Hitler's 1941 Invasion of Russia | Part 4: Fortress Stalingrad

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Hey guys, welcome back to the Anthology of Heroes podcast where we share the stories of
figures and events who changed the course of history. Anthology of Heroes is part of the
Evergreen podcast network. I'm your host, Elliot Gates. Today is part four of our series
following Operation Barbarossa, Adolf Hitler's doomed invasion of the USSR in 1941. In this
episode we'll tell the story of that fateful city, Stalingrad. It's impossible to overstate how
important the battle of Stalingrad was for the overall outcome of World War II. Because this
industrial city of minimal strategic value will be where the exhausted German 6th Army meets its end.
The back and forth battle to control the city would rage for over five months and within this
time period somewhere between one and two million people would perish. Estimates vary wildly but
even with the lower figures this battle is most likely the deadliest battle in the history of
our species. Winston Churchill said that at Stalingrad, quote, the hinge of fate turned
and that hinge was the people on the ground. Amidst the burning rubble and ash blackened
shrapnel the average lifespan for a Russian soldier entering the city was just 24 hours.
In the last three episodes we've sat on the shoulders of the High Command, Hitler, Stalin,
Zhukov, Polis and Chukov. We watched as their orders directly and indirectly changed things on
the ground. But all of them were spared the ultimate consequences from their decision. Stalin
wasn't going to be shot if he disobeyed Order 227 and Hitler didn't have to spend the winter of 1941
in a snowdrift eating horse flesh. In this episode we're going to hear from the men that did. The
grunts, the foot soldiers, the cannon fodder who were thrown into this war. We're going to hear what
they thought of the war and of their leaders. Throughout this episode when we cut between
scenes I'll read out German letters that were sent home from Stalingrad to sweethearts, fathers,
mothers or friends. The letters are probably the most authentic palpable thoughts ever captured
from frontline soldiers of this era. In their final moments when the propaganda and hate melts away
you'll see that their last thoughts are mainly memories of human connections and time spent with
loved ones. If nothing else there are a reminder to cherish the little moments you have with your
friends, your family or your loved ones. Over the course of this episode we followed the
invasion as it took shape in Wehrmacht HQ. Through the mass encirclements of Kiev,
past the tooth-chattering winter of 1941 before coming to a halt with the fuel crisis of 1942,
when things got started the plan looked to be another one of Hitler's master strokes.
Groups of 100,000, 300,000, even 500,000 Red Army soldiers were taken prisoner and rightfully
feeling responsible Joseph Stalin fell into a depressive stupor. But slowly the grit of the
Russian people and Stalin's decision to relocate the industry of the USSR began to turn the tide.
Outside the very gates of Moscow the Germans were pushed back for the first time since World War II
began. Bloodied but not defeated the Wehrmacht changed direction and moved south in an attempt
to reach the rich oil fields of the Caucasus. Bending around the Volga River the city of
Stalin grad acted as a kind of gateway to this region and an increasingly delusional Adolf Hitler
announced that taking this gateway was now the number one priority for the Wehrmacht. Every
other front was mothballed and every weapon in the German war chest was allocated to the
capture of the city so rushing troops from the north Stalin leapt to the defense of the city of
his namesake. Apart from Hitler and Stalin our other main characters in this series are Giorgi
Zhukov number one frenemy and troubleshooter for Joseph Stalin. Broad-chested and confident Zhukov
was calm under pressure. Others said about him as danger increased he became like a tightly coiled
spring alert and focused. Zhukov was rare for a staff officer in the sense that he told Stalin
what he thought and he got away with it. His advice as much as Stalin hated to admit it
had probably saved the USSR at least once. Under him was a man cut from the same cloth
Marshal Vasily Chukov. Chukov was a man who death always seemed to stalk but could never
quite catch. With almost as many pieces of shrapnel in his body as metals on his chest
Chukov was never far from danger. His men called him the stone a fitting name as the Wehrmacht
seemed to break upon him. Flat faced with thin slanted eyes gold teeth and a mop of dark hair
Chukov had the stereotypical look of a Russian peasant and as German troops poured into Stalin
Zhukov and Stalin had put him in charge of the city's defences.
On the German side of the field was Marshal Friedrich Paulus. Paulus was about as different
from Chukov as anyone could be. A polite and industrious staff officer Paulus had never
commanded troops before this appointment. Described by his peers as more of a scientist
than a general Paulus was tall a little ungainly with a high hairline and a recessed jaw.
In a spare time he liked to look over old maps of Napoleon's invasion of Russia.
When he was under stress his bows loosened and a tick on the side of his face would tweak.
And there'd be a lot of that to come because Paulus had been rushed through a bunch of promotions
to become the commander of the Wehrmacht's 6th army tasked with capturing Stalingrad.
As you can hear we've covered quite a bit. I've summarised our main figures but the
character development for Stalin and Hitler as well as the development of the campaign itself
are all very interesting so I'd really recommend starting at part one before jumping into this
episode. We left the last episode as the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, announced their arrival
at Stalingrad with the largest bombing run they'd conducted since the invasion began.
Incendiary bombs rained down on Stalingrad as the first few of the city's wide apartment
blocks collapsed into the street below. Before we get started if this episode sounds a little
different than usual I'm currently recording from a studio as all of my gear is at this moment
being shipped across the South China Sea to Australia. For more information on that and our
release schedule check out our season 5 wrap-up episode. As a heads up rape and violence will
be mentioned in passing several times throughout this episode and a big hello to anyone watching
from the live stream. So let's get into it. Hitler's folly Operation Barbarossa part four
fortress Stalingrad. In the evening of the 23rd of August 1942 the women and children of Stalingrad
pulled the corpse of their friends and neighbours from the rubble of their homes. Prior to the
bombing Stalingrad had been something of a model city for the USSR. Named after the dictator himself
its new built apartment blocks featured pristine views of the shimmering Volga River
which lapped peacefully at the banks of the city. Loosely Stalingrad was split into north
central and southern districts. Most of the employment was to be founded factories in the
north while in the southern district docks and railway stations were where the supplies were
bought in but it was a central district that was the most picturesque. Bulging from flat banks was
an old Tata burial ground that had been repurposed as a central park complete with wild flowers,
picnic spots and ice cream stands. Now as the drone of air raid sirens began to subside that
tranquility seemed a lifetime ago. The Fuhrer now considered the capture of Stalingrad the
number one priority for the Wehrmacht and speed was of the utmost importance. It was now almost
autumn and once Stalingrad fell the Wehrmacht still had to march on the oil fields in the south
and secure the Black Sea. All of this preferably before winter set in. That gave them about six
months. There was no room for errors, no room for setbacks, no room for other opinions.
Many of the Fuhrer's generals who had been instrumental to his earlier victories had now
been dismissed. Von Bock, Kleist, List and Heim all gone but most shockingly Hitler had also
fired Franz Halder. Halder was to Hitler what Zukov was to Stalin. The chief of staff had
been snippy with Hitler since Operation Barbarossa began. As the invasion dragged on in his private
diary he bashed the dictator more and more. Eventually Hitler had enough of his back chat
and he fired his chief of staff telling him quote, You and I have been suffering from nerves.
Half my nervous exhaustion is due to you. It's not worth to go on. We need national socialist
ardour now, not professional ability. I cannot expect this of an officer of the old school
such as you. For Hitler to explicitly state we don't need professional ability was just one more
red flag of the Fuhrer's egotistical megalomania believing he alone was all the Wehrmacht needed
for success. As Friedrich Paulus led the Sixth Army towards Stalingrad the weight on his shoulders
must have been heavy. He was now answerable directly to the Fuhrer. There were no more
smooth talking field marshals to sugarcoat any setbacks and big up victories. The Buck now
stopped with him and he must have wondered, am I up to this? For the Red Army High Command there was
none of this high school drama. For Marshal Vasily Chukhov his assignment to Stalingrad
consisted of a five minute meeting. To ensure Chukhov had understand the mission, the representative
asked him to explain his objective. Without missing a beat Chukhov responded quote, We
shall hold the city or die here. They offered him a cup of tea. He said no thanks and he was whisked
off to Stalingrad. By early September 1942 the last line of defence for the Red Army,
the Volga River had been breached. The speed in which the Germans encircled the city had
caught the Red Army completely off guard. Burning through the last few canisters of fuel
that already made it to the outskirts of Stalingrad where inside Chukhov desperately waiting on
reinforcements from the north scrambled to fortify the corridors and NKVD agents ran through the
suburbs pasting up propaganda posters on walls and lampposts. Each poster had the same message,
resist. Citizens were ordered to barricade themselves in their apartment blocks and turn
each block into a fortress. They were told not to give an inch of ground. The posters didn't
mince words either. One large newspaper print showed a frightened young girl with hands tied
behind her back and a headline that read, What if your beloved girl is tied up like this by
fascists? And underneath it continued, first they'll rape her insolently and then throw her
under a tank. Advance warrior, shoot the enemy. Your duty is to prevent the violator from ravaging
your girl. Critical to the rapid German advance was their air force. More than just bombing runs,
the Luftwaffe provided cover for all ground operations. One Russian soldier talks about
the horrible sounds these aircrafts made, quote. From that terrible day I could never bear the
wild animal howling of German stookers. The wailing they emit is head splitting. It freezes
your soul, casts you into confusion, paralyzes you like the gaze of a venomous cobra and lingers
in your ears for a long, long time. With no air force of its own, the only thing slowing the
advance was the heroic Red Army female anti-airgunners. These women had between a few weeks and a few
months of training, but as shells were so expensive, many of them had actually never fired a live
round. Nevertheless, they learned quickly and they were fearless. Many waved away their comrades as
the air raid sounded, and as bombs rained down around them, they kept firing until the bitter end.
By the time this September rain set in, the Germans were perilously close to the capture
of the city. They occupied about 70% of it, and each attack pushed Chuukov further and further
back, leading him to a remark after one attack, quote. One more battle like that will be in the
Volga. Sloshing through the mud, the Germans came night and day, and the Red Army hit back with
everything it could. From their factories in the north of the city, tanks were pushed off the assembly
line with astonishing speed. Unprimed with metal that was still warm, they arrived piecemeal at the
front. To save time, no gun sights were installed, and crew could only fire them by looking through
the barrel before loading the shell. Chuukov understood that he was on a mission to buy time.
Time for the Stavka to ready a counterattack, time for the Allies to push back in France,
time for General Winter to arrive in the east. As he himself said, quote,
time is blood. Men's very lives became the currency in which time could be bought.
And it's with the implementation of this strategy that Chuukov really started to shine as a commander.
The majority of the Marshal's career had been spent fighting in open warfare, pitch battles,
so the densely packed urban warfare of Stalingrad was completely new to him.
But unlike other commanders who stubbornly clung to strategies they were familiar with,
Chuukov adapted as tactics, throwing away anything that didn't work.
The Wehrmacht ruled the sky, he couldn't change that, but he realised they were much less willing
to drop bombs if there was a chance of hitting their own German troops. So he began to order
his commanders to hug enemy positions. He ordered his divisions to remain as close as possible to
the enemy. With little more than a street, house or even a wall separating Germans and Russians,
the Luftwaffe became more cautious with their bombing runs. Aware that his hastily assembled
tanks were inferior to the German ones, he drove the metal beasts into piles of rubble
throughout the city. Buried in debris up to the turrets, it became impossible for Wehrmacht
soldiers to know if a twisted pile of scrap metal camouflaged a working tank, again slowing them down.
On the morning of September 14th, General Chuukov deployed his very last reserve.
19 tanks and a few hundred soldiers departed his headquarters into the blazing city.
Eyeing the few pistols and crates of grenades in his cramped HQ, he must have seriously thought
that this day might be his last. He said in his biography that his office felt like a grave.
Low earthen ceilings and dirt falling upon his head were a constant reminder of the man's own
mortality. With nothing left to lose, he tried something that he was almost sure would fail.
The NKVD were a specialist branch of Soviet military.
Sort of like the secret police, they maintained their own military arm and command structure.
And the men in that military arm were quite good too. Highly motivated and well trained,
they were mostly stationed at military checkpoints outside the city. If Chuukov could tap into their
reserves, he could keep the fire burning a little longer. So he summoned a high-ranking NKVD colonel
and effectively told him he was taking control of his troops. The colonel said no, absolutely not,
but Chuukov pushed him, telling him if he didn't like it, he'd get Stalin on the phone right now.
It was a bold move from Chuukov because if push came to shove, he didn't actually know whose side
Stalin would take, but he had nothing to lose. His position would be overrun in the next day
if he didn't get men now. Faced with the thought of having to answer to Stalin if the city fell,
the colonel reluctantly agreed. Time was blood, and with it, Chuukov had bought himself a few
more days. With the newly arrived NKVD troops providing cover, Chuukov was finally confident
enough to authorize a river crossing. With all the entrances held by the Nazis, the Volga was
now the only route in or out of the city. The serene calm of the river had now become a soupy
mess of oil and blood, and to cross it was to put yourself in the most vulnerable position of all.
A hodgepodge of transport boats, paddle steamers, gunboats, or even rowboats were all the USSR had
access to, and on this day making the crossing were 10,000 men of the 13th Rifle Division.
Rushed straight from training camps, these men were incredibly green. One in 10 didn't even have a
rifle. The experience of paddling towards this inferno would stay with them for the rest of their
lives. Arriving at the river, a driftwood sign nailed to a tree with the word ferry
scrolled on it, let them know they'd reached their destination. Operational staff rushed
to each soldier and dumped into his arms a few grenades, some ammunition, bread, sugar,
and a sausage, and then shoved them towards the boats. Before the men knew what were happening,
they were aboard a bullet-ridden paddle steamer heading towards Stalingrad.
One soldier said there was so much smoke they couldn't actually see where they were headed,
but he could, quote, feel the hot breath of the city. He went on to say, quote,
this must be how Rome looked after Nero put it to the torch. The only difference is that here the
inferno was made worse by the screaming shells and lethal explosions, increasing the madness and
giving the onlooker the impression that he's witnessing the end of the world. A German shell
made a direct hit on the boat next to one soldier, killing 20 men, splattering water and gore onto
the adjacent boats. The vulgar itself looked like a disgusting broth, full of dead fish,
slicks of oil, and floating body parts. For the men on this boat, statistically,
they were likely to be dead within 24 hours. That same soldier goes on to say, quote,
the further we penetrate into the city, the closer the shells fall around us.
The sky is glowing over Stalingrad. Grayish white smoke billows from the ground, flames
shoot high in the sky in between. The long, probing fingers of searchlights tear at the
half-darkness of the breaking day. Bombs are ceaselessly raining down on a city that has been
condemned to death. That particular description of Stalingrad was actually from a German soldier
named Gunter Koshorty, but at this point, the German experience was probably equal to that of
the Russian. Paulus, predictably, was a nervous wreck. Hitler had handed him a blank check for
the operation and was constantly checking in to see when his investment would pay off.
How long until Stalingrad fell, Hitler asked him continuously, daily, hourly. All Paulus could do
was relay the facts that his generals gave him. He told Hitler that he expected the Russian
casualties would roughly double their own and turn the question back to the Fuhrer. How many
men do they have left? Hitler told the Judith Marshall the same lie that he told his generals,
his minister, the public, and the press, a lie that he probably now believed, too,
that the Russians were down to their last reserves and there were no more men they could call upon.
Paulus was respectful enough not to point out that the Fuhrer had been saying this for almost
a year and a half now. All he could do was believe Hitler, because he was churning through reserves
at a terrifying rate. All of the Reich waited in bated breath for the news of the sea's capitulation.
The press were already ready with camera crews to film the historic event.
A few months back, the average German soldier had never even heard of Stalingrad,
but Nazi propaganda had whipped them into such a frenzy there was now even greater excitement
than there was during the assault on Moscow. Joseph Goebbels had to actually tell the editors to
tone down the hyper-fue levels on the off chance the city didn't fall within the next few days.
Only a few kilometers away from Paulus, Marshal Chokhov was again down to his last reserves.
By now, any idea of a front line had gone out the window. One battalion held a grain silo in the
north, another squad held the department store in the south, and smaller bands were split apart
throughout the city with little pockets of Nazis in between. Communication between the Red Army
divisions was so frequently disrupted that Chokhov had been forced to grant his soldiers a high degree
of autonomy. From here on out, divisions would need to operate with the assumption they would be cut
off from communications for days or even weeks at a time. And this led him to a new approach,
sometimes called his strong point strategy. Crumbling apartment blocks and the shells of
factories were transformed into what he coined centers of resistance. And Chokhov gave guidance
on how these centers of resistance were to be set up. They should have 360 degrees of vision on the
suburbs below. They should have a space for their own makeshift hospital, mess hall, ammunition dump,
and headquarters. Ideally, burnt out apartment blocks were best because they could not be set
on fire. And buildings that had a basement were particularly prized, as soldiers could ambush
the convoys outside before retreating back underground. Strong points soon became strong
pockets. Once an apartment building was secured, soldiers would wait until nightfall, creep across
to the neighboring building, clear it out and secure it, and so on and so on. Chokhov was making
innovations on the fly. Really, he was making it up as he went along. And for a fairly old school
general, especially a Soviet one, who was used to pitched battles in front lines, he showed a
commendable amount of adaptability and creative thinking. Casualty skyrocketing, the Germans
soon began to use a similar strategy. But we've got to remember the victory conditions were different.
The Russians just needed to hold on to what they had. But the Germans needed to defend
their strong points while taking Russian ones. By mid-September, the fighting in the city was
reaching its climax. The Wehrmacht was now on the brink of splitting the Russian-controlled
portion of the city in two. For the Red Army, this would be a disaster. They were used to operating
independently for a few days, but Chokhov knew if they permanently lost control of entire districts,
soldiers would either surrender or be killed. Wehrmacht Lieutenant Weiner paints a vivid picture
of how it was to live in the city at this point. Quote, The street is no longer measured by meters,
but by corpses. Stalingrad is no longer a town. By day, it is an enormous cloud of burning,
blinding smoke. It is a vast furnace lit by the reflection of the flames. And when night arrives,
one of those scorching, howling, bleeding nights, the dogs plunged to the vulgar and
swim desperately to the other bank. The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals
flee this hell. The hard stones cannot bear it for long. Only men endure.
Well, now you know that I shall never return. Break it to our parents gently. I am deeply shaken
and doubt everything. I used to be strong and full of faith. Now I am small and without faith.
I will never know many of the things that happen here. But the little I have taken part in is
already so much that it chokes me. No one can tell me any longer that men died with the words
Deutschland or Heil Hitler on their lips. There was plenty of dying, no question of that. But
their last word is mother, or the names of someone dear, or just a cry for help. I've seen hundreds
fall and die already, and many belong to the Hitler youth as I did. But all of them, if they
could still speak, called for help, or shouted a name which could not help them anyway. The Fuhrer
made a firm promise to bail us out of here. They read it to us, and we believed in it firmly.
Even now I still believe it, because I have to believe in something. If it is not true,
what else could I believe in? I would no longer need spring, summer, or anything that gives pleasure.
So leave me my faith, dear Greta. All my life, at least eight years of it, I believed in the Fuhrer
and his word. It is terrible how they doubt here, and shameful to listen to what they say
without being able to reply, because they have the facts on their side. If what we were promised
is not true, then Germany will be lost, and in that case no more promises can be kept.
Oh, these doubts, these terrible doubts, if they could only be cleared up soon.
In the Kremlin, Stalin wore out the carpet of his office pacing up and down as he barked orders at
everyone and anyone to get him a status report on what was going on. In the middle of reports about
the largest attack yet, the Stavka had lost contact with Chukov. They'd intercepted German
communications announcing that the city had fallen, but no one seemed to know for sure.
The US Embassy at Moscow certainly believed it, and they were already preparing accordingly.
Everyone was in a state of panic, wondering if Moscow would be next again. But in the burning
city, Chukov was still there. As clumps of dirt rained down upon him and his staff, line repairers,
mostly women, scurried across the city patching up fried cables.
After an anxious afternoon, the gruff voice of Chukov warbled into Starva HQ. Stalin grabbed
still hells, but just barely. As unhelpful as ever, Stalin told Chukov to fight harder and
counterattack as soon as he was able. Chukov may have wondered where all his reinforcements were.
Over and over, he'd requested brigades and instead been drip-fed platoons. By his own words,
he didn't know what the Stavka were planning, but he knew they must be working on something.
For months now, Stalin had been pushing the Stavka to launch their long-awaited counterattack,
more than pushing, insisting that it had to start now. But our old friend Giyogi Zhukov,
who'd since been promoted to Deputy Supreme Commander, pleaded with Stalin to just give him
a few more weeks. As usual, Zhukov pushed Stalin further than any others dared,
copping an earful as the dictator raarded him, quote, any delay is equivalent to a crime.
Stalin was more than ready to send in the unwashed masses without training or rifles,
but Zhukov had seen firsthand what one well-placed Maxim gut could do against waves of men.
So as he delayed and delayed again, Zhukov rushed soldiers through training,
scraping together every rifle he could find and redistributing artillery all across the front.
There was a fine balancing act because if Zhukov lost Stalin,
Grad, it would all be for nothing. And the longer they delayed, the greater the chance of that
occurring. After much convincing, Stalin finally relented, and Zhukov knew this would be the last
delay he'd be granted. With little reinforcements to speak of, and Stalin still refusing to allow
any retreat, Zhukov ordered his troops to reduce the front line to just 50 yards, 45 meters.
This was a ballsy move, almost daring the Luftwaffe to continue bombing their positions
when the chance of friendly fire would be so high. Minute by minute, the Wehrmacht advanced
closer and closer, now almost outside Zhukov's headquarters. But still Stalin refused a retreat.
Everyone in the Stavka knew Zhukov would die at his post. But what good would that do?
Somehow this man had resisted the German onslaught for three months. If he died, who would replace
him? At last, when the Germans were almost on top of his position, Zhukov and his staff received
Stalin's permission to retreat. Scurrying out of their bunker as the Germans advanced in,
they moved into their last refuge in the northern districts of the city.
The Red Army were now holding on to Stalingrad by their fingernails.
You are my witness and I never wanted to go along with it because I was afraid of the east.
In fact, of war in general. I've never been a soldier, only a man in uniform. What do I get
out of it? What did the others get out of it? Those who went along and were not afraid.
Yes, what are we getting out of it? We who are playing the walk on parts and this madness
incarnate. What good does a hero's death do us? I've played death on the stage dozens of times,
but I was only playing and you sat out front in plush seats and thought my acting was authentic
and true. It is terrible to realize how little the acting had to do with real death. You were
supposed to die heroically, inspiringly, movingly from inner conviction and for a great cause.
But what is death in reality here? Here they croak, starve to death, freeze to death. It's
nothing but a biological fact like eating and drinking. They drop like flies. Nobody cares
and nobody buries them. Without arms or legs, without eyes, with bellies torn open, they lie
around everywhere. By mid-October, the siege had dragged on for two months. The Wehrmacht now
controlled about 85 percent of the city. Apart from Chokhov's HQ, the Red Army were clinging
on to a few apartment blocks in the center and around the train station. Paulus had double the
amount of men, all the air cover and most of the tanks. And it was figures like this that Hitler
continually hit back with when he needed to justify the siege. Off the top of his head, he could
rattle off the number of men, the number of planes, the number of tanks, even the thickness of their
concrete bunkers. But continually, he disregarded the less tangible combat modifiers, morale,
fatigue, hunger and cold. He told Paulus to ready the troops for October the 14th. This day, he
announced, from the comfort of his bunker, would be the day of the final assault on Stalingrad.
Chokhov's centers of resistance had been the primary barrier to the Wehrmacht's advance,
so Hitler's solution was just to remove them. Another round of carpet bombing to just level
the city, reduce it to nothing, then the rats would have nowhere to hide. Hitler knew time was
running out. Winter was just around the corner. If it didn't take the city soon, the Wehrmacht
would need to spend another winter in Russia. Even in a dictatorial state like Nazi Germany,
optics mattered. How much longer could his papers spin the story of victory being just around the
corner? He had to end this godforsaken war before winter. On October the 14th, the sky turned
dark grey, as the Luftwaffe unleashed another 550 tons of bombs on the city.
Leaving the Red Army no time to recover, Nazi ground troops burst through the lower levels
of the tractor factory, one of the last major holdouts for the Red Army. Cruel booby traps
maimed the first men to enter, and the Red Army from above sprayed bullets down on the troops.
Through the steam and heat, the Germans took many casualties that they advanced room by room,
level by level. With visibility being so poor, the flamethrower units torched entire rooms
rather than risk entering them. Red Army soldiers continually ran low on ammunition,
and often resorted to charging German soldiers with sharpened spades or trench knives.
Tchukov told his men to be active at night and deny the Germans rest,
taking any advantage he could to try and level the playing field stacked against him.
Especially trained dogs would run under German tanks with a hand grenade strapped to their back,
and Vasily Zaitsev, the most famous Russian sniper in Stalingrad,
MacGyvered his sniper optics onto an anti-tank rifle, and began explosively sniping machine-gun
nests. In the ruined apartment blocks, everyone was now crammed together like sardines. There could
be a German squadron on the top floor, a Russian on the middle floor, and civilians on the ground
clad in old brown rags and dusted with ash. It was impossible to tell friend from foe.
Sometimes med would bump into each other late at night, and it would turn into
like an old western gunfight, as both men reached for their weapon and yelled out for help.
The world had become black and white, snow and smoke, oil and sky.
Despite the pitiless conditions, for the Russians fighting at Stalingrad,
there was now an element of pride involved. They knew their whole country stood with them.
In his biography, Chukov writes, perhaps with a little bit of embellishment,
quote, the men were in such a mood that if they were wounded, even with a broken spine,
they had tears in their eyes as they were taken to the east bank. They'd say to their comrades
who bought them out, I don't want to go, better to be buried here. For these men, this was shaping
up to be the great battle of their generation. If they could survive, they could look forward
telling their children, their grandchildren, that they were there. They'd fought at Stalingrad.
In Stalingrad, to put the question of God's existence means to deny it. I must tell you this
father, and I feel doubly sorry for it. You have raised me because I had no mother and always kept
God before my eyes and soul, and I regret my words doubly because they will be my last,
and I won't be able to speak with any words afterwards which might reconcile you and make up
for these. You're a pastor, father, and in one's last letter, one says only what is true and what
one might believe to be true. I have searched for God in every crater, in every destroyed house,
on every corner, in every friend, in my foxhole and in the sky. God did not show himself,
even though my heart cried for him. The houses were destroyed, the man as brave or as cowardly as
myself. On earth there was hunger and murder, from the sky bombs came and fire. Only God was not there.
No father, there is no God. Again I write it and I know this is terrible and I cannot make up for it
ever. And if there should be God, he is only with you in the hymns and in the prayers, in the pious
sayings of priests and pastors, in the ringing of bells and the fragrance of incense, but not in
Stalingrad. October gave way to November, and the final assault, Hitler promised, peed it out.
The city had been levelled, but still there were no white flags or ceasefires from the Red Army.
And now, alarmingly, when the Wehrmacht soldiers gulped down their morning soup,
there was a barely noticeable crust of ice they needed to pierce with their spoons.
The winter was almost upon them. With most of Chukov's strong points levelled,
he again adapted to a new type of warfare. The Wehrmacht would christen it, Brattankrieg,
war of the rats. Amongst the rubble, in literal caves or holes in the ground,
the Red Army soldiers set up shop. From now on there would be less gunfights in the street and
more hand-to-hand fighting. Chukov, realizing the Germans preferred to kill from a distance,
pushed his men to get nice and close before making a killing blow. The primal roar, as Red Army
soldiers tore out from their hovels and charged, eyes wide and bayonets raised, that, he said,
would terrify the Wehrmacht. The glow of the burning city cast long shadows on the walls,
as Red Army soldiers crept quietly from their bunkers. Dropping into the sewers,
they'd reemerge behind German positions. Once they'd killed all they could and stolen all
they could, they'd melt back into the shadows. Lone German sentries on night duty were particularly
vulnerable. Staring into the pitch black, their fingers always on the trigger, listening for the
slightest noise in the darkness. The Red Army took to launching flares to mark the commencement of
a night attack, but only sometimes would an attack actually follow. German defenders had
their sleep disrupted as they ran to the rally point in preparation. As the radio cables were
continually destroyed, Russian squadrons dropped out of radio communication for days or weeks.
Chukov instilled in them the necessity of self-reliance to do what they needed to do to survive.
Brash in both your water and ammunition as you may go days without either.
Self-sacrifice went hand-in-hand with self-reliance and one of the most memorable scenes of the siege
was the last stand of Mikhail Panakako of the 193rd Rifle Division. Pinned down by German panzers
and out of anti-tank grenades, Panakako leapt from his trench with a molotov cocktail in each hand.
As he wound back his arm to throw one, a lucky German bullet shattered the bottle in his hand.
Drenched in petrol, Panakako went up in flames, but staggering forward he hurled himself over
the last few yards and flung his body against the side of a tank, smashing the other bottle in a
ball of fire against the side. Heroism like this was not only commonplace, it was expected.
Chukov's sense of duty to the motherland was as brutal and as unforgiving as Stalin's.
As he stated, quote, in the burning city, we do not suffer cowards.
One time he found a squadron of soldiers on the wrong side of the Volga River.
Believing they were trying to desert, he pulled out his pistol, executed the commander,
turned to the commissar and executed him too. A few minutes later, he shot
both brigade commanders and their commissars. Justifying his actions, Chukov said in his
biography that if anyone found him on the wrong side of the river, then he would have been shot too,
and his executioners would have been right to do it.
Some went even further. One of Chukov's generals,
unimpressed with the discipline of his troops, reintroduced the ancient Roman punishment of
decimation. Walking the line of soldiers, he shot every 10th man then and there.
There is no land for us behind the Volga, became a popular saying for the soldiers.
In other words, Stalingrad was all that remained. For the Russian soldier, there was no point
thinking about tomorrow. There was just this moment. Every day was a game of chance and luck,
and the prize for surviving was the evening, when the daily ration of vodka was doled out.
As if in the presence of something holy, all fell silent when the vodka was passed around.
And when soldiers couldn't get it, anything alcoholic was substituted.
Filtering anti-freeze through a gas mask was one technique of making moonshine.
We'll never know how many died from homebrew like this, but one particularly nasty batch killed 28
soldiers who passed around this concoction that one of them referred to as, quote, a kind of wine.
But if you thought support personnel had it any easier, medical orderlies in these primitive
hospitals went for days without sleep. Ghostly pale and sickly, they became walking blood banks
when reserves ran dry. On busy nights, it was not uncommon for them to collapse due to blood loss.
Female orderlies carried wounded soldiers over their shoulders for miles from the front line
to these hospitals. By now, the city itself was so pulverized that the Luftwaffe remarked
there were few targets remaining. Every block now looked the same. Black smoldering craters with
nothing but an oil fire delineating one neighborhood from another, where houses once stood that were
just ant hills, the only markers of basements that beckoned doom for any soldier who entered.
But one structure jutting out from the featureless black mass was a grain elevator.
This unassuming, brutalist structure would soon be printed on the back of badges,
patches, and postcards if there was one structure that symbolized Red Army resistance, it was this one.
The Stalingrad grain elevator was a plant designed to process and store grain,
a rectangular flat face building with a grain chute poking outside. It had also become the
last holdout for a group of Russian soldiers in an area that had long fallen to the Wehrmacht.
Cut off and isolated, the men inside knew they were on their own.
The initial offer to surrender was met with a spray of bullets, as the soldiers carefully
meted out their rations of food, ammunition, and water. With just two machine guns and two
old anti-tank guns, the men inside repelled attack after attack. From all sides, the German troops
ran at the building, but each time they were pushed back by the stubborn defenders. Artillery
pounded the walls, but the soldiers doggedly held on inside. Making every bullet count,
they waited until the attackers were close enough to ensure a kill shot. The Wehrmacht
likely believed they were facing a full company or even a battalion, but inside the reality was,
there were just 50 men. In a single day, they repelled 10 attacks. Inside, the air was thick
and dry with grain dust, as the soldiers methodically manned their posts, passing around
their few precious bullets and whatever food they had left. After five days, their water, food,
and ammunition were all gone, and as the Germans finally smashed through the concrete,
the six men that still lived slipped away into the night.
On November the 19th, the German sick army awoke to a peculiar sound, a dull kind of grumbling
in their rear. When they went to investigate, they learnt the sound was caused by chunks of ice in
the river freezing and grinding against one another. The Volga River had now frozen. From this point
onwards, they would need icebreakers to bring in supplies, and soon even that would be insufficient.
Each German soldier had to now come to terms with the fact that they'd be spending Christmas
in this pitiless wasteland. It was just like last year, but worse. Now they were deeper into Russia
with virtually no supplies and a shrinking number of ways to obtain them. Some German soldiers
rations had been cut down to just 50 grams of dried bread per day. The temperature had already
fallen to minus 18 Celsius, zero degrees Fahrenheit, the first taster of what general winter had in
store for them. But thousands of miles away, Hitler was not worried. The panic had set in last
year too, but if you'll remember from our last episode, the Luftwaffe had managed to airdrop
food and fuel to the troops. In the dictator's mind, he believed that if push came to shove,
the Luftwaffe could again save the day. But that was irrelevant because Stalingrad,
he believed, would fall any day now.
Nobody knows what will happen to us now, but I think this is the end. Those are hard words,
but you must understand them the way they are meant. Times are different now from the day I
said goodbye and became a soldier. Then we still lived in an atmosphere which was nourished by
thousand hopes and expectations of everything turning out well in the end. But even then,
we were hiding a paralyzing fear beneath the words of farewell, which would console us for
two months of happiness as man and wife. I still remember one of your letters in which you wrote
you just wanted to bury your face in your hands in order to forget, and I told you then that all
this had to be and that the nights in the east were much darker and more difficult than those at home.
The dark nights of the east have remained and they have turned much darker than I had ever
anticipated. In such nights one often listens for the deeper meaning of life, and sometimes
there is an answer. Now space and time stand between us and I'm about to step over the threshold
which will separate us eternally from our own little world and lead into that greater one which
is more dangerous, yes, even devastating. If I could have made it through this war safely,
I would have understood for the first time what it means to be man and wife in its true
and deepest sense. I also know it now, now that these last lines are going to you.
The white modern city that had stood before the 23rd of August was now completely unrecognizable.
A black smoldering wasteland had taken its place. Bomb craters pocked every inch of the city,
glass and shrapnel covered every surface. At the old Tata burial grounds not a single
wildflower or blade of grass still remained. This patch of earth had been fought over perhaps
more than any other and with each artillery barrage, freshly buried corpses were churned up to the
surface. In spindling, teetering towers, Russian soldiers countered their bullets as they waited
for German officers to fall into their sights and in the few buildings that still remained,
Russian and German troops warmed their hands round fires with only a thin layer of concrete
separating the two. In the middle of the city a statue of a group of children playing had somehow
survived the bombing. The stark figures of happy children made for an almost ghostly presence
in the cold gloom of the city. Under the streets soldiers tried to forget the sounds of distant
gunfire and the constant groans of the dead and dying. One German soldier would save this sound
it was not a human sound, just a dull cry of suffering from a wild animal.
One man described the smell of the city as something between a morgue and a blacksmith.
The 10,000 civilians still trapped in the city lived like mice, huddling quietly in the ruins of
their family homes only daring to emerge after nightfall in search of roots, berries or burnt
horsemeat. Before letting their daughters out, mothers would smear dirt or ash on their children's
faces to make them less attractive in case they were captured. Russian squadrons, summed down to
just single digits in strength, made the Germans bleed for every step. One man, the sole survivor
from a gunfight, returned to his command bunker. His right hand had been crushed in battle and he
was unable to hold a weapon but when he realized he was the last one left he took off his helmet,
filled it with grenades and told his commander I can throw these with one hand before hobbling
back out into the snow. Another group of men completely overwhelmed by a German advance
sent back a wounded comrade to their headquarters with a message saying quote,
begin shelling our position. In front of us is a large group of fascists.
Farewell comrades, we did not retreat. The brutality of the war was getting to the
Germans on a psychological level. They'd hit this city with everything they had,
they'd bombed it into the ground, they'd cleared every block, destroyed every landmark,
cut every cable and yet Ivan persisted. Inside a collapsed basement or underneath a sewer drain,
he waited knowing almost vainly that he would outlast them, almost saying is that it? Is that
all you've got? Operation Barbarossa, Operation Case Blue and now Operation Brunswick had come
to Nort. Hitler had swapped places with Stalin, deeply distrustful of his generals that had been
responsible for his victories, he had become sullen and withdrawn. The initiative had been lost,
morale had disappeared and all the forced counterattacks in the world couldn't bring it back.
To the south of Stalingrad the Corkus army group had been frozen in their tracks,
undersupplied and overextended they'd barely moved since their front was deprioritized.
Over dinner one of the generals from this front explained to Hitler that he didn't have enough
troops to advance any further and Hitler screamed in his face, that is a lie. From here onwards
the Fuhrer would eat most of his meals in private. Field Marshal Paulus had been advised by his
doctors that he was headed for a nervous breakdown. His generals fed up to him the horrifying casualty
rates of the Sixth Army to prove that they could not sustain this offensive for any longer,
but Hitler's response was to tell him to prepare the panzers for another final offensive
despite the fact that they had virtually no fuel. Reality was on one side and duty was on the other.
The facial tick on his face must have winced incessantly as he again relented to Hitler's demands
accepting his order to try again.
You must get that out of your head Margaret and you must do it soon.
I would even advise you to be ruthless about it for the disappointment will be less.
In every one of your letters I sense your desire to have me home with you soon.
It isn't strange at all that you are looking forward to it. I too am waiting and longing for
you passionately. That is not so much what disturbs me but rather the unspoken desire
I read between your lines to have not only your husband and lover with you again but also the
pianist. I feel that very distinctly. Is it not a strange confusion of feeling that I,
who should be most unhappy, have resigned myself to my fate and the woman who should have every
reason to be thankful that I am still alive, at least so far, is quarrelling with the fate that
has struck me? At times I have suspicion that I am being silently reproached as if it were my
fault that I can no longer play. That's what you wanted to hear and that's why you keep probing
in your letters for the truth I would have much preferred to tell you in person. Perhaps it is
will of destiny that our situation here has come to the point which permits no excuses and no way
out. I do not know whether I shall have a chance to talk to you once more. So it is well that this
letter should reach you and that you know in case I should turn up someday that my hands are ruined
and have been since the beginning of December. I lost the little finger on my left hand but
worse still is the loss of three middle fingers on my right hand through frostbite. I could hold
my drinking cup only with my thumb and little finger. I am quite helpless. Only when one has
lost his fingers does one notice how much they are needed for the simplest tasks. The thing I can
still do best with my little finger is shoot. Yes, my hand is erect. I can't very well spend the rest
of my life shooting simply because I'm no good for anything else. Perhaps I could make out as a
game warden but this is only Gallo's humour. Only right to calm myself. Pity that I am not a writer
so that I could describe how a hundred soldiers squatted around in their great coats with blankets
over their heads. Do you feel better now that you know the full truth?
Five hundred miles away in the Kremlin an exhausted Georgi Zukov hurriedly dusted the
snow off his boots as he entered Stalin's office. Having just arrived from the burning city he was
there to give Stalin the report that he'd been chomping at the bit for. The confirmation that
their long-awaited counter-offensive Operation Uranus was ready. The plan was kind of a reverse
Barbarossa a huge encirclement of German forces but it wasn't to be contained within Stalingrad
it was further reaching than that. One million one hundred thousand men were waiting on the southern
and northern flanks of the front line ready to crumple in woods and encircle the Sixth Army.
Zukov had done everything he promised he would. For months his troops had held on in the burning
city forcing Hitler to commit the best German troops into an endless street battle. Like a whirlpool,
artillery, soldiers, planes, fuel, everything ended up in Stalingrad. The vermarked forces that
remained outside the city were a skeleton crew, one that had been picked at to feed the Stalingrad
meat grinder. All that was left on the flanks now was a stripped back core of mostly Romanian troops.
Operation Uranus would begin on the extreme flanks of the front line quickly defeating the foreign
troops and collapsing inwards encircling Stalingrad. If I went to plan, Paulus and his legion of the
dam would be trapped inside and Stalingrad would be their grave. The plan required a massive manpower
and while Stalin was happy to send in untrained fodder it had been Zukov that insisted the men
have at least basic training. Now crates full of American spam were piled high in Red Army store
houses as were the newly acquired Jeeps, hardy automobiles that the Russian soldiers seemed to love.
Over 60% of the Red Army's tanks and most of its artillery had been put aside in preparation
for Operation Uranus. Hitler had keenly noticed the lack of firepower at Stalingrad which had
led him to believe that the USSR was finally at the end of their rope while in reality the
equipment had just been sent elsewhere and so in the early hours on the 19th of November 1942
Red Army artillery divisions received a single code word over the radio, siren.
On that note we'll pause things for part four. We'll be back in two weeks for the long-awaited
reckoning of the Red Army and the aftermath of Stalingrad. I hope you've had a great new year
and kicked off any resolutions you've been working on. On the note of resolutions mine
was to try and hit 1000 ratings for the show. Podcast ratings go a long way in convincing
new listeners to give the show a first try. So if you've enjoyed the series so far I'd be
very grateful if you could give this podcast a five star rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
It just takes a few seconds, if you're on Apple Podcasts scroll down to the bottom of the anthology
of heroes page, tap five stars and write a short review. I'd love to hear what episode you enjoyed
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anthology of heroes page and tap five stars. You can't leave comments on Spotify yet. I'd also
like to shout out to our amazing patrons who pay for the sound effects and music that I think really
go a long way to setting the mood in many of the scenes. Thanks a lot to you guys and a big shout
out to our Justinian tier patron members Angus, Claudia, John, Seth and Tom. Cheers guys, see you on the next one.