when there was a retreat near moscow, there was, in general, german propaganda, it was mixed , they retreated to some positions and delayed it, well, in general, so to speak, that’s it, it was impossible to hide the defeat here, well, because the army was captured, well, that’s it , they did nothing, germany was declared injured, and then everyone generally understood that the war was over, in the sense that the war was lost in germany, that everything else meant nothing. after the end of the battle, one of its participants shouted to the german column, pointing to the ruins of stalingrad. this is what your berlin will look like. the battle of stalingrad truly changed the course of world war ii. here one of the most powerful armies of the wehrmacht was completely destroyed. stalingrad to that extent. is

a turning point in the history of world war ii, as the wave of the german offensive broke on the volga, only to roll back like a surf. this battle for the volga, as they called it, yes, for the volga, it was sometimes called the barbarossa 2 plan, but that was an unofficial name, that is, it was like a battle, not for life, for death, that’s where we are now.. . we win this battle, then we can claim with difficulty, but nevertheless , victory in the war, or if we do not win, then this will most likely be a transfer of initiative to the side of the soviet union, which actually happened in forty-three as a result of the victorious completion of the battle of stalingrad, and then the battle of kursk. at the beginning of the 20th century, the district town of saritsin, the future stalingrad, was the center of...

lively trade, through it there was an endless stream of rafts and barges with coal along the volga, forest resin. during the civil war, joseph stalin took part in the defense of tsaritsyn from the troops of general krasny. since 1925 , the city began to bear his name. during the era of industrialization, a tractor factory and a hydroelectric power station were built here.

by the beginning of 1943 , not a single intact building would remain in stalingrad. it was a key large city in this part of the volga, its population was 400,000 people, even more, and its assault, its capture should have meant a very large military-political aspect for the germans. here there was an idea of ​​such revenge, the capture of the city. which bore the name of stalin, this was supposed to show everyone in europe that germany was experiencing only temporary difficulties, but it was aimed at the final victory and the defeat of the soviet union, this is also fundamentally important. hitler said that he was fighting for stalingrad, not because it was stalingrad, and he repeated this so often that one gets the impression that, well , a thief’s cap is on fire, because he constantly exaggerated this idea, i am advancing on stalingrad not because he bears the name of stalin, nor in no matter what. one gets the impression that he

was simply trying to convey what he wanted here. on april 5, 1942, hitler approved the plan for a new summer campaign. operation under codes. the name blau was supposed to fulfill the führ's long-standing dream: the capture of the oil fields of the north caucasus. many german generals, preparing for a second assault on moscow, considered this plan real madness, but none of them dared to openly object to hitler. the very configuration of the front meant that a simple breakthrough to the caucasus would be very dangerous from a strategic point of view. points of view. because then a very long northern flank of this broken gut opens up and accordingly a blow can be struck. hitler decided to divide the army group south, which was supposed to advance into the caucasus, into two. to army group a to army group b. and now army group a was advancing on the caucasus, that is, this is its main task. and army group b - it was supposed

to go to the volga, cut off the supply of oil along the volga to the northern central section of the front, and therefore possibly block it.

plans the operation very clearly, but he lacks one very important point, he is not a commander, that is, he does not have that very small touch that distinguishes a commander from everyone else, he does not have the determination to make a decision, pauz got this army, and the army was very good, it was considered the best army of the wehrmacht in general, worked out connections between units, worked out connections with support aviation, that is, such a very good... killing mechanism, war mechanism, in general they didn’t give anything else, because everything else is were allies. hitler sent large forces of his allies, the hungarian, italian and two romanian armies, to stalingrad. at the height of the battle of stalingrad, the total number of these

formations reached 600 thousand people. the italians seemed to understand that they were sent to these snowy plains to carry some kind of mission.

on july 23, rostov-on-don was captured. in the big bend of the don, the germans surrounded eight soviet divisions, and the ring closed near the city of kalach. of the 13 thousand soviet soldiers trapped, only 105 people were saved.

when the offensive just began, it turned out that the german command, in general, outplayed ours, and very well. stalin was categorically sure that. the performance will be in the center, well, towards moscow, when the german troops rushed in the south, it turned out that we had no forces there, we urgently needed to transfer something there, at the first stage of the offensive, that... at the end of july the germans pushed the red army units back , they were only 60 km away from stalingrad, a wehrmacht breakthrough to the volga threatened complete encirclement of the entire soviet army in the south countries. on the evening of july 28, stalin signed order number 227, more.

very heroically here on august 22, 1942

, the germans crossed the don and took the direct road to stalingrad. for 40 km they walked at top speed across the rock-hard desert steppe. in the evening, advanced german tanks had already reached the volga. the next day, august 23, 1,200 bombers took to the air. a fiery rain of incendiary bombs fell on stalingrad. fires were burning throughout the city. hundreds of families were buried alive under piles of rubble. telephone cables were cut and water pipes were destroyed. oil storage facilities on the banks of the volga caught fire. the pillar of fire rose almost 600 m into the sky. and the smoke from the fires was visible for... 350 km around. this was the most massive bombing of the city during the entire

fighting on the eastern front. the exact number of stalingrad residents who died that day is still unknown. there was simply no way to evacuate the entire population from the city to the left bank of the volga. of the 400 thousand population, which then remained, 100,000 were already evacuated. and during this very tragic air raid. the fourth air army of the luftwafe, when almost the entire center was bombed, it was a whole day of bombing, the casualties then amounted to over 91 thousand people, these are, of course, not only civilians, these are certainly the military who defended the city, but the fact remains that probably , a significant part of the civilians also became victims of this battle of stalingrad. stalin categorically forbade the surrender of stalingrad and ordered...

there is still quite a significant number of enterprises in the city, storming enterprises is another worse, because workshops, underground communications plus ruins.

the german infantry went on the offensive. the germans were moving in two directions. in the north of stalingrad, their main goal was mamaev kurgan and the railway station, in the south - the elevator. but it was not possible to take them on the move. at night , 10,000 soldiers of the thirteenth guards rifle division under the command of thirty-seven-year-old colonel general alexander radimtsev crossed the volga to stalingrad. having jumped ashore, the fighters immediately entered into battle. german positions were only 100 m from the landing site. during the first day of the battle , every third guardsman died. the slopes of mamayev kurgan, where there used to be a park, were now plowed up by shells, and the craters served as shelters for attackers.

we will take on this case, it will be an honest detective story.

the burnt earth was mixed with pieces of human bodies torn apart by bombs and shells. workers at the tractor factory, where they assembled and repaired tanks, got into still unpainted thirty-fours and went straight from the assembly line into battle. the vehicles didn’t even have a gun sight; they could shoot

just point blank, the railway station changed hands 15 times within 5 days. the fighting in the south of the city was just as fierce; in just one day, on september 18th, 50 defenders of the elevator repelled 10 assaults; by september 20th they had run out of ammunition, water and food. only then, with the support of tanks, were the germans able to capture the elevator, finishing off the wounded soviet soldiers. it was.

from the face of the earth, they really need to be razed to the ground, that is, so that there is nothing there. fighting among the ruins of residential buildings, germans called the rat war. endless ambushes

and hand-to-hand combat terrified them. piles of rubble, the skeletons of dilapidated houses, were used by the russians as if they were full cutters. the red army soldiers, holed up in such buildings, cut through the streams of attacking germans with well-aimed fire. destroying them in small groups. german general karl strecker wrote: “the enemy is invisible. our troops suffer heavy losses, falling into ambushes set up in basements, in collapsed buildings, in destroyed factory workshops. at night, soviet sappers mined narrow passages among the ruins. assault groups 6-8 fighters made surprise attacks , trying to exterminate." almost silently with the help of knives sharpened sapper blades. one german soldier wrote: now i know

what real chilling fear is. and at the slightest sound, i press the trigger and shoot until the machine gun gets hot even more. the germans were afraid of soviet snipers, they created clever deceptions using stuffed animals in soldier’s uniforms or hanging white flags. the most famous sniper of stalingrad was a native of the ural village of eleninko, vasily zaitsev, who personally destroyed 225 enemy soldiers and officers. the germans had experience, the southern army too, they had experience in urban battles, they all reached the volga.

metallurgical plant red october, weapons factory barricades and oil storage facility on the bank of the volk. chuikov's soldiers turned these factories into real fortresses. even when left without communication, in groups or alone, our soldiers continued to fight. so, in a battle at a barricade factory, two seriously wounded soviet soldiers continued to help their comrades, pulling the pins out of grenades with their teeth. in these. “i cannot understand how people can survive in such a hell, but the russians are firmly

entrenched in their ruins, basements, craters, in the chaos of steel skeletons that were once factory floors. a german corporal from the 389th infantry division, speaking of soviet soldiers, wrote: “it’s impossible to imagine.” how desperately they defend stalingrad , fighting for it like guard dogs. the defense of the legendary pavlov’s house lasted 58 days. at the end of september, this house was recaptured from the germans by a platoon of soviet soldiers, which was later led by sergeant yakov pavlov. chuikov said that the pavlovtsy destroyed more enemy soldiers than the entire german army lost during the capture of paris. the situation was that the same paulus had practically no strength left to maneuver, that is, in the conditions of urban battles in the same stalingrad, it was impossible

against pavlov’s house. without engaging in battle, they occupied the territory they had left, after which the germans were covered by the positions from which ours had left, and after that the german plow groups had to fight back what they had left, in as a result, it turned out that artillery support did not give anything at all except the loss of the territory that was captured. during the battles, tens of thousands of civilians remained in stalingrad who did not have time or

were unable to evacuate to the left bank of the volga. they took refuge in basements, underground communications and caves dug on the slopes of the river, ate the meat of killed horses and grain from a burnt-out elevator, mostly children had to get food, at night they managed to sneak through the most inaccessible rubble, in the city almost there was no clean drinking water, almost all the inhabitants of stalingrad suffered.

the fourteenth tank division of the wehrmacht , rolf grams, wrote: “it was a terrible, exhausting battle on the ground and underground, in ruins and basements, tanks screamingly climbed onto piles of broken bricks, crawled through destroyed workshops, shot point-blank in narrow courtyards. at the cost of heavy losses, the germans managed to capture part of the tractor factory and the barricade factory, but pushed the red army beyond the volga. they never succeeded. by this time, due to illness, large losses of personal composition, the german offensive began to fizzle out. around the end of october, the beginning of november of the year 1942, the offensive clearly fizzled out, despite the fact that the germans really fought tooth and nail there, until the snow covered them until they began to freeze and die from hunger. in general, the germans fought alone, because

that’s all. these allies turned out to be incapable of this kind of intensity of fighting. paulus actually found himself in a completely hopeless situation, if it were, relatively speaking, some kind of nantes, i i don’t know, something french, then everything would be fine, everything would be enough, say, they would take it , they would take it, because there wouldn’t be such fierce resistance. and here the germans could not understand how they could hold the western bank of the volga for so long.

more than a million people were concentrated on three fronts near stalingrad, the plan was calculated very well, which again suggests that by this moment the level of our military commanders had increased significantly compared to the forty-first year ; they had already clearly determined where to hit, then eat beat against the allies, not against the germans, there is no point in hitting the germans when you can hit the allies, the lines were clearly chosen.