Episode 12 - The Germans cut off the Russian 62nd Army and Hitler changes his tune

The Battle of Stalingrad

In episode 12 we hear how the German Sixth Army and Fourth Panzer Army are at the gates of Stalingrad and about to enter the city named after the Soviet Dictator. The 16th Panzer Division which is part of the Sixth Army has already found its way into the northern suburbs and frantic defence by the Russian Red Army has slowed their advance. In the south, the Fourth Panzer Army has been held up at times by a fighting retreat by the Russian 62nd and 64th Armies, although there are increasing reports of Russian soldiers surrendering in large numbers. In response, NKVD commissars were told to start executing those caught running away. It’s the first week of September 1942 and the Autumn rains have already begun to fall, causing the German’s some difficulty. They’re relying on the Luftwaffe who are flying missions in support of ground forces and the overcast conditions are proving to be a real problem. As the Wehrmacht draws closer to Stalingrad, the number of casualties are beginning to rise on both sides. Civilians are fleeing the city across the Volga while workers in the factories have formed up into battalions and will fight the German army in almost suicidal assaults in the coming weeks.The nearest parallel to this horrific battle was the mincing machine of Verdun in the First world War. But there are significant differences too. At Verdun the contestants rarely saw each other face to face – being battered to death by high explosives or cut down at long range by machine gun fire. At Stalingrad as we’ll see each separate battle resolved itself into a combat between individuals. Soldiers would swear at each other inside different rooms in the same house and across streets. Often they would hear each others breathing in the next room and hear the sound of tinkling of metal as the enemy reloaded their firearms. Hand-to-hand duels were finished in the dark as smoke and brick dust swirled about, soldiers would kill each other with knives and pickaxes, clubs of rubble and garot others with wire or stab them with twisted steel. As Alan Clark writes in his great work called Barbarossa, fighting took place in a giant petrified forest of blackened chimney stacks where defenders had little cover in the suburbs as the houses there were built of wood which had burned to the ground in the massive air raids of the 23rd August. The Luftwaffe had pulverised the city, and as the Germans advanced they would find the Russians would use these uneven iron concrete and stone buildings to great effect. The sewers had become tunnels and the Germans would soon have a name for the type of fighting inside Stalingrad – Rattenkrieg – ratwar.

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