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StalingradThe month to Wednesday, September 2, 1942Issue the First

Germans storm Stalingrad’s outer defences as battle enters seventh day

The Germans, across the Don, storm Stalingrad’s outer defences as the city burns; Mr Churchill has met Premier Stalin in Moscow; Maikop is lost.

A Soviet battery of 76.2 mm divisional guns firing near Stalingrad, August 1942. Soviet photograph by Emmanuil Evzerikhin.
A Soviet battery of 76.2 mm divisional guns firing near Stalingrad, August 1942. Soviet photograph by Emmanuil Evzerikhin.Photograph by Emmanuil Evzerikhin · Public domain

MOSCOW, Wednesday.—Marshal von Bock hurled waves of tanks against the outer fortifications of Stalingrad today, the seventh day of the battle for the industrial city on the Volga, while his air force bombed the Red Army and the city almost without pause.

The crucial sector is southwest of the city. Red Star today gave the first detailed account of how von Bock cracked the Russian defences northeast of Kotelnikovski, throwing in two fresh divisions and hundreds of planes and tanks.

Marshal Timoshenko’s men held off the assaults there for days. Then the Germans struck in two columns, paced by 80 tanks and backed by 100 planes, and in mid-afternoon a second attack forced the Russians back to new positions, the army newspaper said.

in order to halt the enemy it is necessary to reply to every attack with counterattacksRed Star

To the northwest, between the Don bridgeheads and the Volga, the Russians say a counter-attack has erased a German wedge and forced the attackers back to their original positions.

Berlin claims more. The Germans say they have reached the Lower Volga north of Stalingrad, and on Monday the German high command put its troops 15 miles south of the city. Moscow’s midday communique yesterday put German losses at no fewer than 48 tanks and about 2,000 killed.

The battle has been a month in the making. Early in August Moscow dispatches said for the first time that Russia’s reserves were going into action, and the line held at Kletskaya, 80 miles northwest of Stalingrad. Red Star declared that “in order to halt the enemy it is necessary to reply to every attack with counterattacks.”

As the Germans regrouped in the Don elbow and attacked afresh, Izvestia warned: “The danger has increased.” Yet by mid-August, Reuter’s special correspondent in Moscow reported in the Indian Express of Madras, 100 German tanks thrown into four attacks southeast of Kletskaya had failed to break through to the Don elbow.

Then the Germans forced the Don. By 25 August the German army in southern Russia, more than 1,000,000 strong, had driven to within 40 miles of Stalingrad and 170 miles of the Caspian Sea, the Associated Press reported from Moscow.

Nowhere, the Associated Press correspondent in Moscow reported, was there a sign of Soviet weakening.

Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) / Associated Press, Sept. 2 · Evening Star (Washington, D.C.); Associated Press (Eddy Gilmore, Moscow), Sept. 2 · Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) / Associated Press, Sept. 1 · Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) / Associated Press, Aug. 31 · Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) / Associated Press, Aug. 6 · The Indian Express (Madras), Aug. 12 · The Indian Express (Madras), Aug. 17 · Evening Star (Washington, D.C.); Associated Press (Eddy Gilmore, Moscow), Aug. 25

Germans force the Don northwest of Stalingrad

A Red Army soldier on the wreck of a German Heinkel He 111 bomber shot down near Stalingrad, August 1942. Soviet photograph by Emmanuil Evzerikhin.
A Red Army soldier on the wreck of a German Heinkel He 111 bomber shot down near Stalingrad, August 1942. Soviet photograph by Emmanuil Evzerikhin.Photograph by Emmanuil Evzerikhin · Public domain

MOSCOW, Wednesday.—German infantry and mobile divisions forced a crossing of the Don northwest of Stalingrad and broke through strongly built Russian positions, the German high command announced on 24 August, praising the splendid support of its air force.

A German Foreign Office spokesman, quoted by the DNB agency, declared that “the great, and decisive battle for Stalingrad has now begun”.

The crossing held only after Russian artillery and planes had destroyed four earlier pontoon bridges. Next day Moscow acknowledged officially that German tanks and mechanized infantry stood 40 miles northwest of the city. “Particularly stiff fighting raged against enemy tank and mechanized infantry which had crossed to the left bank of the Don,” the communique said.

the great, and decisive battle for Stalingrad has now begunGerman Foreign Office spokesman, quoted by DNB

Front-line reports to United Press told of smoke from burning villages and prairie fires over a 60-mile front, so thick the sun was often no brighter than at dusk. Russians in trenches hurled bottles of flaming benzine at the tanks. “German dive bombers unloaded tens of tons of projectiles, including screaming bombs,” Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.

On 26 August Red Star said a German force that lanced between two Red Army units had “reached a district just northwest of Stalingrad” before it was halted. “The situation in this sector has become complicated,” the Soviet Information Bureau admitted.

Evening Star (Washington, D.C.); Associated Press (Berlin, from German broadcasts), Aug. 24 · Evening Star (Washington, D.C.); Associated Press (Eddy Gilmore, Moscow), Aug. 24 · Wilmington Morning Star (North Carolina); Associated Press (Moscow), Aug. 25 · The Washington Daily News (Washington, D.C.) via Library of Congress, Chronicling America, Aug. 25 · Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) / Associated Press, Aug. 26

Stalingrad burns, but its factories work on

A Soviet army cameraman films the railway station burning after German bombing, Stalingrad, 24 August 1942. Soviet photograph by Emmanuil Evzerikhin.
A Soviet army cameraman films the railway station burning after German bombing, Stalingrad, 24 August 1942. Soviet photograph by Emmanuil Evzerikhin.Photograph by Emmanuil Evzerikhin, Aug. 24, 1942 · Public domain

MOSCOW, Wednesday.—Stalingrad is in flames after relentless bombing by the Luftwaffe, with tremendous damage done to its industrial districts, United Press reports from Moscow say.

The reports, as carried by the Japanese-run Syonan Shimbun in occupied Singapore, note that many of Russia’s heavy industries, tank plants among them, stand in the city. Izvestia says reinforcements are being rushed to the front through the burning city, while police and civil defence crews fight the fires.

The German high command says great fires are raging after night and day attacks by its air force, and that on the Volga its planes sank a large ship, set a tanker afire and damaged three freighters.

Yet life in Stalingrad goes on at a normal but fast tempo, Pravda says. Factories work night and day, and supply barges unload constantly.

Thousands of workers from the Stalingrad factories have taken up arms on the west bank of the Volga to fight beside the Red Army.

The Syonan Shimbun (Japanese-run English-language daily, occupied Singapore); Domei (citing United Press) wire copy, Sept. 1 · Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) / Associated Press, Aug. 26 · Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) / Associated Press, Aug. 25 · Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) / Associated Press, Aug. 26 · Evening Star (Washington, D.C.); Associated Press (Eddy Gilmore, Moscow), Aug. 25

Churchill and Stalin confer four days in Moscow

MOSCOW, Wednesday.—Mr Churchill spent four days in Moscow in talks with Premier Stalin last month, the first journey by a British Prime Minister to the Soviet Union, communiques issued in Moscow and London announced on 17 August.

Mr W. Averell Harriman took part for President Roosevelt. The party of twenty, six of them Americans, flew in three Liberator bombers piloted by Americans and arrived on the afternoon of 12 August.

A number of decisions were reached on the war against Hitlerite Germany and her associates in Europe, the communique said, and both governments are determined to carry on the war “until complete destruction of Hitlerism and any similar tyranny has been achieved.” The talks were held in an atmosphere of “cordiality and complete sincerity”.

cordiality and complete sincerityJoint Anglo-Soviet communique

Asked what the talks were about, a source close to the Prime Minister said: “Any child in the street should know the answer to that.”

In London the Soviet Ambassador, Mr Ivan Maisky, said the Russian people “have not the slightest doubt about our final victory.”

Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) / Associated Press, Aug. 17 · Evening Star (Washington, D.C.); Associated Press (Moscow), Aug. 17 · Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) via Library of Congress, Chronicling America, Aug. 26

Comment: Stalingrad vital to Russia’s existence, says Tokyo writer

TOKYO, Wednesday.—Stalingrad and the country around it are vital to the national existence of the Soviet Union, in the view of Mr Tadasi Sigemori, Editor of the Nippon-Soviet Information Service, set out to the Tokyo newspaper Miyako and printed in the Japanese-run Syonan Shimbun in occupied Singapore.

The city, with 445,000 people in 1939, is a clearing-house for the farm produce of the vast plains around the mouth of the Volga. Should it fall into German hands, Mr Sigemori argues, the Soviet Union would have only Western Siberia left for its grain.

The next German objective, he says, would be Astrakhan. With Astrakhan taken, the whole transport system between central and southern Russia would be completely paralysed.

The Syonan Shimbun (Japanese-run English-language daily, occupied Singapore); Tokyo report wire copy, Aug. 21, 1942.

In Brief

Maikop lost; Germans 85 miles from Grozny

MOSCOW, Wednesday.—Moscow acknowledged on 17 August the loss of Maikop, whose oil installations, which produced 7 per cent of Russian petroleum, were blasted to worthlessness. The communique said: “They did not get Soviet oil and will not get it.” By 25 August, Soviet officials said, the Germans had driven to Prokhladnenski, 85 miles from the oil city of Grozny. Berlin says the German war flag flies on Mount Elbrus and that Axis troops have occupied the Black Sea port of Anapa.

Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) / Associated Press, Aug. 17 · Wilmington Morning Star (North Carolina); Associated Press (Moscow), Aug. 25 · Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) / Associated Press, Aug. 25 · Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) / Associated Press, Sept. 1

Red Army attacks far from the Volga

MOSCOW, Wednesday.—Far from Stalingrad the Red Army is attacking. Russian dispatches of 20 August named for the first time offensives on the Bryansk front, around Vyazma, in the Kalinin-Rzhev salient and at Lake Ilmen; Red Star said on those fronts “the initiative in active military operations belongs to our troops”. On Wednesday the Soviet high command said several more settlements had been captured in the Rzhev offensive.

Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) / Associated Press, Aug. 20 · Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) / Associated Press, Sept. 2

Girl sniper with 309 Germans tells Washington why

WASHINGTON, Friday 28 August.—Junior Lieutenant Lyudmila Pavlichenko, 26, a Red Army sniper with 309 Germans to her credit, who once wanted to be a historian at Kiev University, told reporters at the Soviet Embassy: “Dead Germans are harmless. Therefore, if I kill a German I am saving lives.” The Germans, she said, once called to her through a speaking trumpet, offering chocolate and cake if she would come over. She is in Washington for the International Student Assembly.

Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) via Library of Congress, Chronicling America, Aug. 28, 1942.

Stilwell thinks Japan may strike at Siberia

NEW DELHI, Tuesday.—Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell, the American commander in India, China and Burma, said in New Delhi on Tuesday that he thought there was a good chance the Japanese would attack Siberia. “That’s just my guess, of course,” the general added.

Evening Star (Washington, D.C.); Associated Press (Eddy Gilmore, Moscow; Tokyo; New Delhi), Sept. 2, 1942.

Elsewhere Today

Start Stalingrad from issue one tomorrow

Wayback Wire · No. 1 · The month to Wednesday, September 2, 1942