STALLING AT STALINGRAD

            The Battle of Stalingrad set two of the most controversial powers of modern history against one another, Adolf Hitler’s Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. The battle tested the apparent strengths and weaknesses of each and exposed the paradox of brutality and glory uniquely found in war. Neither the Second World War nor global war memory would emerge from the Battle of Stalingrad unchanged. The Battle of Stalingrad was a major turning point in the strategic war between the Allies and the Axis, and a turning point in national and international perceptions of both Germany and the Soviet Union.

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            In violation of both the Soviet-German Molotov-Ribbentrop nonaggression pact and the Bismarckian tradition to refrain from doing so, the Wehrmacht, under the orders of Hitler, invaded the Soviet Union at the peak of summer in June 1941, trusting the tactic of Blitzkrieg, or lightning war, to bring Germany a quick success. In his novel Stalingrad, Soviet war correspondent Vasily Grossman described, through his character Novikov, the feelings of this first day as a Soviet at war with Germany, “He woke up with a precise awareness that something terrible had happened, but with no idea what this might be… Later, in newspapers and journals, he often came across the phrase ‘surprise attack.’ How—he wondered—could anyone who had not experienced the war’s first minutes ever understand what these words really meant.”[1] After the initial shock of betrayal, Stalin organized the Red Army, which, along with the arrival of snow in early October, turned Hitler’s dreams of glorious Blitzkrieg into a long and bloody winter war. The Wehrmacht laid siege to Moscow where commemorative parades and celebrations for the anniversary of the October Revolution continued unimpeded in an effort to maintain morale and stall the panic of siege. As the Wehrmacht crept closer to Moscow, Stalin revealed that he had also kept secrets from his former ally. Stalin secretly redirected Red Army troops stationed in Manchuria to assist with the situation in Moscow, trusting intelligence that suggested the Japanese were distracted by plans to attack the United States, not the Soviet Union. The arrival of an overwhelming wave of Soviet reinforcements forced the first withdrawal of German troops in WWII.

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            After the embarrassing retreat from Moscow, the Wehrmacht reassessed its strategy and turned its focus to the south, eyeing the city of Stalingrad strategically placed along the west bank of the Volga River. The German process to conquer Russia began with plans to form a line of defense from the Volga to Archangel, with the first objective as the capture of Stalingrad.[2] Stalingrad was a strategic city for the Germans in the pursuit of Lebensraum in Eastern Europe. The area beyond the Volga was ripe for geographical expansion, provided access to valuable oil reserves, and would serve as a physical connection to Germany’s ally, Japan. So too would the capture of Stalingrad offer a symbolic victory. German occupation of a city named for the leader of the Soviet Union became a matter of morale and the assertion of martial prowess on a global scale. It was clear from the beginning that both the Germans and Soviets were prepared to fight viciously for the right to hold Stalingrad for purposes both strategic and sentimental.

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            As the Germans prepared to attack in the Don and Volga River regions in the south, the Soviets continued to prepare many advantages over the approaching Wehrmacht. The Battle of Stalingrad saw the first large-scale use of the mighty Soviet T-34, a tank that rolled smoothly over rugged and even icy terrain and proved impenetrable against German Panzers. Grossman asserts, “The battle fought within the city of Stalingrad took place at time when the Soviet Union was just beginning to produce more gun barrels and military vehicles than the Germans.”[3] Superior ordnance production was a coveted advantage for the Soviets. Even well into the Battle of Stalingrad, the tank factory in the city continued to operate as usual. The Soviet Union’s main advantage was its people, indoctrinated with the will to never surrender. Anthony Beevor, a leading military historian, argues, “The biggest mistake made by German commanders was to have underestimated ‘Ivan,’ the ordinary Red Army soldier. They quickly found that surrounded or outnumbered Soviet soldiers went on fighting when their counterparts from western armies would have surrendered.”[4] While the Wehrmacht met quick and sweeping success in Western Europe as countries like France and Poland surrendered quickly to preserve their people and infrastructure, it soon became clear that the Soviets would not concede so easily. 

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            Soviet propaganda had always emphasized the importance of the Soviet Union over the life of the individual. Beevor goes on to write, “Whatever one may think about Stalinism, there can be little doubt that its ideological preparation…provided ruthlessly effective arguments for total warfare.”[5] Though, at this point of the war, all destruction ravaged Soviet territory only, the Soviets pushed for total war and the commitment of soldier and civilian alike, as much as the Germans. The Soviets were used to harsh Russian weather and prepared for winter warfare. While equipment less suitable for freezing temperatures hindered the Germans, Soviet ski battalions, heated aerodromes, and underground bunkers were standard for the Red Army. In fact, the Red Army was trained for winter conditions and often preferred frigid temperatures to the dampness and mud brought by the spring thaw. As the battle progressed and German morale dropped along with the temperature, the Soviets learned to manipulate German paranoia by leading air raids under the cover of night. Small bombs dropped from U-2s caused the Germans to expend their ammunition, despite doling damages that were more psychological than physical.[6] Once the Germans were surrounded following the main assault on Stalingrad, wasting the Wehrmacht’s remaining ammunition became a sure way to push toward capitulation. Along with the constant buzzing of Soviet planes, the cult of the sniper took over the Red Army. Snipers became increasingly important in instilling anxiety among the surrounded Wehrmacht, any member of which could be picked off by an invisible enemy at any moment. In addition, the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, would blast Russian tango music on loudspeakers “to convey a suitably sinister mood” [7] as an accompaniment to the Germans’ terror. 

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            While the NKVD musically antagonized the German front line, Soviet soldiers learned creative solutions to combat the enemy. When fighting in the city, Germans blocked windows with wire netting to prevent grenades from being thrown into the building. The Soviets were quick to adapt by fixing hooks to their grenades to catch on the wires.[8] As ammunition ran low on both sides, the Soviets continued to be resourceful. Instead of offering standard salutes for fallen comrades, shots were fired at the German front line in honor of those killed.[9] Weapons that did not require ammunition, like bayonets and spades, achieved prominence in the Red Army arsenal. According to Red Army veteran Anatoliy Grigoryevich Merezhko, spades became particularly feared weapons, “Because once that one is within reaching distance of the head it’ll take it right off.”[10] The advantage of committed soldiers fighting for their homeland, already adapted to the harsh Russian winter conditions, set the Red Army a step ahead of the Wehrmacht leading into the Battle of Stalingrad. 

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            Aside from these advantages, there remained factors limiting the full potential of the Soviets. Despite the overwhelming size of the Red Army, especially during the Battle of Stalingrad when nearly 4 million Soviets volunteered, soldiers were often rushed into battle poorly trained and lacking leadership.[11] There was little time for the Red Army to mobilize its troops against the Blitzkrieg with which the Wehrmacht attacked in the summer of 1941, and there had been constant fighting ever since. Merezhko said, “I had a company of 120 men. Only 21 cadets made it across the Volga. The rest had perished or run away. Because the retreat was very disorganized. There was almost no management from the top.”[12] Mixed messages regarding defensive positions and tactical retreats eventually concentrated the Red Army in the city of Stalingrad, stalled at the Volga. But the infantry was not the only force lacking direction. The inexperienced Soviet Air Forces, or VSS, flew inferior planes destined to lose against the practiced Luftwaffe. A Soviet squadron officer said, “Our pilots feel that they are corpses already when they take off.”[13] The Luftwaffe had proven itself in the Spanish Civil War and early in WWII, and wreaked havoc on the VSS and Red Army alike in dogfights and air raids. 

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            To cope with their inadequacy and the constant stress of battle, soldiers of the Red Army turned to the great Russian pastime of drinking vodka. When asked whether the soldiers drank before or after the battles, Red Army staff officer Aleksandr Filippovich Voronov said, “After it wouldn’t be of much use,” adding that, “There wasn’t a moment to wind down, to talk, etc., because the fighting was always close by.”[14] Desperate for intoxication in the midst of failing deliveries of vodka rations, some Soviets inadvertently poisoned themselves drinking chemicals. As Beevor notes, “Men and commanders had been ordered to rest, but they were too keyed up.”[15] It was impossible to relax during the Battle of Stalingrad, and constant vigilance took its toll. Grossman writes, “After a few brief conversations, it became clear that the men were depressed.”[16] Grossman further acknowledged a problem within Red Army psyche. In Stalingrad, Secretary Cheprak says to Novikov, “Apparently we’ve all got too used to yielding ground: all the way from Tarnopol to the Volga. Retreat, retreat, retreat—they say we’ve developed a psychology of retreat.”[17]This defeatist attitude seen in many of the men would have to be defeated before the Red Army could hope to face the Wehrmacht successfully. Later in the story, “Krymov could see that, for many people, retreat had become almost a habit. The retreat had developed its customs and routines; it had become a way of life…But soon they would be on the edge of the abyss; even one more step back would be impossible.”[18] On the bank of the Volga, the Soviets enacted harsh policies, such as Order No. 227, that instituted brutal conditions on the front line and dedicated all resources to defeating the enemy. 

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            In this way, casualties of war were also casualties of a Soviet system that displayed little capacity to care for them. Maria Georgievna Faustova, a radio operator in the Battle of Stalingrad, recalled, “There were so many untended wounded…I was bandaging their wounds together with a field nurse. We did what we could: tearing strips from shirts and using them as bandages. So many died there! …The most horrible is not the shelling itself, but to see its result.”[19] Grossman also acknowledged the inability of the Soviets to keep up with the wounded soldiers. “Vera [a Soviet nurse] knew this monotonous groan of the dying, of those who could no longer ask for anything—neither food, nor water, nor even morphine.”[20] Just as retreat had necessarily become a bad habit for the Red Army leading up to the Battle of Stalingrad, so too had the practice of neglecting the wounded. The Soviet forces’ inexperience created many disadvantages against the Germans that would prolong the battle and maximize suffering.

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            Therefore, the German optimism with which Stalingrad was attacked, was not entirely unfounded, as the Wehrmacht possessed several advantages over the Red Army. As the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, they came fresh off proving their power in France and Poland. They invaded the Soviet Union with high hopes that their tactic of Blitzkrieg would subdue the enemy rapidly and completely, just as in the past. Grossman’s insight assures, “Heraclitus said, ‘Everything flows, everything changes.’ The Germans had rephrased this: ‘We can go around everything, we can flow around everything.’”[21] The Germans truly believed that their campaign would be successful and quick. The Wehrmacht relied heavily on the air superiority provided by the Luftwaffe. The Luftwaffe had become an experienced and vicious force since the Spanish Civil War, and further proved itself during the invasion of the Soviet Union. Soviet MiGs were no match for German Stuka dive bombers and Messerschmitt fighters. Infantry attacks were often preceded by ‘house warmings’ courtesy of Stuka flyovers.[22] Even as the German Sixth Army became surrounded, morale remained high, for a time, amongst the troops. Erich Klein, a soldier in the Wehrmacht and prisoner of war, declared, “Comradeship in captivity, that was the source that gave us new courage and kept us going.”[23] It was this spirit and confidence in German superiority that filled the Wehrmacht with the initial vigor to break into the Soviet Union, and later to attack Stalingrad.

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            However, high morale alone was not enough to sustain the war, and disadvantages that plagued the Wehrmacht from the beginning destined failure against the Red Army. The Soviets mobilized more quickly than predicted and, “By mid-July [1941], the Wehrmacht had lost its initial momentum. It was simply not strong enough to mount offensives in three different directions at once.”[24] Operation Barbarossa broke down, and soon the Wehrmacht found themselves stranded in the Soviet Union as winter approached. Temperatures began to drop to -25ºC[25] and even -40ºC[26] while the troops lacked winter uniforms, which had not been deemed necessary at the start of the operation. Heinz Huhn, a German gunner during the Battle of Stalingrad recalled stealing clothing and food items from Soviet civilians. On picking up some of the Russian language, Huhn said, “I first learned these words: Pozhalsta. Khleba. Yaitsa—Please. Bread. Eggs.”[27] Hitler’s stubborn optimism that the Soviet Union would capitulate at any moment resulted in a lack of suitable equipment and supplies for the mission. 

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            As is always the case with urban street fighting, the air support from the Luftwaffe on which the Wehrmacht relied, soon became a liability as it was impossible to differentiate the positions of the Germans and the positions of the Soviets, which varied by building, and on some occasions were simply different parts of the same building. The Russian winter made all German air support difficult, and resupply was slow and unreliable. The remaining Wehrmacht weapons were inferior and soon ran out of ammunition and stock. German tanks could not defend themselves against the Soviet T-34s. “Even the long-barreled version of the Panzer Mark III only had a 50-mm gun, whose shell often failed to penetrate Soviet tanks.”[28] In addition to inferiority in tank-on-tank violence, the German infantry’s 37mm Pak 36 anti-tank guns were also useless against T-34s.[29] The Wehrmacht command became paralyzed under the stress of being outgunned, outmanned, and out of time. Gehard Hindenlang, a Wehrmacht captain, did not trust the German command, particularly General Friedrich Paulus, whom he did not see as suited for the job. He lamented, “We had in fact all assailed Paulus with our opinions…But he simply could not make a decision.”[30] Stunned in the face of a superior Red Army, Paulus’ Sixth Army became surrounded. Efforts to resupply through an air bridge proved unsuccessful, and the Germans were forced to fight once again on three very different fronts: against the Red Army, against the weather conditions, and against hunger and disease. One soldier wrote, “Lice are like the Russians. You kill one, ten new ones appear in its place.”[31] Deteriorating conditions eventually led to German capitulation. The morale that had initially carried the Wehrmacht, left Germans questioning their loyalty to their commanders and even to Hitler and the Nazi cause.

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            It was with these respective advantages and disadvantages that the Red Army and Wehrmacht entered the Battle of Stalingrad. German Operation Blue was launched in June 1942, exactly one year after Operation Barbarossa. In less than a month, a front had been established at Stalingrad, but it was not until the bombing of Stalingrad on 23 August, “a day which will never be forgotten,”[32] that war became a reality for the nearly 500,000 civilians living in Stalingrad, 40,000 of whom would be killed within the first week of fighting.[33] The Germans steadily advanced across the Don, pushing the Soviets all the way back to the Volga, the established limit of acceptable German advancement into the Soviet Union to be neither conquered by the Germans nor retreated across by the Soviets. Therefore, the city of Stalingrad, situated along the west bank of the Volga, became contested and bloody ground. Fighting in Stalingrad involved the whole city as troops moved building-by-building and block-by-block through the ruins. The Germans referred to it as Rattenkrieg[34] due to cramped combat situations on unconventional battlefields in sewers, tunnels, and cellars across the city. The destruction of the entire city, necessarily involving men, women, and children from the Stalingrad civilian population, was sustained in effort to preserve the rest of the Soviet Union from falling into German hands. Grossman’s character Novikov identifies, “This city of yours [Stalingrad] is unusual. I spent a long time trying to find your street and I discovered that there are streets here named after every city in the Soviet Union.”[35] Grossman highlighted the way in which the struggle for Stalingrad was a microcosm of the struggle for the whole Soviet Union. 

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            Winter hit Stalingrad in early November, and by late November, 290,000 soldiers[36] of the Wehrmacht Sixth Army were surrounded in a Kessel, or cauldron, by the Red Army, completely cut off from Germany, save a few unreliable aerial supply drops. The Germans remained in this miserable position until early January when the Soviets offered terms for a surrender. However, the Germans refused to consider any sort of capitulation. Beevor aptly writes, “When a war of two world outlooks is going on, it is impossible to persuade enemy soldiers by throwing words across the front lines.”[37] A feeble attempt at fighting renewed and the Germans were pushed back into Stalingrad proper. By the end of the month, General Paulus and his Sixth Army surrendered. The Battle of Stalingrad proved to be a turning point of the war. It claimed some 295,000 German lives and anywhere between 479,000 and over 1 million Soviet lives, both soldier and civilian.[38] Boris Serafimovich Kryzhanovsky, a 12 year old Stalingrader during the battle, advocated for the higher end of that estimate. His own records were destroyed along many others in the city archive during the battle, making it impossible to count the dead.[39] The Battle of Stalingrad waged a toll on both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army, losses from which neither would fully recover by the end of the war. 

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            Moving from the ordnance of the war to the ordinance of the war, Soviet Order No. 227 characterized the Red Army experience during the Battle of Stalingrad. An estimated 13,500 Soviet soldiers were executed by their comrades for ‘extraordinary events,’ a euphemism for treasonous behavior.[40] Order No. 227, known as ‘Not One Step Back,’ called for the immediate elimination of cowards, deserters, panic-mongers, and other subversives. Professor of Russian history Michael Khodarkovsky writes, “In essence, this was classic Stalin—deploying fear and threat to achieve his goal with a complete disregard for human life.”[41]Stalin once again asserted his control of the Soviet people through this barbaric practice. Faustova recalled, “They would even add: ‘And if you are wounded, fall with your head toward the West,’ which is to say, to show that you were attacking.”[42] Order No. 227, which Soviet cryptographer Grigory Afanazevich Zverev called a, “nasty piece of business,”[43] wore heavily on Soviet morale, and a feeling of paranoia festered in the ranks. The purpose of the order had primarily been to discourage cowardice and desertion in battle, but was also used to exact corporeal punishment on liberated civilian populations and returned prisoners, whom the Soviets saw as collaborators with the Germans. Johann Scheins, a Wehrmacht truck driver, remembered a moment when his battalion had amassed too many Soviet prisoners, “We didn’t know what to do with them…We tried to get them to go back to Russia, but they didn’t want that. Well, we sent them back over to the Russians…The Russians shot all of them. They shot their own people. Because they had been prisoners of the Germans.”[44] The practice of executing able-bodied fighters on the suspicion of disloyalty to the Soviet Union was a luxury that came with the enormity of the population of the USSR compared to Germany, though the population would never fully rebound from the frivolous expenditure of human life during WWII. Order No. 227 applied to the whole Red Army in an effort to weed out weak links. However, Beevor writes, “Nowhere was Stalin’s ‘not one step back’ order more applicable than in the threatened city that bore his name.”[45] Stalingrad was important for many strategic and symbolic reasons, and just as the whole of the Soviet Union had been tied to the person of Stalin, so too had the whole of the war effort been tied to the city of Stalingrad. 

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            Cruel treatment was not exclusively exacted on Soviet soldiers, as plenty of Soviet brutality extended to German prisoners of war. Following the Battle of Stalingrad and German surrender, the entirety of the German Sixth Army fell into Soviet hands, which, at that time, numbered around 150,000 soldiers. Most German POWs were either pressed into burial and cleanup duties in Stalingrad or marched to prison and labor camps. The NKVD reported in mid-April 1943 that 55,228 prisoners in Stalingrad camps had died.[46] The number speaks for itself: Nearly half of the German POWs had perished within months of their surrender. The death rate confirmed the harsh treatment of German POWs who were underfed, exposed to the elements, and denied treatment for wounds and sickness. Some 2,000 surviving Stalingrad prisoners remained in Soviet prison camps until Stalin’s death in 1953. Klein, a German soldier convicted of war crimes, was sentenced to 25 years of hard labor, “Twenty-five years—that was of course so shocking for us we were practically speechless…Everything was taken away, our hair cut…we were different people—we were no longer human beings.”[47] Klein was released in 1953. 

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            Stalin had always taken a brutal stance when it came to prisoners, both German and Soviet. At the Tehran Conference of Allied Powers that followed the Battle of Stalingrad in November 1943, Stalin allegedly suggested the assassination of 50,000 Wehrmacht officers to subdue the German army. This proposal sounded especially uncouth to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill who “declared that the British people would never ‘stand for such mass murder.’”[48] The Soviet treatment of POWs was uniquely brutal compared to that of its Allies, and notorious even to the enemy. Merezhko said, “Germans just wouldn’t surrender to us…Their propaganda had it that ‘in Stalingrad Russians take no prisoners, shoot everyone on the spot.’ But the fear itself was of course justified.”[49] The fear of execution was another incentive for Germans to refrain from surrender. Scheins was held in a Soviet prison camp after the Battle of Stalingrad until 1949. His message to his Soviet captors was, “Look up, that’s where God is. He’s seen that and you bandits will go to hell.”[50] Many of his comrades in the camp committed suicide to escape the ugly conditions enforced by the Soviets, but Scheins held out hope that pressure from America and other Soviet Allies would prevent the slaughter of all POWs. To his luck, he was correct and survived the war. 

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            Not all Soviet POWs were subjected to such brutal treatment and a 50% fatality rate. Instead of manual labor, General Paulus and other high ranking Wehrmacht personnel were forced to participate in anti-Nazi propaganda campaigns arranged by the Soviets in which their signatures and photos were used to incite anarchy on the German front lines.[51] One German POW, Franz Schieke, a captain in the Wehrmacht and a captive in Soviet prison camps for seven years, claims, “that life as prisoner was not a bed of roses, for sure. But they treated us as human beings.”[52] His experience obviously differed from that of countless others who lost their health, and even lives, as a consequence of the Soviet prison system. The brutality was a product of the system instituted by Stalin and other higher-ups. On the individual level, some Red Army soldiers could be more understanding. Zverev explained, “We were trained to see him [the German soldier] as an enemy that was to be destroyed. Though at the same time we realized that it was a simple soldier—not an enemy by nature. Not every German, I think, was convinced that what their high command was doing was right—beginning with the very fact of attacking the Soviet Union…So I never felt the urge to put a bullet in one, let alone a POW.”[53] Just as many Germans had lost faith in the visions of their leaders, this sentiment was shared in the breakdown of Soviet faith in Stalin’s regime. The ruthless treatment of many German POWs presented the Soviet Union in a bad light to its own people, its enemies, and its allies.

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            When it came to Germans capturing Soviet prisoners, the invading Wehrmacht possessed less of a capacity to hold large POW populations, and thus their tactics for handling POWs were much different. Gehard Münch, a Wehrmacht captain, recalled that he often had more Soviet prisoners than German soldiers in his company.[54] With all of these extra men, the Germans would often force Soviet POWs into military service. These Soviet-turned-German soldiers were known as Hilfswillige or simply ‘Hiwis,’ and some 50,000 of them fought in Stalingrad.[55] To keep the men fighting against their own former comrades, the Germans used the all-to-real threat of Soviet punishment for those who might defect back to the Red Army. The NKVD was extremely wary of Soviets who had spent any time under German influence, and those suspected of corruption were sentenced to labor camps or executed. As Wehrmacht numbers dwindled, front line combat work increasingly fell into the hands of Hiwis. When asked if they would kill their own people, the Hiwis replied, “If we run back to the Russians, we would be seen as traitors. And if we refuse to fight, we’ll be shot by the Germans.”[56] Increased paranoia regarding the Soviet bureaucracy further exposed rifts in the will of the people and the will of Stalin’s government. 

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            No one endured more in the Battle of Stalingrad than the civilians living in the city. Beevor writes, “Never did a population suffer so much from both sides in a war.”[57] Both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army destroyed everything with which they came in contact in order to prevent the other from making use of it. The Battle of Stalingrad turned the invasion of the Soviet Union into a total war of annihilation. Grossman suggests, “Hitler had declared war on peasants and workers; it was the people’s earth he had invaded.”[58] The Germans waged war on the whole Soviet people, not just the Red Army, so it became the duty of the whole Soviet people to defend themselves. At the outbreak of fighting in Stalingrad, around 500,000 civilians occupied the city. Though some women and children eventually managed to cross the Volga to safety, Stalin emphasized the importance of civilians defending their own city. 200,000 men and women aged 16-55, nearly half of the population, were pressed into service.[59] Some civilians were pulled into front line work to replace deserters and casualties, as, according to Grossman, “These were the troops of a people’s war.”[60] Others were recruited for medical work. Medical workers often resorted to extracting their own blood to revive the wounded and were taught to give priority treatment to those with minor wounds who could be patched up and sent back into battle. Grossman writes, “Rarely in his life had the essence of Soviet unity seemed so clear to him.”[61] In a way, the war helped to unify all Soviets around a common cause. But it also united them in death. When the dust settled, less than 10,000 civilians remained in Stalingrad, though official reports denied such high fatalities. Kryzhanovsky proclaimed, “Saying that 42,000 civilians died in Stalingrad. That’s a damned lie. Because Stalin had forbidden evacuation…There have been more accurate figures, for instance, in an article in ‘Pravda’ that during the battle of Stalingrad about 200,000 civilians died—that’s as many as Hiroshima.”[62] Regardless of the exact number of civilian deaths, it was clear that the people suffered much during the battle. The civilians endured the same food and supply shortages as the soldiers. In Grossman’s Stalingrad, a soldier’s wife says, “We’ll run out of potatoes before spring. Same with bread. Same with firewood. The only thing we won’t be short of is grief.”[63] Kryzhanovsky further complained, “I’ll grouch a bit about how they say that Stalingrad was supplied with provisions during the battle. Fat chance! Stalingrad was hungry!”[64] Civilians who had never dreamed of fighting a war themselves were coerced into living like soldiers. They braved the battlefields, looking for cover and chancing their lives, fought the enemy with conviction, and went back to what was left of their homes smarting from the lack of clothing and supplies. While surviving soldiers from across the Soviet Union could dream of returning to their homes and families after the war, Stalingraders witnessed the very destruction of their city, their families, and their lives. 

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            Perhaps more critical even than the effects of the Battle of Stalingrad on the soldiers who fought in the battle and the civilians who bore the destruction of their city, was the impact of the battle on internal and external perceptions of the Soviet Union and Stalin’s regime. Though the invasion of the Soviet Union ended in a strategic victory for the USSR, forcing the Wehrmacht to retreat, it was a campaign rife with blunders. At the onset of Operation Barbarossa, Stalin refused to acknowledge that the Germans, with whom he had signed a nonaggression pact, would invade the Soviet Union in 1941. Even when it became clear that German invaders entered Soviet territory, Stalin was reluctant to make a public announcement on Soviet radio. Beevor writes, “Stalin, the totalitarian dictator, still could not come to terms with the idea that events might be outside his control.”[65] What remained in Stalin’s control was the leadership of the Red Army. Foolishly, he had purged the Red Army of nearly 40,000 officers just four years prior. The replacement leaders lacked in experience and the purges diminished morale with a general feeling of paranoia. As fighting developed in the Soviet Union, Stalin insisted on hearing the latest news from the front lines, but he also insisted on labeling unfavorable reports ‘panic-mongering,’ to the detriment of those making the reports.[66] Stalin made it clear that he cared little about individual Soviet casualties, focusing more broadly on the overall Soviet hold on important cities, like Stalingrad, and his control of the people through supportive propaganda. Beevor writes, “Stalin’s great advantage over Hitler was his lack of ideological shame.”[67] To Stalin, the whole Soviet people were at his disposal for the war effort, and rightfully so as the preservation of the Soviet Union was more important to him that the lives of its citizens. 

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            In order to elicit maximum civilian response, Stalin rebranded WWII as ‘The Great Patriotic War,’ tying the eradication of Nazi Germany to the prosperity of the Soviet Union. Red Army captain Vera Dmitrievna Bulushova asserted, “I felt responsibility. I volunteered. I didn’t know exactly what the war would be, but I knew that everybody around was joining up…Military service then was perceived as a duty, as a matter of course, as part of being a patriot.”[68] Inclusion in this grand patriotic goal did not mean that the average soldier was privy to Stalin’s plans to win the war. Secrecy from soldier and enemy alike was a tactic utilized to keep operational secrets under wraps. This, however, took a toll on soldier morale. Beevor explains, “The obsession with secrecy meant that men not directly involved with Operation Uranus [in the latter half of the Battle of Stalingrad] had not been told about it until up to five days after the start.”[69] Stalin relied on individual soldiers’ patriotic desire to fight for their land and people, but it was difficult to elicit this response when he did not respect the soldiers enough to tell them their missions in detail. 

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            Ironically, just as the Battle of Stalingrad exposed Stalin’s lack of concern for the human cost of the war, national morale soared after the German surrender at Stalingrad. Beevor writes, “Stalin was portrayed as the wise leader and great architect of victory.”[70] As the battle turned into a major strategic turning point in the war, Stalin was eager to capitalize on the city’s association with his name, claiming for himself all of the glory that came with such a victory. Overlooking excessive Soviet battlefield casualties, the Soviet Union earned global acknowledgement as a major military power. Grossman writes, “The tension of this battle was felt by millions of people in Europe, China and America. It came to determine the thoughts of politicians in Tokyo and Ankara; it influenced the tone of Churchill’s secret conversations with his advisers and the spirit of appeals and decrees signed by President Roosevelt.”[71] The Tehran Conference positioned the USSR at the fore of martial operations on the Eastern front, though this came with hesitation from Western leaders, like Churchill, who found it difficult to overlook the high casualties the Soviets deemed acceptable. Khodarkovsky echoed Churchill’s thoughts, “The enormous human cost of the victory showed, once again, that Moscow regarded human lives as easily disposable, and that none would be spared in the pursuit of victory or Stalin’s agenda.”[72]In total, an estimated 26 million Soviets perished in WWII.[73] The Battle of Stalingrad was just one small part of the total war that would be waged on the Soviet people through the spring of 1945. 

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            Casual treatment of casualty was not a complete surprise to those living under Stalin’s frivolously violent hand. Grossman concedes, “Never in Russian history had events succeeded one another with such dizzying speed as during the last twenty-five years [1917-1942]. Never had life’s various strata been so comprehensively rearranged.”[74] Stalinism had quickly established itself in everyday life for Soviets. The majority of front line soldiers had never known anything but Stalinism, and lacked the foresight to question it. Grossman later follows up, “Only in the last days and hours do such people realize that they have been deceived.”[75]This was the case with deserters, to whom Order No. 227 only further proved the brutality from which they ran. Those who acknowledged the Soviets’ brutality were eliminated and focus always returned to the evil of the Nazis. Grossman linked all of the destructive total war waged in Stalingrad as a direct product of Hitler’s will, “A huge city [Stalingrad] had been killed…An unimaginable amount of work and material had been destroyed, in some monstrous act of desecration…’This is Hitler.’”[76] Never mind that the Soviet government was also complicit in the destruction of the city, impressment of civilians into combat, and lack of resources allocated to the city’s warmth, health, and defense. Such truths were strictly prohibited at the time Grossman was writing immediately after WWII. 

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            Stalin demanded to be heralded as the great defender of the Soviet Union and specifically Stalingrad. Kryzhanovsky said, “For us Stalingrad is of paramount importance. We are simply proud of it! I, for example, can’t say anything bad about Stalin’s rule either before the war, during the war or after. I always knew that Stalin was everything. Stalin was Victory.”[77] The cult of personality associated with Stalin was only bolstered by the victory at Stalingrad. It coincides with the Russian proverb that Faustova, along with other survivors, articulated, “Death is not half bad when the world is watching.”[78] The world was certainly watching the Battle of Stalingrad, and like Churchill, watching with a skeptical eye. The military success of the Red Army against the Wehrmacht was undeniable, but so too was the enormous number of casualties and Stalin’s apparent lack of concern for this number.  

​

            It was not only Stalin who was viewed with apprehension after the Battle of Stalingrad; Hitler’s reputation was another casualty of the battle. The first mistake made by Germany was delaying Operation Barbarossa, which had been planned for mid-May, but was pushed to the end of June. This resulted in the Wehrmacht being caught in a winter war in 1941-1942 in Moscow, and led to the winter encirclement in Stalingrad a year later. Grossman stresses, “Only a blitzkrieg—a lighting war—could have brought him [Hitler] true victory. Hitler made a wild gamble—and the Red Army had already denied him his only chance of success.”[79]Invading the Soviet Union, the Germans exacted horrible means of total war on the Soviets they encountered. As part of Rassenkampf, or race war, German martial law exonerated the Wehrmacht of many would-be atrocities against Soviet civilians. Beevor explains, “Many historians now argue that Nazi propaganda had so effectively dehumanized the Soviet enemy in the eyes of the Wehrmacht that it was morally anaesthetized from the start of the invasion.”[80] When the Soviets turned the civilian population against the Wehrmacht with a vengeance, the Germans were unprepared for the horrors to which they would be subjected by an overwhelming Soviet force. 

​

            Hitler, like Stalin, denounced any notion of capitulation or retreat, and always believed the will of the German people would triumph in the face of adversity. Münch recalled what it was like to serve as a captain in the Wehrmacht under Hitler, “Our faith was unshakable at the time—our confidence unshakable…Those who were ten years old in 1933 [when Hitler became chancellor] were twenty in 1943. They had never heard anything else, only what was whispered in their ears.”[81] Much of the Wehrmacht had grown up in Hitler Youth programs, and fighting in WWII was the realization of their years preparing to defend German blood. Hitler, a master of propaganda, working to maintain control of popular opinion even as martial control evaded his grasp, tried desperately to cover up news about the surrounded troops at Stalingrad.[82] But nothing could be done to block all news from the front. Encircled German soldiers wrote, “I hope that in this new year of 1943, I won’t have to survive as many disappointments as in 1942,”[83] and, “My trust in our leadership has rapidly sunk below zero.”[84] Hitler refused to acknowledge the real conditions inside the kessel where his Sixth Army was trapped. A Wehrmacht captain sent to explain the situation to Hitler’s deaf ears said, “I saw then that he had lost touch with reality. He lived in a fantasy world of maps and flags…It was the end of all my illusions about Hitler. I was convinced that we would now lose the war.”[85] Rather than acknowledge the writing on the wall and call for a reassessment of the operation, Hitler and Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels doubled down on the announcement, “Surrender out of the question. Troops fight on to the end. If possible, hold reduced fortress with troops still battleworthy…Sixth Army has thus fulfilled its historical contribution in the greatest passage in German history.”[86] Hitler’s mission in invading the Soviet Union, though it was meant to claim Lebensraum for the German people and strategic access to oil and allies in the east, ended up wasting the lives of many Germans for whom the invasion was being fought. 

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            Hitler attempted to build a cult of personality in which his authority would be unquestioned throughout Germany. Up until the Battle of Stalingrad, he had been mostly successful. Grossman writes, “Tragically, many people believed that by working for Hitler, they were working for Germany.”[87] The hard lesson learned by many, was that Hitler was content to sacrifice the Germans of the present for the glory of Germany in the future. Hitler said, “What is life? Life is the nation. The individual must die anyway.”[88]With the Sixth Army surrounded, rumors began to spread of a German surrender. Hitler encouraged his officers to commit suicide rather than hand themselves over to Soviet captors. German soldiers like Hindenlang had mixed emotions about the practice of honor-suicide: suicide seemed anti-Christian, but imprisonment seemed anti-German.[89] Notably, General Paulus refused to commit suicide and went on to be used as a propaganda puppet by the NKVD, much to Hitler’s dismay. Beevor notes, “Hitler was not, of course, concerned with saving lives, he was interested only in creating potent myths.”[90] Despite the Paulus propaganda being pumped out of the Soviet Union and distributed to the German front lines by means of dropped pamphlets, Goebbels officially announced to the German people that there were no survivors of the Battle of Stalingrad. He blamed this on Soviet brutality, and extended the standard sentiment that “they had died so that Germany might live.”[91] In the weeks following the Battle of Stalingrad, while Hitler and his lackeys committed to the idea of total war, many Germans began to notice cracks in the Nazi regime that had not been apparent until the major martial defeat. 

​

            Resistance groups—such as the White Rose, led by young siblings Sophie and Hans Scholl—began to pop up as Germans became disaffected with the National Socialist Party. These efforts were quashed with as much vengeance as any foreign enemy. Arguments against Soviet brutality and censorship struck an ironic chord in many Germans whose criticism of the government was now also silenced. Beevor writes, “Germans who did not admire the Nazis recognized the grotesque paradox only too clearly. The invasion of the Soviet Union had forced the Russians to defend Stalinism. Now the threat of defeat forced Germans to defend Hitler’s regime and its ghastly failure.”[92] The flaws of Nazism and Hitlerism were exposed by the defeat at Stalingrad, and sparked animosity for the regime that would cement itself most plainly in attempts on the Führer’s life in the following years. Failures in the boasted Wehrmacht exposed weaknesses in Hitler’s propaganda machine and threatened unquestioned faith in his vision. 

​

            Looking back at the Battle of Stalingrad, nearly 80 years removed, the battle clearly shows itself as a major turning point in the tactical, martial, and strategic battle log of WWII, and as a turning point in the perception of both the German and Soviet governments. Surveying the battle, one discovers that its effects were widespread and varied. Grossman captured some of these feelings through his characters, which accurately reflect the sentiments of real survivors, reflecting on the way events at Stalingrad might be remembered for decades and centuries to come:

Perhaps in 800 or 1,800 years, when this road and these trees no longer existed, after this land and this life had fallen asleep forever, covered by a new land and a new life of which we can know nothing—perhaps some old greybeard would walk slowly by, stop for a moment and say to himself, “There were trenches here once. Long ago—in the days of the Great Revolution, of the great construction projects and terrible invasions—soldiers came this way, marching towards the Volga.” And he would remember a picture from a children’s textbook: soldiers marching through the steppe with simple, kind, stern faces, in old-fashioned clothes and old-fashioned boots, with red stars on their caps. The old man would stop. He would prick up his ears. What was it? A sigh? The thud of footsteps? Men marching?[93]

This passage begs the question as to how the Battle of Stalingrad is remembered today. Real life survivor Münch found it impossible for years following the war to tell even his wife about his experiences at Stalingrad. He said, “The brain has to calm down slowly, or else all these evil spirits rise again. One can’t just shake it off. It was too cruel…Those who have not experienced it cannot imagine that such things happened.”[94] Stalingrad has been largely forgotten, particularly in western history, due to the sullied name of the Soviet Union. But the wounds suffered by survivors were and are very real. Luzia Kollak, whose husband died serving the Wehrmacht in Stalingrad said, “Now most of it is behind me, but I just can’t accept that my husband had to die in Russia…I still suffer because of the memories.”[95] The most upsetting part for many survivors is that Stalingrad has been erased from both national and international memory. Since 1961, Stalingrad has been known as Volgograd in an effort to eliminate the vestiges of Stalinism from Soviet/Russian life. The inadvertent consequence has been the elimination of the memory of the Battle of Stalingrad from the fore of war memory. Without the name of the city as a constant reminder of the cruelty that took place, it has become easier to disregard the city’s history and ignore its foundation upon the burial ground of thousands of German and Soviet dead. Zverev says, “It’s of course very upsetting that the city still hasn’t received back its name ‘Stalingrad’…For us, veterans and especially for Stalingraders, it’s very upsetting indeed.”[96] Until the Battle of Stalingrad can be remembered for every facet of its complex history—victory and death, glory and destruction—memory will always fall short of honoring those who died. The first step is to say the name Stalingrad. 

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            The Battle of Stalingrad proved to be a critical moment in repelling Axis forces, but it also changed the way in which the world saw Hitler and Stalin. As Germans and Soviets alike began to falter in unwavering faithfulness to their leaders, the ugly face of total war was exposed. The world learned that both leaders had aspirations that extended beyond the preservation of their peoples’ lives. For the Soviet Union, this became more apparent to those situated externally, as other Allied leaders like Churchill and Roosevelt reluctantly allowed Stalin to play a bloodthirsty role in defeating the more pressing enemy of Nazi Germany. In Germany, distrust of Hitler festered in small pockets, underground resistance groups, and whispered words between wary soldiers and officers. Hindsight has turned Stalingrad into a ghost. Its importance is undeniable, but the name has been erased from maps, its archives have vanished from history, and the city has been rebuilt on the graves of thousands of Wehrmacht and Red Army soldiers and Soviet civilians. Like the Battle of Stalingrad, the history of the USSR in WWII is complex and controversial, but historians must never shy away from grappling with its story. 

 

[1] Vasily Grossman, Stalingrad (New York: New York Review Books, 2019), 119.

[2] Anthony Beevor, Stalingrad (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), 12.

[3] Grossman, 412.

[4] Beevor, 25.

[5] Beevor, 27.

[6] Beevor, 150-151.

[7] Beevor 286.

[8] Beevor, 212.

[9] Beevor, 219.

[10] Anatoliy Grigoryevich Merezhko, interview by Jochen Hellbeck, Facing Stalingrad, 2009, https://facingstalingrad
.com/interviews/anatoliy-grigoryevich-merezhko/.

[11] Beevor, 89.

[12] Merezhko.

[13] Beevor, 22.

[14] Maria Georgievna Faustova and Aleksandr Filippovich Voronov, interview by Jochen Hellbeck, Facing Stalingrad, 2009, https://facingstalingrad.com/interviews/maria-faustova-aleksandr-voronov/.

[15] Beevor, 235.

[16] Grossman, 376.

[17] Grossman, 149.

[18] Grossman, 366.

[19] Faustova and Voronov.

[20] Grossman, 75.

[21] Grossman, 137.

[22] Beevor, 188.

[23] Erich Klein, interview by Jochen Hellbeck, Facing Stalingrad, 2009, https://facingstalingrad.com/interviews
/erich-klein/.

[24] Beevor, 31.

[25] Beevor, 40.

[26] Beevor, 44.

[27] Heinz Huhn, interview by Jochen Hellbeck, Facing Stalingrad, 2009, https://facingstalingrad.com/interviews
/heinz-huhn/.

[28] Beevor, 62.

[29] Beevor, 229.

[30] Gerhard Hindenlang, interview by Jochen Hellbeck, Facing Stalingrad, 2009, https://facingstalingrad.com
/interviews/gerhard-hindenlang/.

[31] Beevor, 306.

[32] Beevor, 104.

[33] Beevor, 106.

[34] Beevor, 149. Rattenkrieg translates ‘rat war’ in German. 

[35] Grossman, 109.

[36] Beevor, 281.

[37] Beevor, 330.

[38] Jochen Hellbeck, “The Battle of Stalingrad,” Facing Stalingrad, April 2015, https://facingstalingrad.com
/battle-stalingrad/.

[39] Boris Serafimovich Kryzhanovsky, interview by Jochen Hellbeck, Facing Stalingrad, 2009, https://facingstalingrad.com/interviews/boris-serafimovich-kryzhanovsky/.

[40] Beevor, xi-xii.

[41] Michael Khodarkovsky, Russia’s 20th Century (New York: Bloomsbury, 2019), 105.

[42] Faustova and Voronov.

[43] Grigory Afanasevich Zverev, interview by Jochen Hellbeck, Facing Stalingrad, 2009, https://facingstalingrad
.com/interviews/grigory-afanasevich-zverev/.

[44] Johann Scheins, interview by Jochen Hellbeck, Facing Stalingrad, 2009, https://facingstalingrad.com/interviews
/johann-scheins/.

[45] Beevor, 97.

[46] Beevor, 413.

[47] Klein.

[48] Beevor, 419.

[49] Merezhko.

[50] Scheins.

[51] Hellbeck.

[52] Franz Schieke, interview by Jochen Hellbeck, Facing Stalingrad, 2009, https://facingstalingrad.com/interviews
/franz-schieke/.

[53] Zverev.

[54] Gehard Münch, interview by Jochen Hellbeck, Facing Stalingrad, 2009, https://facingstalingrad.com/interviews
/gerhard-munch/.

[55] Beevor, xii. The German term Hilfwillige roughly translates to ‘willing helper’.

[56] Beevor, 186.

[57] Beevor, 45.

[58] Grossman, 404.

[59] Beevor, 97-98.

[60] Grossman, 299.

[61] Grossman, 290.

[62] Kryzhanovsky.

[63] Grossman, 32.

[64] Kryzhanovsky.

[65] Beevor, 6.

[66] Beevor, 37.

[67] Beevor, 221.

[68] Vera Dmitrievna Bulushova, interview by Jochen Hellbeck, Facing Stalingrad, 2009, https://facingstalingrad.com
/interviews/vera-dmitrievna-bulushova/.

[69] Beevor, 286.

[70] Beevor, 404.

[71] Grossman, 945.

[72] Khodarkovsky, 106.

[73] Beevor, 428.

[74] Grossman, 69.

[75] Grossman, 189.

[76] Grossman, 841.

[77] Kryzhanovsky.

[78] Faustova and Voronov.

[79] Grossman, 412.

[80] Beevor, 15.

[81] Münch.

[82] Beevor 274.

[83] Beevor, 318.

[84] Beevor, 335.

[85] Beevor, 345.

[86] Beevor, 373.

[87] Grossman, 557.

[88] Beevor, 392.

[89] Hindenlang.

[90] Beevor, 381.

[91] Beevor, 399.

[92] Beevor, 402.

[93] Grossman, 950-951.

[94] Münch.

[95] Luzia Kollak, interview by Jochen Hellbeck, Facing Stalingrad, 2009, https://facingstalingrad.com/interviews
/luzia-kollak/.

[96] Zverev.