About Volgograd, Russia

Formerly and most famously known as Stalingrad, this historic city was founded in the late 16th century to defend the land that Ivan the Terrible had wrested from the Tatars. Then known as Tsaritsyn, the city was for the first several centuries of its existence primarily a military stronghold. In fact, the bulk of its history is one of military conflict. Late in the 17th century, and again in the late 18th century it was captured by Cossack rebels. During the civil war that followed the October Revolution, the city was defended by Stalin and other Bolshevik commanders. In 1918, it fell to the White Russian army, but was retaken two years later. In 1925, as Stalin rose to power in the Soviet government, the city was renamed Stalingrad.

By World War II, Stalingrad had become a major commercial, industrial, and transportation center. It was also the regional center for the rich Caucasus oil fields. All of which, of course, made it quite attractive to Nazi Germany. In the summer of 1942, just as the Soviet Union was turning back the German offensive against Moscow, Hitler launched a major drive toward Stalingrad. The German force numbered over half a million men, including units from a number of different Axis countries. Stalin ordered that the city be held at all costs, and Hitler ordered that it be taken at all costs. The Soviets, vastly outnumbered and outgunned, resisted with a tenacity that is scarcely credible. The Germans were forced to fight house-to-house, slowly working their way through the city by reducing it to rubble. By November, the Germans had still not been able to extricate or overwhelm the small remaining Soviet garrison. General Freidrich von Paulus, their commander, thought it time to withdraw--Hitler refused. Within weeks, two Soviet forces had encircled and captured all of the remaining German forces. The city had been relieved, though there wasn’t really any city left.