On the east bank of the Volga River, between LeninStraße and Suskaya Road, stands a small red brick building with a four-story concrete structure covered with bullet holes, next to which is a stone stele that reads: 1943.9.26-1943.11.25, this is the witness of Stalingrad, pavlov Building.
In September 79 years ago, the Germans and Soviets fought a fierce street battle in Stalingrad, and the German army once occupied 80% of the urban area and 90% of the central urban area of Stalingrad, with more than 2 million casualties in the battle, of which the Soviet casualties exceeded 470,000.
In this battle, soviet lieutenant Pavlov led more than 20 troops to fight the Germans here. Knowing that death was certain, Pavlov and his soldiers held firm, repelling repeated attacks by germans that had multiplied several times.
The Pavlov Building, together with the statue of Marshal Zhukov on Lenin Square and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, became a monument to this heroic city.
History goes back to 1942, when the German army seemed to be victorious, but hidden a huge hidden danger, when the oil they spent more than a decade in the war was rapidly decreasing, without oil, tens of thousands of German tanks, aircraft, artillery and armored vehicles would become a pile of scrap iron, without oil, the german army's most important combat effectiveness, the German armored division will be invincible.
In order to save oil, the German Third Reich cut back on food and clothing, stipulating that only the government had the right to use cars, and even invented shower gels instead of soap, and in order to support transport ships to North Africa, they would pump oil from merchant ships and charge them.
At that time, among the world's major oil-producing countries, oil in the Middle East could not be transported because of Turkey's neutrality, and the oil of the United States naturally could not be expected, while the Caucasus region of the Soviet Union, which was close at hand, had a large number of reserve oil fields led by the Baku oil field, which was the largest oil field in the world at that time, accounting for 71% of the entire Soviet Oil Production.
It can be said that if the German army at that time had oil from the Caucasus, they could fight against the whole world, and to hold the Caucasus region firmly in their hands, they had to take Stalingrad.
For the Soviet Union, Stalingrad was the third largest transportation hub in the Soviet Union and the largest port city on the Volga River, and in the sparsely populated Soviet zone, the communication line was undoubtedly the lifeline.
With Stalingrad, they could transport new tanks and new troops to every battlefield in the Soviet Union through rail and water transport, and without Stalingrad, the Soviet soldiers would become a mess of sand in the vast land of the Soviet Union, and even the German Southern Army could go north without any fear and attack Moscow again.
The attribution of Stalingrad became the dividing line between two armies, two nations, two peoples, and even the world for decades to come, and the eyes of the Soviet Union and the German army met in the city of Stalingrad, where they would engage in a deadly struggle under hitler and Stalin's order to "attack/hold out at all costs" until one of them shed the last drop of blood.
The German 6th Army, part of the Nazi Southern Army, had 430,000 pre-war personnel in 1942, had 18 divisions, more than 440 tanks, more than 5,300 artillery pieces, all of whom were young recruits aged 20-30 years old, well-armed, powerful and well-armed, well-armed, powerful and well-staffed, and was the most powerful regiment on the Eastern Front at that time, with combatants accounting for a quarter of the entire Nazi German army.
This is a division of hundreds of battles, which have already made great achievements in the battles of Poland and Western Europe, and this time they will pave the way for the Fuehrer's occupation of Stalingrad and the future of the Nazis. For the sake of safety, the Fuehrer dispatched the air force of the Fourth Army to provide fire support.
On August 23, 1942, the Luftwaffe 4th Air Force, dispatching 1,600 sorties of aircraft to Stalingrad, bombarded the city of Stalingrad for several days, pouring more than 1,000 tons of ammunition. It was the height of summer, the Caucasus was dry and rainless all year round, and the ancient city was immediately turned into a sea of burning fire.
Stalingrad had 600,000 inhabitants at the time, and because the bridge had been blown up, civilians had to drag their families and take their mouths to avoid air raids next to the Volga River. Only more than 200,000 of these civilians survived, and the rest were buried in the fire.
Twenty days later, the 6th Army successfully entered Stalingrad, but the next trend was not optimistic.
Stalingrad is an east-west, narrow city along the Volga River, its length is more than 30 kilometers, but the strategic depth is only a few kilometers, and the Soviet soldiers are continuously transported from the east bank of the Volga river to the west bank and thrown into the city for battle.
The very difficult street battles began for both sides, and this was where their enemies excelled, the tanks and cannons that had given them countless advantages, had little effect on the unusually strong streets and buildings of the Soviet Union, in which a Soviet veteran, with a cheap grenade, launched a suicide attack, could scrap an expensive tank and all the personnel on the tank.
Nazi soldiers had to get out of armored vehicles and tanks, grab 98 Mauser guns, and engage their enemies in close combat. In the street battles, the Slavs' skillful fighting skills and tenacious character were fully revealed, the speed of the German advance was measured in meters, and every street corner, every basement, and even every ditch became a fulcrum that must be occupied with life.
There was a joke circulating within the German army at the time: we had invaded a house, and through a morning of fighting we occupied a living room, and it was expected that in the afternoon we would occupy the kitchen of their house.
Under the command of Paulus, the commander of the 6th Army at the time, the Soviet front was once compressed to only a few buildings and a few ports, but the Soviet defense was still stubborn.
The Germans also suffered heavy casualties, an infantry division of more than 10,000 men, and by the end of the war there were 900 men left, and each infantry battalion ended up with more than 60 soldiers and more than 10 officers.
Marshal Trikov trained 400 snipers, these mysterious snipers caused a lot of trouble for the Germans, they were the most ruthless killers in the street battle, when defending the front, one of them was a shepherd named Vasily Zaitsev, in this battle killed 242 Germans, he later became the protagonist of the movie "Soldiers In the City".
By the end of August, the Germans had reached the Volga River, and with their aircraft and artillery, they had launched an attack on every ship on the river.
However, thanks to the efforts of the engineering corps, civilian ships and the Volga Fleet, Stalingrad's contact with the other side of the river was never interrupted. A steady stream of Soviet soldiers poured out of the ports of the Volga, and on average one soldier died every nine minutes.
The Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the SOVIET Union was not prepared to drag down the Nazi German army with support alone, and by early September, the support plan of Marshal Zhukov, the commander-in-chief of the Soviet Army, had been drawn up, code-named Operation Uranus.
They were ready to launch a large-scale encirclement and annihilation, starting with the relatively weak Romanian minions, attacking Zulafimović and Kretzkaya in the north, and the Stalingrad Front in the south would break out in the direction of Salpa Lake. It was almost a remake of the Battle of Kiev, only this time the hunters became prey.
However, under germany's air superiority, it was not easy to launch an unconscious encirclement and annihilation war under the eyes of the German army, and they dragged on until November, and the snow and wind would be the natural comrades of the Soviet Union, and in the snow, hundreds of thousands of troops turned on electromagnetic silence mode and marched in the cold.
Above their heads, the Soviet Air Force used all its tricks to attract the attention of the Air Force, and under the cover of heavy snow and friendly forces, 1.1 million Soviet troops arrived at their destination and completed the encirclement.
On 23 November, the two armies formally met at the Soviet Ski Division, and Paulus, realizing that something was wrong, informed the Führer of his intention to break through, but was ordered by the Führer to hold on, informing them that they would be supported by airdropping supplies to continue the battle, and he appointed Manstein to provide support.
Manstein was the best commander of the Nazi German army at the time, and the classic thirty-odd days of occupation of France was his handiwork, but this time, faced with the absolute disparity in numbers, he was powerless, and he once pushed the front 30 kilometers from Stalingrad, where he was in a stalemate with the Soviet army.
In order to avoid greater casualties, Marshal Zhukov took the approach of encircling but not attacking, patiently waiting for the collapse of the Nazis. Unsurprisingly, the air support force gradually became unsustainable, according to calculations, the besieged German army needed 750 tons of supplies, and the airdrop could only provide more than 30 tons.
A large number of Nazi soldiers fell ill and starved to death, relying solely on the strength of faith, and under the pretext of offensive and defensive exchanges, they insisted until January 31, when they submitted a surrender request to the Red Army, and more than 91,000 Nazi soldiers surrendered, the day before hitler's 10th anniversary of coming to power.
If the Defense of Moscow made the Allied side realize the limits of the Nazi German army, then Stalingrad made the Soviet Union see the shortcomings of the Nazis, and this was the first time that the Allies formed a main army group to annihilate the Nazis, which was of great significance.
After the Battle of Stalingrad, the balance of history gradually tilted to the Soviet Union, the 6th Army was destroyed, the main force of the Nazi German army was severely hit, and Hitler had to draw more servants from all over the country to fight, because these people were far less literate than the German army, which was undoubtedly a drinking and thirsty drink.
Due to a lack of personnel and energy, the Nazi front line of war shrank from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, and since then there have been few large-scale offensive plans.
After the training of Stalingrad, the offensive strategy of the Soviet army was more skillful and flexible, and the understanding of the enemy was further improved, and a large number of Soviet generals represented by Marshal Zhukov gradually moved to the forefront of the war.
Taking advantage of the Soviet Union's powerful logistical hematopoietic capabilities, they played an important role in a series of battles such as Stalin's Ten Assaults, and finally guided the Soviet Union to victory.
Text/Dream
Reference: Stalingrad: A Heroic City where Monuments Will Forever Reside, Xinhua News Agency