Nice one sir,that's a great help.

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VICTORY IN SPITE OF ALL TERROR

lol

There was in fact ONE rifle division that arrived Stalingrad with half of its rifles when it detrained because the German fighter-bombers destroyed the trains transporting their weapons. The situation was so dire that the unit was ordered to scavage as many rifles it could find and went into combat the same day.

The rest of the apocryphal stories about every two man a rifle probably had its origin in WWI when some Russian units did not have enough small arms. This was very rare or non-existent during WW2.

i can't decide which side should i believe,but i've played Call Of Duty 2 and Russians are defending Stalingrad while waves of German troops charge at them..the Russians scream "Fot The Motherland!!!"

On Call of Duty 3 they will be shouting "Harry for England and Saint George"!

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Oh great, now you are going to tell me that COD isn't historically correct? Great.

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Scott

That's Za for you... Always spoiling one's hopes and dreams



Cheers...

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Battles don't win wars, Logistics do!

I can't believe you are honestly taking the Hitler Channel and Military Channel as sources. Their 'documentaries' tend to be at best dubious at worst just plain wrong. In this instance they are almost certainly wrong, I have seen History Channel documentaries claim Hitler was Jewish and others continuing to spread the myth of the 'Stalingrad Sniper duel,' both of which have been fairly comprehensively debunked.

Whilst in WW1 the Tsars armies were often sent to the front without weapons this was not often the case in WW2, the rifle and clip story is an old myth that has been kept going through ignorance and people not actually checking their sources.

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

LOL You just noticed this? LOL. Just remember it takes"5 Shermans firing at once to destory a Tiger" LOL. It really is a wonder how much out there is taken at face value or is believed to be totally accurate.And when faced with the correct information to the contrary of what they believe they seemed offended or defensive. LOL

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

there's a Hitler channel??! I hope its just information & not subliminal fascist messages from the "Fuher" himself!

Great stuff! Tell me more. Please!!!

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The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler

I think that the information you've been referring to is highly unreliable, if not irrelevant as a whole. All of these books and movies you're coming across are biased in one way or another. Watching 'Enemy At The Gates' and using that as a historical resource? Dude, that's like watching Spongebob to get an overall idea of the marine world. I suggest you read some translated Soviet accounts of Stalingrad, memoirs perhaps. And if you've never been, I strongly advise you to visit Stalingrad (Volgograd, as it's now called) and go to the 'Rodina-Mat'' memorial at Mamaev Kurgan.

just dont xpect to find any names there ..

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Im himmel gibt's kein bier !

I would love to go see that.

I would be deeply honoured if you took the time to pay a visit to one of the greatest memorials that Russia's got to offer. Rodina-Mat' is absolutely immense, she towers above the whole city as a reminder of Stalingrad 1943. Visiting Pavlov's House and the Battle of Stalingrad Museum, not to mention the Eternal Fire Memorial (located at Mamaev Kurgan as well), would definitely be time well spent, as many people tend to overlook Soviet history, especially the nation's contribution to the war, and tend to concentrate more on the negative aspects of the period, using irrelevant sources (such as Call Of Duty or Hollywood films, or extremely biased books) instead of studying and considering the amazing valor, bravery and courage that my ancestors showed during the war, and the sacrifice that the Soviet Union laid on the altar of freedom. Using the term 'Human Waves' is unbelievably disrespectful to people that actually defeated Hitler's armies (at least inflicted the most harm to the Nazi war machine), conquered Berlin and brought back peace to Europe.

Anyway, it's just an amazing place to go to.

Eternal Fire Memorial


Pavlov's House


The annihilated mill building near the entrance to the Battle Of Stalingrad Museum (the only building in Volgograd to have been left in its wartime destroyed state)


And, Heinrich, what names were you referring to? (just out of interest)

looks impressive tovarisch,nice pics...

It is. Believe me, when I went there, it just changed my whole perspective on Stalingrad. When I saw Rodina-Mat' I nearly burst into tears, it was so moving. I mean, the whole memorial complex is just stunning, just absolutely breathtaking. Too bad that not many people know about them, though. The amount of foreign visitors to Volgograd is catastrophically small, and as a consequence many people think that we've forgotten about the horrors of Stalingrad, and prefer to 'remind' our nation of Stalingrad by remembering 'Human Waves', yelling 'For Mother Russia!' in a perverse Russian accent, always talking about the insufficent weapons supplement, mentioning evil mustache-clad dictator commanders, one rifle per two people, awful Soviet tactics, the zagradotryad regiments etc. Things of that nature. May I remind all of these people that the battle of Stalingrad was actually won?! And a whole German army was encircled and taken prisoner in the course of the battle (!). Fieldmarshal von Paulus was taken prisoner as well, if anyone remembers. A fieldmarshal (!). After Stalingrad the only way for the Fascist hordes was back to where they came from, Germany. Retreat awaited.

Even the posing of that question : 'Was it true that the Soviets charged machine guns yelling "For Mother Russia!"?' deeply offends me and, I would suspect, the Russian nation. And anyway, it was "Za Rodinu, Za Stalina" that they would have been shouting, not 'For Mother Russia!' or anything else that Call Of Duty has engraved in the minds of the West.

Being historically accurate and being biased are two absolutely different things, and ever since I registered all I've been seeing is questions similar to the one above, and that just makes me wonder whether the Soviet side of things is shown in a positive light, anywhere at all, at least when it comes to the Second World War. So much acid has been pourn on the USSR in the Cold War and afterwards, and in that time history literally polarized and obliterated itself. Please hear me out. If you want to keep on believing in a Lenin-obsessed, cattle-like nation, wearing Ushanka hats and charging around drunk, waltzing with bears, keep on believin'. I ain't gonna stop you. Sorry for completely getting carried away with this.

There's Paulus by the way, second on the left, being captured by the Soviet Infantry.

not at all,sometimes it is seen that way,but from recent news reels it looks as any city and very modern too,ray..

I believe he was referring to the victims of that battle. There are no names of the victims anywhere in the city with (perhaps) an exception of a very few. Considering the calamity of the battle and the amount of casualties which both sides sustained in such a short period of time, should be of no surprise.

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The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler

How tall is the Mamaev Kurgan statue?

Hi Towaritsj ..
The line about the names was indeed referrring to another posting about 'Vets meet at Stalingrad ' were both party's of vets were a bit disappointed not to find any names of their fallen comrades .

Seems they haven't been at the right place now looking at the pics of the large hall , plenty of names there . If you read the other article you'll understand . If I ever make that far as Nowgorod I will shurely visit as looks deeply impressive .

(perhaps thats what the guide from that other article tried to say ...)

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Im himmel gibt's kein bier !

Completed in 1967, the statue "Motherland is Calling" is 52 metres high (171 feet) and is made of 5,500 tons of concrete and 2,400 tons of metal. The sword is stainless steel and is 29 metres long weighing 14 tons. The hanging part of the scarf ways 250 tons. The statue not fixed to its foundation by anything but its own weight. At night the statue is illuminated by floodlights.

Heinrich, there are loads of places in Volgograd with names of fallen soldiers, that Memorial Hall being just one of dozens, probably, I don't know the exat amount. There are also books issued with lists of fallen Soviet and German Soldiers, 'Knigi Pamyati' as we call them in Russia, Books of Honor or Books of Memory, but the latter sounds weird. They've got millions of names in them, and info. Literaly, millions. You could also contact the National Archives of Russia or Germany, they must have something on the subject.
I guess they really were looking somewhere else when they failed to notice that hall, for one

Sniper1946, wow, I didn't know that statue was fixed to the foundation only by its own weight thanks for that info, I appreciate it.

Sloniksp, well, maybe there are few, due to the large amount of common graves, but I should think that finding out about a specific military graveyard or some specific monument would help to surface information about fallen soldiers, both German and Soviet. The memorials are there, most of them are unknown, unfortunately.

I posted some in the 'trip to stalingrad' thread by jeffinmnusa.

Do not try to base your knowledge on "Documentaries". Many are innacurate and conflicting in the information they present. There are many other sources out there on the subject. Books are a good thing for a start LOL. And you might want to peruse the threads here too for information.

No human waves at Stalingad?

Somebody hasn't been reading the literature.....

ENEMY AT THE GATES, (William Craig, Page 78)

"In the five days he had been at the front, Zhukov had not yet performed a miracle, but he was attempting to co-ordinate Russian infantry attacks with meager air and tank strikes. Such an effort needed time. This Stalin would not allow him. When Zhukov called him, pleading for a delay until ammunition arrived in sufficient quantities, Stalin gave him until September 5. On that day, Zhukhov launched "human wave" assaults, which crashed into the left flank of the German corridor from the Don to the Volga and immediately foundered. At nightfall, the German corridor was still intact."

This was a front wide assault, lasting for 72 hours, and broken up by German firepower for the umpteenth time. Designed only to buy time, it did just that, as Paulus had to switch reserves from the inner city to the outskirts.
Human Waves were used right up to the fall of Berlin. Whether to break morale, buy time, from lack of suitable training for anything else or simply because a local commander had run out of patience.

The Red Army would not have been able to keep throwing untrained ploughboys into uniform as quickley as they did with sophisticated tactical training schools. Many recruits had a limited education in any case, so complexity was shelved in favour of brute strength. "Human Waves" did much to demoralize an enemy who thought themselves superior, and these 'tactics' were, from a Russian point of view, entirely justified. It is indeed something to think about when your opponents are willing to throw men and machines at your position regardless, until you run out of ammunition, or the pressure becomes too great leading to a retreat.

We should not glorify the Red Army hierarchy for this, but rather, THANK the ordinary Russian, brave and tough buggers that they were, for putting up with this 'tactic'. The attitude of the ordinary Russian can be seen by the INCREDIBLE stoicism they showed when wounded. Again and again, 'Ivan' proved to his German counterpart that they were not dealing with 'untermenschen' at all, but real humans that were "bloody annoyed", willing and able to give their all.

I fall to my knees in grateful praise. As a Westerner, so should you.