turned against Paulus as
heavy rain set in during the morning of the18th, grounding his air support. The down-pour, followed by snow, continued for twomore days hampering the German efforts tomop up in the Barrikady factory complex.The skies cleared on the 21st and by the 23rdthe ground was sufficiently hard for the 79.Infanterie-Division to begin its eastwardadvance on the Red October plant. Thisattack continued throughout the followingday, as well as a renewed effort to eliminatethe Spartanovka bridgehead to the north, butthe troops of both the 14. Panzer-Divisionand the LI. Armeekorps were exhausted. From then until the end of October, the 79.
Infanterie-Division struggled to mount attacksto capture even the smallest of buildings in theRed October factory area while being con-stantly being pounded by Soviet artillery. TheGerman offensive had spent itself dry.
During the evening of the 26th, the leadbattalions of yet another fresh Soviet forma-tion — the 45th Rifle Division (Lieutenant-Colonel Vasily Sokolov) — crossed the riveras the Front commander Yeremenko hadpersonally promised Chuikov all the ammu-nition and replacements necessary to holdthe remainder of the city.
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Above: This picture, taken by Kriegs-berichter Bauer-Altvater, is almost always,but incorrectly, captioned as showing themain gate of the Dzerzhinsky Tractor Fac-tory. In actual fact, it shows the terminalbuilding of the Traktornaya Train Station,located along the same street but half akilometre south of the actual main gate.The trenches and shelters in the foregroundwere constructed by the Russian defenders.
Looking east from the park across the road from the station. The street running leftto right on the western edge of the factory was named Ivanov Street in 1942 but istoday Lenin Avenue.
The real main gate looks similar but is decidedly more grand.
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The following day, October 15, the attack on the Dzerzhinsky Fac-tory was resumed. Preceded by Stuka dive-bombing attacks, itbegan at 0700 with the troops advancing behind a rolling artillerybarrage. While Infanterie-Regiment 578 was cleaning out thenorthern half of the plant, Panzergrenadier-Regiment 103 of the14. Panzer-Division was doing the same in the southern half andby mid-morning the entire factory and the nearby Volga riverbank
were in German hands. This unique colour photograph, taken by asoldier from Infanterie-Regiment 578, Hans Eckle, shows menfrom the 9. Kompanie of the IIII. Bataillon, led by Leutnant KlausVoigt, inside the grounds of the factory. The regimental attackwas supported by assault guns from StuG-Abteilung 245 and partof StuG-Abteilung 244, two of which can be seen moving up onthe left. The view is west, looking back to the main gate.
Although the tractor plant went out of business in 2005, workis still carried out in some of the workshops. The area is off
limits to the general public but, undeterred, Alex still venturedinside to match up Eckle’s shot.
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THE FINAL GERMAN ATTACK(November 11-18)During this period of diminishing activity,
Paulus was desperate for fresh forces toresume his attack. On November 1, he con-ferred with von Weichs and GeneraloberstWolfram Freiherr von Richthofen, the com-mander of Luftflotte 4, to discuss how the citycould be secured before the weather took adramatic turn for the worse, something thatmight be only days away. Having been caughtunprepared in 1941, by the end of Octoberwinter clothing began to be issued to the 6.Armee yet poor weather would still cripplePaulus’s already overtaxed supply route tothe western railheads, and close air supportwould be practically neutralised.While Richthofen offered Paulus a portion
of the Luftwaffe’s rail capacity in order toquickly stockpile the ammunition needed forthe final attack, the 6. Armee’s commanderagonised as to how he could reorganise hisline to provide von Seydlitz’s LI. Armee -korps with assault troops that simply did notexist. A request to the Oberkommando desHeeres (OKH — German Army High Com-mand) for the bulk of the 29. Infanterie-Divi-sion (mot.) was rejected as the OKH wouldnot sanction any further transfer of line divi-sions into the city. Instead, five assault engi-neer battalions were scavenged from armytroops and various divisions outside the 6.Armee which reached Paulus betweenNovember 4-6. In addition, his two StuG bat-talions in the city would be reinforced withthe first 12 units of a new 150mm infantrygun — the StuIG 33B — which was mountedon a heavily armoured PzKpfw III assaultchassis. Together, this force was entrustedwith delivering the final German victory thatwould eliminate the last Soviet bridgehead,and render the city secure before the onset ofwinter. Now Paulus, Seydlitz, and OberstHerbert Selle, the Armee-Pionier-Führer(Commander of Engineer Troops) of the 6.Armee, began planning the final offensive tobe named Operation ‘Hubertus’.
After precious days of haggling betweenthe German High Command and variousgenerals concerning the offensive’s partici-pants, objectives and timing, a commanderwas nominated to lead the attack, scheduledto be launched on November 11. Major JosefLinden, himself a pioneer battalion comman-der and also director of the 6. Armee’s spe-cially created Pionier-Schule (assault engi-neers training school), began to take stock ofhis forces and set forth planning the offen-sive that was estimated to eliminate the lastremaining Russian bridgeheads in the city.Across a battlefield littered with shell-holes,bombed buildings, rubble and twisted metal,
the pioneers would systematically andmethodically implement their craft atdestroying one Soviet strong point afteranother. In their trail, an ad-hoc group ofstorm companies formed from all theremaining infantry and non-essential servicepersonnel in the city, would provide coverand mop up after the engineers. Despite last-minute protests for proper infantry battal-ions from the 60. and 29. Infanterie-Divisions(mot.) to cover the pioneers, Seydlitz pro-ceeded with the unenviable task of stitchingtogether his unconventional infantry force byscavenging men from every type of unit in hiscorps.
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A little further on, Eckle photographed what looks like thesame two StuGs proceeding further into the factory grounds.
The large building in the background housed the factoryadministration and offices.
The structure still stands but Alex found his comparison spoilt by trees, a low walland new buildings.
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The plan itself called for decoy attacksalong the entire line, from the XIV. Panzer -korps near Rynok to the old city defended bythe 13th Guards Rifle Division. The mainassault would come from seven assault engi-neer battalions -– Pionier-Bataillone 45, 162,294, 305, 336, 389 and Panzer-Pionier-Batail-lon 50 -– against the Soviet strong points inthe vicinity of the Barrikady factory. Theywould be supported by infantry of the 305.and 389. Infanterie-Divisions, themselvesaugmented by battle groups from the twoStuG battalions, and company-size contribu-tions from the 14. and 24. Panzer-Divisionand the 44. Infanterie-Division (General -major Heinrich Deboi). The major objective of ‘Hubertus’ would
be to seize the Volga shoreline immediatelyto the east of the Barrikady factory. A some-what lesser, yet significant attack would alsobe launched in the vicinity of the Red Octo-ber plant by the assault engineer unit — Pio-nier-Bataillon 179 — and troops of the 79.Infanterie-Division, although this was con-sidered of secondary importance. In additionto the Croatian Legion (known to the Ger-mans as verstärktes (kroatisches) Infanterie-Regiment 369), the 79. Division would alsobe augmented by forces from the 24. Panzer-Division: two panzergrenadier battalions, amotorcycle battalion and its armoured engi-neer battalion, Panzer-Pionier-Bataillon 40.It is no wonder then that ‘Hubertus’ wouldbecome known as the ‘Battle of the Pio-neers’. Chuikov, now in his new command post
beside the riverbank east of the Lazur Chemi-cal Plant, also considered his situation. Hisdepleted army was holding two bridgeheadsbut neither one was more than 800 metresdeep. The northern pocket was deployedaround Spartanovka and the southern one at‘Pavlov’s House’ with a thin strip along theriverbank all the way north to the Brickworks.Chuikov had successfully conducted severallocal counter-attacks, and had steadily takenin replacements for some of his losses whichhad injected a much-needed morale boost tohis army. Correctly anticipating anotherenemy attack in early November, he hadordered a much-needed reorganisation andconsolidation of the battered defenders, andhis defence now stood as follows:
To the north (Rynok and Spartanovkaarea), Colonel Sergei Gorokhov commandedan isolated composite force of 1,000 menfrom the decimated remains of a fewbrigades and an NKVD regiment. Of the main bridgehead ranging from the
northern boundary of the Barrikady river-bank through the Red October and Lazur toPavlov’s House stood seven eroded divisions,a rifle brigade, and a rifle regiment. Furthestnorth was the 118th Rifle Regiment (the onlysurviving combat unit of the 37th GuardsRifle Division), which was now under thecommand of their southern neighbour,Colonel Ivan Lyudnikov and his 138th RifleDivision (also augmented with the survivorsof the now defunct 308th Rifle Division anddefending the Barrikady area). On their leftflank were the reinforced 95th Rifle Divi-sion, 45th Rifle Division, 39th Guards RifleDivision (reinforced) and 92nd Rifle Brigade(reinforced) covering the area of the RedOctober through the Lazur Chemical Plantand Tennis Racket, the 284th Rifle Division
on the base of the Mamayev Kurgan, and the13th Guards Rifle Division occupying thenorthern part of the old city. In reserve, the193rd Rifle Division was held back to defendthe supply ferry. At 0340 hours on the freezing morning of
November 11, a heavy barrage announcedthe opening of the Germans’ final assault.Not only was the main attack supported byartillery, but Paulus had every division alongthe entire front in the city, from north tosouth, initiate deception attacks to help pindown Soviet forces and prevent Chuikovfrom reinforcing the Barrikady area. Thisheavy barrage was quickly matched withSoviet counter-fire. In the face of this intenseshelling, the infantry of both sides could onlyhug the earth as tightly as possible and staymotionless until the barrage had relented.Selle’s assault engineers now began theirmethodical and slow advance against theSoviet defences, being supported at 0630 by alightning Stuka attack on the Soviet forwardartillery observation posts. One by one,Soviet strong points were reduced by smallgroups of German sub-machine gunners,flame-throwers and teams with satchelcharges. Chuikov immediately counter-attacked by
thrusting Gorokhov’s infantry towards theTractor Factory, but by noon his Volgabridgehead was split again as the assaultengineers reached to within 600 metres ofthe river just south of the Barrikady factory,cutting off Lyudnikov and his defenders in apocket measuring just 400 by 700 metres. By evening Lyudnikov was running low on
supplies and ammunition and the Pharmacyhad fallen, yet at the same time casualties forthe Germans had been severe, both in theBarrikady area and Red October, the latterattack having been a complete failure. Aspredicted, the heavily-laden assault engi-neers were quick to run out of ammunition,and often found themselves unsupported bythe ad-hoc infantry teams to their rear. Theyhad taken 30 per cent casualties, and werestill expected by high command to take theMartin Furnace Hall in coming days if theefforts of the 79. Infanterie-Division provedfruitless.Now constantly under fire from Soviet
artillery, the exhausted German attack wassuspended on the 12th to be resumed the fol-lowing day. A few more buildings, includingthe formidable ‘Commissar’s House’ weretaken, but the Germans had to rest yet againthe following day, limiting themselves toclearing one house at a time. Generals incommand of hundreds of thousands of menspread out over many square kilometres
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The day after the fall of the tractor works, on October 16, the Germans pushed southalong the Volga, launching attacks on the next industrial complex, the Barrikady GunFactory. The force assembled for this assault comprised Infanterie-Regiment 577, ele-ments of Panzergrenadier-Regiment 103, Kradschützen-Bataillon 64 and one tank bat-talion from Panzer-Regiment 36. Here foot soldiers of the 14. Panzer-Division — eitherfrom Panzergrenadier-Regiment 103 or from Kradschützen-Bataillon 64 — move intothe attack from their assembly positions just north of the so-called SchnellhefterBlock. The latter, an important tactical objective (see the map on page 8 and the aerialphoto on page 32), had been taken by the 24. Panzer-Division on October 4. Its peculiarname derived from the German word for office folder and was coined following theblock’s appearance on the city plan. The Soviets called it the Hexagonal Quarter.
Amazingly after all this time, the same apartments still stand on Opolchenskaya Street.
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Heavy close-quarter fighting raged in the factory grounds fortwo weeks but by the end of October the 305. Division had cap-tured all of the Barrikady’s massive assembly halls, the onlyobstacles between them and the Volga being a few batteredhouses and the remnants of the Soviet 138th Rifle Division. Afinal German attack on November 11, spearheaded by five freshbattalions of assault engineers, cut the Soviets off from theriver, leaving them only a tiny bridgehead. Grim fighting ragedaround this small patch of land — known to the Soviets as the
‘Island of Fire’ — for three months, but the exhausted and starv-ing defenders clung on until December 21 when the 62nd Armymanaged to join with them. Even then, fighting continued untilthe end of the battle. Sometime in November, KriegsberichterFritz Gehrmann pictured two soldiers of the 305. Division bring-ing up food and rations (plus a pair of boots!) to the most forward positions in the Barrikady. They are in the southernpart of the factory grounds, walking north. The building on theleft is Hall 2 and the one in the centre Hall 6c.
Most pictures taken in the Barrikady complex — be they fromGerman or Soviet sources — show only a landscape of devas-tated buildings, twisted girders and shell-holes, which stand
little chance of being matched up — quite apart from the factthat the plant is strictly off limits. Under the circumstancesAlex did well to match up this picture.
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were now reduced to issuing orders to battal-ions and companies the size of platoons,directing which house to take that day. Seyd -litz attacked again east of the Barrikady onthe 15th but achieved only modest gains andfailed to eliminate the Lyudnikov pocket.
A spoiling attack by Chuikov during theevening persuaded Seydlitz to suspend hisoffensive for the following day. During the17th and 18th, the final German assault in thecity resulted in only modest gains in the Spar-tanovka area. By this time, further attacks
against the factories had become an exercisein futility, and the window for victory had atlast closed for Paulus. Now, Rumanian obser-vation posts were sending through reports ofmasses of Soviet tanks warming up theirengines behind the front line.
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Left: The Red October Steel Works, lying south of the Barrikady,was attacked on October 23 by the newly-inserted 79. Infanterie-Division. In two days of stiff fighting they captured a large part ofthe plant but were unable to conquer its south-eastern corner,the keystone of which was the formidable Martin Furnace Hall(Hall 4). Defending the factory, along with units of the 193rd RifleDivision, was the 39th Guards Rifle Division. They doggedly heldon to the factory for four months, until the final German capitula-tion. Sometime during the battle, Soviet combat photographer
Georgi Zelma took this well-known picture of men of the 39thDivision, assembled on the nearby Volga bank, being awardedwith the Banner of the Guards. Right: Since the war the riverbankbordering the Red October Plant has been completely trans-formed, some stretches having been given a concrete embank-ment while others have been covered with trees. Another sectionhas been altered by the construction of a new hydro-electricpower station. The shape of the river itself has also changed butthis is the same spot today, looking north-east.
Left: Meanwhile, on both sides casualties were mounting at analarming rate. A German field hospital had been set up in theRussian-Orthodox church in the village of Gorodishche, eightkilometres west of Stalingrad, and as the battle progressed agrowing number of cemeteries sprang up around it. This picturewas taken by Generalleutnant Erwin Jaenecke of the 389. Infan-terie-Division in late October when he left the city to assumecommand of the IV. Armeekorps further west. Right: Today the
site of the wartime cemetery is occupied by a large shoppingcomplex. Most westerners live with the notion that the Rus-sians had no qualms about building over German graves but infact in most cases the remains of German soldiers wereexhumed in 1943-45 and transferred to mass graves. As Alexsays, ‘Certainly, it was done primitively, since the war was stillon, but it was done’. (For more on the subject of German wargraves on the Eastern Front, see After the Battle No. 99.)
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Zelma also photographed the numerous shelters, dugouts and other installations constructed by the 62nd Army along the river front.
With all the changes along the Volga riverbank, one cannot beabsolutely certain where the Soviet photographer stood but,
assuming that it was near where his other picture was taken,this is the best comparison possible.
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THE SOVIET COUNTER-OFFENSIVE(November 19-22)Precisely at 0730 hours on the morning of
November 19, 3,500 guns and mortars beganthe Soviet counter-attack, 160 kilometres toStalingrad’s north. The Stavka goal withOperation ‘Uranus’ was to rupture the frontline manned by the Rumanian Third Army
on Paulus’s left flank, and to make a maddash for the vital German communicationcentre of Kalach as it was there that the 6.Armee relied on a single pontoon bridge fortheir supplies. The bombardment lasted for 80 minutes
before the shock elements of the South-Western Front (5th Tank, 1st Guards and
21st Armies) and Don Front (24th, 65th and66th Armies) charged the numbed Ruman-ian defenders who by noon had been largelyrouted. At 1300 hours the tank elements ofthe 5th Tank Army and 21st Army deliveredthe coup de grâce against the Rumanians. The first indication of the magnitude of
the disaster facing the Germans was when a
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Left: A large number of images that show the battle of Stalin-grad from the Soviet side were in fact not taken during actualcombat but acted out for the benefit of the cameramen in quietareas far from the front line or re-staged after the end of thefighting. This still from Soviet newsreel footage ostensiblyshows Russian soldiers advancing past a knocked-out PanzerIV. Right: It was actually filmed at the Sudoverf plant inArsenyev Street in the industrial suburb of Krasnoarmeysk,
over 20 kilometres south of the main city and six kilometresfrom the nearest front line. The filming was carried out in mid-October and photos taken on the same occasion alreadyappeared in the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper on the 28th. Thefootage was first used in the Soviet documentary Stalingrad,released in 1943, and has become stock material included incountless film documentaries since then. The building on theright was the factory’s fire-station.
A scene in the same sequence shows a housing block being hitby heavy shell-fire and infantrymen rushing in for the assault.
This too was filmed in Arsenyev Street in Krasnoarmeysk andAlex found the same apartment building to prove it.
Left: Another clip shows a machine-gun team firing at enemypositions near a high-rise building. Right: This turns out to havebeen filmed in Barrikadnaya Street in southern Stalingrad,
probably in early September. It shows the yard of the House ofSpecialists of the Hydrolytic Plant. The housing block in thebackground remains.
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temporary break in the clouds allowed aLuftwaffe plane to spot the westwardadvance of hundreds of Soviet tanks. At 2200hours, von Weichs sent a message to Paulusordering him to suspend indefinitely all fur-ther attacks in the city, and instead to rede-ploy the 14., 16. and 24. Panzer-Divisions tohis left flank to meet the Soviet assault.
As Paulus’s mobile reserve was now head-ing north-west, the disaster was completedon the 20th when the Stalingrad Front (51st,57th and 64th Armies) to his immediatesouth began its offensive against the Ruman-ian defenders of the 4. Panzer-Armee. Dueto shortages of fuel, Paulus’s three panzerdivisions could offer limited resistance to the
northern thrust. The only real obstacle tostand in the 5th Tank Army’s way was theXXXXVIII. Panzerkorps and the onlymobile reserve worth mentioning in thesouth was the veteran 29. Infanterie-Division(mot.), which was still nearly at full strength.
The XXXXVIII Panzerkorps comprised the22. Panzer-Division with 40 tanks, and the
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On November 19, the Soviets began Operation ‘Uranus’,launching a giant pincer movement by two army groups fromnorth-west and south of Stalingrad. Within four days, the pin-cers snapped shut near the village of Sovetskiy, 45 kilometreswest of Stalingrad, thus trapping 22 divisions — some275,000 men — of the 6. Armee and 4. Panzer-Armee in agiant pocket. Six weeks later, on January 10, 1943, the Soviets launched Operation ‘Ring’ with the intention of
attacking into the pocket to split it apart and capture the twoairfields left in German hands. Here troops of the 21st Armyadvance past a knocked-out Panzer III at the town of Karpovka. Located 35 kilometres west of the city, on the edgeof the German defensive perimeter (see the map on page 4), itwas taken on January 13. The sector was defended by the3. Infanterie-Division (mot.), so the vehicle most probablybelonged to its Panzer-Abteilung 103.
Most pictures taken on the endless steppe west of Stalingrad,where the Soviet offensive and great encirclement — and thesubsequent starving and freezing to death of numerousdoomed German divisions — took place offer little scope for
comparison photography, so we have concentrated our storyon the pictures taken inside the city. However, Karpovkamakes a good exception, so we include it to represent themany actions that were fought on the snowy plains.
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Rumanian 1st Armoured Division with 80obsolete Skoda and Renault tanks and wasnow being led by Generalleutnant FerdinandHeim. Having formerly been in charge of the14. Panzer-Division, he had assumed commandof the corps on November 1 but was now des-tined to become the scapegoat for the Stalin-grad disaster. In a sea of hundreds of Soviettanks, the panzer corps was directed and redi-rected in desperation from HQ while commu-nications between the two divisions had bro-ken down. The snow now falling, together withfog, worked well in the Soviets’ favour as theLuftwaffe was grounded and the German HighCommand was prevented from getting a firmgrasp of the situation as a whole. In ideal ter-rain, the vaunted 88mm flak gun was the primetank killer in the German inventory, but thistoo was rendered impotent by the weather.
The frantic misdirection of the panzercorps continued throughout the next day butit only resulted in eventual encirclement. Itsremaining 50 tanks were then ordered tobreak out to the south-west which they man-aged to accomplish over the next few days.By now the Rumanian armoured division hadbeen destroyed and the 22. Panzer-Divisionhad suffered such losses that it eventually hadto be disbanded. Generalleutnant Heim wassubsequently returned to Germany where hewas stripped of rank and jailed without trialin a pathetic attempt by Hitler to whitewashhis responsibility for the disaster.
Early on the 20th, the 29. Infanterie-Divi-sion (mot.) — in particular its panzer battal-ion — began a counter-attack against theflank of the Soviet southern thrust with somesuccess. The division was ideally placed tocontinue its advance into the Soviet mecha-nised elements, and if the southern thrusthad been thwarted, a spanner would havebeen thrown into the machinery of the entire‘Uranus’ offensive plan. This may have beenthe last real hope for 6. Armee’s salvation
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Right: On January 22, the forces of DonFront, pressing in from the south-west,broke through the outer ring of the Ger-man forces holding out in Stalingrad andmarched east into the city. The 62ndArmy, finally able to break out from itslong-held toeholds along the Volga,joined the offensive and together theyswiftly split the starving and dying Ger-man forces in several isolated, doomedenclaves. Finally victorious, the Sovietforces took possession of the city centre.Here T-34/76s roll westwards throughOktyabrskaya Street. They are nearingthe intersection with Lenin Avenue.
Today the street is named Geroyev Avenue. All buildings seen in the wartime picturehave been demolished, the area having since been totally re-developed.
A kilometre further north, what may very well be tanks fromthe same unit advance through a landscape of snow-clad ruins.They are coming from Saratovskaya Street and turning intoKurskaya. This is the same crossroads where we saw the German anti-tank gun set up the previous September (seepage 23). The photograph was taken looking east up what istoday Mira Street.
The red-brick building in the background is Stalingrad’s his-toric synagogue. Built in the early 20th century, it was shut asa place of religion during the Communist era and, having sur-vived the battle relatively unscathed, it was used as a stateutilities’ office until the demise of the Soviet Union. Restored in2005-7, it was re-inaugurated in November 2007 and todayagain serves the city’s Jewish community.
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but on the 21st the division was ordered towithdraw and take up defensive positions on6. Armee’s southern sector, thus allowing theSoviets to freely complete their encirclementwhich was achieved on November 22.
A Soviet offensive was not a surprise tothe German High Command — indeed onehad been expected — but the strength of thisattack was grossly underestimated, and the
confidence in their ability to contain a break-through was unrealistically high. The Ger-mans were in a good position to counter-attack yet their primary mobile reserve, the22. Panzer-Division, had been rendered rela-tively useless chiefly from neglect by theOKH to allocate sufficient maintenance andfuel resources prior to the 19th. The nextday, when an overly-cautious Soviet com-
mander penetrated Paulus’s southern flank,aggressive and opportunistic action byGeneral major Hans-Georg Leyser, the com-mander of the 29. Infanterie-Division (mot.),could have made good ground towards halt-ing the enemy thrust, but at that criticalmoment the German High Command losttheir nerve and ordered the unit to go on thedefensive.
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A score of Soviet tanks assembled beside the Central TrainStation, photographed from the pedestrian overpass at the ter-minal’s northern end. The structure in the immediate right
foreground is the station’s water tower. As a vital transporta-tion hub, the rail yards had been a target of devastating Luftwaffe attacks the previous August.
The water tower has gone but these are the northern platforms as seen from today’s footbridge.
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With all hope being lost, Generalfeldmarschall Paulus (he had been promoted byHitler the day before) finally surrendered on January 31, 1943. Here he arrives at thecommand post of Lieutenant-General Mikhail Shumilov, the commander of theSoviet 64th Army, in the town of Beketovka, located ten kilometres south of the cityalong the Volga (see map on page 4). This is Kalanchevskaya Street. With Paulus arehis Chief-of-Staff, Generalleutnant Arthur Schmidt, just visible behind him, and hisAdjutant, Oberst Wilhelm Adam, wearing a fur hat.
Kalanchevskaya is today named Krasnoufimskaya. Unfortunately the house wherePaulus met with Shumilov no longer exists but the building at the far end of thestreet forms a good link with the past.
Soviet cameramen were present to film Paulus entering the house and, appearing to beill at ease as he entered the crowded room, he sat down (above) to face his victors (right).Although he surrendered personally, Paulus never formally surrendered his army.
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THE END OF THE 6. ARMEE(November 23, 1942 — February 2, 1943)With the 6. Armee encircled, Paulus and
Heeresgruppe B commander von Weichswasted no time in requesting permission fora possible break-out, but Hitler immediatelyforbade any such action. Over the next days,and clearly aware of the dire military situa-tion in southern Russia, Hitler looked forany possible hope of saving the fruits of his1942 campaign and retaining his hold on thenow politically-important Stalingrad and theeconomically vital Caucasus. What Hitlerwas looking for, Reichsmarschall HermannGöring, the Commander-in-Chief of theLuftwaffe, provided in a guarantee to keepPaulus adequately supplied by air over thecoming winter weeks and months until hecould be relieved by ground forces. TheFührer thereby made his final decision onthe 24th for Paulus to hold fast and ready the6. Armee for airborne resupply.Soon after his decision, Hitler’s resolve was
strengthened when word came in from hischief strategist and newly-appointed leader ofHeeresgruppe Don, Generalfeldmarschallvon Manstein, that in his opinion a reliefoperation was preferred to a break-out, pro-vided the necessary ground forces were madeavailable. The battle of Stalingrad was nowtransformed into a desperate war of manoeu-vre as both sides raced to fill a gaping 200-kilometre hole in the Axis line between theItalian Eighth Army and the 16. Infanterie-Division (mot.) based at Elitsa. More menand material were quickly sent east in orderto try to decide the outcome in 1942. However, despite the valiant bravery and
appalling losses suffered by the German re-supply crews, Paulus never received what hehad been promised, and Manstein’s reliefoperation of December 12-23 failed in theface of renewed Red Army vigour. In theend, the air and ground forces necessary tosave Paulus never reached the front until the6. Armee’s airfields had been overrunand the pocket was on the verge of collapse.Potent German forces such as the SS-Panzer -korps, Panzergrenadier-Division Gross - deutschland and the Tiger tanks of schwerePanzer-Abteilung 503 arrived barely in timeto stabilise the southern front and prevent acomplete catastrophe that would havedwarfed the loss of the Stalingrad ‘Kessel’(cauldron). Even a plan in January 1943 tobuy Paulus time by crash-landing supply glid-ers, including the massive Me 321 Giganttype, was eventually scrubbed after the loss
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Left: Some of the other German generals captured in Stalingradwere also taken to Beketovka. The officer on the left is General-major Hans-Georg Leyser, commander of the 29. Infanterie-Divi-sion (mot.). He had taken over from Generalmajor Max Fremereyon September 25, when the division was withdrawn from the
city for a three-week period of rest. Re-committed on October19, it defended the south-western flank of the pocket, making afighting withdrawal into the city until its last remnants capitu-lated on January 31. Right: Untouched by the war, the woodenhouse remains exactly the same. Alex even matched the snow!
The surrender ceremony over, Paulus was driven in his own staff car to Don Frontheadquarters outside Zavarykino, some 80 kilometres north of Stalingrad, to be ques-tioned by General Konstantin Rokossovsky, the army group commander, and GeneralNikolai Voronov, the Stavka representative. Schmidt and Adam followed under escortin another car. The following day, February 1, the other captured Stalingrad generalswere brought here too. Assembled in this picture are (L-R) Generalmajor Fritz Roske(71. Division), General der Artillerie Max Pfeffer (IV. Armeekorps), Generalmajor MartinLattmann (389. Division), Schmidt, Paulus, Generaloberst Walter Heitz (VIII. Armee -korps), Generalleutnant Alexander Edler von Daniels (376. Division) (with his back tothe camera) and Generalleutnant Helmuth Schlömer (XIV. Panzerkorps). All wouldface months of interrogation and years of imprisonment.
Right: After the war, as so often the casewith small villages in Russia, Zavarykinohad its name changed, to Zavarygin, but fortunately the house, outside which the German generals were photographed,still stands.
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After the German surrender, a large number of pictures weretaken on the Square of Fallen Heroes. The Soviet army photo -graphers realised that it offered a perfect backdrop to illustrate
the German defeat and extol the Soviet victory. Many of theirpictures, like this one, show groups of prisoners being escortedinto captivity across the square.
The ruins along the northern side have since been replaced by the massive edifice of the Main Post Office.
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Waving the Flag of Victory over the embattled square! Severalsimilar pictures, clearly staged for propaganda purposes, weretaken from this same balcony belonging to the headquartersbuilding of the Stalingrad Oblispolkom (Regional Executive
Committee). It stood close to the square’s southern end, on thecorner of Lomonosov and Volodarski Streets. Visible on the farside (partly hidden by the flag) are the gutted remains of theUnivermag — the site of Paulus’s last command post.
The Oblispolkom headquarters and all the buildings between itand the square were pulled down after the war and the resulting
space used to considerably enlarge the square. By necessity,Alex’s comparison had to be taken from ground level.
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of Pitomnik airfield. Thereafter the pocketbegan its accelerating and unstoppable slideto its complete destruction.True to Hitler’s wishes, the 6. Armee never
formally surrendered and was finally justoverwhelmed and annihilated on February 2,1943. Yet 11,000 men took refuge in the sew-ers and held out until early March when thelast of them surrendered. While exact figuresare not known, approximately a quarter of amillion men were surrounded in late Novem-ber, and while up to 40,000 were evacuated byair, around 100,000 were still taken prisonerwhen the end finally came. The healthiestwere used to rebuild the city into what istoday Volgograd but, of the others, a mere5,000 survived captivity to be repatriated toEast or West Germany in the 1950s.
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Abandoned Wehrmacht vehicles fill up Lomonosov Street, theavenue that leads into Square of Fallen Heroes which lies in thebackground. Visible on the left is the rear side of the Drama The-atre, with the Oblispolkom building just beyond.
Lomonosov is today Mira Street. The building from which thisshot was taken today houses the Volgograd Ministry of Healthbut, denied permission to photograph from one of its win-dows, Alex had to take his comparison from street level.
The ghosts of the past are long gone and trees have taken their place.
Above: Many of the German prisonerswere put to work in the city clearingdebris and obstacles. These men, clad inovercoats and scarfs against the freezingcold, are dismantling a road-block onKubanskaya Street.
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Up to November 18, 1942, Paulus wouldhave left an impressive military career forhistorians to study as he had been a giftedstaff officer and competent field commander.Instead, he became the centre of contro-versy, largely due to his decisions regardingthe Kessel. Having refused to disobey Hitleron several occasions regarding a break-out,and having refused to surrender the remain-
ing pocket of resistance even after hebecame a prisoner on January 31, Paulusdenied his Führer’s last implied wish whichwas for him to commit suicide. Hitler hadpromoted him to Generalfeldmarschall justin time to provide him with the incentive topull the trigger, but Paulus chose life instead,and hence became the first German field-marshal ever to be taken captive.
On the other hand, General Chuikov’sdetermined steadfastness in the Stalingradbridgehead propelled him to a distinguishedcareer. His 62nd Army was renamed the 8thGuards Army which, under his leadership,fought all the way to Berlin, and he had thehonour of receiving the first peace overturemade by the German Chief of the GeneralStaff, General Hans Krebs.
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Soviets rejoice in their victory over the Fascists. The two men in the foreground are dancing to the accompaniment of an accordion.
Looking north-west into Gogol Street. The Main Post Officestands on the right and the building with the tall spire seen
rising in the background is the terminal of the new CentralTrain Station.
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In conclusion, the Battle of Stalingrad wasessentially brought about by the failure ofOperation ‘Blau’. Due to poor planning andexecution, the Soviet Army was not finishedoff in the summer of 1942, and while Hitlermay have had delusions that the Red Armyhad already begun to collapse, the capture ofStalingrad was also endorsed by his generalsas a way of making the Soviets stand, fight,and be destroyed.
Yet stand and fight they did, but by earlyOctober, with Paulus bogged down in Stalin-grad, and Heeresgruppe A bogged down inthe Caucasus short of the critical oilfields,Hitler became obsessed with the capture ofthe city in order to have at least a symbolicvictory to show for the year’s offensive cam-paign. Yet reality did not escape him thatOctober. In the words of GeneralleutnantWalter Warlimont, deputy chief of the OKW
Operational Staff: ‘Instead of greeting mewhen I entered the cabin, Hitler fixed mewith a long malevolent stare and suddenly Ithought: the man’s confidence has gone; hehas realised that his deadly game is moving toits appointed end, that Soviet Russia is notgoing to be overthrown at the second attemptand that now the war was on two fronts,which he has unleashed by his wanton arbi-trary actions, will grind the Reich to powder.’
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The bulk of the 100,000 Germans captured inside the pocket wereinitially held in a number of POW camps located in Beketovkaand Krasnoarmeysk, south of Stalingrad, which were collectivelyknown as Camp No. 108. However, in the immediate aftermath ofthe battle, the Soviets found it impossible to provide food and
warmth for such a large body of men and within two monthsover 50,000 had perished. Although conditions improved in thespring, by then it was too late. This gruesome picture was takenon the hillside outside Beketovka where the thousands ofcorpses were taken to be burned or buried in mass graves.
The spot where the wartime photo was taken is now a hugesand quarry, so Alex took his comparison 50 metres to theright, near the old Beketovka civilian cemetery, orientating him-self by means of the group of large buildings on the left horizonand the power plant on the right. The quarrying removed alltraces of the bodies buried here. However, there are similarmass burial sites elsewhere in the Stalingrad area and today the
German War Graves Commission, in co-operation with localenthusiasts, are trying to trace these graves so that the remainscan be disinterred and transferred to the German War Cemeteryat Rossoshka, the new burial ground which has been estab-lished 35 kilometres north-west of Volgograd. It was opened in1999 and now contains over 56,000 dead with commemorationsto a further 120,000 who are missing.
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