Stalingrad
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94. For more on Nikolai Kosykh, see Sibiriaki na zashchite Stalingrada (Novosibirsk, 1943).
95. On September 18, 1942, Commissar Petrakov wrote his daughter a letter: “My black-eyed Mila! With this letter I am sending you a cornflower [ . . . ] Imagine: here the battle rages, enemy projectiles explode, everything is destroyed and yet here grows a flower [ . . . ] And then the next explosion, and it has torn the cornflower. I have removed the flower and put it in my shirt pocket. The flower grew and wanted the sun, but the force of the explosion has destroyed the flowers, and if I had not picked them up, they would have been trampled. Just what the fascists do with the children in the occupied villages around; they kill and crush the children [ . . . ] Mila! Your Papa Dima will fight to the last drop of blood against the fascists, to the last breath, so the fascists will not treat you like this flower. What you do not understand, your mom will explain.” The letter was first published in 1957 in Rabotnitsa. That same year saw the inauguration of the Soldiers Field memorial west of Volgograd. Among the mass graves stands a bronze statue of a girl holding a cornflower in her hands. At her feet is a triangular stone in the shape of a Red Army letter. On it are carved Commissar Petrakov’s words to his daughter. Stalingradskaia bitva. ntsiklopediia, p. 355.
96. Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov (1901–1988), one of Stalin’s closest aides, was a member of the State Defense Committee during the war. In this capacity Malenkov traveled to Stalingrad in August 1942 to inspect the city’s defenses.
97. Kirill Semenovich Moskalenko (1902–1985). Commander of the 1st Guards Army.
98. Boris Petrovich Shonin (1918–1942), assistant chief of staff of the 339th Rifle Regiment of the 308th Rifle Division, recipient of the Red Star and the Lenin orders. Shonin’s deeds were documented by Captain Ingor, the interviewee: M. Ingor, Sibiriaki: Stalingradtsy (Moscow, 1950), pp. 22–26.
99. Vasily Anufriyevich Zhigalin (1910–1942). Senior lieutenant, assistant to the regimental chief of staff. Fell on October 27, 1942, in Stalingrad (details at www.obd-memorial.ru).
100. Semyon Grigoryevich Fugenfirov (1917–1942). Assistant to the regimental chief of staff. Died of his wounds on October 29, 1942, in Stalingrad (details at www.obd-memorial.ru).
101. A reference to an open letter to Stalin sent by hundreds of Red Army soldiers fighting at Stalingrad on the eve of the revolutionary holiday in November 1942. The soldiers swore to defend Stalingrad to the last drop of their blood. The letter was published in Pravda, November 6, 1942, p. 1.
102. Probably Prokhor Vasilievich Kayukov (1914–1942), who died in Stalingrad in October 1942, according to www.obd-memorial.ru.
103. Captain Ingor writes that before the war Zoya Rokovanova taught Russian literature at a school. At the front she hosted readings under the motto “Life Is Magnificent!” The readings featured the life of revolutionary writer Nikolai Chernyshevsky (1828–1889), whose writings supplied the motto. Rokovanova had books shipped from Omsk to prepare for the readings. After the readings, she distributed written summaries among the soldiers. M. Ingor, Sibiriaki—gurt’evtsy—gvardeitsy (Omsk, 194?), pp. 44–46. The publication date on the volume, 1941, is a misprint.
104. That is, German aircraft, probably a Focke-Wulf fighter bomber.
105. The “Call by the participants in the defense of Tsaritsyn to the defenders of Stalingrad” was published in the army newspaper For Our Victory. Za nashu pobedu, October 2, 1942.
106. The book was published in 1943 under the title Sibiriaki na zashchite Stalingrada (OGIZ, 1943). It included the stories: A. Svirin, “Sibiriaki v boiakh za Stalingrad”; V. Grossman, “Napravlenie glavnogo udara”; V. Belov, “Bogatyri Sibiri”; M. Ingor, “Leitenant Boris Shonin”; M. Ingor, “Artillerist Vasily Boltenko”; V. Belov, “Vasily Kalinin,” and others.
107. Grossman, Gody voiny, pp. 388–399.
108. Krasnaia zvezda, November 25, 1942, p. 3. Grossman talked with the soldiers of the 308th Rifle Division before the beginning of the November 19, 1942, counteroffensive. In later editions the essay was slightly altered to foreshadow the Soviet victory. Grossman, Gody voiny, pp. 49–61.
109. Grossman, Gody voiny, p. 365.
110. Most of the interviews were conducted on the ships of the Volga flotilla, which were scattered after the battle of Stalingrad: to conduct the interviews, the historians had to travel to Kuibyshev (now Samara), Saratov, Sarepta (near Stalingrad), and Chorny Yar (near Astrakhan).
111. The division was refurbished after it lost 80 percent of its personnel fighting in eastern Ukraine in summer 1942. Isaac Kobylyansky, “Memories of War, Part 2,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies, December 2003,:147. In April 1943, the division was renamed 87th Guards Rifle Division.
112. Stalingrad 1942–1943. Stalingradskaia bitva v dokumentakh (Moscow, 1995), p. 192. Latoshinka today borders on the northern outskirts of Volgograd. During the war, the village was often called Latashanka. The spelling has been standardized here.
113. Tsentral’ny arkhiv Ministerstva oborony Rossiiskoi Federatsii, f. 1247. op.1. d.10. l. 105.
114. Samsonov, Stalingradskaia bitva, p. 240.
115. Glantz, Armageddon in Stalingrad, p. 522.
116. Apparently the maneuver was postponed for twenty-four hours. See also Oleynik, interview.
117. The Soviet general staff and German Wehrmacht reports are cited from Stalingradskaia bitva. Khronika, fakty, liudi (Moscow, 2002), 1:827–842.
118. Stalingrad 1942–1943, pp. 187–188. The document bears the signatures of Yeryomenko, Khrushchev, and Varennikov.
119. Stalingradskaia bitva. Khronika, fakty, liudi, 1:842.
120. Wolfgang Werthen, Geschichte der 16. Panzer-Division, 1939–1945 (Bad Nauheim, 1958), pp. 106–108, 110.
121. Werthen, Geschichte der 16. Panzer-Division, p. 116; Glantz, Armageddon in Stalingrad, pp. 521–524.
122. Stalingrad 1942–1943, pp. 183–184, 187; see also Zaginaylo, interview.
123. Stalingrad 1942–1943, p. 192.
124. Erëmenko, Stalingrad, p. 248. A recent Russian publication identifies the losses of the landing operation but also points out that the Soviet battalion “had destroyed 10 to 15 enemy tanks and up to an infantry battalion of the enemy.” In addition, it notes that the action successfully concealed Soviet preparations for Operation Uranus. (Stalingradskaia bitva, pp. 224–225). That, however, had not been the stated goal of the landing maneuver.
125. Isaak Kobylianskii, Priamoi navodkoi po vragu (Moscow, 2005), chap. 5.
126. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. I, op. 80, d. 3, 7–8, 12, 16, 28, 32, 80. Those interviews that bear dates were recorded between July 18 and 28, 1943. The Interviewers were Vasily A. Divin, Filipp St. Krinitsyn, and Nikolai P. Mazunin, and the stenographers Ye. S. Dassayeva and V. Shinder. The latter, the record notes, was a sailor of the Red Fleet.
127. Colonel (and as of December 1942, Major General) Sergey Fyodorovich Gorokhov (1901–1974) commanded the 124th Independent Rifle Brigade and the Northern group of the 62nd Army.
128. Shadrinsky Bay is on the eastern bank of the Volga, opposite the settlement, located on the river’s western bank.
129. Today the village is located near the Volga cargo port.
130. Sredne-Pogromnoye is a village on the left bank of the Akhtuba.
131. At another point in the interview, Zaginaylo said about him, “Fyodorov is an amazingly quiet commander; he does not shout, is not nervous, but explains the order clearly.”
132. Oleynik possibly confused Kazakhs and Bashkirs. Before the landing maneuver the division was resupplied in Bashkiria, probably with local recruits.
133. Nikolai Nikitich Zhuravkov (1916–1998).
134. This refers to the six-tube 15cm Nebelwerfer 41, which Soviet soldiers called Vanyusha, in contrast to their Katyusha.
135. Anton Grigoryevich Lemeshko. Lieutenant of the Guards, Commissar of the Northern Group of the Volga Flotilla.
136. Probably Ivan Mikhailovich Pyoryshkin.
137. The
brigade fought since September 1942 at Stalingrad, first as part of the 64th Army, later in the 62nd, 57th, and 51st Armies before being restored to the 64th Army in January 1943. See Burmakov, interview; Stalingradskaia bitva. ntsiklopediia, p. 401.
138. Friedrich Roske (1897–1956). Previously regimental commander in the 71st Infantry Division. Succeeded General Alexander von Hartmann as divisional commander on January 26, 1943, after his death. According to several witnesses, Hartmann had sought a “hero’s death”: he walked up to the battle line, standing tall, and was shot in the head. Kehrig, Stalingrad, p. 533; Torsten Diedrich, Paulus: Das Trauma von Stalingrad (Paderborn, 2008), p. 289.
139. Akte Dobberkau (p. 2), in RMA Hirst Collection, Hoover Institution Archives (Stanford University), Box 10.
140. Diedrich, Paulus, p. 285.
141. Ibid., pp. 289–291.
142. Kehrig, Stalingrad, p. 542f.
143. In 1860, 65 percent of the officers of the Prussian army came from the nobility. Until 1913, the share of aristocratic officers in the Imperial Army stood at 30 percent. In 1918, 21.7 percent of generals were aristocrats. After the Nazis took power, the percentage declined again. In 1944, 19 percent of all generals were of noble origin. Bartov, Hitler’s Army, p. 43.
144. The scene in Beketovka was captured in the documentary film Stalingrad (dir. Leonid Varlamov, 1943). The speaker dubbed the German commander correctly as “Friedrich Paulus.” Yet in his 1972 memoir Leonid Vinokur repeated the title “Von Paulus.” L. Vinokur, “Plenenie fel’dmarshala Paulyusa,” Raduga: Organ Pravleniia Soiuza pisatelei Ukrainy 1972, no. 2: 145–148.
145. Army General Shumilov came from a poor peasant family, as did Captains Ivan Morozov and Lukyan Bukharov. Both negotiated with Generals Schmidt and Roske in the department store basement. See interviews with Shumilov, Morozov, and Bukharov.
146. Fritz Roske, “Stalingrad,” manuscript, 1956. From the private archive of Bodo Roske, Krefeld. Presented in abbreviated form in Die 71. Infanterie-Division im Zweiten Weltkrieg 1939–1945, ed. Arbeitsgemeinschaft “Das Kleeblatt” (Hildesheim, 1973), pp. 299–300.
147. Cited from the television documentary Stalingrad: Eine Trilogie (2003). The commandant of Stalingrad reported that a group of Germans was seized in a shelter on March 11, 1943 (Demchenko, interview).
148. On the role of European volunteers who joined the Wehrmacht, see Hans Werner Neulen, An deutscher Seite: Internationale Freiwillige von Wehrmacht und Waffen-SS (Munich, 1985); Müller, An der Seite der Wehrmacht.
149. Burmakov was a colonel during the battle and was only promoted to major general on March 1, 1943.
150. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 11, 14–15.
151. A reference to Operation Ring, which was initiated on January 10, 1943. See pp. 11–12.
152. Duka wanted to say, “Hand over your weapons!” (“Geben Sie Ihre Waffen!”), but he mistakenly said: “Hand the guards!”
153. This is confirmed by Kehrig in Stalingrad, pp. 542–543.
154. Red Square was adjacent to the Square of Fallen Heroes. Several German wartime maps show only Red Square in the city center, omitting the larger Square of Fallen Heroes. Red Square was abolished in the course of the postwar reconstruction of Stalingrad.
155. This could have been Boris V. Neihardt, translator with the 51st Army Corps. In view of a possible surrender to the Soviets, Neihardt was ordered to serve Paulus and the Army Command on January 22, 1943. Kehrig, Stalingrad, p. 539.
156. Ivan Andreyevich Laskin (1901–1988) was the 64th Army’s chief of staff between September 1942 and March 1943. In 1941, Laskin had commanded a rifle division at the Southwestern front and successfully broken through a German encirclement. In December 1943, the NKVD learned that the Germans had in fact captured and interrogated Laskin, before he managed to escape again. (After his escape he had remained silent about this fact.) The major general, who had received Soviet and American decorations for his role in the capture of Field Marshal Paulus, was arrested, accused of treason and espionage, and—after prolonged interrogations that stretched over years—sentenced to a fifteen-year prison term. The basis for this harsh treatment was Stalin’s Order no. 270 of August 1941. Laskin was freed as part of an amnesty in 1952 and rehabilitated in 1953. Naumow and Reschin, “Repressionen gegen sowjetische Kriegsgefangene und zivile Repatrianten in der USSR 1941 bis 1956,” p. 339.
157. In his 1972 memoir Vinokur describes his arrival at the department store consistent with the facts described here, but he gives a different slant to the encounter with the hundreds of armed German soldiers in the courtyard of the store: “The Germans huddled in a corner together talking to each other. You could only understand single word fragments: “Kamrad, Kamrad, Hitler kaput! Paulus kaput, kaput.” Our officers and soldiers were talking boldly, courageously, with dignity. It seemed as if the capture of fascist generals was an everyday thing” (L. Vinokur, “Plenenie fel’dmarshala Pauliusa,” p. 146). Vinokur’s 1943 interview conveys how threatened he felt surrounded by armed Germans. The memoir hides this feeling and gives an anachronistic image of the defeated Germans trying to ingratiate their superior Soviet opponents.
158. Paulus was in a different room. Gurov confuses the exceedingly tall field marshal with Roske, who was shorter: “Roske was tall and thin. Paulus was shorter, but had a fuller build.”
159. In the final part of the interview Vinokur again refers to the scene: “I was speaking through the interpreter. I went into Roske’s room. I said: [sic]. He said the same thing. He liked that. He asked if I would sit down.” It would be nice to know what word or words Vinokur used when he greeted the German officer. The stenographer did not say, perhaps wisely?
160. Emka: Soviet M-1 limousine, colloquially referred to as “M-type.”
161. During the Seven Years War, Russian and Austrian troops occupied Berlin for a few days in October 1760.
162. Probably Shumilov was asked if he had asked Paulus why he had not committed suicide.
163. To establish a spatial and moral “new order” in Europe and the world was the explicit goal of the Axis powers: Germany, Italy, and Japan. Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (London, 1998), pp. 143–146.
164. The reference is probably to Major Demchenko, the city commandant of Stalingrad. See p. 92.
CHAPTER 3: NINE ACCOUNTS OF THE WAR
1. W. I. Chuikov, Legendarnaia shestdesiat vtoraia (Moscow, 1958); Chuikov, Nachalo puti, ed. I. G. Paderina (Moscow, 1959); Chuikov, Vystoiav, my pobedili. Zapiski komandarma 62-i (Moscow, 1960); Chuikov, 180 dnei v ogne srazhenii. Iz zapisok komandarma 62-i (Moscow, 1962); Chuikov, Besprimernyi podvig. O geroizme sovetskikh voinov v bitve na Volge (Moscow, 1965); Chuikov, Srazhenie veka (Moscow, 1975); Stalingrad. Uroki istorii. Vospominaniia uchastnikov bitvy, ed. W. I. Chuikov (Moscow, 1976).
2. Chuikov, Srazhenie veka, pp. 108–109.
3. Walter Kerr, The Russian Army: Its Men, Its Leaders, and Its Battles (New York, 1944), p. 144; Werth, The Year of Stalingrad, p. 456.
4. Richard Woff, “Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov,” in Stalin’s Generals, ed. Harold Shukman (London, 1993), pp. 67–74.
5. Grossman, Life and Fate, p. 660.
6. Stalingradskaia popeia, p. 390; see also Chuikov, Srazhenie veka, pp. 257–258.
7. Initials of the stenographer, Alexandra Shamshina.
8. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 2a, l. 1–28.
9. Serebryanye Prudy, in Moscow province, is Chuikov’s birthplace. Today it features a Chuikov Museum as well as a memorial bust (by artist Yevgeny Vuchetich) and another monument (by artist Alexander Chuikov, Vasily Chuikov’s son).
10. Romania and Germany declared war on August 15, 1916.
11. The party of the Left Social Revolutionaries existed from 1917 to 1923 and had formed an oppositional circle in the Socialist-Revolutionary party. Its members wanted to withdraw from World War I, transfer land to the peasants, and terminate cooperation with the Provisional Government.
12. The October Revolution, 1917.
13. The names Ilya and Ivan are written in the margin in pencil.
14. The decree, signed by Lenin, was published on January 15, 1918.
15. The village soviet occupies the lowest rung of the soviet system; at its upper end is the Council of People’s Deputies.
16. Lefortovo: a district in Moscow’s east, home to barracks and military academies.
17. The insurrection of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries began on July 6, 1918, with the assassination of the German ambassador in Moscow, Count Wilhelm von Mirbach-Harff.
18. The Alexeyevskaya Military Academy was founded in 1864 and located in Lefortovo.
19. A river that rises in the western foothills of the Urals and flows into the Kama, the largest tributary of the Volga.
20. For Gordov, see pp. 63–64.
21. Kotelnikovo: a settlement located 190 kilometers southwest of Volgograd.
22. Tsimlyanskaya: a village in the Volgograd region.
23. Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev.
24. That is, Hill 102.0, or Mamayev Kurgan.
25. Orlovka and Rynok were villages north of Stalingrad and formed part of the city’s outer defense perimeter.
26. Gumrak: village northwest of Stalingrad.
27. Correct: Yelshanka.
28. Mikhail Naumovich Krichman (1908–1969). From June 1942 to April 1943 he commanded the 6th Guards Tank Brigade.
29. Interview with Alexander V. Chuikov, Moscow, November 11, 2009.
30. Kuzma Akimovich Gurov (1901–1943). Lieutenant general. Member of the Military Council of the Stalingrad Front.
31. Nikolai Ivanovich Krylov (1903–1972) was appointed chief of staff of the 62nd Army in August 1942. Until the arrival of the new army commander, Chuikov, he commanded the army for more than a month. He received the Hero of the Soviet Union award twice in 1945. See N. I. Krylov, Stalingradskii rubezh (Moscow, 1969).
32. Nikolai Mitrofanovich Pozharsky (Pozharnov) (1899–1945). From September 1942 artillery commander of the 62nd Army.
33. See p. 280, note 43.