IV. The Battle in the City

Stalin forbade the evacuation of civilians from the city on the premise that their presence would encourage greater resistance from the city's defenders. Civilians including women and children were put to work building trenchworks and protective fortifications. A massive German air bombardment on 23 August caused a firestorm, killing thousands of civilians and turning Stalingrad into a vast landscape of rubble and burnt ruins. Eighty percent of the living space in the city was destroyed.

By the end of August, Army Group South (B) had finally reached the Volga to the north of Stalingrad. Another advance to the river south of the city followed. In the initial phase the Soviet defence relied extensively on "Workers militias" composed of workers not directly involved in war production. Tanks continued to be produced and manned by volunteer crews of factory workers. They were driven directly from the factory floor to the front line often without even being painted and without gunsights.

By 1 September 1942, the Soviets could only supply their forces in Stalingrad by perilous crossings of the Volga. Amid the debris of the now wrecked city, the Soviet 62nd Army formed defense lines, with strongpoints situated in houses and factories. Fighting in the city was fierce and desperate. "Not a step back!" was the slogan. The Germans pushing forward into Stalingrad suffered heavy casualties. Soviet reinforcements were shipped across the river Volga from the eastern bank under constant bombardment by German artillery and planes. German military doctrine was based on the principle of combined-arms teams and close co-operation by infantry, engineers, artillery; and ground-attack aircraft. To counter this, Soviet commanders adopted the simple expedient of always keeping the front lines as close together as physically possible. This put the German infantry in the position of having to fight on their own or be endangered by their own supporting fire. Bitter fighting raged for every street, every factory, every house, basement and staircase. The Germans, calling this unseen urban warfare Rattenkrieg ("rat-war"), bitterly joked about having captured the kitchen but still fighting for the living-room.

1. What losses did the German air bombardment on 23 August inflict?

2. How did the tractor factory function when the German troops were pushing forward into the city?

3. How were Soviet forces supplied? How were reinforcements shipped?

4. How were the defense lines formed?

5. What was German military doctrine based on? What expedient did Soviet commanders adopt?

6. Why did the Germans call the battle in the city “Rattenkrieg”?

Fighting on Mamayev Kurgan, a prominent blood-soaked hill above the city, was particularly merciless. The height changed hands several times. During one Soviet counter-attack to recapture Mamayev Kurgan, the Soviets lost an entire division of 10,000 men in one day. At the Grain Elevator, a huge grain processing complex dominated by a single enormous silo, combat was so close that Soviet and German soldiers could hear each other breathe. Combat at the Grain Elevator went on for weeks until the German army reduced the position. In another part of the city, an apartment building defended by a Soviet platoon under the command of Yakov Pavlov was turned into an impenetrable fortress. The building, later called "Pavlov's House", oversaw a square in the city centre. The soldiers surrounded it with minefields, set up machine-gun positions at the windows, and breached the walls in the basement for better communications.

With no end to the fighting in sight, the Germans started transferring heavy artillery to the city, including several gigantic 600 mm mortars. Soviet artillery on the Eastern bank of the Volga continued to place German positions under fire. The Soviet defenders used the resulting ruins as defensive positions. German tanks became useless in heaps of rubble up to eight meters high. If they still were able to move forward, they were taken under Soviet anti-tank fire from the rooftops.

1. Why is Mamayev Kurgan called “a prominent blood-soaked hill” in the article?

2. What other fierce fights are described in the article?

3. What did the defenders of the city use as defensive positions?

4. Why did German tanks become useless within the city?

Soviet snipers also successfully used the ruins to hide in. They inflicted heavy casualties on the Germans. The most successful sniper was only identified as "Zikan", being credited with 224 kills by November 20, 1942. Vasily Grigoryevich Zaitsev was credited with 149 kills during the battle (Note: The article on Vassily Zaitzev claims that he was in fact responsible for 225 kills between November 10th and December 17th.).

For both Stalin and for Hitler, the battle of Stalingrad became a question of life and death. Soviet command moved the Red Army's strategic reserves from the Moscow area to the lower Volga, and transferred all available aircraft from the entire country to Stalingrad. The strain on both military commanders was immense: Paulus developed an uncontrollable tic in his eye, while Chuikov experienced an outbreak of eczema that required him to bandage his hands completely.

In November, after three months of carnage and slow and costly advance, the Germans finally reached the river banks, capturing 90% of the ruined city and splitting the remaining Soviet forces into two narrow pockets. In addition, ice-floes on the Volga now prevented boats and tugs from supplying the Soviet defenders across the river. Nevertheless the fighting, especially on the slopes of Mamayev Kurgan and inside the factory area in the northern part of the city, continued as fiercely as ever. The battles for the Red October, the tractor factory and the Barrikady factory became world famous. While Soviet soldiers defended their positions and took the Germans under fire, factory workers repaired damaged Soviet tanks and other weapons in the direct vicinity of the battlefield, sometimes on the battlefield itself.

1. Who inflicted heavy casualties on the Germans?

2. Why was this battle a question of life and death?

3. When did the Germans reach the Volga and capture 90% of the city?

4. What difficulties did the Soviet forces face when supplying the defenders?

5. Did the fighting continue?

6. What battles become world famous?

7. How did the factory workers help the defenders?

The Soviet Counter-attack: Operation Uranus

During the siege the German, Hungarian, and Romanian armies protecting Army Group South (B)'s flanks had pressed their headquarters for support. The 2nd Hungarian Army (consisting of mainly ill-equipped and ill-trained units) were given the task of defending a 200 km section of the front north of Stalingrad. This resulted in a very thin line of defense with some parts where 1-2km stretches were being guarded by a single platoon. Soviet forces held several points on the south bank of the river and presented a potentially serious threat to Army Group South (B). However, Hitler was so focused on the city itself that requests from the flanks for support were refused. The chief of the German army general staff OKW, Franz Halder, expressed concerns about Hitler's preoccupation with the city, pointing at the Germans' weak flanks. Hitler replaced Halder in mid-October with General Kurt Zeitzler.

In Autumn the Soviet general Georgy Zhukov, responsible for strategic planning in the Stalingrad area, concentrated massive Soviet forces in the steppes to the north and south of the city. The German northern flank was particularly vulnerable, since it was defended by Hungarian and Romanian units which suffered from inferior equipment and low morale. Zhukov's plan was to keep pinning the Germans down in the city, and then to punch through the overstretched and weakly defended German flanks and to surround the Germans inside Stalingrad. The operation was code-named "Uranus".

1. Why did Soviet forces present a potentially serious threat to Army Group South at the front north of Stalingrad?

2. Why didn’t the German armies protecting Army Group South flanks get support?

3. Where did General Zhukov concentrate massive forces in autumn 1942?

4. What was his plan?

5. Which units suffered from inferior equipment and low morale?

On November 19, 1942 the Red Army unleashed Uranus. The attacking Soviet units under the command of General Nikolai Vatutin consisted of three complete armies, the 1st Guard, 5th Tank and 21st Army, including a total of 18 infantry divisions, eight tank brigades, two motorized brigades, six cavalry divisions and one anti-tank brigade. Thinly spread, outnumbered and poorly equipped, the 3rd Romanian Army, which held the northern flank of the German 6th Army, was shattered after an almost miraculous one-day defense.

On November 20, a second Soviet offensive (two armies) was launched to the south of Stalingrad, against points held by the Romanian 4th Army Corps. The Romanian forces, made up primarily of cavalry, collapsed almost immediately. Soviet forces raced west and met two days later near the town of Kalach, sealing the ring around Stalingrad. About 250,000 German and Romanian soldiers, as well as some Croatian units and volunteer subsidiary troops found themselves trapped inside the resulting pocket.

Hitler had already declared in a public speech on September 30th that the German army would never leave the city. At a meeting shortly after the encirclement, German army chiefs pushed for an immediate breakout to a new line on the west of the Don. Hermann Göring instead claimed that the Luftwaffe could supply the 6th Army with an "air bridge." This would allow the Germans in the city to fight on while a relief force could be assembled, a plan that had been used successfully a year earlier at the Demyansk Pocket on a much smaller scale (an army corps versus an entire army). The German Sixth Army was the largest unit of this type in the world, almost twice as large as a regular German army. Also trapped in the "pocket" was a corps of the Fourth Panzer Army. It should have been clear that supplying the pocket by air was impossible: the Luftwaffe's carrying capacity after the Battle of Crete had not been reinforced, and the maximum 300 tonnes they could deliver a day would be less than the 500 needed by the pocket. However, Hitler backed Göring's plan and re-iterated his order of "no surrender" to his trapped armies.

1. When did the Red Army unleash the operation code-named Uranus?

2. How many offensives were launched? Were they successful? Why?

3. When was the encirclement completed?

4. How many soldiers and units were trapped in the city?

5. After the encirclement, what plans did German army chiefs consider to save their 6^th Army trapped in the pocket?

6. Which of the plans did Hitler back?

7. Why was it difficult to carry out this plan?

The air supply mission failed almost immediately. Harsh winter weather and heavy Soviet anti-aircraft fire made maintaining the air bridge almost impossible. In general only 10 percent of the needed supplies could be delivered. Those transport planes which made it would evacuate the sick and wounded when taking off from the besieged enclave. The 6th Army slowly starved. Pilots were shocked to find the troops assigned to offloading the planes too exhausted and hungry to unload food.

Soviet forces consolidated their positions around Stalingrad, and fierce fighting to shrink the pocket began. An attack by a German battlegroup formed to relieve the trapped armies from the South, Operation Wintergewitter ("Winter Storm") was successfully fended off by the Soviets in December. The full impact of the harsh Russian winter set in. The Volga froze solid, allowing the Soviets to supply their forces in the city more easily. The trapped Germans rapidly ran out of heating fuel and medical supplies, and thousands started dying of frostbite, malnutrition and disease.

1. Why did the air supply mission fail?

2. What were the transport planes pilots shocked at when the delivered supplies to the besieged troops?

3. When did the fighting to shrink the pocket begin?

4. How did harsh winter weather affect the trapped Germans?

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