Episode 10 - An air raid pulverises Stalingrad and Russian women slow 16th Panzer division’s advance

This is episode 10 and the marauding Wehrmacht is at Stalingrad’s door – the enemy is at the gates. As we’ll hear, the savage air raids the were a precursor to the main event that symbolised the start of the months of a battle that would change the world. We’ll also hear the extraordinary story of truly courageous young women just out of high school and what they managed to achieve to the north of the city. We’ll begin by joining German units and hear individual stories from soldiers who were convinced that within a week they’d be enjoying the delights of the Soviet Union’s model city on the Volga River. Why not? The Russians were facing a stronger and more experienced force and had resorted to arming civilians as a last gasp effort to halt the German juggernaut bearing down on the oil rich caucuses. As we know, Hitler had split Army Group South and sent the First Panzer Army off South Eastwards towards the Black Sea coast and the oil producing region in a move which had baffled the Soviets. It had baffled his own Generals although they quickly forgot their misgivings about splitting Army Group South. On the 21st August 1942 infantry companies under General von Seyderlitz’s LI Corps crossed the Don River at dawn using inflatable boats. They established a bridgehead at the village of Luchinsky. More Germans paddled furiously over the Volga, while downriver at Vertyachy an entire battalion crossed the river in around a hour. Pioneer units went to work building pontoon bridges to take the panzers and other vehicles of General von Wietersheim’s XIV Panzer Corps across. The Don meanders about here, after flowing almost directly South East, it suddenly turns and flows westerly towards the Black Sea instead of continuing onwards to the Caspian Sea. IT’s at that point where there’s a land bridge between the Don and the Volga. In a few thousand years they’ll probably weather their way towards each other and lead to the formation of a large marshland. But here we are in 1942 with the Germans crossing what they called The Stream. Some of the members of the Sixth Army had already decided that the mysterious Don was a place of beauty and would be setting up their farms there after the War. Most of course, would be dead within six months. But let’s not jump the gun.