The Battle of Stalingrad
The battle for Stalingrad divided into the 2 period: defensive and offensive. The period from the beginning of the fighting to November 18, 1942, is considered defensive. In this period of time, according to the memories of the deputy commander of the battalion, F.M. Hot, managed to recover history the feat of the 12 Tank Brigade, which is not mentioned in the summaries of the events of that time. According to him, in the morning of September 18 1942, after the artillery preparation, the offensive of the 1 Guards Army began. Captain Troshin, the commander of the first battalion of the tank brigade, took the boy Kohl, a pupil of this battalion, into the tank. The 12 Brigade tanks broke through 3-5 kilometers ahead to the Nursery, but were met with fierce fire and cut off from the main forces. The brigade commander Colonel A.S.Kirnos was injured. Troshin's tank was shot down during the battle. At nightfall, he sent Kohl through the landing hatch back with a report on the status of the battalion at that time. He himself was also able to get out of the environment at night. A few more Soviet tanks were able to get out of the encirclement. But before nightfall, the brigade suffered huge losses: the 25 tanks were burned down, the commander of the second battalion, Captain Padalko, and his deputies Commissioner Postnikov and Captain Koval died heroically.
The fate of the rest of the crews of tanks that broke through the defenses and were cut off from theirs remained unknown. It is assumed that they, turning to the east, entered Borodkin farm, but without the support of the infantry were destroyed by German artillery. The names of these heroes tankers now do not define. They remained forever in the memory of the inhabitants of the farm, which was soon burned down by the German fascist invaders.
The defense of Mamayev Kurgan, as it rises above the central part of the city and allowed to control the city and the crossings over the Volga and Volga regions, was of great importance in the defense of Stalingrad against the fascist invaders. On the military maps of that time, Mamaev Kurgan is listed as height - 102,0. This place is also known that the fiercest battles of the Great Patriotic War were fought here. From the 200 day of the entire period of the defense of Stalingrad against the fascists, the 135 days continued the battle for this strategic sector. This place was completely distorted and beaten with shells, bombs and mines, the snow did not have time to cover the ground because of the constant artillery fire, it fell and immediately melted. The shelling was very dense; on every square meter after the end of the battles, shells from 500 to 1250 were found here. After Stalingrad was repulsed by the enemy, here, on the Mamayev Kurgan, the dead were buried. About 34,5 thousands of people rest here, and this place has become a real mound - the burial place. The same fierce battles took place in other parts of the city: in the “ravine of death”, on Lysaya Gora and others.
From 19 November 1942, the confident offensive of the Soviet forces began in Stalingrad. The army of Paulus suffered frequent defeats and heavy losses: only numbers remained of many units and formations, personnel were practically destroyed. The situation was complicated by the weather: severe frosts, piercing wind. There is a story about the icon "Stalingrad Madonna". On Christmas night from 24 to 25 December, 1942, in a German hospital, the wounded asked the doctor to draw some kind of Christmas picture. Doctor Kurt Roiber took a piece of coal in his hands and on the back of the school geographic map he drew an image of the Mother of God carrying a baby wrapped in a black raincoat. Strong and reliable mother hugs protect the baby from all the horrors of life and death. In the morning, after seeing the drawing, many Germans began to pray, seeing in the image the hope of salvation. But precisely on this day, by evil irony, the ring of encirclement of the Soviet troops closed around Paulus's army, and they no longer managed to break through the defenses. The drawing of Kurt Roiber became afterwards an icon called the Stalingrad Madonna. He was taken out of Russia by a friend of a doctor who was seriously wounded and sent home with the last plane escaped from the encirclement. The doctor himself died in Soviet captivity. Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered and renounced the ideas of National Socialism.
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