Hugging the Enemy

"Die in Stalingrad, or defend it"

On 12 September 1942 Vasily Chuikov received command of the 62nd Army on the western bank of the Volga. His assigned task was to hold the city, and he moved his command post forward into the ruins rather than to the safer eastern bank. His decisive choice was to keep the Soviet front line pressed as close as physically possible to the German line. Once the opposing trenches lay within grenade-throwing distance, German aircraft and artillery risked striking their own men whenever they fired.

Bombing turned into a trap

The measure answered German blitzkrieg tactics directly. In interviews in 1943 Chuikov recounted that he let the German bombing of the city draw armoured units into the rubble, where their progress was impeded and where they could be destroyed with Molotov cocktails, anti-tank rifles, and Soviet artillery firing at close range. German air superiority, Stuka dive-bombers included, became unusable in a zone where the two sides were intermingled. The ruins themselves became the defender's weapon.

Assault groups and the fighting at night

The Germans captured most of the city by mid-November 1942, yet never cleared the defenders' narrow bridgeheads on the river bank. Small assault groups moved suddenly into buildings and used underground passages to shift position, and Soviet troops counterattacked mainly at night, retaking by dark the positions they had lost in daylight.

The cost, and a doctrine reused

The tactic came out of the first large-scale urban battle the Red Army had fought. Its achievement was to halt the German advance; its price was paid jointly by the city and by the forces of both sides. Chuikov's army was redesignated the 8th Guards and applied the same experience in the street fighting for Berlin, where on 2 May 1945 General Weidling signed the surrender of the city's garrison at Chuikov's command post.