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September 1942 – Stalingrad, USSR: Food became scarce as the siege carried over into the third month. Constant bombing missions by the Luftwaffe had reduced the city of Stalingrad to rubble. Soviet soldiers and civilians hid within the shells of buildings, gutted from fire and constant attacks. Wave after wave of Nazi troops swept into the city, fighting from street to street and building to building. At one point, the Germans occupied ninety percent of the city, reducing the Soviet 62nd Army to a fraction of its original strength.

Both the civilians and the Soviet soldiers in Stalingrad were reduced to capturing rats for meals, eventually boiling the soles of their shoes for sustenance. All the while, Stalin was relentless in his orders to hold the city at all costs, demanding that the 62nd Army go on the offensive to recapture what had been lost. In the retaking of Mamayev Kurgen, only three percent of Soviet soldiers survived of the original ten thousand. Morale was low as it became clear that the city would undoubtedly be lost.

However, the Germans hesitated. Rather than send forces over the Volga River to defeat the main Russian force, they concentrated on the western side of the city, bringing large artillery pieces forward to bombard the Soviet entrenchments. This hesitation enabled the Soviets to mass artillery batteries on the east side of the river. As the battle raged, German tanks, the best in the world and the deciding factor in many battles, became useless as the rubble in the city covered the roads. The Germans began losing ground as their military superiority was disadvantaged.

By October 1942, the Soviet 62nd Army was reduced in strength to less than 50,000 soldiers and held a small strip west of the Volga River. The Nazi forces bombarded them heavily, but the Soviets held their ground. The bombing missions had weakened the Luftwaffe forces at Stalingrad. With reduced strength, they began losing their air superiority as Stalin redirected planes from the entire Soviet Union to Stalingrad.

As ice flows began to block traffic on the Volga River in the early Russian winter, the Soviet forces on the western bank of the river lost their supply line. Continuing to hold their ground despite overwhelming odds, civilian factory workers from the tank and ammunition factories on the riverbank worked to repair the Soviet equipment. The Soviets – soldiers and civilians alike – displayed remarkable courage and determination during the first months of the Battle of Stalingrad. Facing insurmountable odds and severely outnumbered, they held onto Stalingrad despite a lack of supplies and mounting death toll. From their initial strength of nearly 200,000 men, the Soviet 62nd Army had been whittled down to about 45,000 trapped with their backs against the Volga River. However, they refused to give up. The 62nd Army deserves to be remembered with honor and glory.

Chris Stanwick, Editor