would win. After Stalingrad, they moved resolutely westward, straight to Berlin, and the legacy of their arduous passage into the heartland of Germany remains with us to this day. For the Soviet Union, the path to its present role as a superpower began at the Volga River, where, as Winston Churchill described it, "the hinge of fate had turned. . . ."
For the Germans, Stalingrad was the single most traumatic event of the war. Never before had one of their elite armies succumbed in the field. Never before had so many soldiers vanished without trace in the vast wilderness of an alien country. Stalingrad was a mind-paralyzing calamity to a nation that believed it was the master race. A creeping pessimism began to invade the minds of those who had chanted "Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!" at Hitler's rallies, and the myth of the Führer's genius slowly dissolved under the impact of the reality of Stalingrad. In furtive conversations, men once too timid to move against the regime began to make concrete plans to overthrow it. Stalingrad was the beginning of the end for the Third Reich.
After spending four years intensively researching the battle of Stalingrad from both sides of no-man's-land, I found that the mosaic of the story changed with the passing days—as does all history. The brilliant German offensive to the Volga paled in relation to the inspired defense of Stalingrad by the Russians. Beyond that, most gripping of all, was the gradual moral and physical disintegration of the German soldiers as they realized they were doomed. In their struggle to cope with the unthinkable, lies the ultimate drama of the event.
Brutality, sadism, and cowardice are undeniably prominent in the story. Jealousy, overriding ambition, and callousness to human suffering occur with shocking frequency. Man aspires to greatness, but all too often his hopes are submerged by the primitive instinct to survive at any cost. What happens is not pleasant reading. No book that deals with widespread slaughter can be. At Stalingrad we are witnesses to monumental human tragedy.
William Craig
Westport, Connecticut
November 8, 1972
Chapter One
Parched by the blazing sun of summer, the grassy plain of the steppe country is light brown in hue. From the vicinity of Lugansk in the west to Kazakhstan in the east, the barren tableland stretches more than six hundred miles across southern Russia. Only a few rectangular patches of cultivated farmland, kolkhozi, relieve the desolation and, from them, ribbons of road run straight to the horizon.
Two majestic rivers, running roughly north to south, scour the land. The erratic Don gouges a convulsive path to the city of Rostoy on the Sea of Azov. Farther east, the mighty Volga bends more gently on its way to a rendezvous with the Caspian Sea at Astrakhan. Only at one place do the rivers run parallel to each other, and here they are forty miles apart. After that brief attempt at union, they flow relentlessly on their lonely journeys to different destinations, giving but brief respite to the harsh terrain. Otherwise, the suffocating heat of the region cracks the ground and paralyzes life.
It has been that way for centuries on the steppe. But on August 5, 1942, a malevolent presence intruded on the timeless scene. From the west, from the far-off Ukraine, came giant pillars of dust. The whirling clouds advanced fitfully across the prairie, slowing only for short periods before moving on toward the east and the Don River barrier. From a distance they resembled tornadoes, those natural phenomena that plague the open areas of the earth. But these spiraling clouds hid the German Sixth Army, an elite legion dispatched by Adolf Hitler to destroy the Soviet Army and the Communist state led by Joseph Stalin. Its men were supremely confident; during three years of warfare, they had never suffered defeat.
In Poland, the Sixth Army had made the word blitzkrieg ("lightning war") a synonym for Nazi omnipotence. At
For the Germans, Stalingrad was the single most traumatic event of the war. Never before had one of their elite armies succumbed in the field. Never before had so many soldiers vanished without trace in the vast wilderness of an alien country. Stalingrad was a mind-paralyzing calamity to a nation that believed it was the master race. A creeping pessimism began to invade the minds of those who had chanted "Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!" at Hitler's rallies, and the myth of the Führer's genius slowly dissolved under the impact of the reality of Stalingrad. In furtive conversations, men once too timid to move against the regime began to make concrete plans to overthrow it. Stalingrad was the beginning of the end for the Third Reich.
After spending four years intensively researching the battle of Stalingrad from both sides of no-man's-land, I found that the mosaic of the story changed with the passing days—as does all history. The brilliant German offensive to the Volga paled in relation to the inspired defense of Stalingrad by the Russians. Beyond that, most gripping of all, was the gradual moral and physical disintegration of the German soldiers as they realized they were doomed. In their struggle to cope with the unthinkable, lies the ultimate drama of the event.
Brutality, sadism, and cowardice are undeniably prominent in the story. Jealousy, overriding ambition, and callousness to human suffering occur with shocking frequency. Man aspires to greatness, but all too often his hopes are submerged by the primitive instinct to survive at any cost. What happens is not pleasant reading. No book that deals with widespread slaughter can be. At Stalingrad we are witnesses to monumental human tragedy.
William Craig
Westport, Connecticut
November 8, 1972
Chapter One
Parched by the blazing sun of summer, the grassy plain of the steppe country is light brown in hue. From the vicinity of Lugansk in the west to Kazakhstan in the east, the barren tableland stretches more than six hundred miles across southern Russia. Only a few rectangular patches of cultivated farmland, kolkhozi, relieve the desolation and, from them, ribbons of road run straight to the horizon.
Two majestic rivers, running roughly north to south, scour the land. The erratic Don gouges a convulsive path to the city of Rostoy on the Sea of Azov. Farther east, the mighty Volga bends more gently on its way to a rendezvous with the Caspian Sea at Astrakhan. Only at one place do the rivers run parallel to each other, and here they are forty miles apart. After that brief attempt at union, they flow relentlessly on their lonely journeys to different destinations, giving but brief respite to the harsh terrain. Otherwise, the suffocating heat of the region cracks the ground and paralyzes life.
It has been that way for centuries on the steppe. But on August 5, 1942, a malevolent presence intruded on the timeless scene. From the west, from the far-off Ukraine, came giant pillars of dust. The whirling clouds advanced fitfully across the prairie, slowing only for short periods before moving on toward the east and the Don River barrier. From a distance they resembled tornadoes, those natural phenomena that plague the open areas of the earth. But these spiraling clouds hid the German Sixth Army, an elite legion dispatched by Adolf Hitler to destroy the Soviet Army and the Communist state led by Joseph Stalin. Its men were supremely confident; during three years of warfare, they had never suffered defeat.
In Poland, the Sixth Army had made the word blitzkrieg ("lightning war") a synonym for Nazi omnipotence. At
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