Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 17

Sunday, February 14, 1943 SUNDAY TRIBUNE. General Nm SctIon PAGE Writer Who Followed Victorious Russians 'Stalingrad Is Lidice Reports: Magnified 30 Times Stalingrad, scene of perhaps the most decisive battle of this 4 war, is portrayed in its glorious ruins by correspondent David J. Mchol, who began his inspection of the battleground 72 hours after the Nazi radio admitted the forfeit of one of Hitler's supreme objectives in his winter campaign. Trucks Can't Kill Germans' Prt at nrn in ri hunt ftfid I Duly Srmt STALINGRAD Field Von Paulus, who led Hitler's armies into their biggest failure, would answer only two questions when captured. He admitted his first name was Friedrich, and said he was 52 years old.

The best commentary was supplied by a Soviet commander who said, later: "Generals without armies are unimportant." He might have paraphrased the assertion of Lt Gen. Mikhail Malinin, chief of stiff of CoL Gen. Kon-stantin Rokossovaky's Don armtes, who was asked if American equipment figured importantly in the Stalingrad fight. "Not much," the general said. He was reminded of the presence of American trucks.

"They don't shoot," was his laconic reply. Bv DAVID M. MCHOL wiped out or imprisoned as a result of their experience. fwrul to Momlni Twhon. hlrais Dally tl oTALINGRAD This Volga city has almost ceased to exist except in the spirit, which refuses to be defeated.

It is London's blitz made more horrible by every modern weapon of war; it is Rotterdam's smashed center extended over a city the size of Minneapolis; it is Lidice magnified 30 times; it is fire, tornado, earthquake and flood in one, but it is equally the twisted, tortured graveyard of Hitler's mad hopes to conquer the Soviet Union. Its southern suburbs, which remained in the Red army's hands from the beginning of the battle, on Sept. 14, are relatively undamaged by comparison, though bombed frequently, but from the tiny river Tsaritsa which flows into the Volga south of the center of the city as far north as the settlement extended, it is an indescribable ruin. The center of the city where Field Marshal Freidrich von Faulus' Sixth army made its final desperate stand includes no single intact building. The roofs are gone, the walls are down completely.

The interior is nothing but girders, rubble heaps, tangled machinery, stray bits of uniforms, all the scattered equipment which armies leave behind in such furious fighting. A little to the north, the modern section of the city suffered chiefly from bombs. Our impromptu guide pointed out the site of a five-story apartment where not even the foundations were longer visible. The truck in which we rode wound its way through the craters along a temporary road. The streets were lined with burned trucks and automobiles of all types.

Skeletons of streetcars stood on Red army planned a counter blow and actually struck first. The Nazis held in reserve fne Infantry divisions and two tank divisions, either new or reinforced. They launched them on Oct. 14 along a front three miles long and by nightfall they had advanced variously from half a mile to a mile in a day of battle such as the world perhaps never before had seen. With daybreak the artillery began ceaseless fire.

The thunder of guns continued for five hours. To it, the Nazis added a maelstrom of aerial bombing. In a single day 2,500 airplane flights were sent over the battered battleground. There is no more dramatic monument to this fighting than the spot near the river bluff in the Red October factory. The ground rises abruptly 15 feet on the west side of the factory.

The Nazi advance on that awful October day rolled right to the lip of this rise, less than 33 from the building walls. They held this line for weeks but never reached the Volga here. The men who heffl this section against the Nazi horde were under command of Maj. Gen. Step-an Guriev.

Just over the bluff, there is a simple marker saying, "Guriev's guardsmen stood here until death." No one who has seen this wreckage can doubt it. The significance of the fighting in this area seems to be double. The defense which refused to be broken prevented the Germans from controlling a sufficient length of the Volga banks to cut the supply routes. At the same time Nazi losses, especially heavy, enabled the Red army to achieve by mid-November what General Malinin described as an "equilibrium of forces." The Red army chose that moment to begin its amazing offensive. "Street fighting" actually is a misnomer for the combat at Stalingrad.

More accurately, it was weird interior fighting, much of it at night, room-to-room, hall-way-to-hallway, on each floor of the house and finally in the basement. Virtually every building in occupied portions of Stalingrad had to be cleared in this stub ling. They will enter his.ory as among the mot Important fortifications of modern warfare. From the hill's top even heavy machine guns could command the vital Volga route, the only avenue of supplies for the city's defenders. Capture of this point was the key to the whole German strategy for crushing Stalingrad.

On Sept. 27 a Red army division won the eastern slopes and their hold never again was broken, but the Nazis retained the water tanks and the western slopes and fought on there for the next four months. It will be a long time before Kurgan's bare hilltop loses the traces of that fighting. Guarded by inn machine guns, deep in the circular trenches, wire lines and minefields, the Nazis held their positions against ceaseless attacks until Jan, 10 11, when the Red army finally planted its banner on the tank roofs, In the Initial stages of the offensive that finally releaed the city entirely from the Nail grip. The impromptu forts were Immediately turned against the Germans.

One of the snipers Is credited with 154 kills from a vantage point on a reservoir roof overlooking Kurgan's western slopes, which the Nazis held until Feb. 1. Hemmed in from the south, checked at the city's center and halted halfway in the factory section, the Nazis aimed the most powerful single blow of the whole fighting, a blow aimed to encircle the valiant Sixty-second army and control the Volga hanks sufficiently to cut off its supplies entirely. It was the attack that Hitler promised the German people on Kept. SO would mean Stalingrad's fall.

It almost did. Stalingrad's defenders say Oct, 14 was the darkest day of the whole battle, Immediately after Hitler's vain assurance, It became evident to the Soviet command that a new blow was being prepared. The born bitter fashion. The Germans in most rases fought to a finish. "One of our storm units," General Rodimlsev said, "attacked an el-shaped building and captured the second floor hut the Nazis still held the first floor.

They were driven to the base-ment with grenades but eould not be dislodged. "Next we called In sappers who rut holes through the floor and put flame-throwers there. Still that didn't end the resistance. The last resort was simply to put 550 pounds of explosive In the center of the floor." In the latter stages when hunger became the major problem for the encircled Nazis, the Soviet fighters, who were receiving two hot meals daily, found grim entertainment in hoisting a loaf of bread on a bayonet while the enraged Nazis shot it to bits. Si For this type of fighting, the Soviet command evolved storm groups ranging from five to 30 men including infantry, tommy-gunners, rappers and anti-tank riflemen equipped with bayonets, hand grenades, flame ihrowers and long, murderous looking antitank guns.

To deal with enemy tanks, the Soviet fighters developed a strategy requiring the coolest kind of nerves. The tanks were simply permitted to make their way through the Soviet lines when necessary. The infantry, whlrh normally followed them, was cut off and destroyed by tommy-gunners while tank specialists went to work. The Germans early learned the impossibility of maneuvering the largest tanks in cramped city quarters. The Soviet command relied very little on tanks for the defense of Stalingrad, partly because the great offensives to the north were being prepared, partly because they early discovered that the craters left by Nazi bombs made their adequate use difficult.

Keeping in touch with the storm groups operating in various sections of the city was another difficult problem. Wide use was apparently made of the open radio for staff orders to anything smaller than a division. It was also found that telephone lines ft I ti 10-TO1 "VW TOU ARE NOT Sr nd can heIh WITH ymmo imp "KITE i Minnfd Will Hear nearest to the front were most reliable. The opposing troops were so closely locked together that Nazi bombs and shells could not be greatly used on the front lines for fear of wiping out their own forces. For the moment this type of fighting seems to he playing a smaller role; the Soviet offensive is moving too rapidly.

But when the Nazis deride to make a last-ditch stand similar to that in Stalingrad or to undertake new offensives, which the Soviet command confidently expects they will do, it will again come to the fore. When it does there will be this Important difference: The Red army now contains whole armies trained in the world's most exacting post-graduate clinical course of street fighting Stalingrad. The Nazi units best schooled in this technique either have been Alto CUSTOM TAILORED CIVILIAN SUITS AND OVERCOATS mmmmm ARMY Officially Authorized NAVY MARINE CUSTOM TAILORS Attention (o your indiv idual measurementat prices no higher than ready-made. OftN MQHDAY EVENINGS MINNEAPOLIS TAILORING CO. 2nd Floor.

ma mm amid the horror of this another general accepted the responsibility for the marshal's capture. Around him, his own headquarters were literally falling to pieces. The basement of the L'niver. mag. Stalingrad's central department store on the northwest corner of the city's principal square, was still reasonably secure.

But from the one window still retaining its glass, the marshal could look, If he scraped through the heavy frost, out on the debris-littered courtyard and towering, jagged, six-story walls from which all semblance of roof and floors had long since disappeared. The plain fact, at 7 o'clock that morning, was that the Red army, after exactly three weeks of Its new offensive, had completely surrounded the square, with its slender obelisk dedicated to the fallen "heroes of the revolution" In which Stalingrad, then called Tsaritsin, played a leading role. They sent a new offer of surrender, Someone said "no" and touched off the last chapter of Hitler's worst defeat. The relative merging calm was shattered suddenly by a concentration of mortars and divisional artillery hearing on every posl-tlon the Germans still held in thit square. The first to appear was Von Paulus' aide-de-camp, Lieutenant General Roske.

But let Lt. Fe-dor Velchenko continue the story In his own words: "The aide said, 'My chief wants to see the Russian Velchenko explained. With 13 soldiers and two officers of the storm-group of which he was senior officer, Yelchenko started through the gated passageway leading to the store court. The Germans inside shouted warnings against mines and finally guided the party through the danger. "Inside the court," Yelchenko continued, "we pawed the same entrance we later used a ramp leading dow to what apparently was the packajrlng and delivery section of the store.

At the hall's end, three of the men entered the small room and the negotiations were begun." Von Paulus did not appear during the talks, but Lt. Gen. Fielefeld Schmidt, staff chief of the Sixth German army, made frequent trips to Von Paulus' bedroom, An agreement was reached and Soviet guards took places for a few minutes beside the Nazi guarrts at Von Paulus' quarters. The Nazis were later removed. The lieutenant said Von Paulus was not searched and was permitted to keep his sidearms for half an hour after the talks.

Hoske's only request, the lieutenant said, was that Von Paulus should be given a special guard to prevent his possible injury and that he should not be "treated like a tramp." Actually, Von Paulus was taken away in a private car with Red army guards charged with his safety. "He looked healthy and unhappy," the lieutenant said. That was a good summary of the way he looked to us. We saw Von Paulus, Schmidt, the marshal's personal aide, Colonel Adam, and several other captured Nazi generals in their quarters in a frame building in one of the nearby steppe villages. Von Paulus appeared extremely tired and had a marked nervous tic in the right corner of his mouth, but otherwlfe he was well and unharmed.

To understanu and appreciate the savageness and bitterness of the fighting here is to visualize something of the titanic struggle waged along the whole Soviet front. Mamaev Kurgan, or Hill 102, as marked on staff maps, actually Is two long, low ridges, one parallel to the Volga and hardly a mile westward, the other angling southeast towards the center of the city. Where the ridges meet at the northern end is only 300 feet above the river, yet it Is the highest point in the vicinity. There stand two concrete water tanks, three-fourths underground, 30 feet apart. Between them is a six-foot concrete box sheltering the waterpipe coup- In 1 943 get CHEVROLET DEALER SERVICE 1 NMLY 'OR CAR 1 NCE VMM WTENA BATTLE BICKER Kpfrlnl In Mornlnt Trlliune anil I rtlrnin Dally STALINGRAD The vicious fighting here, often with only a single wall separating the enemies, produced verbal exchanges almost as savage as the battles.

"Rus kaput" wa the taunting Na.i cry during the early weeks. Cold, hunger and encirrlrment altered the challenge. "I'll trade a rifle for a fur rap," a German once shouted. "Make it a tank snd we'll talk husine," the guardsmen shouted back. Another Nazi offered to e-change a tommy gun.

"I'll keep the hat and get jour tommy gun anyway," a Soviet fighter answered. from frostbite and are not yet able to be moved. As if protecting against the unnatural silene over the city the echo of five months' fury a random mine may be heard exploding as Bed army sappers continue the task of clearing Stalingrad. Tor two days the homes of Stalingrad's defenders were the headquarters for our exploration of the city. It was the first such opportunity that foreign observers had had since the battle began.

If it serves even slightly towards making" understandable to Americans what the defenses of Stalingrad meant in terms of human beings and terms of Hitler's defeat, it will be greatly worthwhile. Field Marshal von Paulus, tall and as severely Prussian as any wielder of the Nazi baton, was raptured in the basement of Stalingrad's equivalent of Marshall Field's by 15 minutes of blasting and tearing artillery fire and a 21-year-old Red army senior lieutenant. On the shoulders of the commander of the Sixth German army, the most powerful modern force ever hurled against a besieged city, rests a heavy responsibility that can be shared by only one man Hitler. On der fuehrer's decision, Von Faulus issued the orders for maintaining pressure on Stalingrad's center, despite the threat of encirclement, and then the orders refusing the ultimatum of Jan. 8 and again of Jan.

9. The direct result of this chain of events was the throwing of 330,000 men, the pride of the German army, to starvation, disease, death and imprisonment. In the end, with a regard for military niceties that seems terribly out of place 6000 fURillTURE MICID II5HT Phent 6E. UI tracks or leaned crazily into the snow. Still farther north were the worker' settlements.

Here the worst damage of all occurred. It Is impossible to believe that people ever lived there. Almost 'the only indication is provided by the multitude of metal bedsteads which give the appearance of a gigantic junkyard, One's first impression is that this cannot be real. The devastation Is too utterly complete. One feels hopclely Inadequate before the' task of description.

Frost blackened corpae, In Rrnteaqtie attitudes In which they fell or were punhed aside into mme convenient trench, seem per. fectly natural accompaniment for this mad scene. The final weird touch, if. any Is needed, is added by the tiny girl playing unconcerned among the ruins and by the atartled mother emerging from a cellar with its protected entrance. There is an occasional sledge loaded with the pitiful remnants of household equipment, an occasional muffled pedestrian along the torn streets, but traces of civilian population are few, al-, though some continued to survive in cellars and sewers even In those central sections occupied by the Germans.

The last shot of this gigantic battle, which conceivably might mark the turning point of the whole war, was fired about noon a week ago (this section of Nichol'iT story was filed Tuesday) in the northwest-era workers' settlement. Four hours later, the last organized group of Nazi resistance was rounded up. We first saw the battlefield 72 hours later. A thin lnjer of fresh snow served only to accentuate the desolation, while over all had settled a strange Jilence and an atmosphere of exhaustion as if the whole region had spent its last resources In a final effort to hurl out the Invaders and the torn earth now wanted only peace and quiet. Squads of tommy-gunners made their stoic way through paths cleared of mines, not turning aside, not speaking.

Trophy units went about the grim business of picking up pieces and salvaging what is left both of man and Soviet equipment. An occasional prisoner may be seen, sometimes unaccompanied. Two emerged from a dugout hobbling on obviously frost-bitten feet searching for hits of firewood, for Stalingrad is bitterly cold. One reported at the en-'trance to a field hospital the basement of a four-story building In the city's central square where 200 Nazis are suffering Man? twn say "flrrt urn ii rvltjon." Hut tow of eld fuhiooed mutton wet, Grandma's favorite. Generous jar 2, doublewprlyJM.

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