Maddened by flames and explosions, women and children rushed to the shore, blocking the already overloaded Army crossings. The maternity and the hospital were on fire, the water supply did not work. The brick «skyscrapers» of the center and factory districts received high-explosive bombs, while numerous quarters of wooden one-story buildings were hit with incendiaries. For several days in a row, the Germans methodically tried to destroy the city and killed the civilian population. On the same day, August 23rd, 4th Air Fleet began an intimidation campaign: a carpet bombing of Stalingrad. The German units blocked the Stalingrad-Moscow railway, destroyed an airfield in the Rynok village area, tanks kept the Volga under fire, and traffic in that area became possible only at night. Units of 16th Panzer Division, covered on the flanks by 3rd and 60th Motorized Divisions, reached the Volga River north of Stalingrad in the vicinity of the villages of Latoshinka, Rynok and Spartakovka, cutting the Stalingrad front in two.
The efficient Wehrmacht machine and the elite 6th Army under General of Panzer Troops Friedrich Paulus, captured a bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Don, and the next day, August 23, directed the first strike in the direction of Stalingrad. In this article, I will try to slightly expand the geography of heroic events, and most importantly, to recall those fighters and commanders of the Red Army, thanks to which the word Stalingrad became the analogue of «Kuzma's mother» for all uninvited guests from the West, and the eponymous toponym forever registered on the streets and squares of European cities.Īt the end of the «training» summer of 1942, not all was clear.
During Soviet times this momentous page of history was varnished from all sides, as a result of which the entire Stalingrad battle left but a few notions in the general consciousness: Pavlov’s House which was not captured by the enemy, Mamaev Kurgan which passed from hand to hand many times, and the basement of the department store where the German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus unexpectedly met with fighters of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. The city on the streets of which events unfolded in the autumn of 1942, and which became a turning point in the Second World War. The word resounded around the world 70 years ago, and is now one of the most significant symbols of heroism and selflessness of the Soviet people.
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