The Battle of Stalingrad was one of, if not the most brutal, and costliest battle in the history of warfare. For 163 days, two modern superpowers clashed in an industrialized metropolis of over one million people. The casualty figures are overwhelming:  estimates range from 1.2 to 1.7 million people captured, killed, wounded, or missing. From August 23rd to February 2nd, all the demons of the Eastern Front reared their ugly head in a city that would become a tomb for hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, caught in a War of Annihilation between two maniacs. This “sepulchral city,” in Conrad’s terms, while serving as a monument to heroic bravery, also represents the most brutal consequences of human depravity.

Combat

 The utter disregard for human life shared by the commanders-in-chief meant that each side would see horrendous casualties in pursuit of victory. Hitler ordered that the city be taken at all costs, while Stalin mandated that Stalingrad would be defended to the last man. His infamous order No. 227 declared "Not a step back!" Anyone seen retreating, or deserting their posts would be shot on sight. When Vasili Chuikov assumed command of the city's defense, his first action was to setup checkpoints around the city to make sure the order was obeyed.

After the early battles for the suburbs, and the sacrifice of the 13th Guards Rifle Division in the city center, combat assumed a different aesthetic. Soviet commanders noticed the inherent waste of utilizing large amounts of men in urban warfare. Chuikov issued this command on the 26th:

"I again warn the commanders of all units and formations not to carry out operations by whole units like companies and battalions. The offensive should be organized chiefly on the basis of small groups, with tommy-guns, hand-grenades, bottles of incendiary mixture and anti-tank rifles."

This active defense (dubbed Rattenkreig, or "War of the Rats" by the frustrated Germans) worked beautifully for the Russians. Every time the attackers managed to take a house – a de-facto fortress, small groups of Russian storm troopers would counterattack. German soldiers often joked that, “we’ve conquered the kitchen, but we’re still fighting for the bedroom.” The beauty of these tactics, however, had their limitations. The life expectancy for a Russian defender entering Stalingrad was about 24 hours. One German Lieutenant probably best described the fighting in a remarkable November journal entry:

"We have fought during fifteen days for a single house, with mortars, grenades, machine-guns and bayonets. Already by the third day, fifty-four German corpses are strewn in the cellars, on the landings and the staircases...There is ceaseless struggle from noon to night. From storey to storey, faces black with sweat, we bombard each other with grenades in the middle of explosions, clouds of dust and smoke, heaps of mortar, floods of blood, fragments of furniture and human beings. Ask any soldier what half an hour of hand-to-hand struggle means in such a fight. And imagine Stalingrad; eighty days and eighty nights of hand-to-hand struggles... Stalingrad is no longer a town. By day it is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke; it is a vast furnace lit by the reflection of the flames. And when night arrives, one of those scorching, howling, bleeding nights, the dogs plunge into the Volga and swim desperately to gain the other bank. The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure."

Aside from the close, personal nature of combat, soldiers had to watch out for an even more deadly enemy - the sniper. The most famous of the lot, Vasily Zaitsev, started a sniper school within the confines of the Red October Factory, where he trained his pupils to be hunters of men. He and his students killed over 3,000 Germans during the course of the battle, with Zaitsev himself accredited over 200 of the fatalities.

For two months soldiers on both sides fought tooth and nail for a burned-out and depleted city. In the final months, the attacks focused on the enormous factories that were the hallmark of prewar Stalingrad. The fighting pretty much continued as it had, with horrible losses sustained on both sides, and the Germans slowly gaining territory. For the Germans, the mile had been replaced by the yard as an effective measurement of conquered territory. Urban warfare had successfully blunted the advance of an army meant for open country, but it was the soldiers on both sides who bore the awful consequences of their leaders’ tactics.

Letters Home:

In the armies of totalitarian societies, letters rarely made it to their intended recipient. Instead, they were often confiscated as indicators of sentiment towards the regime. Unfortunately, letters from Soviet fighters in Stalingrad are few and far between because of the extremely high casualty rate, and the nature of Stalinist Russia. Russian letters from combat generally contained assurances to family members of the sender’s well-being, and other lies meant to keep the morale high at home. Remarkably, the best letters from Stalingrad come from the German side of the struggle, despite the ultra-totalitarian nature of the Nazi State. None of the following letters, written in the final days of the battle, ever made it to their destinations. Instead, the Bureau of Army Information seized them immediately upon their return from the Kessel; where by some miracle, they made it through the fall of Nazi Germany as a testament to the great fallacy that is war.

Letter 1: "On Tuesday I knocked out two T-34s with my mobile anti-tank gun. Curiosity had lured them behind our lines. It was grand and impressive. Afterwards I drove past the smoking remains. From a hatch there hung a body head down, his feet caught, and his legs burning up to his knees. The body was alive, the mouth moaning. He must have suffered terrible pain. And there was no possibility of freeing him. Even if there had been, he would have died after a few hours of torture. I shot him, and as I did it, the tears ran down my cheeks. Now I have been crying for three nights about a dead Russian tank driver, whose murderer I am. The crosses of Gumrak shake me and so do many other things which my comrades close their eyes to and set their jaws against. I am afraid I'll never be able to sleep quietly, assuming that I shall ever come back to you, dear ones. My life is a terrible contradiction, a psychological monstrosity...During the night I cry without control, like a child. What will this lead to?"

Letter 2: "I wanted to write you a long letter, but my thoughts constantly disintegrate like houses which collapse under shellfire. I still have ten hours, then this letter has to be turned in. Ten hours is a long time for people who are waiting, but short for those in love. I am not nervous at all. Actually it is here in the East that I have for the first time become really healthy; I don't have colds and sniffles anymore; that is the only good the war has done me. It gave me something else, the realization that I love you. It is strange that people value things only when they are about to lose them. The vast distance is spanned by the bridge from heart to heart. By that bridge, I wrote you about our daily rounds and the world in which we live here. I meant to tell you the truth when I returned, and then we would never have talked about the war again. Now you will learn the truth beforehand, the last truth. Now I can write no more.

As long as there are shores, there will always be bridges. We should have the courage to walk on them. One bridge leads to you, the other to eternity; at the very end they are the same for me. Tomorrow I shall set foot on the last bridge. That is the literary way of saying 'death,' but as you know, I always liked to express things figuratively, because I took pleasure in words and sounds. Give me your hand so that crossing it won't be so hard."

Letter 3: "Today I talked to Hermann. He is south of the front, a few hundred yards from me. Not much is left of his regiment. But the son of baker B--- is still with him. Hermann still had the letter in which you told us of father's and mother's death. I talked to him once more, for I am the elder brother, and I tried to console him, though I too am at the end of my rope. It is good that father and mother will not know that Hermann and I will never come home again. It is terribly hard that you will have to carry the burden of four dead people through your future life. I wanted to be a theologian, father wanted to have a house, and Hermann wanted to build fountains. Nothing worked out that way. You know yourself what the outlook is at home, and we know only too well what it is here. No, those things we planned certainly did not turn out the way we imagined. Our parents are buried under the ruins of their house, and we, though it may sound harsh, are buried with a few hundred or so men in a ravine in the southern part of the pocket. Soon these ravines will be full of snow."