Episode 13 - Chuikov takes command of the 62nd Army as the fighting escalates on 14th September 1942

Episode 13 is full of fire and brimstone as the Sixth Army and Fourth Panzer Army finally arrive in Stalingrad proper. That’s when the fighting becomes more personal with every house and every apartment a stronghold and skirmishes begin to take place inside different rooms of the same house.

By the end of the first week of September 1942 the German Sixth Army had come up to the western limits of the city almost along the whole of its length, while the Fourth Panzer Army were probing the southern limits.

Ditches and barricades proved no lasting barriers to the weight of German pressure, only men and women could hold the Wehrmacht back. The air-attacks had stopped for only a freak building here and there stood untouched among the vast devastation. The great blocks of flats, the fine public buildings were now crazy hollow shells.

Civilians were now sheltering in the basements and some would remain in these gloomy pits until the defeat of the Germans in February 1943.

And it was for this crazy shell of a city that the fiercest of all city-battles of the Second World War was joined. For the Russians, its factories could no longer contribute to the Soviet war-effort, for the Germans it was useless as a shelter.

Even its strategic value either for the Germans or the Russians was now extremely doubtful. For Hitler as we’ll see, it was to become an object of a Führer-prestige obsession. For Stalin it would become the symbol of the ultimate Russian defiance.

For the Germans it would be synonymous with final defeat – for the Russians it was to mark the beginning of final victory.

Last episode I explained how General Golikov was left behind on the West bank of the Volga River joining General Lopatin who commanded what was left of the 62nd Army.

Golikov had begged to be allowed out of Stalingrad but Kruschev who was the political commissar in command along with Yeremenko told him to pull himself together. Lopatin on the other hand was a nervous wreck and hardly an ideal leader of men at this moment.