Battle Of Stalingrad: A Picture Album (Unseen Pictures)

Stalingrad was a peaceful bustling city. Until.....

The German bombers appeared over the sky. And the bombs fell....

The aerial assault on Stalingrad, the most concentrated on the Ostfront, represented the natural culmination of Richthofen's career since Guernica. Fourth Air Fleet aircraft flew a total of 1,600 sorties that day and dropped 1,000 tons of bombs for the loss of only three machines. According to some estimates, there had been nearly 600,000 people in Stalingrad, and 40,000 were killed during the first week of bombardment.

The reason why so many citizens and refugees still remained onthe west bank of the Volga was typical of the regime. The NKVD had commandeered almost all river craft, while allotting a very low priority to evacuating the civil population. Then Stalin, deciding that no panic must be allowed, refused to permit the inhabitants of Stalingrad to be evacuated across the Volga. This, he thought, would force the troops, especially the locally raised militia, to defend the city more desperately. 'No one bothered about human beings,' observed one of the boys trapped behind with their mothers. 'We too were just meat for the guns.

On their third evening, German panzers sank a paddle-steamer taking women and children from the city to the east bank. Hearing screams and cries for help, soldiers asked their commander if they could use some of the pioneers' inflatable boats to rescue them. But the lieutenant refused. 'We know how the enemy fights this war,' he replied. After night had fallen, the panzer crews pulled their blankets up over their heads so that they did not hear the cries any more.Some women managed to swim to the west bank, but most swam to a sandbank where they stayed the whole of the next day. The Germans did not fire when they were evacuated the next night, as proof that they were different from the Russians.

CHUIKOV ARRIVES ON THE SCENE

The following morning, General Chuikov received a summons to the new headquarters at Yamy of the joint military council for the Stalingrad and South-Western Fronts. It took him all day and most of the night to cross the Volga and find the spot. The glow from the blazing buildings in Stalingrad was so strong that, even on the east bank of the broad Volga, there was no need to switch on the headlights of his Lend-Lease jeep.When Chuikov finally saw Khrushchev and Yeremenko the next morning, they stated the situation. The Germans were prepared to take the city at any price. There could be no surrender. There was nowhere to retreat to. Chuikov had been proposed as the new army commander in Stalingrad.'Comrade Chuikov,' said Khrushchev. 'How do you interpret your task?'

'We will defend the city or die in the attempt,' he replied. Yere-menko and Khrushchev looked at him and said that he had understood his task correctly

 Stalingrad burns...

German Stukas over Stalingrad

Germany came to a bad end at Stalingrad. Cemetery of German soldiers who fell here...

The once bustling Red Square in Stalingrad lay in ruins... The Russians did the same to Berlin three years later...

German soldiers at Stalingrad

Sixth Army chief, general Paulus inspects a gunner position

A German signboard warns, "Stalingrad is dangerous. Peril"

Russians warily approach dead German soldiers

General Paulus at Red Square in Stalingrad

German soldiers in action

The dejection had set in.... The Russians had the Sixth Army surrounded

"Forbidden to enter the city. The curious endanger not only their lives but also those of their comrades." 

 The nazi flag flies over a ruined city

Top German officers at Stalingrad: General Paulus, the Freiherr von Weichs Generaloberst and General der Artillerie von Seydlitz 

 Soviet propaganda poster: "Dad is dead. Complain to Hitler, he is responsible" 

General Paulus at the aerodrome of Gumrak 

Radio message of General Paulus to OKW, reporting the imminent capitulation 

 Paulus before he surrendered. Hitler had forbidden him to capitulate. He had told him to die with his men.

Soviet poster urging German soldiers to surrender. "German soldiers, follow our advice: accept my surrender, comrade, and not shoot me" 

 The last message broadcast by the German Sixth Army.  February 2, 1943:
"High clouds at 5,000 meters. Visibility 12 km. Clouds. Small isolated cloud fields. Temperature 31 degrees below zero. Fog and mist red on Stalingrad. End of the weather. Greetings to home"

 Paulus with Russian officers after surrendering

 These men did not have a chance to surrender....

 The Nazi dream had begun to shatter...

 These men surrendered. The officers....From left to right: Generalmajor Dimitriu, of the 20th Infantry Division Romanian. Generalleutnant von Daniels, of the 376th Infantry Division. Generalleutnant Schlömer, the XIV. Panzerkorp. Generalmajor von Drebber, the 297th Infantry Division. Generalleutnant  Renoldi, Military Medical Corps of the Sixth Army. All of them, prisoners of war.

General Paulus' staff

The Schmidt Generalleutnant

Generalstabsarzt (Military Medical Corps) Prof. Dr. Renoldi 

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Unseen pictures of Battle of Stalingrad

The Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942. Part of the German 6th Army advancing on Stalingrad.

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THE BATTLE FOR STALINGRAD (Source: BBC)

The tables were turned when Hitler set in motion one of the bitterest conflicts of the 20th century - the Battle of Stalingrad. In the spring of 1942, he launched a two-pronged attack in what he believed would be his final offensive in the East.
One set of troops headed towards Baku and it's rich oil resources, whilst a second group pushed towards Stalingrad and the Volga. After more than a year of bitter defeats, the Soviet army was exhausted and demoralised, but it started to employ a new tactic - the fighting retreat - which put a strain on German supply lines. Soviet soldiers were no longer instructed by their generals to stand their ground at all costs. Instead they retreated - to avoid capture and continue fighting.

The Germans cross the River Volga on their way to Stalingrad. August 23, 1942 German 14 Panzer Corps broke through the front 62 Army in the area Vertyachego and traveled 72 kms per day, and reached the Volga north of Stalingrad.

The Germans moved swiftly forward, reaching the banks of the River Volga. The German soldiers of Army Group B had one last major task - to take the city of Stalingrad on the west bank of the Volga.
And so began the bitter and bloody battle. More than 1,000 tons of bombs were dropped on the city, but Stalin initially forbade any evacuation from the city, even of children. Soviet reinforcements had to cross the Volga from the east and many of them drowned under the weight of their clothing and weapons. The average life-expectancy of a Soviet private soldier during the battle of Stalingrad was just 24 hours.The infamous Penal Units - some of them including political prisoners - took part in suicidal missions as a way of atoning for their 'sins'. By the end of the siege, one million Soviet soldiers had died on the Stalingrad front.
The ferocity of the fighting at Stalingrad shocked the Germans, who were used to the relative ease of their Blitzkrieg tactics. Suddenly they were faced with hand-to-hand combat, often only yards away from the enemy. 'Our principle was to grab hold of the enemy and not let go; to hold him very close - as you'd hold a loved one', says Anatoly Mersko, who served under General Chuikov.
Soviet veteran Suren Mirzoyan remembers the blood lust of the time. 'I was like a beast. I wanted only one thing - to kill. You know how it looks when you squeeze a tomato and juice comes out? Well, it looked like that when I stabbed them. Blood everywhere. Every step in Stalingrad meant death. Death was in our pockets. Death was walking with us.'
As the battle raged, it was also time of terror for ethnic minorities on both sides of the dispute. In Germany, Hitler's 'final solution' reached it's horrific climax in extermination camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau. Life expectancy for many on arrival could be measured in just hours.
In the USSR, meantime, Stalin's ruthless approach to punishing ethnic collaborators in the Soviet Union meant that whole ethnic nations were forcibly exiled to Siberia as punishment for the small number of collaborators in their midst. One of the ethnic groups who suffered most were the Kalmyks from the steppe south of Stalingrad. Stalin ordered every ethnic Kalmyk, including women and children, to be 'relocated' to even more remote regions of the Soviet Union.
Whole families were crammed onto insanitary transport trains. Many didn't survive the long journey. Officially, 93,000 Kalmyks, 68,000 Karachai people, 500,000 Chechens, 340,000 Balkars and 180,000 Tartars were deported. The figures are almost certainly underestimates.

Street fighting in Stalingrad. Initially the Germans were full of confidence. They felt that the city would fall soon, but the Russians surprised them. A nasty surprise, if I may say so.

THE GERMAN SIXTH ARMY

The German 6th Army was a field army which was created after the Franco-Prussian war and the German unification by the second half of the 19th century. The glorious 6th Army had its baptism of fire during World War I and its nemesis during World War II at the hands of the Russian winter, collapsing at the Battle of Stalingrad, for which it is best known. It was mostly composed of infantry elements. As a field army, the German 6th Army was a formation superior to a corps and beneath an army group. It consisted of a headquarters, which usually controlled at least two corps, and a variable number of divisions.

At the outbreak of World War I, the 6th Army was composed of 10 divisions organized around 5 corps; it was commanded by Prince Rupprecht von Bayern. When the French Plan XVII was launched in August 1914, it was deployed in the Central sector that covered Lorraine. In August 1914, in the Battle of Lorraine, Rupprecht’s 6th Army used a feigned withdrawal to lure the advancing armies onto prepared defensive positions and managed to resist the French fierce attack. When the Western Front got bogged down in a stalemate warfare, with the opposing forces forming lines of trenches, the 6th Army was based in Northern France. On September 24, 1915, the 6th Army was the target of the British Army’s first chlorine gas attack of the war. Despite having suffered horrific casualties, the Germans held the line as the British attacks were kept in check.

During World War II, the German 6th Army was reorganized in October 1939, after the Polish Campaign, using elements of the former 10th Army, under the command of Walther von Reichenau. In May 1940, it took part in the invasion of the Low Countries and linked up with the German paratroopers who destroyed the fortifications at Eben Emael, Liège, and fought in the Battle of Belgium. Then the 6th Army participated in the breakthrough of the Paris defenses on June 12, 1940, before acting as a northern flank for German forces along the Normandy coast during the last stages of the Battle of France.

When Operation Barbarossa was launched on June 22, 1941, the 6th Army was the spearhead of Army Group South in its drive into Soviet territory. In January, 1942, Friedrich Paulus was appointed commander of the 6th Army, replacing von Reichenau, who had suffered a heart attack. The new commander led the 6th Army during the ferocious Second Battle of Kharkov, which took place in the spring of 1942. The victory at Kharkov sealed the 6th Army’s destiny as it was selected later that year by the German High Command for the attack on Stalingrad. As the German 6th Amry could not capture the city fast, the Russian winter came and the Red Army launched Operation Uranus, which was a Soviet counter-attack by Soviet that surrounded the Germans in a pincers movement from November 19 to November 23, 1942. Thus 6th Army was trapped. A relief operation, called Operation Wintergewitter, conducted by Field Marshal Erich von Manstein failed to provide the Germans with adecuate military and food supply. By January 31, 1943, the 6th Army of Friedrich Paulus had been reduced from 800,000 men to 85,000, and on February 2, Friedrich Paulus surrendered.

Then came the fierce winter and the even fiercer Russian opposition. Winter, 1942.

Autumn 1942 saw some very heavy fighting. Building to building. Street to street.

The Germans were running out of supplies. The Luftwaffe tried heroically to keep it going but that too stopped when the last airstrip under German control fell. Above two Germans froze to death.
A Russian soldier uses a flame-thrower.

Russians move on the outskirts of Stalingrad

Russian marines join the action

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