The Rest Is History - 215. Stalingrad and the Red Army

Episode Date: July 28, 2022

Tom and Dominic are again joined by Iain MacGregor to discuss the climax of the Battle of Stalingrad, Pavlov's House, and the Red Army's counter offensive that ultimately defeated the Axis forces. Join The Rest Is History Club for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the, bringing the earth and sky together into one swaying blur. The snow fell on bark's shoulders. It was as though flakes of silence were falling on the still vulgar, on the dead city, on the skeletons of horses. It was snowing everywhere, on earth and on the stars. The whole universe was full of snow. Everything was disappearing beneath it. Guns, the bodies of the dead, filthy dressings, rubble, scraps of twisted iron. This soft white snow settling over the carnage of the city was time itself. The present was turning into the past and there was no future. Welcome to The Rest is History and that was Vasily Grossman

in his great novel Life and Fate drawing on his experience as a war reporter during the Battle of Stalingrad in the last months of 1942. So, Tom, we ended the last episode with German and Soviet troops fighting house to house, and winter was coming over closer, and our guest Ian McGregor is still with us. And Ian, can we kick off by talking about one of the really iconic things about Stalingrad, something I know you're really interested in,

which is the story of Pavlov and his house. Because this is, your book is called The Lighthouse of Stalingrad. And, I mean, obviously, it's a podcast, so people can't see the map, and his house because this is your book is called the lighthouse of stalingrad and um i mean obviously this is a podcast so people can't see the map but if you can imagine there is a a square very close to the volga river called the 9th of january square and it's flanked by all these buildings um the german forces uh have sort of got down to the square and there's one building that sort of sticks out into the square isn't there's one building that sort of sticks out into the square,

isn't it? It's an apartment building. And this is the building that becomes famous, the famous building of Stalingrad called Pavlov's House. So tell us about who Pavlov is and why his house matters. Junior Sergeant Pavlov is a bit like Chukov. He was born in a village outside of Moscow, about 50 miles outside of Moscow.

He joined up at the start of the war. And he was in the elite formations because the guards rifle divisions that had been created were seen as the elite of the Russian Red Army Armed Forces. Better train, better equipment, better pay, better food. And he was in Redimtsev's 13th Guards that had gone over on this suicidal, almost like Omaha Beach assault onto the Western Shore to reclaim the central part of the city, which the Germans had taken the day before. And they did manage to drive them back. And then what you have therefore going forward over the next few weeks and months is this brutal house-to-house fighting for just the few inches of ground, few feet of ground,

the next room, the next floor, hopefully you capture the next building. The 9th of January Square is literally 600, 700 metres away from the Volga and behind that is the central landing pier where the main supplies of troops and ammunition and as well as the wounded going in the other direction were. And that's where Radimtsev had his headquarters. And it was up to him to have his three regiments

along this line that would defend the pockets of resistance in the center of the city. And what evolved was it was the case of following Chukev's orders that there would be an active defense, which came all the way from Moscow. Stalin wanted to see this. He wanted to let the Russian people know that they were fighting to defend the city and they were taking the fight to the Germans. They weren't just passively waiting to be attacked. So this active defense spawned or evolved the doctrine of the storm troops. Pavlov became part of this. Instead of mass assaults by company-sized formations, which would then be decimated by German artillery, assault guns, or aerial attacks, they would shrink this down to six-man teams. Normally,

six-man teams could be eight-man teams, and they would be armed to the teeth. So they would shrink this down to six-man teams. Normally six-man teams could be eight-man teams. And they would be armed to the teeth. So they would have the latest submachine guns, like I was saying, their pocket artillery, which was bags of grenades. And it would be up to them to be the vanguard to see if they could take these buildings that were further into the heart of the city that might be able to allow Radimtsev to then push the line further away from the Volga and give himself more of a chance of staying there.

So from late September all the way through to the end, really, that's the kind of fighting that the Russians employed in the heart of the city and in the factory districts to retake these buildings. So Pavlov was just part of this. And the house that Dominic was talking about was a house that stuck out. It was a huge four-story apartment block. It could probably take at least 200 people, had over 100 rooms, had a reinforced concrete basement as well. And before the war, it had been one of these new modern blocks that had been built for specialists who

worked in the factory districts, the middle managers, directors, and important party officials. So before the war, it was a place you wanted to live in. But during the war, no. Yes, exactly. By the war, no. And so the Germans had taken it. It was one of their main places that they had taken around the square. They already had all the buildings on the other side of the square and to the side of the square as well. And this building was seen as a, I suppose, it was a vantage point because it was so high. And it becomes a totem.

Yes, exactly. And it offered great views across the city. You could see the whole length of the city. You could see what the Germans were doing in terms of where they were moving to. It would give the artillery spotters on the roof time to then feed back information to the huge artillery parks that Chuikov had built on the eastern shore that were landing these huge salvos that were destroying German formations. As they lined up, even before they attacked, they would be spotted. And this is one of the reasons why the Germans wanted this kind of house back. So when they lost it to Pavlov's team, and then it became infested with reinforcements and turned into a super fortress, the Germans wanted it back. And that's a very similar story to at least a dozen buildings you could talk about in the centre of the city that was fought over, back and forth over the following months.

So when you say a super fortress, they're installing machine guns. I mean, the whole place must have been shot to pieces, but it's basically a ruin by now, right? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the roof's pretty much caved in. Obviously, all the windows are shot out. And it's become a kind of totem for the Soviets. Is it also something that the Germans feel we've got to take it? Well, that's what I found in the research. It was never, again, if you look at the official story, Paulus himself apparently had it marked on his map that Pavlov's house was a place that they needed to take. But it's not mentioned in any combat diary of the main German divisions,

the two or three German divisions that were operating in that area. They never talked about it. The main combat commander whose personal papers I discovered, who was a key figure in the fighting in this area, never mentioned it. He talked about other buildings that they fought for, but he didn't talk about Pavlov's house. Don't get me wrong, it was essential. They needed to have it. It was almost their warning system for anything that would happen if the Germans were going to advance towards Radimsev's main line. He needed that as his almost canary in the gas chamber

to warn him what was going on. But you're right, Tom, they'd laid minefields around the building. It was heavily barbed wire. They'd moved in heavy machine guns. They'd moved in teams of tank destroyers on the roof. It was pretty impregnable. So why, I mean, Pavlov's house becomes famous, doesn't it? Is it famous during the battle or is it only famous afterwards?

Because I think, isn't it taken up by a newspaper called Stalin's Banner? Great name for a newspaper. Tell where that's coming from. I think its political leanings are very clear. So Stalin's Banner is basically the Russian Guardian. I'm right in thinking that this is long after the battle and it basically creates Pavlov's house as a kind of an emblem of Soviet fellowship and bravery. Because it's all about how it's not just Russians, is it?

It's people from across the Soviet Union. It's a band of happy brothers. The Red Army during the Second World War really expanded their propaganda tentacles into their formations. There was over 1,300 newspapers and journals published, created and published across the Red Army, across every territory.

So that's where you've got people like Ilya Ehrenberg and Valery Gr Grossman and these sort of iconic figures. Yeah, I mean, there were over, I think, 5,000 reporters that would work on these journals and newspapers. And of that 5,000, over 900 were professional writers, as Ehrenberg and obviously Vasily Grossman. So they were part of this organised, dedicated setup to report the stories that boosted morale, gave any kind of defeat a certain slant that it didn't seem so catastrophic.

And Stalingrad, as you said, right at the beginning, became a metaphor for almost the soul of the Russian during that part of the Great Patriotic War. We cannot give Stalin up. It's a breathing, living city. It's not a dead city. We are fighting for it. We are fighting for the soul. And we are defending Mother Russia and Mother Volga. And that's the kind of attitude that was taken. So Ian, I listened to the podcast that our sister podcast, We Have Ways, did on Stalingrad. And they had an interview with a very interesting, I think, creator of the museum, the Second World War in Dresden. And he scoffed at the idea. We don't have scoffing on our podcast, Tom.

Well, he didn't scoff. He was politely sceptical of the idea that Stalingrad had resonance for the Soviets and for Stalin himself because it was Stalin City, because of its name. What's your take on that? I think I would say inside the city, those that were fighting for it, definitely I would agree with that. I think they weren't fighting for Stalin. They weren't fighting for any kind of notional idea that they were saving Russia. I think as any combat soldiers would say, fighting in any kind of horrific situation like this, they're fighting for each other. You're doing it for your friends. But the broader, the propaganda thing, the spin, how is the Soviet press, how is the Soviet media spinning it?

The story was taken up on the 31st of October. It was first mentioned. By then, the battle had moved to the north, the factory district. The south of the city had already been captured weeks before. The central part was pretty much 90% occupied by the Germans. There was only that sliver of a few hundred meters depth from the Volga that was still occupied by Radimtsev's forces. Paulus was now under instruction that you've taken those two bits.

The final bit is to now take the factory district. And that's where the fighting had moved to. So Pavlov's house and the 9th of January Square was quite quiet at the time. And that's when the reporters, I suppose, felt it safe to move in and do some interviews. And that's exactly what happened. So as I say in the book, this correspondent for the newspaper, six-page newspaper or newsletter for the 62nd Army was called Stalin's Banner. And a lieutenant, Julie Shapurin, happened to be given permission to go into the house. And he was the one who actually gave the term in the first article about it on the 31st of October, the House of Pavlov.

And in that, he then waxes lyrical about the tropes that have survived all these decades long, about there was a few of them. They were a band of brothers. They came from this huge ethnic mix that represented the Soviet Union. So Tatars, Chechens, Tajiks, and ironically Ukrainians, that would hold off this relentless horde of German infantry, aerial attacks, and armoured attacks for the next 58 days. And is this rubbish, ultimately?

It's inflated. It happened to a degree. But like any fight that was going on in the city, as we talked about earlier on, you capture a house or you capture a room or a floor in a house, you might give it up within 12 hours and then you might retake it again. And this goes back and forward, back and forward, over the days and the weeks of this fighting and that's why it became a meat grinder the house itself uh they took it but by my reading of the accounts that were written down and just stored in in the panorama museum's archives and that's not just the the ordinary soldiers who

fought with pavlov but his commanding officer and then the chain of command right up to regimental level that was in charge of operations in the area. They moved in a lot of troops. That's how they turned it into a fortress. And that's how they were turning the other houses into fortresses. The whole point of which was, yes, they're going to attack us. And primarily they're going to attack us via aerial attack because that was that was their best weapon and and artillery barrages and that does cause casualties but as soon as the the casualties were shipped out more reinforcements come in so it's not really a band of brothers it's

a it's a it's a shifting yes it's homogenous there's an awful lot of troops and pavlov himself am i right in thinking that pavlov't the commander? The commander was a man called Afanasyev, Lieutenant Afanasyev? Yeah. So he came in within 48 hours of Pavlov's storm team taking the house. And again, there's conjecture on whether they actually took the house by fighting. Some German stories I've read is there was actually no one there. The Germans had vacated it. That's not such a good story though, is it? Exactly. But the legend is they were there and they took it room by room and they succeeded. So Anasayev took over 48 hours later.

He was the one who led the first of a number of reinforcement columns into the house. So Ian, it's a meat grinder. The Germans and the Russians are kind of tearing chunks out of each other. Nothing much seems to be happening except that everyone's dying. But then something does change. And this is Operation Uranus. Yes. So this had been actually first talked about during the really dark days of early September when the Germans were first investing the city and they'd already reduced it to rubble. And it was a case of, and Zhukov hadn't even been given his command yet. And this was Georgy Zhukov.

At the time, he wasn't Marshal Zhukov yet. He would be a year or so later, but at the time he was a general, but he was still Deputy Supreme Commander and he was the one reporting to Stalin in Moscow. And with his colleague Vasilevsky, they were outlining the predicament they were in and the Germans were still pushing towards the Volga and they were going to seize Stalingrad. And as well as getting a flea in their ear from Stalin, who obviously didn't want to have this happen, they had the –

I was going to say the guts, they had the ability to actually sit him down and mention that they had this plan as military strategists, great military strategists, both of them were, they could see how overextended the German lines were now from their main base where they'd started from. And they had very weak flanks. So it's all about the trucks. It's all about the trucks. Also about the trucks, as had been said, the bulk of the fighting going towards the Volga was being done by German troops, infantry and armour, and the Luftwaffe, like I said, but their flanks were being guarded by their Axis allies.

And their Axis allies are not strong, right? They're not strong. They had great fighting spirit. And that's what I've seen in a lot of the records I've read. I mean, obviously, a lot of them did flee when Uranus started. But if you're an infantryman on the frozen steppe, and you haven't been fed properly in weeks, and you haven't got the anti-tank guns you're required to fend off a T-34, when you see hundreds of them coming through the foggy mist, What do you do? And they did put up a fight for a day or two days, I think, in the north when the first section started. But it's a weight of numbers and a weight of firepower. They're mostly Romanians. Are they Romanians, Hungarians? Primarily Romanians were guarding the flanks

with Italians and the Hungarians too. But predominantly, famously, the main breaks in the line at the beginning were from the Romanians that were guarding the flanks, in the north especially. But Ian, you said it was tanks, but also I gather from your book, Cossack horse cavalry. Great scare tactic. And they can travel well in snow. They're well-provisioned.

Yeah, thousands upon thousands of Cossack columns. So, I mean, I had no idea that at the Battle of Stalingrad, They're well-provisioned. Yeah, thousands upon thousands of Cossack columns. So, I mean, I had no idea that at the Battle of Stalingrad, the Cossacks on their horses played a key role. Well, that's in the step. It's not in the city itself. It's out on the step. Because you've got to remember, this frontier ran for hundreds of miles. So this is the encircling process.

So they're coming around and they're kind of bottling the Germans up. And you compare it to the Battle of Cannes, Hannibal's great victory over the Romans. But at Cannes, Hannibal's army was smaller than the Roman army that they envelop. But presumably by this point at Stalingrad, the Russians are starting to really outnumber the Germans, are they? Yes. Yeah. I mean, that's when their reinforcements are really coming online. They're being fed into the mix of the big bridgeheads that Zhukov was building up on either flank, north and south of the city, not just in terms of men. They had well over a million men by now, fresh troops, including Cossacks.

But he had hundreds of tanks and they'd rebuilt the Soviet Air Force. So they had well over a thousand planes now that could contest the skies over the city as well as in and around the areas that they were going to attack in a pincer movement from north and south. And so how long after starting Operation Uranus did the Germans find themselves surrounded? Within days. So it was launched in the north on the 19th, the following day from the south. And by the 23rd, they met up famously at a transport hub, Kalach, which was roughly around 40 to 50 kilometres deep into the German lines

and way behind Stalingrad. And that's where they met. And that's where the Germans realised they were in a tricky situation. And are the Germans taken completely by surprise by this? Have they not seen it coming at all? They'd had some warnings, but I don't think they realised. There wasn't a belief in the upper echelons of the high command where Hitler was operating, that they would have not just the resources to attack, but they would have learned from the Germans' use of combined arms. This was properly the first time that the Russians used combined forces. So air attacks met by then huge artillery bombardments. Then the armor goes in and then the infantry

follows up. They hadn't been doing that before. This was the first time that it all worked. It clicked, and it had incredible results. So Hitler, ironically, 11 days before the Soviets launched this fantastic kind of pincer operation, he has gone in front of his old fighters in the beer hall in Munich, and he's basically told them them Stalingrad is finished. We've, we've,

we're just mopping up with, with the city is ours, hasn't he? Yes. And obviously the question that's always hung over the last, sort of the horrendous last weeks, last two months, really of the battle of Stalingrad is the,

the sixth army. They pretty much know straight away. They've been encircled. Don't they? And they say, should we break out now of the encirclement back to the west link up the rest of the German forces or are we just going to stay here and somehow fight it out and Hitler says well you absolutely have to stay you cannot retreat show national socialist spirit yes exactly I mean there's so many questions about this. Is this Hitler's ideological blindness? Do his generals know that it's folly? And I suppose third, if he had said, actually, you know what, break out, get back to the West, get back to the rest of the troops, could they have even done it? Yeah, that's a big ask in the weather as well, especially when you're

up against so many fresh troops and tanks and a revitalized Air Force Two. They probably would have done it, but it's speculation on how much would be left by the time they've done it. Hitler is famous for not saying they couldn't do it. And he slept on it overnight. And then he's persuaded by Goering or some of Goering's logistical commanders as well, of that an airlift was possible. And it had worked the year before. So once we had the, after Boba Rossa and the Russian winter counteroffensive, there had been various pockets that had been isolated once Hitler had said, stand and fight. And these had been

successfully, I mean, we're talking army groups, not a few thousand men, huge armies of about 70 to 80,000 men that had been surrounded by the Russian counter-offenses had been resupplied and fought their way out. So it had worked. So he, on the one hand, he wanted to believe what he was being told by Goering, who had been out of favour and was now trying to get back in favour, who was promising him, I can get together enough transport planes to supply the Sixth Army, which was bogus from the start. But equally, as Hitler surprisingly admitted to his chief of staff, he was in the operations room and he's pointing to obviously where the situation where they're in at the moment, this pincer's closed, and he's pointing to Stalingrad. He said, if we retreat from there, we are never getting back there.

He was a realist enough to know that the cost that it had taken to get there, he wouldn't be in the situation to get it again. What's the possible endgame, Ian, though, in which they, because they can't hold out? Or does he think? There's the other army, isn't there? So there's the army to the south. But again, I think that was a gesture more than a specific plan. I don't think it was ever a realistic option. So this is Operation Winter Storm, is that right?

Yeah. And that was von Manstein, who'd been promoted to field marshal because he'd successfully conquered the Crimea with the 11th Army. He was then parachuted in, as he would be in future operations through the war. He was a very able, talented commander. He was given a couple of fresh divisions and some battered survivors that had managed to retreat west and get back to the lines from the encirclement. These were used to try and batter a way through.

He tried it. It began 12th of December, but again, they just weren't appreciative of A, the Russian winter and the kind of forces that they were now facing. Because they were all wearing the wrong shoes. Well, no, but the Russians had deliberately, by the time they'd done the encirclement, they then brought in fresh reinforcements to really solidify that line, looking out from Stalingrad to the new frontier the Germans had, whilst the forces surrounding Stalingrad would then reduce it. So then they're in this, what are they called, the Kessel?

The Kessel. Which is sort of shrinking by the day, basically. And I guess at this point, the Germans are probably losing as many men to frostbite and cold and starvation as they are to Russian fire. Absolutely. Yeah, well, as we were talking about, they'd been promised X amount of provisions and supplies by the Luftwaffe or by Goering. And the Luftwaffe, the transport planes that they tried to scrape together from all different theaters of operations to try and achieve this, it was never going to happen. Even on a good day,

they delivered half the tonnage that the sixth army needed because this is over 300,000 men trapped in this Kessel. They need everything that you need to survive, not just arms and armaments. So you're right. The operations that were subsequently then happening over the coming weeks going into 1943 into January was simply to isolate specific areas of the pocket

to carve it up and isolate those pockets to then easily reduce them further. It did cost the Russians thousands and thousands of troops to do this. But they can afford it. They can afford it. And the Germans were putting up a good fight. And in the middle of this, Ian, you have these incredibly harrowing,

actually kind of oddly haunting scenes of the Germans at Christmas. They try to cut down trees, Christmas trees. They light candles. They think about their families back home. They sing hymns and stuff. So I had something like this,

about this in my kid kids book that i did about the second world war and when my son was reading the in draft he was he said to me he was then i think eight and he said um god this is the first time i've realized the germans were people too i almost feel sorry for them but you do kind of it's hard to read that i mean whenever we read the stories of the battle of stalingrad for for obvious reasons, the Germans loom in our imagination as it were the villains. But when you read those stories of them, their eyes full of tears, trying to celebrate Christmas,

do you think it's hard not to be moved or am I being too sentimental? No, I think it's absolutely right. It's human nature. I hugely admire the Russians for what they did and what they suffered. But yeah, I mean, you can't help it. And you look at, like I have, you look at some of the drawings that were created, the Christmas cards. I've got several at home here that were supplied to me when I was talking to veterans. Very kindly, they gave them. They look so sweet and amazing. And they obviously, behind them must be a story of terror and despair. The personal papers I got from Colonel Friedrich Roscoe, who's obviously in charge of a regiment that was in the centre of all this, in the city fighting.

Yeah, he's one of your big characters, isn't he? Again, it's heartbreaking. He tells an amazing story of how he's standing outside his headquarters and he hadn't told his men it was his birthday. And amid the silence, the Russians stopped for a few hours of a barrage. They get out and get some fresh air and they're having a cigarette and he's talking to his officers. And he started to be serenaded by the regiment's military band, who've scrubbed and donned on their best clothes and come marching out of the basement and sing him happy birthday.

And he's moved to tears. And when you read that, you can't help but feel sorry for their predicament. But they had killed a lot of people, let's bear that in mind. So, well, just probably a bit of balance there before we get the violins out. But also the Russians have put up the – that was the talk about they get the violins out. I was about to say the Russians have the loudspeakers out, don't they? And what I always think is the most unbelievably sinister thing,

the Russians have got a loudspeaker playing the sound of a clock and a voice sort of says in German, every seven seconds a German dies at Stalingrad. God, that is sinister. And, I mean, that must have been absolutely terrifying, you know, because the clock ticking and all the time. Dystopian nightmare. Yeah, well, they were dropping leaflets.

They were using POWs that they captured that were willing to make speeches or call to their comrades to come over. And towards the end, very much in any kind of huge human disaster, whether it's the Titanic or whatever, you get people that do dreadful things right at the end. And there were, I mean, that's what happened. That kind of psychological warfare worked. It convinced whole units to break the line and just walk across the snow into captivity. Okay, I think we should take a break there. And when we come back,

let's have a look at how the Germans surrender, their official surrender. And also, I think we should look at how the battle is seen today in Russia and elsewhere in the world. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. today in Russia and elsewhere in the world. Add free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets. Head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Before the break, we heard how the German defeat in Stalingrad was looking inevitable.

But Ian, the first official ultimatum of surrender, so that's official ultimatum sent by the Soviets, by the Red Army High Command to the Germans, comes on the 7th of January. Have I got that right? Yeah. Paulus is feeding this back to Hitler in Supreme Headquarters and they're being discounted one after another. This happens a few times. so there's still communications i mean how are the communications holding up oh they had radio

communications all the way through until the second to last day of the surrender right uh because that's how uh paulus was then promoted to field commander that's how they they gave him his promotion to field field marshal and there's a whole welter of promotions to the various officers. which, you know, Pallis says, this is basically indication I should commit suicide. I should kill myself.

So there's that. And it's just the intense, the intensity and the hopelessness of their situation as the ring, the Kessel ring is shrinking as it's then broken up into three specific parts, north, center and south and the communication between those elements are lost and it's what you do and all the time you've got stragglers moving into these these last uh fortifications trying to seek shelter trying

to get away from the cold medical attention trying to get something to eat so so ian um hitler basically wants them to die like the Spartans at Thermopylae. But what actually happens? Talk us through what the endgame is. Well, the endgame, you're right. He wants them to tie down as many Soviet forces as possible because then it was a strategic matter. He still had to try and extricate Army Group A from the Caucasus,

which were in danger of being sealed off if the Russians pushed even further west from where they were surrounding the Stalingrad area. They could easily shut the door on Army Group A, and then he's got an even bigger disaster on his hands. So strategically, it was thought if powerless can keep going for as long as possible, it ties up several armies that are surrounding Stalingrad and that flank and allows Manstein to extricate as many troops and armor as possible, which is what happens. And he managed to stabilize the front.

But in Stalingrad itself, yes, it was ground down remorselessly. There's tank armies coming in all directions. And don't forget, there's Chucov's 62nd Army still in the heart of the city, fighting for all it's worth to tie down whatever of Paulus's forces wants to carry on the fight. And there were, there were quite a few thousand troops that were still prepared to go down fighting to the last bullet, as Hitler wanted them to. He wanted everyone to do that, but they still prepared to go down fighting to the last bullet, as Hitler wanted them to. He wanted everyone to do that, but they were prepared to do that. And that's what I capture in Roska's memoir,

as in he was just an excellent combat commander, and he was the one who put the backbone into that central pocket where Paulus was housed. And Paulus actually came into his headquarters and took it over as the six armies headquarters but in charge of the actual perimeter and giving the day-to-day orders was uh rosca and this is a department store yeah the univer univer mag department store so really it's like something from a i mean funnily enough pavlov's house that we talked about earlier i know has been in a video game.

It's been in a level of Call of Duty, I think. That's right. And the idea of fighting in the shattered remains of a department store surrounded by this bombed out city centre. I mean, that's very Call of Duty, isn't it? I mean, that's literally what's happening. They're reduced to this department store. Well, it's a scene from hell.

And I agree with Tom, it's a hell of their own making. But it's a scene of hell because you've got thousands of dead and dying lying in the basements of this department store. And don't forget, right from the beginning of the battle, that had seen some of the most brutal fighting in and around the department store, around the square where it was based and nearby the train station. That's where the first really titanic struggles were between troops fighting hand-to-hand combat in the buildings and cellars. So fast forward four months later, it's lunar landscape devastation, and that's their final rid-out. And how does a surrender actually happen?

How is it negotiated? Well, the official story is a Red Army lieutenant was the first one to make contact and establish that they were offering terms and they were actually willing to talk about terms this time and they weren't going to be rejected out of hand. And it then went up the chain of command and it got to general level where the chief of staff of the 64th Army, which had been defending the south of the city, he was sent in, a guy called Lashkin. He was in there and he was the one who then sat down with Paulus and him and his officers were visibly shocked by the state of Paulus, emaciated, gaunt, slightly unshaven, uniformed slightly, a bit of a mess,

not really the wherewithal to really understand what was being said. But again, when you read the unpublished memoir of Rosca, it was actually Rosca who was in charge of the first communications. He'd gone out and knocked on a tank and said, we want to now discuss surrender terms, send your party over. And that was the first connection made to the enemy that was only a few hundred yards away from them. And obviously they're surrounded by artillery tanks and heavily armoured infantry.

They have no chance. They're barely holding on. But before even Paulus had turned up, it was Rosca who'd announced to the Russian leadership, we have the field marshal in the building. Up until then, they had no idea where Paulus was. And therefore, it was Roska who kind of choreographed what was going on over the next few hours and how the Russians would deal with their surrender,

as in no one's going to be shot. Officers to a level can keep some side arms. They're going to be supplied with food. They're sick, will be treated fairly. Whether that happened or not, I'm sure it did. Lots of instances, I'm sure it didn't. Well, all the SS get shot, don't they? And any Russians who were in German uniform to get shot?

Well, I was going to say the hardcore, there was a hardcore that still fought on for a few weeks after the surrender in the Northern sector. And it took over, I think it was something like 10,000 security troops had to go into the city, the ruins of the city, once Paulus' surrender had been official, to flush out this final nest of survivors who were just not going to give in.

And maybe some of them were SS. I'm not sure. The official records don't say that. But they were going to go down fighting. And I think out of the thousands, I think it was 8,000 to 9,000 were there that had to be flushed out and only 2,000 were captured. But in your book, you say that the prisoners, the SS prisoners and the Russians who've been in German uniform, they just get shot straight off. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there was a lot of that going on wholesale, if not the back of a building or just taking away. There's one point that I capture about, which I hadn't read before, where as Paulus is being put into a staff car to take him to 64th Army headquarters to be the famous filming of him, one Russian recognizes him and marches up to him with a machine gun and just wanted to take him out then and there. And he had to be restrained. And Paulus is visibly shocked by this. So Paulus, he gets taken to Moscow, is that right? And he basically flips. He becomes a communist.

Well, they were taken, the majority of the 90,000 that surrendered were marched into captivity, but you know, march of death for many of them with disease and the cold and the lack of, because again, they weren't expected to capture so many prisoners. They didn't have the supplies to feed them. They could barely feed their own troops. So there was a huge casualty rate and drop off

of prisoners within weeks and months. But the, yeah, the elite of the German command were taken to special camps. And it was there over the coming months and duration of the war that, yeah, quite a few of them did flip to the other side. And they realized that fighting for national socialism wasn't what it should be and calling upon their comrades to do the right thing. And Paulus was taken to the Nuremberg trials. He's one of the witnesses. And he ends up living in East Germany, doesn't he? He does, yeah.

And Roscoe, you talked about, who's one of the central characters really in your book. So he actually stays in it. He's in prison for more than 10 years till 1955. So one of the last people to be released, I think. Is that right? Yes, he was tried. Look at his prison records. He was tried as a war criminal, but many of them were, many of the senior officers were. And he, yeah, he did about 12 years. The early part of

which first two or three years was hard labor. He moved around the prison of war archipelago. So he was in Siberia, He was in the Urals. He was down by the Black Sea. And he was in Stalingrad because they used quite a lot of POW, German POWs to rebuild Stalingrad over the next few years. So he came home in the last year of the last transports coming back from the east to West Germany. And he came home to Dusseldorf in the summer of 1955.

I mean, he met his youngest son he'd never seen before. And that's one of the things I capture. Paulus tells him in the ruins of the Univermag while they're getting bombed, news has just come through on the radio that your wife's had a son. And he has to go off into an antechamber to cry because, obviously, it's emotional news. But, yeah, so he meets his son for the first time. But whatever was going on in his head, whether it's PTSD or guilt

or he just couldn't, after everything he'd been through, he couldn't settle down. He sadly committed suicide Christmas Day 1956. I mean, it's incredible when you think 1956, the year that Bill Haley and the Comets are touring Britain, you know, rock and roll, all that sort of thing, that the war is still sufficiently fresh in people's minds. And that the scars of it are still so raw that people are coming home and, you know, taking their own lives because of the traumas they've suffered. But talking of the freshness of the traumas they've suffered. But talking of the freshness of the memories of Stalingrad,

obviously for the Soviet Union, and then when the Soviet Union falls, Russia as well, Stalingrad is the great victory, isn't it? It's the great crowning victory. Yeah, especially today. I mean, that's the one thing you couldn't ignore it. When I was on my trip, I met several historians there, had dinner with them. We had a really good chat and discussed lots of aspects of the story itself that I'm talking about and of Stalingrad as a whole. And to them, yes. I mean, even if you park Putin to one side and whatever agenda he's setting right

now, and he has set over the last couple of decades to them, Stalingrad is, uh, the cornerstone of what happened in the great patriotic war. And along with other cities, I mean, there's, there's over 10 of them, but Stalingrad was one of the first cities to be called a hero city or designated a hero city by Stalin to be celebrated as such. And ironically, Kiev's one of them too, and Odessa is as well. And so to Russians, it really, I mean, I can't overemphasize how much it means to them. When I was there, I was standing outside Pavlov's house on a freezing cold day. It was about minus 10, minus 12, probably minus 20 in the chill, taking photos of the house. And I got there really early in the morning thinking no one will be here.

It was about nine o'clock in the morning. There was about 200, 300 of them standing behind me that were doing the tour, going along the Volga, taking the photos of Pavlov's house. And as you say, Dominic, I know it's in a call of duty, but there's other things. Children are educated about it constantly. It's constantly at the front of Russian military history, Russian history of the 20th century. And yet, is there an irony here? Well, there are loads of ironies, but is one irony, Ian, that, I mean, you actually agree with James Holland in our Barbara Ossip podcast, that the German drive, you know, eastwards and south was doomed anyway?

Yeah, I mean, I just, especially after the first year, I can't understand why they thought they could conquer so much land. That's the thing. But having launched it, what else could they do? No, I agree. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's Hobson's choice. It wasn't like they could say, oh, sorry, we've made a mistake. Let's patch things up.

But equally compounded by the fact that he declares war on America. Yeah, well, Hitler's hopeless, isn't he? Yeah, but he's instigated his own downfall before they even launched Case Blue. And he's seeing that from a strategic point of view, whereas the troops on the ground, you read the letters, you read the diaries, they did feel like this was it. This was their crusade. The communique Rosca gives to his company commanders, because he led his regiment to capture the river right at the start of the battle. He's the first Germans on the river in the city.

He gave a communique to his troops declaring that we do this, the war's almost won. We get to the river, it's done. And you just think, what were they thinking? Well, Ian, thanks so much. To all the force and your new book, The Lighthouse of Stalingrad, The Hidden Truth at the Centre of World War II's Greatest Battle, is out now? It comes out 28th of July.

Brilliant. So that's The Lighthouse of Stalingrad. I can't recommend it enough. It is immensely readable, but it is a very harrowing story. But, Tom, I don't know if you agree, but harrowing stories are often the best, aren't they? Yeah, it's definitely harrowing and and um i do you know i i'd never actually so i haven't read anthony beaver's book it's a terrible thing to admit i

i really know i hadn't seen the jude law film i haven't played call of duty in the house so i really there's the the depths of my ignorance about the battle of stalingrad enormous but um in shocking i know i can't believe you have the effrontery the effrontery to appear on a history There's the depths of my ignorance about the Battle of Stalingrad enormous, but Ian's book. Yeah, it's shocking. I know. I can't believe you have the effrontery to appear on a history podcast after those admissions. Well, but now I've read Ian's book and I know all about it. I meant to say one thing I forgot to say, which I think is really key actually, and whether they still go ahead with it,

I'd be super surprised because of what's going on right now. The historians that I had dinner with in Volgograd were launching a campaign to change the name of Pavlov's house. I thought you were going to say Volgograd back to Stalingrad. Well, no, but they are allowed to call it Stalingrad six times a year to do with various dates in the diary to do with the war. But they wanted to change the name of Pavlov's house to Afanasyev's house because they feel that's the right thing to do so whether they

disappear from view now who knows maybe call it afanasiyev and pavlov's house or is that too wordy that's that's the liberal democrat solution there tom that's very very liberal democrat anyway thanks never so much um i think we have put the battle of salingrad to bed uh thank you very much listening uh and thank you to ian for coming on and we will see you soon for more history-based well fun isn't the word stuff goodbye bye-bye thanks for having me goodbye thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community,

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