Сталинград ! The Sword of Stalingrad: Paulus kapituliert...!

"Rodina, dorn radnoy..." The statue of Mother Motherland commemorating the Victory

"At midday on 2 February [1943] a Luftwaffe reconnaisance aircraft circled over the city. The pilot's radio message was immediately passed to Field Marshal Milch : 'No more sign of fighting in Stalingrad'. "
(Antony Beevor, Stalingrad, Ch. 23 : 'Stop Dancing! Stalingrad Has Fallen')



It is very difficult to find words for the Stalingrad epic and a simple historical reference goes beyond (and does injustice to) the scope of this blog.

First of all it is difficult to grasp the fact that a city of secondary importance in the Eastern front became the theatre of the biggest, bloodiest and most brutal battle of Human History, an inferno of suffering and slaughter that showed how high and how low human nature can reach.

Adolf Hitler, once more behaving like a deranged cartoon villain, each word and action a caricature of leadership, heavily laden with hubris, split and messed up the advance of Heeresgruppe Süd, commiting the better part of it to the capture of the city of Stalingrad and the securing of the western bank of the Volga river as part of the glorified mess that was codenamed Operation Blue (Fall Blau, "Case: Blue").

The attack was spearheaded by German armour under the command of officers such as the hero of Stalingrad, "der Panzergraf", Hyazinth Graf Strachwitz von Groß-Zauche und Camminetz (who by the end of the war had been awarded Diamonds to his Swords and Oakleaf of his Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross - Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub, Schwerten und Brillanten). Meanwhile the city of Stalingrad was being pummeled to smoking ruins by Wolfram von Richthoffen's Luftflotte 4...

(Panoramic view of Stalingrad, from the eastern bank of the Volga. This was the sight that arriving Soviet troops faced as they were ferried across the waters of the mighty river, to fight in the ruins of Stalingrad and usually die within 24 hours)

Der Panzergraf

Despite the rapid success of the advance because of the ideal conditions of the Kuban steppe, the offensive bogged down in the ruins of the city. And so, the drama began to unfold in all its gruesome splendour....

The task of taking the city itself fell to the German 6th Army, under the command of General der Panzertruppen Friedrich Paulus. Meanwhile the rest of the Heeresgruppe B, as that half of the Heeresgruppe Süd had been renamed manned the Don - Volga front around the siege.

Facing them were the heroic Soviet 62nd and 64th Armies, eventually under the command of General Vassily Chuikov, subordinate to the General Who Obviously Won the Second World War By Himself, Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov.

Vassili Chuikov

Four times Hero of the Soviet Union, Marshal Georgy Zhukov

In the city ruins the German Army lost all of the tactical advantages that it had under the Guderian-inspired doctrine of blietzkrig. Instead of that, they became involved in murderous streetfighting (as per Chuikov's plan, the Stalingrad Academy of Streetfighting never left the Germans a moment of respite). In this gruesome slaughterhouse, tanks and aircraft lost their tactical significance. Amidst the ruins of the city the weapons of choice were grenades, bayonets, flamethrowers and spades with sharpened edges, which when wielded properly could literaly hack a man in two.

The Stalingrad Academy of Streetfighting

With suicidal bravery (backed by Chuikov's brutality, who knew that they HAD to keep Stalingrad or die in the attempt and Stalin's order "Not one step back - the Volga has only one bank) the Soviet soldiers turned each and every heap of rubble into a mighty fortress or a deadly trap that had to be reduced at a heavy cost of German casualties. It was usual for an appartment building floor to belong to one side while the top and bottom floors were occupied by the other.


This rats' warfare (Rattenkrieg) wore down the German forces, as the Sovites were slowly readying the axe that was to fall...

On November 19 1942 a massive Soviet counteroffensive (Operation Uranus) broke through the Romanian (who were ill-equipped) and Italian (who honoured their tradition of being weak-kneed and pathetic in combat) armies who "guarded" the German flanks and encircled the 6th Army.

"Wacht im Osten" (Guard in the East) by Emil Dielmann, 1943. "Es steht ein Soldat am Wolgastrand/er wache für sein Vaterland..."

A counteroffensive to relieve the besieger-turned-besieged 6th Army failed and the men under the command of Friedriech Paulus were doomed.

"Errinerung an Stalingrad" (Memory of Stalingrad) by Franz Eichhorst, 1943

The Soviets slowly started to crush the encircled Germans and the remnants of Wehrmacht's largest formation capitulated on February 2 1943.

The Battle of Stalingrad was over.

German prisoners of war, the remnants of the 6th Army, marching to their doom in some Soviet Gulag.

It had lasted almost 200 days claiming the lives of about 2 million soldiers from both sides. But even this figure does scant justice to the ACTUAL suffering.

In the Battle of Stalingrad humanity witnessed its most dire extremes. Bravery mixed with treachery and with lethal cunning, cruelty of unspeakable proportions countenaced with unparalleled self -sacrifice and all this as the stench of the dead and the moans of the thousands of wounded who were piled in makeshift dugouts along the bank of the Volga.

If there has ever been anywhere, anything close to hell,then it was Stalingrad during those days.

And in the icy ruins of the city lay the foundatins for the most total and bloody disaster that Germany would face two years later.

At some point Hitler had publicly declared that he considered the success in Stalingrad vital in avoiding another Verdun. Well, he didn't get his Verdun, all right. Instead, what he got for Germany was fire, rape and death to such an extent that made Verdun look like a slap in the hand.

"Heimkehr" (Homecoming) by Hans Adolf Bühler, 1940. No consolation after Stalingrad....

Oh, the way nations commit themselves to destruction....