group would drive even further to the south, directly at the oil
¿HOGVWKHPVHOYHVx General Friedrich Paulus was charged with capturing Stalingrad,
and his army drove to the city and prepared to assault it. But Stalin
decided to make a stand
at the city that was named
after him. He issued a
directive that the Russians
would not yield one more
step back. To enforce this
order, all Russian army
units were required to
organize detachments of
men armed with machine
guns who would stand
behind the front line with
orders to shoot any man who
retreated. In August, Stalin
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charge of resisting the
German invasion.
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bombarded Stalingrad with
planes, reducing it to vast
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German soldiers then began
moving in, squeezing the Russians into an ever-smaller section of
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the German edge in mobility was negated.
x As 1942 wore on, Hitler grew obsessed with the symbolic value of
Stalingrad, and he began to divert resources away from the more
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o Tank units that would have been better employed seizing the
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factory areas of Stalingrad were
transformed into nightmarish
combat zones of rubble, through
which small squads of Russian and
German soldiers crawled, fought,
and died.© Denis Dryashkin/iStock/Thinkstock.