Episode 17 - Pavlov defends his house as Hitler orders a major attack on the 14th October

This is episode 17 and we’re into the second week of October 1942 where the Sixth Army continues to batter the Russian 62nd Army on the banks of the Volga. Russian soldiers are grimly hanging on to their slither of land. To the south, the German 4th Panzer army has been hammering away trying to push the Russians across the mighty river but things are not going swimmingly.

Last episode we heard how General Paulus as growing more strained as each day passed and Stalingrad refused to fall. Inside the city, General Chuikov who led the 62nd Army had stiffened his men’s resolve to fight after panic at times.

“In the blazing city..” he said afterwards “we did not suffer cowards. We had no room for them..”

IT was only by the 8th October that the political department in Stalingrad wrote a report for Stalin back in Moscow saying “the defeatist mood is almost eliminated and the number of treasonous incidents is getting lower…”

It was revealed later that 13 500 Russian soldiers were executed in Stalingrad over the period of the battle which would extend until February 1943.

Civilians were now being evacuated in huge numbers – including the 5th October. A day earlier Colonel Groscurth of the Sixth Army had written “will Stalingrad turn into a second Verdun?”.

The first world war battle that chewed up a million French and German soldiers was an historic attempt at using men as mincemeat in an attempt to overcome the enemy. That was the German plan. Verdun was one of the reasons why the reparations demanded at the Treaty of Versailles by the French were so onerous – and of course led directly to the installation of the Nazi’s who played on German citizen’s belief they’d been unfairly dealt with after the First World War.