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p In early 1942, the Soviet High Command held that the turning of the tide in the Moscow Battle could be consolidated and developed. What was needed was a second front by the United States and Britain. But the governments of those two countries were disinclined to fulfil their commitment. And the nazi intelligence soon found out that no preparations were undertaken.

p The absence of a second front enabled Germany to manoeuvre freely with the considerable forces it still had. A new offensive was planned against the Soviet Union along new operational principles necessitated by the breakdown of the Barbarossa Plan.

p The new plan was aimed at crushing the main forces of the Red Army, depriving the USSR of its economic potential in the South and then building up for a renewed operation against Moscow.

p No longer could the nazis mount an offensive simultaneously in all strategic directions. There were to be successive offensive operations, the first of them on the southern wing.

p ’Hitler’s plans for 1942 summer offensive provided graphic evidence of Germany’s predatory war aims, outlined forthrightly by Goebbels: "This war is not a war for a throne or an altar, this is a war for grain and bread, a war for a well-laden breakfast, dinner, and supper table... a war for raw materials, for rubber, iron and ore."  [95•1 

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p That was not entirely true. The war may have been all that Goebbels said, but it was also waged for nazi world supremacy.

p For the southern offensive the nazis massed go divisions and 4 brigades out of the total of 229 divisions and 16 brigades that they had on the Soviet-German front at the end of June 1942.  [96•1  These jumped off on June 28, driving for Voronezh. In a month of heavy fighting they advanced 150 to 400 km, but failed to encircle the Soviet troops, which continued to resist courageously, holding new defence lines. After the initial success, the Germans decided to develop the offensive with two army groups—Group “B” heading for the Volga and Group “A” for the Caucasus. In the meanwhile, Soviet counter-attacks from the North against the flank of the advancing enemy had halted the latter at Voronezh, the main theatre shifting south, in the Stalingrad direction. The great Stalingrad Battle began with a nazi offensive from the Ghir River on July 17. Within the very first weeks the Soviet fighting forces added outstanding exploits of courage and tenacity to their glorious record. At the end. of July, near Kletskaya, four anti-armour soldiers of the 33rd Guards Division (P.^J Boloto, I. Aleinikov, F. Belikov an4 Samoilov) barred the way to 30 panzers. In three days of fierce fighting they destroyed 15, not letting the enemy pass. Somewhat later, in another sector, 16 men of the 4oth Guards Division repulsed five attacks and destroyed six out of the 12 attacking panzers. Feats of this kind were a daily occurrence.

p However, vastly superior in numbers and arms, the enemy pressed forward. From July 17 to August 17 the nazis-came another 60-80 km closer to Stalingrad. On August 23, they thrust powerfully towards the city proper, breaching the front and pouring into a gap with the Luftwaffe striking massively from the air. Marshal A. I. Yeremenko, who was in command of the Stalingrad Front as a Colonel-General, describes the scene in the afternoon of August 23:

p "Stalingrad was enveloped in flame, smoke and soot. Fires broke out all over the city; it was ablaze; the log buildings burned like torches; vast billows of smoke and tongues of flame’ shot up over the factories; the piers were alight; the oil tanks were like active volcanoes, spitting 97 lava.... All Stalingrad seemed to be dug up and blackened.

p A hurricane appeared to have hit the city, raising it into the air and letting the fragments of buildings fall on squares and streets. The air had become acrid and bitter, and difficult to breathe."  [97•1 

p Yet the nazis faltered and—much to their surprise—failed to capture the city. The Soviet resistance and counter-attacks stemmed their advance. However, the German offensive potential was still considerable. Daily, fresh masses of men and arms were committed to the battle. And on September 13 came the general assault.

p Soviet resistance, directed by now experienced generals, grew firmer by the hour. The splendid Soviet soldier, unshakeably convinced in his cause and coming victory, rose to full stature in the Volga battle. His development was the result of educational work by the Communist Party. The Communists brought out the finest qualities in the Soviet soldiers, who, covered themselves with undying glory.

p There were many men among the Stalingrad defenders like sniper V. Zaitsev, who destroyed 225 Germans. Zaitsev it was who spoke the phrase that became the motto of Stalingrad: "For us no land exists across the Volga!" Mortally wounded, signaler V. Titayev clamped .his teeth on the end of a torn telephone cable, restoring the connection. A handful of Soviet soldiers defended a strategically important four-storey house at which German guns fired up to 120 shells daily, and retained possession until the end of the battle. The building is known by the name of the sergeant in command as Pavlov’s House. The squad consisted of Russians (Pavlov, Alexandrov, Afanasyev), Ukrainians ( Sabgaida and Glushchenko), Georgians (Mosiashvili and Stepanoshvili), the Uzbek Turganov, the Kazakh Murzayev, the Abkhazian Sukba, the Tajik Turdyiev and the Tatar Romazanov.

p At a high price in men and arms, the nazis reached the Volga on October 15, cutting the Red Army front in two. At one time the depth of the Soviet Stalingrad defences, with the Volga behind them, was no more than 700 metres. Yet the Red Army stood its ground; Here, it began its long trek back to the West. On the bank of the Volga was sealed the fate of Berlin. In 1967, Knapton and Derry, two British 98 authors, wrote: "The Russians had sacrificed more men to save one ruined city than the Americans were to lose in combat during all the campaigns of the war. In so doing they had made the defense of Stalingrad a turning point in the history of Europe, if not the world."  [98•1 

p The Soviet Command took stock of the opportunities for a counter-offensive that a stout defence, pinning down a huge enemy force at Stalingrad, would create. While defending the city, it maintained positions on the flanks of the German battering ram at Stalingrad, and began concentrating forces north-west and south of the city well in advance.

p While the nazi Army Group B unleashed its fury against Stalingrad, part of Army Group A mounted Operation Edelweiss to capture the Caucasus. From Rostov the nazi armies set out south-east.

p In defensive battles between the Don and the northern foothills of the Main Caucasian Range, the Soviet troops, fighting in extremely difficult circumstances, displayed incredible tenacity. Repulsing ferocious enemy attacks, counter-attacking strongly, the Red Army backed away to the northern foothills, there to stem the German move in November 1942. All enemy attempts to blast the way through to the Transcaucasus were repelled at a high price for the nazis.

p Then came the hour of the big turn in the Great Patriotic and Second World War. In the morning of November 19, 1942, the roar of thousands of Soviet guns and mortars gave notice of the Red Army’s offensive at Stalingrad.

p The German Command still had a considerable force of 50 divisions massed in the area. True, the enemy no longer had the advantage of superior numbers. Strength was approximately equal. If anything, the Red Army had a slight edge. The ratio in men and officers was i : i, it was 1.3 : i in tanks, 1.3 : i in guns and mortars, but i : i.i in planes.  [98•2  The Soviet offensive was made possible thanks to the skill of the Command. While the enemy force had bogged in Stalingrad, the Soviet generals built a decisive superiority in men and arms in the direction of the main blows and delivered two converging ones: one from the north-west against the township Sovietsky, and the other simultaneously from the south.

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p The two Soviet fronts (the Southwestern under General N. F. Vatutin and the Don under General K. K. Rokossovsky) effected a junction and encircled the entire enemy Stalingrad group in less than five days. The Stalingrad Front (under General A. L Yeremenko) took part in the operation, too. The ring round the Germans shrank to half its original area in the following six days. Twenty-two nazi divisions with a vast amount of weapons and vehicles were compressed into an area of 1,500 sq km, vulnerable from all directions to long-range artillery. Meanwhile, another 12 divisions were wiped out.

p The Soviet forces repulsed the attempts to relieve the beleaguered force made by Army Group Don under General Fieldmarshal Fritz Erich von Manstein.

p On January 8, 1943, a Soviet offer of surrender was turned down by the encircled German troops. Two days later, the Don Front began a mopping-up operation, slicing the encircled force into parts, isolating each part, and eliminating them one by one. General Fieldmarshal Friedrich von Paulus and his staff were taken prisoner on January 31, and by the evening of February 2 the entire nazi Stalingrad group was either destroyed or captured. By then the prisoners’ total climbed to 91,000, including 24 generals.

p Hitler Germany proclaimed a day of mourning—a day that for all progressive mankind was a day of hope. The Soviet victory on the Volga put paid to Hitler’s plans of world conquest. The official US war history says: "The heroic stand of... Soviet peoples saved the United States a war on her own soil."  [99•1 

p While Hitler mourned, the radiant sun of victory rose over the Soviet Union and its Armed Forces. It was still a long way to the West—from the Volga to the Elbe and Spree. But the start had been made, the war reversing its direction from Mamayev Kurgan, the strategic height at Stalingrad, towards Berlin.

p Western historians, if in the least objective, admit the crucial significance of the Stalingrad victory, though some falsifiers have still not given up running it down. But the facts are against them. Walter Goerlitz, a West German 100 historian, for one, pointed out that "Stalingrad was the turning point in the Second World War".  [100•1  British historian Ronald Seth wrote: "If you are honest, whatever you may think about Communism, you cannot withhold admiration for the Russians and their military leaders, for the courage, endurance and skill in holding the Germans at Stalingrad in 1942, and with Stalingrad as their springboard, eventually turning the tide of war in their own favour, and, incidentally, to the advantage of the Western Allies."  [100•2 

p The counter-offensive at Stalingrad grew into a general Soviet offensive all down the line from Leningrad to the Caucasian foothills. In January 1943, the blockade of Leningrad was lifted and the “lifeline” across the ice of Lake Ladoga replaced by railway communications along the lake’s southern shore.

p New exploits were inscribed in the chronicle of the Soviet war effort. In January 1943, north of Velikiye Luki, a Guards regiment of infantry, 56th Division, attacked an enemy stronghold in Chernushki village. Its advance was stemmed by a machine-gun nest, which kept the soldiers on the ground. Six submachine-gunners dispatched to destroy the machinegun were cut down before they reached it. A private, Alexander Matrosov, crept towards the machine-gun and, coming to within a few yards from the embrasure, opened fire against it. The fire was well aimed; however, though a mine near the machine-gun was caused to explode, the enemy continued firing. Matrosov leaped and covered the embrasure with his body, thus enabling his mates to rush forward. The battle was won at the price of Matrosov’s life, the memory of whom is now revered. He was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and the 254th Guards Infantry Regiment, in which he served, has been given his name.

p In the fierce cold of winter, the Red Army advanced west ome 600-700 km, crushing 113 enemy divisions in 4 months and 20 days. It cleared important economic and strategic areas and totally eliminated the threat to the Volga and the Caucasus.

p The outcome of the Stalingrad Battle was impressive evidence of the power and viability of the socialist state. The 101 Stalingrad victory had strong international and historic repercussions.

p It turned the tide in favour of the Allies in all theatres, including the African and Pacific.

p Victory over fascism was dawning. A new phase began for the Resistance movement. The peoples were eager to contribute to the victory and relieve some of the burden borne by the Soviet Union due to the absence of a second front. In this new phase, the nazi invaders were in most occupied countries opposed not by mere partisan detachments, but by well-knit liberation armies.

p In Germany proper, too, the Communist Party became more active underground. The number of anti-fascist groups multiplied. The judgement passed down by the nazi judiciary in the case of the biggest and most massive anti-fascist organisation headed by veteran Communists Anton Sefkov, Franz Jakob and Bernhardt Bestlein, said that members of the group "had come to the conclusion that after Stalingrad Germany can no longer win the war, and decided to do everything they could to speed up the defeat of the Third Reich and reestablish peace".  [101•1 

p The entire fascist bloc, not Germany alone, was hurled into a crisis by the Soviet victory at Stalingrad. It was a heavy blow for Germany’s European allies, who began toying with the idea of quitting the war. The Japanese Government, which had once already postponed the date of its attack against the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1942, postponed it once more until the following year. Meanwhile, Germany’s relations with some of the neutral countries, which provided it with extensive aid before Stalingrad, deteriorated.

p Joachim Wieder, a West German historian, observes: "The consequences of the German defeat came into evidence everywhere: the neutral powers, Turkey, Spain, Sweden and Portugal began to show restraint; the fighting spirit of Germany’s allies sank to nil. The partisan movement in the occupied areas became stronger, the military rebels in the Wehrmacht became stronger too, and so did the opposition throughout the country."  [101•2 

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p The Stalingrad victory firmed up the anti-Hitler coalition. It won admiration everywhere. Only the extreme reactionary element in the United States and Britain was perturbed and irritated. Its hopes of seeing the Soviet Union exhausted and subjugated had collapsed.

p Yet grateful mankind gave due credit to the unexampled exploit of the Soviet people at Stalingrad. The word " Stalingrad" heartened all anti-fascists, all champions of national and social freedom. It inspired writers and poets, musicians and painters. "Born I was to sing the immortality of Stalingrad,” wrote Pablo Neruda, a Chilean poet in his poem, "A New Song of Love to Stalingrad".  [102•1  Rockwell Kent, the US artist, when making a gift to the USSR of his paintings and books, said in November 1960: "All of us are indebted to the Soviet people for Stalingrad. This gift that I make is an act of gratitude."  [102•2 

Stalingrad is for all a symbol of tenacity and courage of freedom, and of the grandeur and invincibility of social progress, of socialism.