by Stalingrad- The City that Defeated the Third Reich (epub)
34. See pp. 292–293, and Rodimtsev, interview, pp. 298–301.
35. Tumak: bend of the Volga below the settlement of Krasnaya Sloboda, which served as an important crossing point for the 62nd Army.
36. Verkhnyaya Akhtuba: a village east of Stalingrad.
37. Among them was sniper Vasily Zaytsev. See Zaytsev, interview.
38. Stalin’s Falcons: slang for Soviet fighter pilots.
39. Polikarpov U-2 biplane. Built in 1927, it was used as a trainer aircraft and crop duster and in war as a reconnaissance aircraft. The aircraft flew slowly, had no technical equipment, and offered its two-man crew, who flew in an open cockpit without helmets, weapons, or parachutes, no protection. Losses were consequently high. Among Germans the nightly raids were feared. They referred to the bombers as “nuisances” or “sewing machines.” Kempowski, Das Echolot, p. 556.
40. Korney Mikhailovich Andrusenko (1899–1976), who fought in the Red Army since 1918, commanded the 115th Independent Rifle Brigade during the battle of Stalingrad. Chuikov reprimanded Andrusenko for retreating without authorization on November 3, 1942, following a devastating German attack. Andrusenko was demoted in rank and made regimental commander. For more details on Andrusenko’s complex war biography, see: http://www.warheroes.ru/hero/hero.asp?Hero_id=4530.
41. Stepan Savelyevich Guryev (1902–1945). Commander of the 39th Guards Rifle Division.
42. Ivan Efimovich Yermolkin (1907–1943). Commander of the 112th Rifle Division.
43. Lieutenant Colonel P. I. Tarasov, commander of the Independent 92nd Rifle Brigade, had moved his command post without authorization from the center of Stalingrad to an island in the Volga on September 26 in the course of a German attack. A military tribunal accused him of cowardice, pointing out that his irresponsible behavior (as well as that of the brigade commissar, G. I. Andreyev) had prompted the troops to leave their defense positions. Both the commander and the commissar were executed on October 9, 1942 (Daines, Shtrafbaty, p. 133). Tarasov and Andreyev must have been one of the two brigade command teams that Chuikov personally executed in front of the brigade’s assembled soldiers (see pp. 273, 288). Chuikov’s memoirs make no mention of their names.
44. Guards Lieutenant General Vasily Akimovich Gorishny (1903–1962). Commander of the NKVD’s 13th Motor Rifle Division. Hero of the Soviet Union (1943).
45. Colonel General Ivan Ilyich Lyudnikov (1902–1976). Commander of the 138th Rifle Division, which led the fight for the Barricades munitions plant. Hero of the Soviet Union (1943).
46. Possibly Afrikan Fyodorovich Sokolov (1917–1977). Captain chief of staff of the 397th Antitank Regiment of the 62nd Army. Hero of the Soviet Union (1945).
47. Major General Viktor Grigoryevich Zholudyev (1905–1944). Commander of the 37th Guards Division, which fought for the Stalingrad Tractor factory. Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously, 1944).
48. The division was formed in August 1942 near Moscow on the basis of the 8th Airborne Corps. See the interviews with A. P. Averbukh und A. A. Gerasimov.
49. The text comes from the French song “Everything Good, Beautiful Marquise,” which Russian entertainer Leonid Utyosov used in his repertoire. In the song the Marquise asks what happened to her estate after her absence. Everything is good, they say, and so on, to the small matter of the death of her gray mare.
50. The KV is a heavy Soviet tank named after Marshal Kliment Voroshilov. German soldiers called the tank “Dicker Bello” due to its strong armor.
51. The German fighter Messerschmitt Bf 109 (Me-109).
52. Vasily Grossman interviewed Chuikov in December 1942. His brief notes are concordant with Chuikov’s present statements; for example, “Final conversation [with Chuikov] about cruelty and callousness as principles. A dispute. His last, surprising sentence: ‘Well, what the heck, I cried, but alone. What do you say when four Red Army soldiers directs fire onto themselves! You cry, but alone, alone. Nobody. Has. Ever. Seen me cry.’” Grossman, Gody voiny, p. 357.
53. While in Stalingrad, Grossman also spoke with front commander Yeryomenko and asked him about his opinion of Chuikov: “Chuikov I suggested. I knew him; he cannot be swayed by panic. ‘I know your bravery, but it comes from drinking, this bravery I do not need. Don’t make any rash decisions, you like to make them.’ I helped him when he panicked.” The writer’s notebook portrays the front commander in unflattering ways: Yeryomenko claims that he had been the first to come up with the idea of encircling the Germans in a pincer operation, and he repeatedly underlines his closeness to Stalin (Grossman, Gody voiny, pp. 350–353). A chapter in Grossman’s Stalingrad novel describes the front commander’s visit with Chuikov: Yeryomenko felt like a “guest” who had come to see the “master of Stalingrad.” Grossman, Life and Fate, p. 56.
54. Boris Mikhailovich Shaposhnikov (1882–1945). Deputy people’s commissar of defense of the USSR (1942–1943).
55. Alexander I. Rodimtsev, Gvardeitsy stoiali nasmert’ (Moscow, 1969), pp. 7–10.
56. Vasily Grossman, “Stalingradskaia bitva,” September 20, 1942, in Grossman, Gody voiny, p. 29.
57. On October 18, 1942, Izvestiya reported on the house but did not mention Pavlov. Speaking to historians, Rodimtsev described the hostilities he conducted as a commander. The defense of the Pavlov house may have been controlled below his command level.
58. The destroyed Pavlov house was rebuilt in July 1943, to great propaganda fanfare. Located on 61 Penzenskaya Street, the building appears as “House 6/1” in Vasily Grossman’s novel Life and Fate. See Stalingradskaia bitva. ntsiklopediia, pp. 136–137, as well as the television documentary Iskateli: Legendarnyi redut (dir. Lev Nikolaev, 2007).
59. The “house of the soldiers’ sacrifice,” in A. I. Rodimtsev, Gvardeitsy stoiali nasmert’, pp. 85–105, 133–134, 138.
60. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 6, l. 1–7.
61. Sharlyk is a village in the Orenburg region and birthplace of Alexander Rodimtsev. A street and a school are named after him and a bust of him exists there. In 1967, a school museum of military glory was opened, and Rodimtsev loaned it his uniform jacket, cap, and binoculars.
62. The great famine in Russia (1921–1922), brought about by the Civil War and a drought, cost about 10 million lives. It particularly affected the agricultural region between the Volga and the Urals, including Orenburg.
63. Kulaks: pejorative Soviet-era reference to wealthier peasants who were considered “class enemies” of poorer peasants.
64. Today, the Moscow Military Academy.
65. The Khodynka field, located northwest of Moscow, was used for military instruction and target practice.
66. Students of the Federal Military Academy had the exclusive right to stand guard at the Lenin mausoleum.
67. The article could not be found in Red Star.
68. The International Exposition dedicated to Art and Technology in Modern Life, held from May through November 1937. Set up at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, the exposition was noted for the visual confrontation between the German and Soviet pavilions, which faced each other.
69. The M. V. Frunze Academy of the Staff of the Red Army. Since 1998 known as the General Military Academy of the Russian Armed Forces.
70. A city in southern Ukraine.
71. Stalinka (today Chernozavodskoye): town in the Poltava region, Ukraine.
72. Filipp Ivanovich Golikov (1900–1980). Commander of the 1st Guards Army on the Southeast and Stalingrad Fronts. From September 1942 deputy supreme commander of the Stalingrad Front; from October 1942 commander of the front.
73. The division was reinforced and newly equipped after suffering heavy losses in the battle of Kharkov. Many of the reinforcements were officer trainees without combat experience. During the reorganization, the division was ordered to Stalingrad. Krylov, Stalingradskii rubezh, pp. 128–129.
74. Rodimtsev’s memoir contains nothing about the shooting.
75. According to Samsonov, the L-shaped house (in Russian: “G-obrazny dom”) an
d the Railway Workers house, which stood seventy meters from each other on Penzenskaya Street, were multistory buildings with massive cellars. After taking the two houses, the Germans converted them into veritable fortresses. The buildings had great tactical value because they controlled the area. Samsonov, Stalingradskaia bitva, pp. 265–266.
76. For a detailed description of the storming of the L-shaped house and the Railway Workers house, see W. I. Chuikov, “Taktika shturmovykh grupp v gorodskom boiu” (Assault group tactics in city fighting), Voennyi vestnik 1943, no. 7: 10–15. The storming of the L-shaped house was filmed by Valentin Orlyankin and is shown in the documentary Stalingrad (dir. Leonid Varlamov, 1943).
77. Tim is a town in the Kursk region.
78. The conversation, like the one with Rodimtsev, took place on January 7, 1943, in Stalingrad. The interviewer was A. A. Belkin, and the stenographer was A. I. Shamshina. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 6, l. 8–8 ob.
79. Olkhovatka: probably a village in the Voronezh region.
80. Chuikov, Srazhenie veka, p. 350; Stalingradskaia popeia, p. 196.
81. PPSh stands for Pistolet Pulemyot Shpagina and is a Soviet submachine gun. It was developed by Georgy S. Shpagin.
82. This renders all the more valuable the interviews that Svetlana Aleksievich conducted with female veterans of the Great Patriotic War during the 1980s: Svetlana Aleksievich, War’s Unwomanly Face (Moscow, 1988).
83. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 6, l. 9–10.
84. Burkovka: a settlement on the eastern side of the Volga and location of a 62nd Army field hospital.
85. Maybe Gurova answered the question of her marital status. Since the interviewers’ questions are not included in the transcript, the degree of their intervention in the conversation is difficult to gauge.
86. Stalingradskaia bitva. Khronika, fakty, liudi, 1:417, 427; Stalingradskaia bitva. ntsiklopediia, p. 402. Today Rossoshka is home to a German war cemetery which was set up by the German War Graves Commission in 1999. An estimated 50,000 German soldiers are buried there. A Russian war cemetery is located on the other side of the street.
87. On Makarenko, see James Bowen, Soviet Education: Anton Makarenko and the Years of Experiment (Madison, 1965).
88. Innokenti Petrovich Gerasimov (1918–). Details at Geroi Sovetskogo Soiuza: Kratkii biograficheskii slovar’ (Moscow, 1987), 1:319; Stalingradskaia bitva. Khronika, fakty, liudi 1:74–75.
89. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 38, l. 36–37.
90. Rzhishchev: a town southeast of Kiev.
91. A settlement on the southwestern edge of Kiev.
92. Political officer Innokenti Gerasimov, who conducted the interview with Averbukh.
93. Regimental commander Alexander Akimovich Gerasimov, not to be confused with the eponymous political officer (see note 88).
94. This refers to the six-tube 15cm multiple rocket launcher Nebelwerfer 41, which Red Army Soviet soldiers called the “Vanyusha” (little Vanya), in contrast to their own “Katyusha” (little Katya) rocket launcher.
95. Verkhnyaya Yelshanka: a settlement south of Stalingrad.
96. The blood-stained uniform of Major General Vasily Glazkov (1901–1942), shot through in 168 places, is now displayed in the Volgograd Panoramic Museum.
97. Chuikov, Srazhenie veka. Glantz writes that on September 11 the division still counted 454 soldiers. Glantz, Armageddon in Stalingrad, p. 85.
98. Initials of Alexandra Shamshina, the stenographer.
99. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 38, l. 25–32. The transcript does not indicate who conducted the interview.
100. After Glazkov’s death, Colonel Vasily Pavlovich Dubyansky (1891–?) assumed command of the 35th Guards Rifle Division.
101. The 35th Guards Division fought against the German 14th and 24th Panzer Divisions, as well as the Romanian 20th Infantry Division. Glantz, Armageddon in Stalingrad, pp. 64, 93.
102. Gerasimov’s regiment was located south of the German forces that had reached the Volga on the southern edge of Stalingrad. The only open way to reach the division command was by boat.
103. The sailors of the Volga Military Flotilla who controlled the river crossing.
104. Stalingradskaia bitva. ntsiklopediia, p. 127; see also the interview with divisional commander Batyuk.
105. Interview with Alexander Levykin, commissar of the 284th Rifle Division.
106. “Donesenie OO NKVD Stalingradskogo fronta v NKVD SSSR o khode boev v Stalingrade, 16. 9. 1942,” in Stalingradskaia popeia, p. 196.
107. William Craig, Enemy at the Gates (New York, 1973), p. 120.
108. This date is given by Aksyonov in his interview. According to another source, the hill was not fully under Soviet control until January 26: Kratkie svedeniia ob osnovnykh tapakh boev 62. Armii po oborone gor. Stalingrada, NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 3, l. 5.
109. As a history teacher, Aksyonov felt an affinity to Isaak Mints’s historical commission. The State Historical Museum in Moscow has an oil lamp made from a grenade shell with the inscription: “To the history professor Dr. Mints in memory of the defense of Stalingrad from Captain N. N. Aksyonov.” 1943 god. Voina glazami ochevidtsev. Vystavka iz sobraniia Gosudarstvennogo Istoricheskogo muzeia pri uchastii Tsentral’nogo muzeia Vooruzhennykh Sil (Moscow, 2003), p. 8.
110. On the Stalin cult in the Soviet Union, see Jan Plamper, The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power (New Haven, CT, 2012).
111. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 4, l. 3–16 ob. The long interview began on May 5 and was continued on May 8.
112. Metiz: acronym for “Metal Products.” Established in 1932 as the Stalingrad steel mill, the factory was located at the foot of Mamayev Kurgan.
113. Imperialist War: this is how Lenin and other Soviet Marxists referred to World War I.
114. This refers to the Il-2, a Soviet fighter plane, which was built under the direction of Sergey Ilyushin and came into use during the war.
115. The plant was situated on the slope of Mamayev Kurgan.
116. In accordance with Soviet wartime propaganda Aksyonov represents the defense of Tsaritsyn as a struggle against the Germans. Yet German occupation troops in the Ukraine did not participate in the attack on the city in 1918.
117. Kastornaya: railway junction on the Kursk-Voronezh route. In July 1942, heavy fighting took place there.
118. Letters written at the time by Grossman indicate that he was, in fact, very concerned about Benesh. See A Writer at War, pp. 203–204.
119. Signed: “Viewed on May 12, 1943, N. Aksyonov.”
120. Corrected by hand to “none.”
121. Rakityansky was born in 1913. This is confirmed at: http://www.obd-memorial.ru/html/info.htm?id=9413438.
122. The following was deleted: “and we felt very sorry about him.”
123. A Stalin order of May 1, 1945 formally declared four Soviet cities “Hero Cities”: Leningrad, Stalingrad, Sevastopol, and Odessa. The number later rose to twelve.
124. See also Frank Ellis, The Stalingrad Cauldron: Inside the Encirclement and Destruction of 6th Army (Lawrence, KS, 2013), pp. 270–284.
125. Na zashchitu rodiny, October 5, 1942, p. 2.
126. Kapitan N. N. Aksënov, “Rol’ snaiperov v oborone Stalingrada” (manuscript), NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 26, l. 2.
127. Words from an article by writer and journalist Ilya Ehrenburg (1891–1967). Il’ia Erenburg, “Ubei!” [“Kill!”] Krasnaia zvezda, July 24, 1942.
128. Chuikov, Srazhenie veka, pp. 174–175.
129. Na zashchitu rodiny, October 21, 1942, p. 1; October 26, 1942, p. 1; October 30, 1942, p. 1.
130. Ibid., October 26, 1942, p. 1.
131. “Znatnyi snaiper,” Beevor, Stalingrad, p. 203, with a reference to the archive of the Russian Defense Ministry.
132. Grossman, Gody voiny, p. 387.
133. “Snaiper Vasilii Zaitsev,” Na zashchitu rodiny, November 2, 1942, p. 1.
134. N
a zashchitu rodiny, November 6, 1942, p. 1.
135. Ibid., November 14, 1942, p. 1.
136. Zaytsev, interview, p. 367; NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 27, l. 44; Stalingradskaia bitva. ntsiklopediia, p. 151. A Moscow archive has Zaytsev’s Stalingrad “combat account” for the period from October 5 to December 5, 1942. The booklet countersigned by Captain Kotov lists 184 killed “Hitler soldiers” (RGASPI-M, f. 7, op. 2, ed. 468).
137. Zaitsev, Za Volgoi zemli dlia nas ne bylo, pp. 105–106.
138. Captain Aksyonov may have played a role in facilitating the interview with Zaytsev. On March 9, 1943, he wrote an essay on the role of snipers in the defense of Stalingrad (NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 26, l. 1–20). Presumably this text was in front of the historians who talked with Zaytsev in April; that would explain the concordance of the narrated episodes. Aksyonov’s essay, or parts of it, appeared in the newspaper Red Fleet on March 15, 1943 (see p. 367).
139. Vasilii G. Zaitsev, Geroi Sovetskogo Soiuza. Rasskaz snaipera (Moscow, 1943).
140. Zaytsev’s 1981 memoir also departs from the 1943 interview on multiple counts. Zaitsev, Za Volgoi zemli dlia nas ne bylo.
141. Stalingradskaia bitva. ntsiklopediia, p. 151; Geroi Sovetskogo Soiuza: Kratkii biograficheskii slovar’, 1:524.
142. Raisa Ivanovna Krol’ worked for the commission beginning in 1942.
143. NA IRI RAN, f. 2, razd. III, op. 5, d. 4, l. 17–26.
144. Zaytsev describes the sniper modification of his automatic rifle, the Tokarev SVT-40.
145. Probably the TOZ 8 sports and hunting rifle that was produced by the Tula Weapons Factory.
146. In the published interview: “In October, something very important happened in my life. The Komsomol handed me over to the ranks of the Communist Party.” Zaitsev, Rasskaz snaipera, p. 8.
147. The political officer in question must be Colonel Vedyukov.
148. On Furmanov and Chapayev, see pp. 25–28.
149. Alexander Yakovlevich Parkhomenko (1886–1921) was a Civil War hero. Vsevolod Ivanov published his biography in 1939.
150. Grigori Ivanovich Kotovsky (1881–1925) was a Soviet commander during the Civil War. Zaytsev probably read V. Shmerling’s book Kotovsky (Moscow, 1937).