Stalingrad

Southland Times, Issue 24891, 3 November 1942, Page 4

Stalingrad

THE battle for Stalingrad has been headline news for so long that it is becoming easy to accept its changing fortunes without the tension normally associated with a momentous struggle, More than two months have passed since the city was first declared to be in “grave peril.” At that time the Germans were battering their way from the south-west and the north-west, “using tanks by the hundred, motorized infantry by the thousand, and great numbers of guns in an effort to force a decision.” On August 26 it was reported that the Russian defences had been penetrated at one point and that the city itself was “within the area of operations.” The situation was described officially in Moscow as “complicated and grave, but by no means hopeless.” Newspaper readers who had come across statements of this kind while earlier battles were being fought began to prepare themselves for depressing communiques. The Luftwaffe appeared over the city in great strength, pattern-bombing with ferocious thoroughness. It became hard to believe that the defences of Stalingrad could remain soundly organized in the face of such merciless attacks, especially while the Red Army seemed to have an inadequate local air support. The Germans were sacrificing their troops in a tremendous effort to carry the city with a frontal assault. By September 1 they were talking of their “supreme effort,” and it was claimed that “history has not recorded such tremendous troop concentrations in a comparable area.” A decision seemed to be approaching. Yet that was two months ago, and in spite of renewed efforts and appalling losses the Germans have not yet gained their victory. T 1 e Russians fought a battle of tactics on plains that are bare of natural defences. Between the elbows of the Don and Volga a strip of plain 45 to 80 miles wide rises faintly from east to west until it reaches a line about 240 feet above sea level. Thereafter it drops sharply to the Volga. There are no forests, no ravines. For mechanized warfare it would be difficult to imagine a more suitable terrain. But the Russians have remembered what the French failed to remember in 1940 — i that a city can be defended. They forced the Germans to attack street by street, yard by yard, until the battle had become a unique struggle among the ruins. It is still going on. Hitler has lost time and man-power in the battle for Stalingrad. He has declared that the city will be taken. No one can say with certainty whether or not he will prevail. But his armies are fighting something that takes its strength from the spirit of a nation. The secret of this epic defence can be found in the words of a Soviet war correspondent, Ilya Ehrenbourg: “Friends can be chosen. Wives, too, can be selected. But not a mother. There is only one mother, and she is loved because she is a mother. In front of Stalingrad we are defending our mother—Russia.”