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Chuikov's Close Embrace: Surviving Inside the Ruins of Stalingrad
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Inside the Battle of Stalingrad, General Chuikov's 62nd Army clung to a strip of riverbank measured in metres — and turned the ruins into a weapon. This chapter covers the Volga line, the factory sieges, Pavlov's House, and the sniper war that defined urban combat in 1942.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
For five months, the only thing standing between the German Sixth Army and complete control of Stalingrad was a strip of riverbank so narrow that soldiers could hear the water. In some places, Soviet troops held less than two hundred meters of ground.
The Luftwaffe arrived at Stalingrad first. In late August of nineteen forty-two, German aircraft flew the equivalent of two thousand sorties over the city in a matter of days.
The man tasked with holding Stalingrad was General Vasily Chuikov, commander of the Soviet Sixty-Second Army. He established his headquarters on the western bank of the Volga, in a position that was repeatedly bombed throughout the battle.
Inside the city, the battle fractured into dozens of smaller battles. The Tractor Factory.
While Chuikov's men bled for every meter on the Volga bank, Soviet planners were watching something else entirely. The German Sixth Army's flanks.
Paulus knew what encirclement meant. He requested permission to break out to the west.
Two million casualties is the figure most associated with Stalingrad. Soviet and German dead, wounded, prisoners, and missing across the full course of the battle.
Chapter summary auto-generated from the verified script. Listen to the full episode for the complete content.