19411945ussr's video: Stalingrad 04 - Mamayev Kurgan and Street fighting

The Birch Tree - The Red Army Choir Stalingrad 04 - Mamayev Kurgan and Street fighting Fighting on Mamayev Kurgan, a prominent, blood-soaked hill above the city, was particularly merciless. The position changed hands many times. By the 12 September the Soviet 62nd Army had been reduced to 60 tanks, 700 mortars and just 20,000 men. The 13th Guards Rifle Division, assigned to retake Mamayev Kurgan and Railway Station No. 1 on September 13, suffered particularly heavy losses. Over 30 percent of its soldiers were killed in the first 24 hours, and just 320 out of the original 10,000 survived the entire battle. Both objectives were successful, only to temporary degrees. The railway station changed hands 14 times in 6 hours. By the following evening, the 13th Guards Rifle Division did not exist, but its men had killed an approximately equal number of Germans. Combat raged there for weeks near the giant grain silo. When German soldiers finally took the position, only forty Soviet bodies were found, though the Germans had thought there to be many more Soviet soldiers present due to the ferocity of Soviet resistance. The Soviets burned the heaps of grain during their retreat. In another part of the city, a Soviet platoon under the command of Yakov Pavlov turned an apartment building into an impenetrable fortress. The building, later called "Pavlov's House," oversaw a square in the city center. The soldiers surrounded it with minefields, set up machine-gun positions at the windows, and breached the walls in the basement for better communications. They were not relieved, and not significantly reinforced, for two months. Well after the Battle, Chuikov liked to joke, perhaps accurately, that more Germans died trying to capture Pavlov's House than died capturing Paris. According to Beevor, after each wave, throughout the second month, of the Germans' repeated, persistent assaults against the building, the Soviets had to run out and kick down the piles of German corpses in order for the machine and anti-tank gunners in the building to have clear firing lines across the square. Sgt. Pavlov was awarded the "Hero of the Soviet Union" for his actions. Soviet snipers also successfully used the ruins to inflict heavy casualties on the Germans. The most successful sniper was Vasily Zaytsev who is also the most famous. Zaitsev was credited with 242 confirmed kills during the battle and a grand total of more than 300; he was also credited with killing a specially-sent, though potentially fictional German sniper known by the names Erwin König and Heinz Thorvald. Zaytsev fixed a standard Mosin-Nagant rifle scope to a Soviet PTRD-41 14.5mm anti-tank rifle PTRD for use against Germans hiding behind walls under window sills. The 14.5mm rounds easily penetrated the brick and the soldier behind it. Zaytsev was awarded the "Hero of the Soviet Union" after the war, primarily for his actions during the battle. Mamayev Kurgan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamayev_Kurgan 13th Guards Rifle Division: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_13th_Guards_Rifle_Division Yakov Pavlov: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakov_Pavlov Vasily Zaytsev: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Zaytsev Battle of Stalingrad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad http://english.pobediteli.ru/ http://english.pobediteli.ru/flash.html?DR=1