How a handful of Soviet soldiers stopped the Nazi army: the mystery of the Pavlov house

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Exactly 100 years marks one of the symbols of military valor, courage and courage: on October 17, 1917, Yakov Fedotovich Pavlov was born, a Red Army soldier who led the defense of the house in Stalingrad, nicknamed by the German soldiers "the fortress", and his colleagues called "Pavlov's house".

Tierra del Fuego in numbers

Despite the fact that the epic with the military successes of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front ended with the defeat of German units and formations at Stalingrad, the Soviet people and the Red Army paid a high price for this victory.

Taking into account the importance of Stalingrad as a strategic point on the map of the USSR, the Wehrmacht command and Adolf Hitler personally were aware that the capture of Stalingrad could once and for all demoralize the Red Army.

It was with this calculation that they began to prepare for the operation to storm Stalingrad especially: in the direction of the main attack, the most combat-ready tank and infantry divisions were drawn together, and the city itself was bombed in the hope of leaving no stone unturned.

During the weeks of the preparation phase and the first days of the assault, the Luftwaffe seemed to be ordered not to leave anything alive - on different days, up to two and a half thousand aircraft fell on the city. The command of the 8th and 16th air armies of the USSR constantly had a headache: the enemy's superiority in fighter and bomber aviation significantly complicated the defense of the city.

Historians have calculated that up to 100 thousand tons of bombs of caliber from hundreds to several hundred kilograms were dropped by German pilots during the storming of Stalingrad.

It is worth noting that the German pilots did not find it easy for the German pilots to carry out massive air raids on the city: the personnel of the Soviet fighter and assault aviation were not inferior to the attackers in terms of the quality of piloting and air combat.

Artillery shelling of the city was no less intense, accompanied by attempts to establish control over every street or quarter.

This was the main difference between the battles for Stalingrad and the capture of Belgium, Holland or France: in Europe, the heavy tread of the German military machine brought whole countries to their knees, and almost immediately after crossing the USSR border, the well-oiled mechanism for the destruction of all living things began to fail one after another.

It was in Stalingrad that the German Ground Forces were accustomed to fierce return fire and insane ammunition consumption even throughout the entire European campaign. Historians explain that this is due not only to the moral and strong-willed qualities of the Red Army, but also to the ability to competently organize the defense of the city and set up combat posts.

“Reports that France was conquered in a few weeks, and during the same time in Stalingrad the Hitlerite army only crossed from one side of the street to the other, did not appear by themselves. The density of the fire was monstrous - everything that could be used was applied on both sides. There were several thousand fragments and hundreds of bullets for each meter.

This was not the case in any battle, either before or after Stalingrad. Even during the defense of Berlin, the Germans did not fight as fiercely as during the offensive operation at Stalingrad.

If my memory serves me, in letters home one of the German soldiers recalled that the kilometer that they had left to go to the Volga, they go longer than across the whole of France or Belgium,”military historian Boris Ryumin said in an interview with the Zvezda TV channel.

Battle for every building

Unlike an easy walk through Europe, the Battle of Stalingrad turned into a real hell for the soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht: every house, every attic or window was turned into firing points. The updated losses of the Wehrmacht for the period of the operation to seize Stalingrad were published by the Russian Ministry of Defense only in 2013.

Natalya Belousova, head of the Russian Defense Ministry's department for perpetuating the memory of those killed in the defense of the Fatherland, said that one and a half million German soldiers completed their life along the banks of the Volga.

During the time that the German infantry formations stormed the city, the soldiers and officers had a very clear understanding of the new in nature and, as a consequence, in the fierceness of the battle in the city.

In dense buildings with houses, warehouses, garages, courtyards, factories and workshops, the outcome of the battle was decided not by air support and the number of troops thrown into the attack, but by competent management and combat training. A real battle was going on for separate sections of the street and buildings: the enemy could not capture the houses occupied by the Red Army soldiers, therefore, most often, German artillery and mortars "hollowed out" the buildings until they were completely destroyed.

The house, which was defended by the machine-gun squad of Senior Sergeant Yakov Pavlov, was one such building. The small four-story structure was a key element in the formed defense system of the 42nd Guards Rifle Regiment of the 13th Guards Division under the command of General A. I. Rodimtsev.

The special zeal of the Nazis and the desire, regardless of losses, to seize the building was simply explained: the four-story dilapidated "fortress" was located in the best possible way - a line of sight of more than a thousand meters in all directions, and the possibility of operational monitoring of the movements of the Nazis towards the Volga.

On September 20, 1942, after the soldiers of Pavlov's unit had cleared and occupied the building, organizing an all-round defense, reinforcements were sent to the positions of the Red Army - a group of riflemen with anti-tank rifles under the command of senior sergeant Andrei Sobgaida, and four fighters under the command of Lieutenant Aleksei two mortars to the building.

Later, a platoon of Lieutenant Ivan Afanasyev joined the defenders, placing a machine gun and submachine gunners in the windows.

Heavy weapons made it possible not only to destroy the enemy at a considerable distance from the fortified position, but also to suppress and often prevent new attempts to attack.

However, the Nazis did not waste time in vain - every day since the end of September 1942, they tried to destroy the building with powerful artillery raids.

“Almost immediately after Pavlov, Afanasyev, Chernyshenko and Sobgaida with their groups fortified in and around the building, not only the extermination of the German infantry, probing the approaches to the house, began, but also the shooting of enemy positions in neighboring houses.

The Germans, of course, did not like such impudence - every day the positions of the defenders were processed not only from mortars, but artillery was also attracted.

After the battle, proceeding from the landscape of the area, they came to the conclusion that the Germans could use up to 150 shells and mines of various calibers per day against fortified positions near Pavlov's house,”military historian Andrei Gorodnitsky said in an interview with Zvezda TV channel.

Monument to valor

After the war, the commander of the 62nd Army, Vasily Chuikov, in addition to the general picture of the heavy fighting in the fall of 1942, will also recall Senior Sergeant Pavlov. “This small group, defending one house, destroyed more enemy soldiers than the Nazis lost in the capture of Paris,” the army commander writes.

The main question of historians, staff workers and command during the heroic defense of the house and after the enemy was thrown not only from the Volga, but also outside the USSR state border, remained combat experience, training and circumstances thanks to which the defense of a particular area from a detachment of only 31 people held several buildings and a small patch of land for 58 days.

And this despite the fact that by the time the Red Army launched a counterattack, most of the defenders, including Afanasyev and Chernyshenko, were seriously wounded.

A detailed analysis of the actions showed that timely supply of the Red Army with ammunition played an important role in the successful defense of the house. “Back then, they didn't make much of a difference - a group target or a single target. They destroyed everything that moves from the side of the enemy,”historians say.

Another mystery for experts for a long time remained the relative safety of Pavlov and the fighters of his group, who not only survived in their own "fortress" at 61 Penzenskaya, but also resisted the enemy for a long time without any serious injuries.

Archival documents, reports and reports, as well as clarifications of historians, allow us to conclude that Pavlov's group waited out artillery attacks on the lower floors of the building, quickly returning to positions after their completion.

Later, it also became clear from archival documents why Yakov Pavlov's group never left the dilapidated building, although the opportunity to withdraw without loss appeared regularly.

From the very beginning of the shelling of Stalingrad by German troops and the "preparation" of the city for the assault, people were hiding in the basement of house No. 61, whose last hope was only a handful of Red Army men with weapons.

Yakov Fedotovich Pavlov himself is a man of extraordinary destiny. Having met on October 17, 1942, the 25th anniversary under a hail of bullets and the whistle of artillery shells, being wounded and lying in the hospital, the young sergeant did not leave the service and continued to fight. The end of the war Pavlov, like many defenders of Stalingrad, met on the Oder.

The defenders of the house, including Yakov Pavlov, never mentioned their own exploits. This is partly why the impossible, insane, but important feat in the defense of Stalingrad was not immediately recalled.

True, already in the middle of the summer of 1945, an annoying misunderstanding caused by the desire to quickly launch a counteroffensive and defeat the enemy in his lair was corrected: on June 27, 1945, Yakov Fedotovich Pavlov was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

As for the "Pavlov House", in addition to domestic and foreign films, history textbooks and dozens of fictional literary works, the tactics of actions of the Ground Forces defending both Stalingrad as a whole and individual areas were studied in detail not only in the military academies of the USSR, but also far beyond it.

Yakov Fedotovich Pavlov passed away in 1981 - the consequences of a severe injury affected.

Many of Pavlov's colleagues will later recall that it was thanks to the resilience of such Soviet soldiers as Yakov Pavlov that the city was recaptured, and the enemy's ridge was broken in half.

After the bloody defeat in Stalingrad at the Headquarters of the Wehrmacht in Berlin, rumors spread that the Russians were not going to surrender their land and "for the brothers who died in Stalingrad" they would certainly take revenge.