The Lighthouse of Stalingrad: The Hidden Truth at the Centre of WWII's Greatest Battle

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The sacrifices that enabled the Soviet Union to defeat Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941-45 are sacrosanct. The foundation of their eventual victory was laid during the battle for the city of Stalingrad, resting on the banks of the river Volga. For Germany, the catastrophic defeat was the beginning of their eventual demise that would see the Red Army two years later flying their flag of victory above the Reichstag. Stalingrad is seen as the pivotal battle of the Second World War, with over two million civilians and combatants either killed, wounded or captured during the bitter winter of September 1942. Both sides endured terrible conditions in brutal house-to-house fighting reminiscent of the Great War. It was only when Barbarossa finally faltered in the winter of 1941 that the city caught Hitler’s eye. With the Case Blue initiative, Army Group South, which had originally intended to go after the oil fields, would be split into two sections, A and B. While A would continue after the oil, B would conquer the city, making it part of a supply route that would help replenish beleaguered and overstretched German forces across the vast Russian steppe. A harrowing expedition to Antarctica, recounted by Departures senior features editor Sancton, who has reported from every continent on the planet. The Lighthouse of Stalingrad is the finest of military history, utterly riveting, based on revelatory and superb research, and a heart-rending account of arguably the most impactful battle to defeat Nazism in WWII. A wonderful and important and timely book." — Alexander Kershaw, New York Times bestselling author of The Bedford Boys

Brezhnev had long admired Chuikov, the “Legendary One.” While he himself had made his way up the ladder during the Great Patriotic War as a political commissar, it had not stopped him from inflating his own contribution to the war effort, awarding himself the military honors that commanders such as Chuikov had spilled blood for. Both men had endured an uneasy relationship with Brezhnev’s predecessor as first secretary—Nikita Khrushchev. Brezhnev respected Chuikov’s bluntness, and laughed at the way he had publicly questioned where Khrushchev had been during the fighting in Stalingrad. 12 And more important, Brezhnev had counted on his support when the time came to oust the erratic leader and take control of the Central Committee himself in 1962. He owed Chuikov.

About Iain MacGregor

The procession had arrived at the pathway to the enormous memorial complex, which covered 1.3 square miles of the eastern slope of the Mamayev. Before they would reach their destination, the mourners were now faced with a series of terraces to ascend, each with sculptures eulogizing a stage of the battle. 14 They began by walking up the 100-meter (328-foot) path, before climbing up the two hundred steps, representing the two hundred days of the battle, which took the cortege and the multitude of followers up to the Avenue of Lombardy Poplars. They were now walking through a circular piazza enclosed by birch trees, giving the mourners a dominating view across the Volga that emphasized how crucial in commanding the high ground this position had been to both sides. However, MacGregor’s real coup is not so much the exposure of the propaganda-myth of “Pavlov’s House” but the access he was given to the unpublished letters and memoirs of a German officer who was present at the battle from its inception to its end. Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Roske is almost a Wehrmacht Officer from central casting. Cultured, intelligent, an able and dedicated soldier, his observations on Stalingrad add first-person authenticity to the familiar history of the battle. Furthermore, he officiated at the surrender of General Paulus, and his meticulous observations of the process are superbly and uniquely detailed. Later chapters of MacGregor’s book benefit hugely from the previously unpublished memoirs, diaries, and letters of German Major General Friedrich Roske. They provide an excellent insight into the truly dire situation the Wehrmacht faced that Christmas, taking refuge in their dugouts as loudspeakers set up by the Soviets taunted them about their looming defeat. The story, particularly of the Lighthouse, shows us just how tenaciously a people will fight when their land, and indeed their homes, are being overrun by a foreign aggressor. As MacGregor pointedly reminds us, it is a lesson that at least one of Stalin’s successors appears to have forgotten. REVIEW BY CALUM HENDERSON The Lighthouse of Stalingrad: the hidden truth at the centre of WWII’s greatest battle Within this life-and-death struggle for the heart of the city and situated on the frontline was a key strategic building, codenamed: ‘The Lighthouse’. Here, a small garrison of Red Army guardsmen withstood German aerial bombardments and fought off daily assaults of infantry and armour. Red Army newspaper reports at the time would be seized upon by the Moscow media needing to place a positive spin on the fighting that had at one point looked beyond salvation. By the end of the war, the story of this building would gather further momentum to inspire Russians to rebuild their destroyed towns and cities until it became the legend it is today, renamed after the simple sergeant who had supposedly led the defence –‘Pavlov’s House’.

The Kremlin had signed his public obituary celebrating his military and political deeds, with First Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, though himself too ill to attend the funeral, sending his key men from the Central Committee to pay homage alongside local Volgograd Party dignitaries. As the easterly breeze cut through the gathering crowd waiting along the banks of the river, some sitting in trees and atop parked buses to get the best view, the most senior men in the Soviet Union had flown in from Moscow, and now they stood solemnly next to Chuikov’s coffin, lying in state in the Central House of the Soviet Army on Suvorovskaya Square. The head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, gazed past Chuikov’s family and the honor guard around his coffin, toward the double-fronted glass doors. The crowd was pressing toward the entrance to get a better look. Next to him stood Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, lost in his thoughts. Representing the Soviet Armed Forces was the defense minister Dimitry Ustinov, who amiably talked to the younger man on his right, a rising star of the Party, recently elevated to secretary of the Central Committee—Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. By the end of October, a report had appeared in Stalinskoe Znamya (Stalin’s Banner), the 62nd Army’s own newspaper, proclaiming the miracle of ‘Pavlov’s House’, as they referred to it, and the bravery of its defenders. The house, the paper added, was ‘a symbol of the heroic struggle of all defenders of Stalingrad’. Within this life-and-death struggle for the heart of the city and situated on the frontline was a key strategic building, codenamed: 'The Lighthouse'. Here, a small garrison of Red Army guardsmen withstood German aerial bombardments and fought off daily assaults of infantry and armour. Red Army newspaper reports at the time would be seized upon by the Moscow media needing to place a positive spin on the fighting that had at one point looked beyond salvation. By the end of the war, the story of this building would gather further momentum to inspire Russians to rebuild their destroyed towns and cities until it became the legend it is today, renamed after the simple sergeant who had supposedly led the defence - 'Pavlov's House'. An authoritative and unforgettable insight into the decisive days of that most terrible struggle on the banks of the Volga’– Jonathan DimblebyA wonderful and important and timely book' - Alexander Kershaw, New York Times bestselling author of The Bedford Boys and First Wave The most memorable event in my grandfather’s life was, of course, the Battle of Stalingrad. [When he died] he wanted to lie in the ground next to his soldiers.” 1 As we talk on the phone, Nikolai Chuikov’s voice suddenly breaks, lost in his memories of the day the citizens came out onto the streets of the city that had decided the fate of the Second World War in Europe, to say farewell to their adopted son. Within this life-and-death struggle, Soviet war correspondents lauded the fight for a key strategic building in the heart of the city, “Pavlov’s House,” which was situated on the frontline and codenamed “The Lighthouse.” The legend grew of a small garrison of Russian soldiers from the 13th Guards Rifle Division holding out against the Germans of the Sixth Army, which had battled its way to the very center of Stalingrad. A report about the battle in a local Red Army newspaper would soon grow and be repeated on Moscow radio and in countless national newspapers. By the end of the war, the legend would gather further momentum and inspire Russians to rebuild their destroyed towns and cities.

Stunning. History at its very best: a blend of impeccably researched scholarship, genuinely revelatory primary sources, and a beautifully written narrative' - James Holland It was this appalling pile-up of corpses that began to chill spines throughout the German High Command. Paulus watched in horror as his best men were cut down and replaced by rookies – easy prey for the Soviet snipers, who were themselves the subject of much mythologising in the months and years to come. An enthralling and insightful look into the most decisive battle of the Second World War - The Lighthouse of Stalingrad sheds new light on the heroic work of those who fought and died as we mark its 80th anniversary. Surprisingly, however, when Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, Stalingrad was not an immediate target. The city was initially just a name on the map for the German High Command, symbolic perhaps but not as strategically important as Moscow or Leningrad (the renamed St Petersburg) or the oil fields deep in the southern Caucasus. Five years later, Stalin, now head of the Soviet Union following Lenin’s death, had the city renamed in his honour. As a vast trading port, with a rich supply of fish from the river and raw materials from the factories on its banks, ‘Stalingrad’ would help power the promised Soviet economic miracle.Splendid. . . . MacGregor writes with great fluency and narrative drive, and his account of the context to the battle and the complexity of its fraught swings of fortune and misfortune is compellingly terse." — New Statesman (UK) A wonderful and important and timely book’– Alexander Kershaw, New York Times bestselling author of The Bedford Boys and First Wave What few civilians were left in Stalingrad hunkered down with their occupiers for the winter. Neither had any food. As one Valentina Savelyeva, then just five, remembered, ‘we ate clay and nothing but clay… my mother would throw away the bits that were soaked in blood.’ The only source of water was the scorched Volga. Roske himself played an important role in the surrender of the Sixth Army at the end of January. He was subsequently imprisoned for 12 years, returning to West Germany in 1955 – before killing himself the following year. His boss, Paulus, famously refused to commit suicide after Hitler disingenuously promoted him to Field Marshal. He too was captured and became something of a Soviet propagandist for the remainder of the war. Stunning. History at its very best: a blend of impeccably researched scholarship, genuinely revelatory primary sources, and a beautifully written narrative’– James Holland