Word: volga
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...food. The Russian counteroffensive that began on Dec. 5, 1941, also relieved pressure on the city. By early 1942, though the blockade was not broken, the Germans could not hope to advance without a terrible fight. Besides, Hitler was turning his attention toward the Volga River and oil-rich Baku by the Caspian Sea. There a titanic struggle soon developed over the city that stood in his way: Stalingrad...
...called gateway to the Caucasus, was even more ominous. The siege was embarrassingly brief, and whole Soviet units reportedly fled in panic. Suddenly the way south to the oil fields of Baku was open. With German armies simultaneously dashing to cut off the Soviet supply line along the Volga, Stalin issued a stern "not a step back" decree to the Red Army. Deserters were to be shot on sight...
Stalingrad, a great sprawl of a city on the Volga, became the focal point of the struggle. It had originally been named Tsaritsyn, and during the bloody civil war it was successfully defended against the rightist White Army by Stalin himself, who gave it his name. The Russians knew that if they did not tie down the Germans at Stalingrad, the war would virtually be lost. Not only would the huge cities of the north be bereft of supplies from the fertile south, but the oil fields of Baku that fueled the Russian war machine would fall to the Wehrmacht...
...Luftwaffe sent 600 bombers against the city, killing 40,000 civilians. On the same day, the Germans established a five-mile front to the north. Wrote the Soviet General Vassili Chuikov: "The enormous city, stretching for 30 miles along the Volga, was enveloped in flames. Everything around was burning and collapsing." Less than two weeks later the Germans rumbled into the western suburbs, and two months of the most ferocious street fighting of the war ensued. "Fierce actions had to be fought for every house, workshop, water tower, raised railway track, wall or cellar, and even for every heap...
...Germans, however, could never quite take all of Stalingrad. While they held air superiority, they were unable to knock out the powerful batteries of Russian artillery across the Volga. And beyond the Stalingrad cauldron, the Red Army was on the move. In late November 1942 the Russians encircled the city, trapping thousands of German and Romanian troops. Hitler had committed a strategic mistake. He had dissipated his military strength and caused tremendous logistical confusion by splitting up the offensive -- sending a huge strike force toward the Caucasus simultaneously with the drive toward Stalingrad...