Vasily Grossman. "For a just cause"
“Stalingrad has become a symbol of courage, resilience of the Russian people and at the same time a symbol of the greatest human suffering. This symbol will remain for centuries." (British Prime Minister Winston Churchill)
On August 23, 1942, 75 years ago, Stalingrad was subjected to a barbaric bombardment. For Hitler, the capture of Stalingrad meant not only the achievement of important strategic results, the disruption of communications between north and south, and the disruption of communications between the central regions of Russia and the Caucasus.
The capture of Stalingrad not only determined the possibility of a wide invasion to the northeast, bypassing Moscow in depth, and to the south, to achieve the ultimate goals of the geo-expansion of the Third Empire. The capture of Stalingrad was a foreign policy task - its solution could determine important changes and the position of Japan and Turkey.
The capture of Stalingrad was an internal political task - its fall would strengthen Hitler’s position within Germany and would be a real sign of the final victory promised to the German people in June 1941.
The fall of Stalingrad would be the atonement for the failed blitzkrieg, which was supposed to end, according to the Fuhrer's promise, eight weeks after the start of the invasion of Russia. The fall of Stalingrad would justify the defeats at Moscow, Rostov, Tikhvin and the terrible winter casualties that shocked the German people.
The fall of Stalingrad would strengthen Germany's power over its satellites and would paralyze the voices of disbelief and criticism.
Hitler's demand: “Stalingrad muss fallen!” (“Stalingrad must be destroyed!”) was born from other reasons, more compelling than the reality of the battlefields. That's what he wanted!
Hitler raised his bloody ax over Stalingrad. The first planes appeared at about four o'clock in the afternoon. From the east, from the Volga region, six bombers were approaching the city at a high altitude. As soon as the German vehicles, having passed over the Burkovsky farm, began to approach the Volga, a whistle was heard and explosions immediately rumbled - smoke and chalk dust rose above the bomb-damaged buildings. The planes were clearly visible in the transparent air. The sun was shining, thousands of window panes sparkled in its rays, and people, raising their heads, watched how quickly the German planes went west.
Someone's young voice shouted loudly:
- These are crazy people who broke through, you see, they don’t even announce the alarm.
And immediately sirens, steamship and factory whistles began to wail with dull force. This cry, broadcasting misfortune and death, hung over the city, as if it conveyed the melancholy that gripped the population. It was the voice of the entire city - not only people, but all buildings, cars, stone, poles, grass and trees in parks, wires, tram rails - the cry of the living and inanimate, gripped by a premonition of destruction. An iron, rusty throat alone could give rise to this sound, equally expressing the horror of a bird and the anguish of a human heart. And then silence came - the last silence of Stalingrad.
The planes came from the east, from the Volga region, from the south, from Sarepta and Beketovka, from the west, from Kalach and Karpovka, from the north, from Erzovka and Rynok - their black bodies moved easily. Among the feathery clouds in the blue sky, and like hundreds of poisonous insects escaping from secret nests, they rushed towards the desired victim. The sun, in its divine ignorance, touched its rays to the wings of the creatures, and they sparkled with milky whiteness - and in this resemblance of the wings of the Junkers to white moths there was something languishing, blasphemous.
The hum of the engines became stronger, viscous, thicker. All the sounds of the city faded, shrank, and only the humming sound thickened, filled, darkened, conveying in its slow monotony the frantic power of the engines. The sky was covered with sparkles of anti-aircraft explosions, gray heads of smoky dandelions, and angry flying insects quickly glided among them.... The Germans walked several floors high, occupying the entire blue volume of the summer sky...
Having met over Stalingrad, the planes, coming from the east and the west, from the north and south, began to descend, and it seemed that they were descending because the summer sky sagged, subsided from the weight of metal and explosives reaching to the ground. This is how the skies sag under heavy clouds full of dark rain.
And a new, third sound appeared over the city - the drilling whistle of dozens and hundreds of high-explosive bombs coming off the planes, the screech of thousands and tens of thousands of incendiary bombs rushing from open cassettes. This sound, which lasted three or four seconds, permeated all living things, and the hearts sank in melancholy, the hearts of those who were destined to die in a moment with this melancholy, and the hearts of those who survived. The whistling grew and became more intense.
Everyone heard him! And women running down the street from the melting lines to their homes, where their children were waiting for them. And those who managed to take refuge in deep basements, separated from the sky by thick stone ceilings. And those who fell on the asphalt among the squares and streets. And those who jumped into the cracks in the gardens and pressed their heads to the dry earth. And the wounded, who were lying on the operating tables at that moment, and the babies, demanding their mother's milk. The bombs reached the ground and crashed into the city.
Houses died just like people die. Some, thin, tall, fell to the side, killed on the spot, others, squat, stood trembling and staggering, with their chests torn, suddenly revealing what was always hidden: portraits on the walls, sideboards, night tables, double beds, jars of millet, half-peeled potatoes on the table covered with ink-smeared oilcloth. Bent water pipes, iron beams in the interfloor ceilings, and strands of wires were exposed. Red bricks, smoking with dust, piled up on the pavements. Thousands of houses were blinded, and window glass paved the sidewalks with small, shiny scales of fragments.
Under the blows of the blast waves, massive tram wires fell to the ground with a ringing and grinding sound, and the mirrored glass of shop windows flowed out of the frames, as if turned into liquid. Tram rails, hunched over, crawled out of the asphalt. And at the whim of the blast wave, a blue plywood kiosk stood indestructibly, where they sold sparkling water, a tin arrow-sign “go here” hung, and a fragile telephone booth glistened with glass.
Everything that had been motionless for centuries - stones and iron - was moving rapidly, and everything into which man had invested the idea and forces of movement - trams, cars, buses, steam locomotives - all of this stopped. Lime and brick dust rose thickly in the air, fog rose over the city and spread down the Volga.
The flames of fires caused by tens of thousands of incendiary bombs began to flare up... In the smoke, dust, fire, amid the roar that shook the sky, water and earth, a huge city perished. This picture was terrible, and yet more terrible was the look of a six-year-old man, crushed by an iron beam, fading into death. There is a force that can raise huge cities from the dust, but there is no force in the world that could lift light eyelashes over the eyes of a dead child.
Only those who were on the left bank of the Volga, ten to fifteen kilometers from Stalingrad, in the area of the Burkovsky farm, Verkhnyaya Akhtuba, Yam, Tumak and Gypsy Zarya, could see the whole picture of the fire as a whole and measure the enormity of the misfortune that befell the city.
Hundreds of bomb explosions merged into a monotonous roar, and the cast-iron weight of this roar made the earth in the Volga region tremble, the windows of wooden houses tinkled, and the foliage on the oak trees moved. The lime fog that rose over the city covered tall buildings and the Volga like a white sheet, stretched for tens of kilometers, crawled towards Stalgres, the ship repair plant, Beketovka and Krasnoarmeysk. Gradually the whiteness of the fog disappeared, mixing with the yellow-gray smoky haze of the fires.
From a distance it was clearly visible how the fire burning over one building connected with the neighboring fire, how entire streets were burning, and how in the end the fire of the burning streets merged into one wall, living and moving. In some places, tall pillars like towers rose above this wall, which stood above the right bank of the Volga, domes and fiery bell towers swelled. They sparkled with red, pure gold, smoky copper, as if a new city of flame had grown over Stalingrad.
The Volga was smoking along the banks. Black soot smoke and flames slid across the water - it was the fuel leaking onto the water from the broken tanks that was burning. And the smoke rose many miles in clouds. This cloud grew and, washed away by the steppe winds, began to spread across the sky, and many weeks later smoke hung over dozens of steppe miles around Stalingrad, and the swollen, bloodless sun walked its way among the white haze.
At dusk, the flames of the burning city were seen by women walking from the south to Raigorod with sacks of grain, and by ferrymen at the crossing in Svetly Yar. The reflections of the fire were noticed by old Kazakhs traveling to Elton on carts; their camels, sticking out their slobbering lips and stretching out their dirty swan necks, looked back to the east. From the north, fishermen saw the light in Dubovka and Gornaya Proleika. From the west, the fire was observed by officers from the headquarters of Colonel General Paulus who had gone to the banks of the Don. They smoked and silently looked at the light spot flickering roundly in the dark sky.
Many people saw a glow in the night. What did it say, whose death, whose triumph?
The power of the disaster was enormous, and all living things, as happens during forest and steppe fires, earthquakes, mountain collapses and floods, sought to leave the dying city. Birds were the first to leave Stalingrad - jackdaws flew scatteredly, hugging low to the water, to the left bank of the Volga; overtaking them, gray sparrows flew in flocks of gray, sometimes elastically stretching, sometimes shrinking.
Large rats, who must have not come out of their secret deep holes for years, felt the heat of the fire and the vibrations of the soil, crawled out of the basements of food warehouses and grain barns, rushed around in confusion for several moments, blinded and deafened, and, driven by instinct, dragging their tails and fat gray hairs. butts, crawled towards the water, climbed along planks and ropes onto barges and half-submerged steamers standing off the shore.
Dogs with crazy, dull eyes jumped out of the smoke and dust, rolled down the slope and threw themselves into the water, swam towards Krasnaya Sloboda and Tumak.
But white and gray pigeons, with a force even more powerful than the instinct of self-preservation, chained to their homes, circled over the burning houses and, caught in the current of hot air, died in smoke and flame.
The woman, raising her hands to the cruel, growling sky, shouted:
-What are you doing, villains, what are you doing?
Human suffering! Will future centuries remember him? It will not remain, just as the stones of huge houses and the glory of warriors will remain; it - tears and whispers, the last breaths and wheezes of the dying, the cry of despair and pain - everything will disappear along with the smoke and dust that the wind carried over the steppe.
At eight o'clock in the evening, the commander of the Fourth Air Fleet, Manfred von Richthofen, took off in a twin-engine military aircraft to assess what had been done.
From a height of four and a half thousand meters, a picture of a huge catastrophe, illuminated by the setting sun, was visible. The hot air raised white smoke, cleared of soot, into the air; This smoke, bleached by the height, lay in the heights like a wavy veil, it was difficult to distinguish it from light clouds; below it breathed, rose, boiled, a heavy, swirling, sometimes black, sometimes ashen, sometimes red smoke ball.
It seemed that the largest Himalayan mountain, Gaurizankar, was slowly and heavily rising from the womb of the earth, protruding millions of pounds of hot, dense piebald and red ores. Every now and then a hot, copper flame burst from the depths of the colossal cauldron, shooting sparks thousands of meters away, and it seemed that a cosmic catastrophe was being presented to the eyes.
Occasionally the ground became visible, small black mosquitoes darting about, but dense smoke instantly swallowed up this view. The Volga and the steppe were shrouded in a hazy fog, and the river and the land in the fog seemed gray and wintry. Far to the east lay the flat steppes of Kazakhstan. A gigantic fire burned almost at the very border of these steppes.
The commander said abruptly:
– ....They will see on Mars... Beelzebub’s work...
The fascist general, with his stony, slavish heart, at those moments felt the power of the man who led him to this terrible height, put in his hands the torch with which German aviation lit a fire on the last frontier between East and West, showed the way to tanks and infantry to the Volga and the huge Stalingrad factories.
These minutes and hours seemed to be the highest triumph of the inexorable “total” idea, the idea of violence of motors and trinitrotoluene against the women and children of Stalingrad. To the fascist pilots, hovering over the Stalingrad cauldron of smoke and flame, it seemed that these minutes and these hours marked the triumph of German violence over the world, promised by Hitler.
Forever defeated seemed to them those who, suffocating in smoke, in basements, pits, shelters, among the red-hot ruins, houses turned to dust, listened in horror to the triumphant and ominous hum of the bombers reigning over Stalingrad.
But no! In the fateful hours of the death of the huge city, something truly great happened - in the blood and in the hot stone fog, not the slavery of Russia, not its death, was born; Among the hot ashes and smoke, the strength of Soviet man, his love, loyalty to freedom lived indestructibly and stubbornly made its way, and it was this indestructible force that triumphed over the terrible but futile violence of the enslavers.
15:12 — REGNUM 75 years have passed since the tragic date of the barbaric bombing of Stalingrad, and the memory of those terrible days is still alive in the hearts of witnesses to these terrible events. Today, August 23, in Volgograd they paid tribute to the victims of the massive attack of Nazi aircraft on the city on the Volga.
Representatives of public organizations, the administration of the Volgograd region and the city of Volgograd, and citizens, many of whom had to experience the horror of those terrible days, laid flowers at the Eternal Flame on the Square of Fallen Fighters. Children of wartime Stalingrad shared their memories, calling on everyone for peace so that no one would ever have to experience the horror of war. Participants in the ceremony honored the memory of the victims with a minute of silence.
On the same day, the reburial ceremony of 1002 defenders of the Fatherland took place at the Rossoshinsky Military Memorial Cemetery.
During the search work, it was possible to establish the names of 30 fighters. Relatives of the Red Army soldier of the 35th Guards Rifle Division (8th Airborne Corps) Mikhail Makeev arrived in Rossoshki; corporal, squad commander of the 10th Infantry Division of the NKVD Nikolai Aristarkhov; Sergeant, wagon driver of the 258th Infantry Division Ilya Uryashev. Personal belongings of the defenders of Stalingrad found by search engines were handed over to their relatives.
Amid farewell salvos, the remains of soldiers and officers who died during the Great Patriotic War on the territory of Volgograd and the Gorodishchensky district of the Volgograd region were buried. In total, 19,387 soldiers have found eternal peace at the Rossoshinsky Military Memorial Cemetery of Soviet soldiers who died at Stalingrad since 1997, the names of 700 of them have been established. Previously, they were listed as missing, buried on the battlefield or in populated areas (including on Mamayev Kurgan) or were not listed at all in the Central Archives of the Russian Ministry of Defense.
August 23, 1942 became the most tragic day in the history of Stalingrad. On the morning of this day, the Germans, having broken through the defenses of the Soviet army, reached the Volga, finding themselves only three kilometers from the tractor plant.
At exactly 16:18, the whistling sounds of bombs falling from the sky rent the air. A massive bombardment of the city began. There were no air raid warnings for just two weeks. German bombers flew up to two thousand sorties every day. From August 28 to September 14, 50 thousand bombs weighing from 50 to 1000 kilograms were dropped on Stalingrad. For every square kilometer of Stalingrad land there were up to 5 thousand bombs and large-caliber fragments.
From the memoirs of former instrument operator Raisa Galchenko: “ On August 23, we heard the roar of engines from the direction of Gumrak. And soon they saw enemy planes. Just a few minutes later, bombs began to explode near us. We were choking in the soot, but the soldiers continued to shoot. No one went to cover... For us, days and nights merged into continuous noise. The streets around were burning. The groans of the wounded were heard...«
An entire city on the Volga was practically wiped off the face of the earth. There is not a single intact building left in the center. 309 city enterprises turned into a pile of stones. At the Red October plant, 170 thousand square meters of production space were disabled, transport and crane facilities, mechanical and electrical equipment were completely destroyed. From the summer of 1942 to the beginning of 1943, 8 thousand aerial bombs were dropped on the Stalingrad Tractor Plant. All that was left of it were ruins.
A few years ago, on March 19, 2008, on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad, the Panorama “Battle of Stalingrad” museum hosted a viewing and discussion of the television documentary “Stalingrad. Chronicle of Victory". In it, along with the military theme at that time, for the first time an attempt was made to identify a civilian theme - the most painful and neglected in films about Stalingrad.
The start was impressive. In close-up, on the entire screen, Air Marshal Ivan Ivanovich Pstygo is presented, who authoritatively sums up August 23, 1942 - the most mournful date of Stalingrad. Quote: “August 23 was that terrible blow, when 2,000 bombers passed through Stalingrad and, according to the latest, probably the most probable data, 200,000 people died in Stalingrad!” This is exactly half the city's population.
Yuri Panchenko. At the age of 16, he survived the entire Battle of Stalingrad in the Central District of the city. Served in aviation for more than 50 years. Author of the book “163 days on the streets of Stalingrad.”
However, areas that were not bombed that day should be excluded from the total urban population. Then in four districts of the city (out of eight) that were attacked by German aircraft, where about 200,000 people lived, the entire population was killed. I'll clean it up. I want to howl in horror.
And where does Pstygo go with the wounded, who are counted as three to one among those killed?
That's another 600,000! In total, in a city with a population of 400,000 people, the number of victims on August 23 is... 800,000 people, which is comparable to the population of Stalingrad and Astrakhan combined!
About dreamers
Our home-grown dreamers turned out to be more modest.
Oleg Naida, a candidate of philosophical sciences, counted 2,000 German planes in the skies of Stalingrad on August 23, which took the lives of more than 40,000 citizens.
Further civilian casualties began to snowball.
Iraida Pomoschnikova, chairman of the association “Children of Wartime Stalingrad.” In the book “We Come from War,” six-year-old Irochka not only counted 2,000 enemy bombers in the skies of Stalingrad on August 23, but also counted the victims: 42,000 killed and 50,000 wounded. What a mean girl, but smart! At her age, I could only count to ten, and only on my fingers.
Vladimir Beregovoi, professor at the University of Economics in St. Petersburg, member of the “Children of Wartime Stalingrad” association. In his article “Triumph and Tragedy,” which “announces a book-requiem for Stalingrad,” he toughened up the outcome of the ill-fated day: 46,000 city residents were killed and 150,000 were wounded. Five-month-old Vovochka, retiring with his parents from Stalingrad, also counted the number of German planes that bombed the city on August 23rd - more than 2000!
Enemy planes "... flew in a square formation of sixty-four aircraft...". What is this - the Mughal shakhovna or the Khrushchev method of square-cluster sowing of corn? I even saw corpses “sticking out” along the river bank and the Volga, red with blood. One thing is certain: Vovochka’s parents were color blind. The water in the Volga actually changed color, but not to red, but to black, because in the area of the tractor plant, German aircraft bombed and burned a convoy of oil barges.
Tatyana Pavlova, historian. In his laborious publication, “Classified Tragedy: Civilians in the Battle of Stalingrad,” he cites information from city authorities, where funeral teams from August 22 to 29, 1942 buried 1,816 corpses and picked up 2,698 wounded. But after a few pages in the same period from August 23 to 29, Pavlova considered that there was not enough blood on the streets of the city, and therefore could not resist the temptation to punish the Stalingraders for 71,000 people (only killed and 142 wounded!) And after another couple of hundred pages I even remembered the Japanese, “the total losses of the population of Stalingrad are 32.3% higher than the similar losses of the population of Hiroshima from the atomic bombing.”
Vladimir Pavlov, St. Petersburg historian in the book “Stalingrad, Myths and Reality. New Look” proposes to declare August 23 “the day of national repentance of communists in Russia” for the death of 500,000 citizens who fell in the Battle of Stalingrad. Moreover, he presented the forced eviction of city residents to Belaya Kalitva as a humane action of the German command.
Cool though!
All this is the fantasy of people, where each of them, spinning their own legend, openly speculated, since during the storming of Stalingrad none of them were in the city.
Only six-year-old Irochka Pomoschnikova was in the Northern town, which was not bombed by the Germans on August 23rd.
Now the main thing. The bombing on August 23rd was a prelude, these were flowers, and the berries were ripening ahead. The brutal bombardment of the city began on the morning of August 24 and continued until August 27. The peak of the impact is August 25. In four days, the central areas of the city were burned, and the surviving population fled.
So, according to the testimony of ambitious dreamers, by the end of Sunday the population of Stalingrad was finished. It was completely broken and mutilated. Every single person! Scrambled eggs!
However, the realities of that ill-fated day tell a different story:
- the next morning in the Balkans (central district of the city), residents were given freshly baked bread. Was it that the dead baked rolls at night?
- on the morning of August 24, as usual, the working population went to work. By tram, not by hearse! The tram went to the destroyed Banny Ravine bridge at the Teschina stop (Vozrozhdeniya Square);
- the newspaper “Stalingradskaya Pravda” was published;
- the water supply worked until August 25;
- firefighters worked;
- the crossing was working;
- hospitals were being evacuated, which meant 4,500 wounded soldiers, onto the motor ships “Joseph Stalin”, “Memory of the Paris Commune” and “Mikhail Kalinin” that arrived in the city;
- hospitals operated on the outskirts of the city;
- air defense anti-aircraft artillery was operating;
- Soviet fighters were constantly flying over the city;
- militias were being formed in the factories;
- The Stalingrad Defense Committee, headed by the regional committee secretary Chuyanov, worked continuously;
This is not a complete list of concerns that fell on the shoulders of the townspeople.
August 23rd was a shock that the population successfully coped with. But after the severe injuries received over the next four days, the city was no longer able to recover.
In the official report of the Stalingrad City Defense Committee No. 411-a dated August 27, 1942, in addition to a detailed and named list of damage caused by German aviation to the industrial and public services of Stalingrad, civilian casualties are indicated in all areas of the city that were bombed. Overall result: 1017 people were killed and 1281 people were wounded. Naturally, this is not a complete list of victims. The count of casualties continued. But this is not 40,000, not 70,000, not 200,000 and not 500,000 people wasted by the current irresponsible and ambitious people who were never in Stalingrad.
Over the entire period of the Battle of Stalingrad, according to the reporting documents of the Stalingrad Party Archive, 42,754 city residents died from bombing and artillery shelling. And according to the head of the region, Chuyanov, the number of dead citizens is estimated at 40,000 people.
The population of the city, caught on the anvil of the battle, began to die like flies. People died in street battles, where the “stupid bullet” did not distinguish between friend and foe. And dystrophy and typhus in the German “cauldron” are worse than a bullet.
About death
And yet, why did people die?
From the bitter fate of my sixteen-year-old school and street classmates who lived in the Central district of the city:
- Elivstratova Lyusya died along with her mother and two sisters from a German bomb on August 23, 1942;
- Tsygankov Misha was shot by the police along with his father for possessing a rifle;
- Petya Vanin was shot by a policeman for possessing a Komsomol card (policemen are former Soviet citizens, lackeys of the occupiers);
- Zavrazhin Vitya is killed by a Soviet mine;
- Sasha Krasilnikov is killed by a Soviet mine;
- Fefelova Ira was killed by a German bullet;
- Chernavin Leva went missing;
- Baryshev Igor was burned;
- Mulyalin Vasya is wounded by a Soviet mine;
- Vitya Goncharov – severe shrapnel wound to the head, lost an eye, caused by a Soviet mine;
- Bernstein Misha - a through bullet wound in the chest from a German bullet;
- Kazimirova Lida - a through bullet wound in the neck from a Soviet bullet;
- my peer, whose name has not been preserved, was killed by an NKVD soldier for looting - he stole a pound of flour;
- four people managed to survive the entire Battle of Stalingrad in the city center without a single scratch.
Those who died in the German cauldron from dystrophy are not listed here. There are no witnesses. They all died of hunger at once. Whole families.
About the Germans in Stalingrad
Germans are often presented in modern films as naughty creatures, white and fluffy. This is because only five-year-olds are testifying. One complains that the Germans stole a pot of baked milk from them. Another only remembers his own grandmother, who was baptized. The Germans entered and grandma was baptized. Our people came and she was also baptized. With this, all their passions and muzzles dried up.
But to understand all the troubles that befell the population of the city in occupied Stalingrad, it is necessary to comprehend and link into one the main events that daily reduced the number of citizens. Rokossovsky Street to No. 30. Here, during the occupation of the city, the German commandant’s office, a punitive military organization, was located. And opposite the commandant’s office, in the former Iliodorov Monastery, the Germans created a camp for imprisoned Soviet citizens.
And now about the “naughty” faces.
- Major Helmut Speidel (died in the Beketovsky prisoner of war camp), commandant of occupied Stalingrad, marked the border of the restricted zone from the channels of city residents hanging from the channels of railway bridges on Golubinskaya Street (tramway viaduct near the prison, on Kubanskaya Street (viaduct near the Dynamo stadium), on Nevskaya Street, on pedestrian bridge over the railway. Hanged on both sides of the bridge.
- Chief Corporal Helmut Jeschke, inspector of the commandant's office for civil affairs. The population of the city was under his watchful eye. The Iliodorov monastery, turned into a prison by the Germans, was reputed to be the place of an ominous plague of townspeople, from where policemen every morning pulled out the corpses of people who had become numb during the night and dumped them into an aircraft crater in the courtyard of the commandant’s office.
- Major Neubert, senior doctor of the commandant's office. In early December, after Neubert inspected the hospital for captured wounded Soviet soldiers (located on Golubinskaya Street near the blood transfusion station), the wounded Red Army soldiers disappeared without a trace, and then a German hospital was located in the vacated premises. Dr. Neubert was accompanied by German medical officials and a Russian woman who worked as a doctor in the infirmary.
- Colonel Rudolf Kerpert (convicted in captivity by a German tribunal), commandant of the notorious camp for Soviet prisoners of war "Dulag-205" in Alekseevka. In the German “cauldron”, bunk comrades who had lived only yesterday became food for the captured Red Army soldiers, driven to the point of insanity by hunger.
War is not a pot of baked milk or an old woman’s sign of the cross. War is the ugliest form of human communication. For us, the Germans have become worse than the plague, worse than cholera, worse than the Tatar yoke combined. You can forgive them with your mind, but not with your heart!
About 2000 aircraft
And lastly, this is about the 2,000 bombers that bombed the city on August 23rd. Enemy planes took advantage of the corridor cut by German tankers from the Don to the Volga through Kotluban, Orlovka and the Tractor Plant, where the city’s air defense was destroyed. Further, along the left bank of the Volga, the bombers entered the rear of the city with impunity, from where no one was expecting them. The anti-aircraft gunners were taken by surprise. They realized it when the first Heinkel squadron was already over the middle of the river. The sky literally boiled from the explosions of anti-aircraft shells, but... it was too late.
The bombers flew in waves in squadrons with an interval of about 15 minutes between squadrons. The bombing of the city began at 16:20 Moscow time and ended at sunset at 19:00 since planes do not fly in groups at night. At night, single planes bombed at large intervals.
Consequently, in two hours and forty minutes of daylight, with a fifteen-minute interval, only eleven groups - squadrons - could pass. There are 9-12 aircraft in a squadron, and by multiplying, we get a real idea of the number of enemy aircraft that took part in the bombing of the city on August 23. This is about 100 - 130 aircraft. So the circulated legend about two thousand bombers attacking the city on August 23rd is clearly a fantasy. The Germans did not have such a number of bomber aircraft on the entire Eastern Front. By the beginning of July 1942, that is, by the beginning of the offensive on Stalingrad, the Germans had approximately 2,750 aircraft of all types. Of these, 775 bombers, 310 attack aircraft, 290 fighters, 765 reconnaissance aircraft, etc.
So, all the “eyewitnesses and eyewitnesses” of the Battle of Stalingrad that I mentioned, whom we applaud on memorable dates, suffer from a common pathology - damage to the mind.
And a requiem for Stalingrad is inappropriate. Let the Germans pray for themselves. We didn't invite them here. People. Know Stalingrad. Because soon there will be no one to remember Stalingrad.
The city on the Volga was completely destroyed 76 years ago. After a massive bombing by Nazi aircraft, almost all buildings turned into ruins, and tens of thousands of civilians died.
Despite the stubborn resistance of the Soviet troops, on August 23, 1942, the enemy was able to break through the defenses of the 62nd Army and the advanced detachments of the German 14th Tank Corps reached the Volga.
At 16:18, following Hitler's orders, the aviation of the Nazi troops subjected Stalingrad to a massive bombardment.
During the day, the enemy was able to make more than 2 thousand sorties of the 4th Air Fleet. Air raids never reached such strength throughout the war. Instantly the huge city was engulfed in flames.
The bombing continued on August 24, 25 and 26. During this time, businesses, houses, and cultural and educational institutions turned into ruins. Transport, communications and utilities were completely disabled.
Photo: globallookpress Radio Paris during the days of the bombing reported:
The attention of the whole world is now focused on the grandiose battle of Stalingrad. Radios of America, England and the Axis powers are broadcasting messages that the battles at Stalingrad surpass in size all the battles of this and previous wars. The significance of Stalingrad for the USSR is enormous. Surrendering Stalingrad means opening the heart of the country to the enemy.
Air defense systems were able to shoot down 120 enemy aircraft on August 23 alone. At the same time, anti-aircraft artillery regiments at this time successfully repelled attacks by German tanks and infantry.
Photo: MKU “City Information Center” During the bombing, the Stalingrad City Defense Committee decided to immediately evacuate women, children and the wounded from the city to the left bank of the Volga.
The remaining approximately 169 thousand civilians worked daily on defensive lines and building barricades in the streets and near factories.
These days, the city defense committee addressed the population of the city with an appeal.
Dear comrades! Dear Stalingraders! Once again, like 24 years ago, our city is going through difficult days. The bloody Nazis are rushing to sunny Stalingrad to the great Russian river Volga. Stalingraders! We will not hand over our hometown to the Germans for desecration. Let us all stand as one in defense of our beloved city, our home, our family. We will cover all the streets with impenetrable barricades. Let's make every house, every block, every street an impenetrable fortress. Everyone go out to build barricades. Barricade every street. In the terrible year of 1918, our fathers defended Tsaritsyn. We too will defend Red Banner Stalingrad in 1942!
As a result, all German attempts to quickly take the city from the north were stopped thanks to stubborn resistance. Soviet troops, despite the enemy's superiority in strength and technology, managed to launch a series of counterattacks and stop the offensive on August 28, 1942.
Photo: Russian Ministry of Defense To this day, August 23, 1942 is considered the most terrible event in the history of Stalingrad. Every year on this day, Volgograd residents lay flowers at the eternal flame and hold a minute of silence in memory of those who died from German bombs.
Today Volgograd is called Stalingrad. This is such a wise decision by the party. Solomonovo! People debated for a long time whether it was necessary to rename Volgograd back to Stalingrad, or even back to Tsaritsyn, or not to stir up the past and leave everything as it is.
And so, on the eve of all the glorious anniversaries starting today, in order to stop these disputes, contentions, civil war, the wise city leadership decided to leave everything as it is, but for three days a year to call Volgograd Stalingrad. Namely: May 9,
a day, as I heard, is kind of muddy ,
February 2, the day the Battle of Stalingrad ended, and August 23, the day of the sudden colossal bombing of Stalingrad. By the way, and the only one!
That’s why everyone remembers it that way. Volgograd residents don’t even remember any other bombings of their city, but everyone knows this one.
I don’t presume to evaluate the wisdom of our leaders regarding the remaining days, but calling Volgograd Stalingrad today in all local media is an absolutely fair decision. This particular one "victory" there is a very specific author. And it's time to glorify him.
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The original was taken from
"Сui prodest" - "Look for who benefits"
"There are no fortresses that
the Bolsheviks couldn't take it"
Bastard Stalin
, .
Anyone who was not too lazy to master these three short materials, I hope, fully understood that the Germans simply could not organize such a monstrous and sudden bombardment of Stalingrad that day. And on another day they couldn’t - they simply had nothing.
And most importantly, it was definitely not in their interests.
It’s just that over many decades and a couple of generations of lop-eared oafs you have been taught to think that the Germans were a senseless, bloodthirsty beast, and all this crap is what the propagandists are using to this day with such ease. Meanwhile, I remind you that the Germans have always been the most rational people. And by the way, these are the greatest good-natured people on Earth. They were, are and will be. Before Hitler, under Hitler and after Hitler. No Fuhrer can change the national character. Even a fascist Bolshevik, not like a Nazi vegetarian. No, not all fortresses can be taken by the Bolsheviks. He lied to you again.
But only Comrade Stalin himself could have created all this. And his motives were ironclad! And, unlike the Germans, there was every opportunity to quickly leave the city in ruins. In these picturesque and artificially created ruins, protracted picturesque battles were then fought. I will explain in more detail and more clearly..
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As my great Teacher Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun taught me, I explain based solely on Bolshevik sources and the most ordinary, but immutable logic. Choose any sources, they all say the same thing.
For example . Quite a patriotic piece of crap with a red star, just like any other. You just need to be able to read. And think for yourself. And so the Bolsheviks confessed everything a long time ago. Well, did you read it? Refresh your memory of something you never knew? Then let's go. So, what exactly happened on August 23, 1942? A terrible thing happened: the Germans broke through the defenses of Stalingrad and broke into the northwestern outskirts of the city.
And Comrade Stalin has everything ready! Comrade Golovanov’s entire long-range bomber aircraft is standing idle on the other side of the Volga. And all the goals have long been outlined and approved. And for a long time it has flown over the area more than once. And therefore, every crew knows their maneuver, as Suvorov taught them to fight. And Stalin really needs to hurry, while the sky over Stalingrad is still clear - huge, but purely destructive Von Richthofen's 4th Air Fleet is just relocating to Stalingrad, but almost all of it has already flown there. The command of the 4th Fleet is still incomplete, yes, but it is about to become so, and the Germans will begin to act, begin to shoot down red bombers, saving priceless loot, which is practically the property of the Third Reich.
What is the goal of advancing troops? Destroy everything in front of you? Not at all, the goal of the attackers is exactly the opposite - to seize someone else's resource in as safe a form as possible. But the goal of the retreating side is precisely to ensure that the enemy does not get anything valuable. Have you really never heard of this? Then why don’t you understand that it was the Bolsheviks who rushed to destroy the already guaranteed doomed Stalingrad? Why do you believe that Richthofen could have arranged this? Because they are fools. Or do you have another explanation for this? "mysterious" phenomenon? It's good for you. But I don’t have it.
After all, what is Stalingrad? This is a whole pile of valuable factories. The pile is really big. Moreover, together with the working personnel who were not evacuated... Because because! Because we need to protect the property of our Bolshevik comrades, and not scurry all the way to the Pacific Ocean with all our qualifications, saving our miserable lives. It is this wealth that Comrade Hitler must seize as unharmed as possible. And the most valuable of all the riches of Stalingrad is its oil refinery! It was the DBA heavy bombers that destroyed it first. The Volga was burning, they were so outrageous! Who did this, did the Germans really need it?
Just look at the map. Just look at the distance Hitler now had to carry all the oil products for his voracious army. Now go back to your commie sources, and you will see that in parallel with the grandiose Stalingrad offensive operation, Hitler led another, no less grandiose and offensive operation - the Caucasus. Again he acted simultaneously on two diverging directions. Was he a fool? No, just a poor guy forced to operate in the vast expanses of Asia.
Soviet oil came from the Caucasus. Moreover, all of it. And Baku, and Chechen, and Iranian. The latter is, in general, almost 100% aviation gasoline for Sovk. For valiant red soldiers. For "Maestro", "Romeo" And "Grasshopper" with "Darkie"". Holy names, yup! And all these oil products were flowing along the Volga.. Place one gun with the most reliable gunner of the Reich anywhere on the shore of this majestic Russian River, and Comrade Stalin would have no oil. None.
Why Stalingrad, why was it so easy for everyone? Look back at the map. Do you see where this hero city stands? Do you see this sharp bend towards the west? He was the closest thing to the Germans! And, again, there was a factory there. A good factory, by the way. Moreover, it is especially priceless because it is the closest of all potential ones. Let's take the Caucasus, and here we have oil refining, exactly. And the personnel trained under it, during processing. Not evacuated, which is especially noteworthy.
And there are quite a few other good factories in this industrial center. And the footage, back, is with them. And all previous practice has clearly shown that people liberated from the Bolsheviks are willing to cooperate. For complicity, as Comrade put it. Stalin. He himself knew about this circumstance. And he took it into account. Therefore, all future accomplices had to explain something. Conduct, tekskat, political information. Yeah, visual propaganda. For our native Soviet power. So that they don’t experience illusions and don’t have plans for bourgeois gingerbread.
So, who, you say, smashed Stalingrad to pieces on August 23, 1942? Richthofen, you say? What for? Don’t you know, Hitler wasn’t very upset when he learned that this glorious naval commander-aeronaut of his had dropped the most scarce kilotons of payload on what was practically German property? He, the Fuhrer, can be said to have personal property! No, didn’t he scold that Richthofen? And didn’t you spank this pest on his plump fascist bottom? And why? But because Hitler was kind! Like Lenin. Or his eyes.