Liveblogging World War II: September 12, 1942
Michael Jones: Stalingrad: How the Red Army Triumphed:
[Stalin's] Order 227 had just been introduced, with its blocking detachments and penal companies, and Chuikov had been instructed to hold Stalingrad or die in the attempt. In his book, Beevor revealed a shocking piece of factual evidence, that on the Stalingrad Front during the course of the battle the Soviet authorities executed no less than 13,500 Red Army soldiers on charges ranging from desertion and cowardice to incompetence, corruption….
At the crisis point in the fighting in mid-September an NKVD report shows that 1,218 soldiers were held for attempting to leave the city without permission – of these 21 were shot, 10 arrested and the rest redistributed to different units. The army was always desperately under-strength and the blocking detachments responsible for enforcing this policy were frequently drafted into the frontline fighting.
It is true that Chuikov said: ‘In the blazing city we did not suffer cowards, we had no room for them.’ Men were shot for cowardice without any compunction in the 62nd Army – this was a grim reality of the terrible fighting within Stalingrad. But it was something done on the initiative of officers and ordinary soldiers as well as their commander – everybody was in this together. Chuikov made the remark ‘time is blood’ after he had arrived at Stalingrad and reached his army HQ. He wanted urgently to get to work, to acquire an accurate picture what was going on in the city – this was a standard he set for himself, as a commander….
We need to understand the ghastly position Chuikov was in. He had been called to the Stalingrad Front on the morning of 12 September 1942 and offered command of the 62nd Army. Later, Chuikov recalled Krushchev’s comments:
The Germans had decided to take the city at any cost. We should not and could not surrender it to them, we could not retreat any further, for there was nowhere to retreat to….
Lopatin had… been relieved of his post. Chuikov was asked how he understood his task, and responded:
We cannot surrender the city to the enemy, because it is extremely valuable to us, to the whole Soviet people. The loss of it would undermine the nation’s morale. All possible measures will be taken to prevent the city from falling.
Chuikov concluded with the fateful words: ‘I swear I shall stand firm. We will defend the city or die in the attempt.’
This conversation is recounted in Chuikov’s memoirs, written in the Kruschev era; during the battle for Stalingrad, he described it to journalist Vasily Grossman in a more matter of fact fashion:
Yeremenko and Krushchev said to me:
"You will have to save Stalingrad. How do you feel about it?"
"Yes, sir."
"No, it isn’t enough to obey, what do you think about it?"
"It means to die. So we will die."
Gamlet Dallakian, who was on Yeremenko and Kruschev’s staff at the time, said of Chuikov’s appointment:
In comparison to Kolpakchi and Lopatin he was a much stronger person – he had a much stronger will. We all felt Chuikov would make a stand against the Germans, even with his back pressed right up against the Volga….
Chuikov refers to a meeting with [Lopatin] two days after taking command (on 14 September), describing ‘the hopelessness he [Lopatin] felt, his sense of the impossibility and pointlessness of fighting for the city’, adding ‘his feeling of depression had undoubtedly communicated itself to his subordinates’...
