The Beginning, Middle, and End

Stalingrad: The City That Defeated the Third Reich, by Jochen Hellbeck.

I will cover three aspects of the battle; as noted in the title, the beginning, middle, and end.

In the Line of the Main Drive

To the soldier, the phrase “in the line of the main drive” carries dread.  No words are more terrifying in war.

This is the title of an article published during the battle in Red Star, and written by Vasily Grossman.  The article describes the destruction brought on by the invading German army, and the feeling of those who were “in the line of the main drive.”

The regiments that formed Colonel Gurtyev’s Siberian division took up their positions at night….Yes – behind them was the ice-covered Volga, behind them lay the fate of Russia.  The decision was to fight to the death.

The Siberian division had one mission: to defend a factory – a factory no longer operating, of course; it was a stronghold on the map.  They stood in the line of the main drive: what was spread over two fronts in 1914 – 1918, and in this war was previously spread over a 3000 kilometer front, was now focused on Stalingrad and the Caucasus.

It is easy to point to the threats made against Soviet troops that was used to motivate them to fight to the death; perhaps it should not be diminished that they also recognized that they knew were fighting for the fate of Russia and that this was important to many of the soldiers.

The German history in this war until now was one of advance, measured in several kilometers per day; the Soviets clawed back, when they could, in much smaller chunks:

Only in Stalingrad does one know what a kilometer truly means: one thousand meters, one hundred thousand centimeters.

Artillery, enemy bombers, concentrated fire, day after day, week after week.  In one month, the Germans launched 117 assaults on this Siberian unit; in one fateful day, the Germans attacked twenty-three times.  The Germans felt that their assault was beyond the ability of a human to withstand; yet, there the Siberians withstood.

After weeks of such assaults, the Germans launched their decisive attack against the factory: eighty hours of pounding brought on by German airplanes, heavy mortars and artillery.  The Germans broke through.  In their victory, the Germans sowed seeds of their defeat.  Every trench and foxhole now became a Soviet stronghold, each with its own command and control.  Urban guerilla warfare.

The Siberian division did not leave the line, nor did they even once look back; for they knew that behind them was the Volga and the fate of their country.

The Sound of Music

Just as all seemed lost….From Major Vasily Georgievich Belugin:

And then it started.  The thundering of the first artillery salvo.  Where was it coming from?  And why?  It was odd, unbelievable that this powerful salvo was coming from the east, from the east banks of the Volga.  There was a second and third salvo, and then they began firing at will.

A thousand guns fired for forty minutes.  Finally, the Soviet artillery was working for the defenders of Stalingrad.  The relief for the defenders was noticeable: during the barrage, they were able to sit down for dinner.  After the barrage, silence; not a single shot in return from the Germans.

After the battle, the captured Germans would offer that it was the Russian artillery and mortars (and not the aircraft or crudely crafted propaganda) that was decisive.  Once these were brought to bear, the tide turned; once these were brought to bear, morale changed sides.  From Ernst Eichhorn:

All of the officers in the 24^th Panzer Regiment think highly of the Russian artillery.  They’re accurate and don’t scrimp on shells.  If there hadn’t been any artillery at Stalingrad, and it was just infantry attacking the surrounding forces, then the Germans could have easily fought them off and resisted longer.

The Russian T-34 tank also took praise from this German officer, “an excellent piece of machinery.”

Submission

The Russians encircled the Germans; from now on, it was merely a matter of time – albeit, still months of fighting lay ahead.  Once surrounded, German general Friedrich Paulus issued his order, ending with the words “Hold on.  The Führer will get you out!”  It didn’t quite go that way.

As the Russians entered one building after another, they found Germans huddled in the dark – sometimes a thousand or more at a time.  The stench was overwhelming; human waste, the dead and injured; smoke.

On January 31, Paulus was promoted to Field Marshall.  The message from Hitler to Paulus was clear: no German Field Marshall had ever been taken alive.  Paulus was to fight to the death or commit suicide.  Paulus decided not to agree.  He declared himself a private citizen, thus considering himself not responsible for the German surrender.

When the Soviets entered the basement, they found [Paulus] lying in a bed next to Roske’s room, where other German officers were negotiating the terms of surrender.

Fritz Roske became divisional commander when his predecessor, General Alexander von Hartmann had sought a hero’s death.  On January 26 – just a few days earlier – he walked up to the line, standing.  He took a bullet in the head.

Roske’s first words made clear: he was not negotiating on behalf of the Field Marshall.  The surrender was complete.  Nikita Khrushchev arrived the next day; he was overjoyed.

Epilogue

Senior Lieutenant Alexander Shapsovich was wounded and hungry; he was also days outside of friendly lines.  He was crawling his way back to Russian-controlled territory.  He was 150 meters away when he decided he would not make it.  Then, good fortune:

…this old man and his daughter picked me up and carried me to their home in Stalingrad.  The daughter dressed my wounds and gave me some milk to drink.  Her name was Zoya.  Later I was sent across the Volga.  I kissed the man and his daughter good-bye.  He cried for me like I was his own son.  After that I was in the hospital.

Paulus survived in Russian captivity during the war.  After the war, he settled in Dresden, East Germany.  He died fourteen years and one day after his surrender; his body was transferred from the east to the west and buried in Baden Baden, next to the body of his wife. 

He had not seen her since he left for war in 1942.

Salvation

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of the Communist Party if you do works for the communist party lest any man should boast.

Stalingrad: The City That Defeated the Third Reich, by Jochen Hellbeck.

Before continuing with other aspects of this battle I will take a diversion: a look at the language of salvation through the Communist Party; salvation that differed totally from that offered by the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Revolution was a catastrophic event for the Church.  I only offer superficial (i.e. Wikipedia) background.  The final decades of tsarist rule saw an upswing in those who sought a return to the Church and the Christian faith, as well as an increase in mysticism and visions of catastrophe and redemption.

In 1914 in Russia, there were 55,173 Russian Orthodox churches and 29,593 chapels, 112,629 priests and deacons, 550 monasteries and 475 convents with a total of 95,259 monks and nuns.

The year 1917 was a major turning point for the history of Russia, and also the Russian Orthodox Church.

That’s an understatement.  The Bolsheviks seized Church lands; during the war, the Church sided with the White Russians.  Wrong side.  Then again, the Church didn’t have a “right side” it could choose.

But from these roots – roots traced back to Greek missionaries from Byzantium to Kievan Rus in the ninth century – within a few decades, any such feeling was lost.  The language remained the same; but the prayers were to a different god.

Salvation

Ephesians 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God 9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.

From Junior Sergeant Alexander Semyanovich Duka:

Before we went I applied for party membership….The one thing I wanted was to know that if I died, I’d die a Bolshevik.

Redemption by Blood

Ephesians 1:7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us.

Redemption for sins against the communist state was possible.  Soldiers deported to penal colonies for abandoning a position in the front…

…were to be given an “opportunity to redeem their crimes against the motherland with blood.”

The soldiers were reminded of Ilya Ehrenburg’s dictum:

“The blood spilled in battle is sacred.  Each drop of it is a precious sacrifice on the altar of the motherland.  If a man has guilt before the people, he removes it with blood in combat.  I said that they were to wash away the guilt with blood.”

The Final Confession

Luke 23:39 One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” 40 But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? 41 We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  43 Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

For the communist:

Several political officers reported that seriously injured soldiers asked to enter the party so they could die as communists.

To Die in Glory

Acts 7:55 But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”

59 While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

From Hellbeck:

Party functionaries tried to persuade soldiers to submit their applications before combat.  This way they could be certain of finding a place in the communist pantheon if they were killed.

“How can you go fight?  If you’re killed, you’ll die without being politically conscious.  But if you die as a member of the Komsomol, you will die in glory.”

Panikhida (Prayers for the Dead)

Not very easily found in the Bible, but Orthodox Christians are not bound by the doctrine of Sola Scriptura; they accept a progression of teaching from the saints.  For the Russian Orthodox:

You ask in what sense do we pray for the souls of the departed. Why, in the same sense that we pray for the souls of those with us because Christ is Risen, trampling down death by death. The barrier between living and dead has been eliminated due to the Resurrection of Christ.

For the Russian Communist:

“Now we’re working on the issue of posthumously removing the convictions of those who were killed because they fought and died heroically.”

Conclusion

Romans 1:21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

The Greatest Generation

In the spring of 1984, I went to the northwest of France, to Normandy, to prepare an NBC documentary on the fortieth anniversary of D-Day, the massive and daring Allied invasion of Europe that marked the beginning of the end of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.  There, I underwent a life-changing experience.

Ten years later, I returned to Normandy for the fiftieth anniversary of the invasion, and by then I had come to understand what this generation of Americans means to history.  It is, I believe, the greatest generation any society has ever produced.

-        The Greatest Generation, by Tom Brokaw

Hogwash.

Every sentence of this gushing tribute is hogwash, well, except for the part about Brokaw visiting Normandy.  This invasion did not mark the beginning of the end of Hitler’s Third Reich.  If this is the criterion through which one is to judge “the greatest generation any society has ever produced,” one need look to a time about eighteen months earlier and more than three-thousand kilometers to the east.

Stalingrad: The City That Defeated the Third Reich, by Jochen Hellbeck.

The battle of Stalingrad – the most ferocious and lethal battle in human history – ended on February 2, 1943.  With an estimated death toll of a million, the bloodletting at Stalingrad far exceeded that of Verdun, one of the costliest battles of World War I.

So begins Hellbeck.  The book is compiled from 215 eyewitness accounts – an oral testimony taken during and after the battle.  Testimony is taken from general down to cook, male and female, soldiers and nurses and political officers.  The book was prepared for publication by a joint commission of German and Russian scholars and historians.

From this book, there are a couple of different themes I will examine in the coming days.  For now, an introduction.

Stalingrad.  Almost six months of fighting; between the two sides, over two million combatants; of these, almost two million killed, wounded or captured.  A key result of the German defeat: Germany moved significant military resources from west (i.e. where Brokaw’s generation would eventually fight a drastically weakened Germany) to east to deal with the losses and the newfound Soviet momentum.

While Operation Barbarossa did not result in a defeat of the Soviets in one massive operation, the German advance continued – delayed but not halted.  In the early days of the battle, there was no reason to believe Stalingrad would hold.  From Captain Afanassyev, at Stalingrad on August 20, 1942:

In fact, it was terrifying.  When I stepped outside for a look, I was overcome by doubt; the advancing German army was enormous….there’s no way we could hold out against this.  That was how I felt then.  One look into the periscope would send me into a panic.  It wasn’t exactly cowardice but the feeling that destroying everything that was moving at us was impossible.

Had Stalingrad been lost, Germany’s path to Moscow would have been open from the south; Germany’s push into and through the Caucasus and Caspian oil and into the Middle East would have advanced unimpeded.

Newspapers, political leaders, and generals in Germany, Britain and the Soviet Union understood this battle in exactly these terms.  For example, from the diary of British General Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff:

I felt Russia could never hold, Caucasus was bound to be penetrated, and Abadan (our Achilles heel) would be captured with the consequent collapse of Middle East, India, etc. After Russia's defeat how were we to handle the German land and air forces liberated? England would be again bombarded, threat of invasion revived... And now! We start 1943 under conditions I would never have dared to hope. Russia has held, Egypt for the present is safe. There is a hope of clearing North Africa of Germans in the near future...Russia is scoring wonderful successes in Southern Russia.

Up until this point, for over a year the British suffered defeat after defeat.  The United States had yet to enter the war Europe in any meaningful way.  It was the Soviets doing the heavy lifting.