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World War II – Stalingrad – Iain MacGregor
188 Plays1 year ago
Ep 010 - Nonfiction. In September 1942, one of the fiercest battles of WW2 began: Stalingrad. The battle is one of the most written-about of WW2, and I was so glad to pick up Iain MacGregor's new book, "The Lighthouse of Stalingrad," which adds a new layer to the history & chronicles an event crucial to the defeat of the Nazis. In Iain's words, "I wanted to write a very human story." What a great interview.
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Transcript
Introduction to Ian McGregor & 'The Lighthouse of Stalingrad'
00:00:02
Speaker
Hi, everyone. This is AJ Woodhams, host of the War Books Podcast, where I interview today's best authors writing about war-related topics. Today, I am so excited to have Ian McGregor joining me, talking about his new book, The Lighthouse of Stalingrad, The Hidden Truth at the Heart of the Greatest Battle of World War II. And I really learned a ton from this book, so I'm so excited for this conversation.
00:00:32
Speaker
Ian McGregor is an author and editor. He has published many books on the Second World War on the Eastern Front, and his research has taken him to archives in Leningrad, Moscow, and Volgograd. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and his writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Spectator, and BBC History magazine. Ian, how are you doing today? I'm very well, thank you. The clocks have gone forward in the UK by an hour, as they usually do, which
00:01:01
Speaker
Herald Springtime, so there's some strain outside, and I'm working from home today in the day job. Well, I had to, so I'm in Washington DC right now, and for setting this up, it was morning time, and so I'm trying to do some math. So I just Googled, if it is 11 a.m. in Washington DC, what time is it in London? And that's how we luckily Googled lettuce to the right place.
00:01:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's lovely. As many of your listeners will know, it's nice to work from home a few days a week. So you can collect your thoughts more. So I'm hoping this will be a good talk we have. Wonderful. Well, yeah, thanks so much for joining me. I'm really excited about this book.
00:01:50
Speaker
I was with some friends this weekend actually at a bar in Washington DC and I had your book with me because I was reading it on the train and I sat it down on the table and my friends were like, oh, I was just on the beach last week and I saw somebody reading that.
00:02:06
Speaker
And I didn't think of your book as a beach read, but I can confirm that there is at least one person out there on a leisurely beach trip reading The Lighthouse of Stalingrad. So I thought I would. So there's a kind of, there's a, there's a link to the sea. Maybe that's the reason I'm trying to think of. Yeah.
00:02:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I've read lots of military history books while I've been relaxing on the beach. It's good to hear. Maybe it could be a commentary on my type of friends too. Yeah, it's good. No comment. So this is the first book that you've written about World War II specifically, is that right?
Ian McGregor's Fascination with Stalingrad
00:02:53
Speaker
Yes. As you said in the intro, I published dozens and dozens of books on 20th century history and obviously within that World War I and World War II. But as a writer, yeah. What inspired you to write this book about Stalingrad? I've been fascinated by specifically this battle.
00:03:17
Speaker
Since I was nine years old and my parents bought me for my birthday and illustrate, I mean, I've always loved history, so they're always feeding me lots of books and things like that. So I had an illustrated history of the greatest battles in history and the one that really stood out for me
00:03:37
Speaker
other than the Battle of Kenai, which is in ancient Rome, was, and very similar to Stalingrad actually at the ending, was Stalingrad, because obviously you can relate to that because you're looking at a city, an urban city, modern city, so you can think as a child that you're thinking, well that's very much like where I'm living.
00:03:57
Speaker
And it just captured my imagination because obviously the banner headline was Greatest Battle of the Second World War. So I wanted to find out as much as I could about that. And then I was just very lucky as a teenager, and this is way back in the 80s, early 80s, as a teenager, my parents paid for me to go on a student exchange trip to the Soviet Union as was to Russia. So that was to Leningrad and the environs outside Leningrad.
00:04:26
Speaker
And again, that really stirred within me a passion about Russian history, especially modern Russian history, 20th century modern history, whether it's the Russian Civil War in 1917 to 1922, 23, or Stalin taking over. And then obviously the part of the Second World War, the Great Patriotic War was just fascinating. And then the Cold War. So all that is super, super interesting to me.
00:04:52
Speaker
But like I said, it's my publisher after my previous book, which was on the Berlin Wall, my publisher said to me, what book would you like to write next? What really captures your imagination that you could really get your teeth into? And I didn't need a second thought really. I said, well, I'd love to do one on Stalingrad. But as I'm sure we'll talk about in the next
00:05:14
Speaker
hour. It has to be something completely new and different. The world doesn't didn't really need another book on Stalingrad, really. I just but I would if I told it through an original angle, which I hope that's what I've captured with the book.
Why Write a New Account of Stalingrad?
00:05:30
Speaker
Well, you know, it's really interesting because my conventional wisdom also is, well, you know, Stalingrad, it's such a documented battle. There's been so many books written about it. But one of the reasons why I was actually kind of excited to read this book
00:05:46
Speaker
and why I actually I liked I'm a big fan of lots of context in which we'll get into and I love that you provided a lot of context in your book because I had heard a lot about Stalingrad but I didn't know any of the specifics really and maybe it's a generational thing where you know I've I've I know there's books that have been written however long ago about Stalingrad but I actually I was surprised at how little
00:06:14
Speaker
maybe not how little I knew, but how much I learned just about the battle itself. So, well, maybe let's just get right into the battle, the siege of Stalingrad. Would you say it's the siege of Stalingrad or the battle of Stalingrad? What's the proper? It's a campaign. I say in my talk, especially to students,
00:06:36
Speaker
We all say it's obviously known as the Battle of Stalingrad and as the city of Stalingrad on the River Volga in southern Russia, but it was really the Stalingrad Front, which is why it's a battle of millions of combatants and why there's well over a million and a half killed.
00:06:54
Speaker
it's because it was along a long front. So it's not just in this city that stretches like a ribbon along the river for about 20, 25 miles. So that's nearly 40 kilometres long. It's a big urban sprawl of a city. But it's the hinterland outside of it, which strategically is a front. So that's why you've got this clash of armies, millions strong, and consisting of thousands of aeroplanes, thousands of tanks and motorised vehicles.
00:07:21
Speaker
exit etc etc so yeah it's the battle of stalingrad but it means so much more it's it's it's a whole area. Yeah well this the the the siege itself last from september of nineteen forty two to february of nineteen forty three but i actually want to start a little bit before that in nineteen forty one when when germany.
00:07:44
Speaker
invades the Soviet Union, maybe we can just start there and go leading up to September of 1942.
Operation Barbarossa and the Invasion of the Soviet Union
00:07:55
Speaker
So 1941, when Germany invades the Soviet Union, tell us a little bit about that invasion at the very beginning, who's winning, who's losing, the troop numbers, give us a little context.
00:08:11
Speaker
Well, I mean, the previous year, so 1941, 22nd of June, 1941, Operation Barbarossa jumps off, and that's Adolf Hitler and his Axis allies, but primarily, obviously, it's Nazi Germany's
00:08:29
Speaker
key campaign of the whole of the Second World War, his ultimate goal was to destroy Bolshevism. I mean, the Nazi ideology, the obvious target and adversary was Stalin's Russia.
00:08:46
Speaker
So that was the whole point of the operation was to knock the Soviet Union out of the war and destroy Bolshevik Russia. Ironically, it was Stalin's Soviet Union, especially their mineral wealth and the oil that had bankrolled Hitler's expansion to the west to the previous year with
00:09:05
Speaker
obviously the invasion of Poland, followed by then the invasion west to take France. The Low Countries drive Britain out off the continental Europe, so they were themselves besieged on our island. That had all been achieved really through, obviously, famously, we always talk about this big motorised blitzkrieg of Hitler's
00:09:29
Speaker
armored divisions and combined arms with the Luftwaffe aerial attacks, et cetera, et cetera. But you need oil. You need oil to drive a 20th century motorized army in terms. I mean, obviously, the German army was heavily reliant on horse drawn vehicles as well as foot soldiers just marching along. But their panzer armies and motorized divisions needed oil. Germany
00:09:54
Speaker
Germany's mineral wealth and oil wealth was negligible and Stalin had bankrolled that. So the attack the following year, 22nd of June, 1941, even though there was lots of information and intelligence reports, not just from Stalin's own people, but from the Western allies like Britain, for instance, was telling him German troops, Axis troops are massing in their millions on your borders.
00:10:22
Speaker
to attack. He just didn't believe it because he was thinking long term, I've been supplying Nazi Germany for the best part of two years in terms of all this. He was completely surprised, right? So it took him by surprise. And, you know, it's been argued probably correctly that he just didn't want to do it. Psychologically, it was a damaging blow to him. He just didn't believe it was happening.
00:10:45
Speaker
and from that he just kind of rabid in headlights. So this massive invasion over well over three million men, three giant armies north, centre and south, north to drive along the Baltic coast, capture Leningrad, second biggest city and communication hub on the European side of Russia. The centre to obviously drive through
00:11:10
Speaker
towards Moscow, take out the centralized hub of the whole country and capture that. And then the southern army is to do what where the fighting is at the moment that everyone's talking about in the Ukraine. Drive through Ukraine, drive through Belorussia and go into the south into the Caucasus where this mineral wealth was that was coming up.
00:11:29
Speaker
and being delivered by Stalin's trains and trucks to Hitler anyway. And it worked to a degree. It wasn't the one summer campaign that had worked the year before against France where it knocked France out of the Second World War in eight weeks, eight to 10 weeks. That wasn't repeated. You're just talking about a far, far bigger country. And this kind of ideologically driven
00:11:58
Speaker
argument Hitler had that you just had to kick in the door of Soviet Russia and which he believed was rotten to the core with Bolshevism and the whole edifice was collapsed just didn't happen so even though his armies were plunging hundreds and hundreds of kilometers into the country and capturing cities like Smolensk and Kiev
00:12:18
Speaker
besieging Leningrad, getting to the gates of Moscow, driving down south to the Caucasus. They were still being held up by fierce Soviet resistance, even though by the end of the summer campaign and by going towards winter time, they killed nearly three million Soviet troops and captured three million Soviet troops. They destroyed the bulk of the Western army.
00:12:41
Speaker
of the Soviet Union. And it really wasn't, and you write a little bit about this too, I think a lot of people, in hindsight, the thought is that Hitler's invading the Soviet Union was like his, that was such a ludicrous thing for him to do. If you look right up to that invasion, if you look at the Soviet Union in their campaign against Finland, the Soviet Union had a very kind of weak
00:13:07
Speaker
military campaign in Finland. And then also too, Hitler didn't believe that the Soviet economy was modern enough to compete against his ghastly modernized German force. With the Winter War and Stalin trying to capture a huge chunk of Finland, very much like what's going on in Ukraine today,
00:13:30
Speaker
He just arrogantly thought that the mass of his armies and the amount of armor that they had and mechanized troops, they could easily take on and beat the Finns. But he was dealing with a very highly trained, highly motivated Finnish army that was well supplied by the Allies, by Germany as well.
00:13:56
Speaker
They really gave the Soviet invading army a bloody nose and the Soviet army that was attacking wasn't well coordinated, had low morale, troops weren't as well trained as they should have been. Their leadership, the military leadership had been heavily damaged by the purges.
00:14:15
Speaker
Leading up to that campaign that Stalin had instigated in the late 30s way, you know Chopped the head off them that the main military leadership of the Red Army. So it was disaster and obviously other people outside especially German military high commander watching this thinking aha look at look at how badly they've performed here they are it reinforced the fact that they were right for the picking but saying that
00:14:41
Speaker
even though Hitler wanted this to happen, wanted this invasion to happen, when the Wehrmacht came to Wargaming, a strategy that they would implement in Operation Barbarossa, a lot of their main military leaders were seeing this as, well, this is quite impractical in terms of how many men will need the logistics that's involved. This country or territory is 10 times bigger than what we did to France. The amount of men we've got to capture,
00:15:09
Speaker
You know, when you capture these millions of men, do you have the logistics and the actual wherewithal to take the prisoner and actually deal with them properly? There was nothing of that in place. So there was a lot of skepticism in the German High Command, but Hitler and Hitler's policies have delivered a lot of success over the last 18 months. They'd smashed the Western allies. They'd taken France, which they'd never done in the Great War, 1914 to 1918. So he had this self-belief. So they followed him.
00:15:40
Speaker
albeit with some skepticism, they still followed him willingly into the East to think maybe we can do this. But as I was saying, by the time he gets, what are we talking about? By the time you're getting, say, five months into this operation, and they're outside the gates of Moscow, they're outside the gates of Leningrad, they're about to plunge into the Caucasus, that's where the Russian winter hits. They're not prepared for it. But equally, then they just weren't prepared. And it came as a shock to how fiercely
00:16:07
Speaker
Soviet forces were putting up a fight. Yes, they were being destroyed en masse by the methods of Blitzkrieg, as in these motorized divisions would surround whole static red armies and then just destroy them or capture them in bulk and then destroy them. Again, Hitler just didn't believe that the pools of manpower that Stalin would be able to call upon to keep delivering fresh divisions, which completely shocked everybody.
00:16:37
Speaker
So by the time of 1942, we're getting towards what are they going to be their plans. You know, the German army had had a severe bloody nose because they'd been counterattacked outside the gates of Moscow and not just outside the gates of Moscow all along the lines. So this line stretched from the Baltic coast all the way down to the Caucasus is well over a thousand kilometers, if not fifteen hundred kilometers.
00:16:59
Speaker
All along that part, you've got these mini, not coordinated, as some would say, coordinated giant offensive. It was a series of counter-offensives as the Soviets could perceive that the Germans were struggling to handle the winter conditions, but also that they were right at the edge of their capacity to actually carry on fighting because they'd lost so many vehicles, lost a lot of men. They lost more men to frostbite than they did to actually fighting.
00:17:28
Speaker
And so by the time they get to September of 1942, it's not the same army it was a year ago. Things are very different. Yeah, I mean, their plans for 1942. And you've got to remember that by the time that they started this operation, that would ultimately end at Stalingrad in 1942 in September.
00:17:53
Speaker
that the the Christmas of 41 going into 42 that's when obviously Hitler joined Imperial Japan his fascist ally and declared war on the United States so he's now he's in this global campaign and it's much bigger stakes to play for and to be a winner and taking this massive gamble he now knows he he does need
00:18:16
Speaker
He needs oil, he needs the mineral wealth that southern Russia can give him to carry on fighting this war that's now on a bigger playing field.
00:18:26
Speaker
Let's talk about then the city of Stalingrad itself and the geography and why Stalingrad. You touched on this a little bit, and I know you've talked a little bit about resources. So Stalingrad itself, that would be considered in the southern part of Russia, correct?
00:18:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's in southern Russia. It's on the banks of the Volga. The Volga River stretches from the Caspian Sea in the south all the way up to basically north of Moscow. It's well over a thousand kilometers long.
00:19:02
Speaker
over 15 kilometers long, I should say, over five, 600 tributaries feed into it. I mean, it's very much like the Mississippias to America and how valuable the Mississippi was strategically during the American Civil War and how both sides really needed to grab the Mississippi because economically and supply routes wise, it's fundamental for one side or the other to have it to maintain momentum.
00:19:29
Speaker
So Stalingrad basically is originally with Tsaritsyn. It had been there since medieval times and again, like the Mississippi, it was one of a number of small villages that just grew into trading posts, then into towns and then to major commercial centres as we progress through the centuries. So by the time the Germans arrived outside the city in September 1942,
00:19:57
Speaker
You're looking at a place that is a major urban industrial center. It was one of the major places in southern Russia.
00:20:06
Speaker
Stalin in the 30s had poured a lot of Soviet money, but also a lot of Western investment, especially from America, into turning this city into what he would call a showpiece city, which I mean was named after him as Stalingrad. And that was going to be one of these satellite Soviet cities that would almost be a replica of what you could get if you lived in Moscow. So you'd have boulevard parks, department stores, big libraries, theatres, the best hospitals, the best schools,
00:20:36
Speaker
You ride a little bit too. I thought this was very interesting because I'm from the Midwest here in America. You're right that the city itself is almost like an industrial American Midwest city where industry was thriving. Exactly. I've been to the Midwest quite a lot and I've been to Chicago quite a lot. It reminded me, I mean, physically the shape of it is different to Chicago. Like I said,
00:21:02
Speaker
The whole city of Stalingrad was basically situated along the river. It's like a long ribbon, over 40 kilometres long. At its deepest point, it's probably only two kilometres in depth. So it's not like this homogenous blob that most cities are like.
00:21:20
Speaker
that just spreads out in all directions from the compass. It was literally layered along the bluffs of this river. And for obvious reasons, because that's where the trading's been done. That's where all your warehouses are. And by the time the Germans arrive, that's where they've got these giant factories, which, to get back to my point, one of the key places of the fighting that would happen was in the north of the city where this giant, what was called the factory district was. And one of those giant factories, those three of them,
00:21:50
Speaker
was actually designed and built by the Ford Motor Company. And that gets back to all this Western investment that had been plowed in in the 1930s, because Stalin originally wanted this, it was called the tractor factory. It was supposed to be making farming equipment that some of it was for Russia, but the bulk of it was gonna get exported because it would bring the government lots of imported wealth. But as you do, as America did, as Britain did, once you're at war, you have to turn over a lot of these factories from not making what they're supposed to be making
00:22:20
Speaker
They make arms, they make equipment, they make tanks, they make armored boats, armored planes. And that's why the city of, I almost said Volgograd, that's why the city of Stalingrad was a military target because that's what it was doing. It was churning out armored boats, armored planes, T-34 tanks, all that kind of thing. And so,
00:22:38
Speaker
To get back to my earlier point about this case blue was what it was called, the summer campaign, the year after Barbarossa, which failed. This campaign was to plunge into southern Russia and capture the oil. Stalingrad was really just a city on a map. Strategically, it was going to be the furthest east this new offensive would reach.
00:22:59
Speaker
And it was just to get the army, a portion of the army on the Volga River, because then that protected, cemented, the bulk of the army's flank as it then veered 90 degrees and went down into the south, into the Caucasus to capture the oil. That was the fundamental goal of that summer campaign. Very much like the year before, because the Soviets were putting up a big fight, they were resisting. German army was losing men and material. Hitler had to take a gamble, he's thinking,
00:23:25
Speaker
The caucus is that this big campaign's not going to work. I'm not going to achieve the goals that I wanted to. I've got to come out of this with something to justify this vast expenditure in human life and material. All eyes will now go back to Stalingrad. We're going to capture or destroy Stalin's city. So Stalingrad is standing in the way of, if Stalingrad falls for what this means to the Soviet Union, that will just give the German army
00:23:56
Speaker
a very easy path towards these oil fields and other resources. That was the thing. German propaganda had always said, especially over the last year, that they'd been at war with Russia, that they would break the back of the Red Army and they would eventually succeed in destroying Western Russia, European Russia. Their demarcation line of where that was was
00:24:24
Speaker
They wanted to go past Moscow, but they were always going to probably stop at the Ural Mountains, which is about 500, 600, 700 miles further east of Moscow. And then that line continues. You follow that southwards, and then you're heading down towards the Caspian Sea, heading down towards Iran. That's where the Volga is. So that's naturally to a lot of German commanders. They were thinking, if we get to the Volga, we pretty much, A, we will have hopefully destroyed the Red Army in front of us.
00:24:51
Speaker
And we would have split the country in two. And if we split the country in two, they'll either sue for peace on our terms or we actually can continue this fight and we'll destroy them completely. And they very much believe that because obviously you and I are looking at this in hindsight. We know what's going to happen at Stalingrad and we ultimately know the Soviet Union is going to win the Second World War. But at that point in time, there had just been one victory after another for the German army over the Soviets. Both sides had seen the way that
00:25:20
Speaker
The Winter War had worked where the Germans hadn't succeeded in their goals.
00:25:24
Speaker
everyone was attributing really to the winter weather. It hadn't been the Soviets that had defeated them. It was the weather. So in Hitler's mind and in a lot of his loyal commanders' mind, their feeling was, well, we can still beat this army. They'd never defeated us yet. And on the flip side, that's what the Red Army thought. They're thinking, what are we going to do? They're going anywhere at will that they want to. We're managing to hold the line to a degree, but we're getting smashed time after time.
00:25:52
Speaker
It's costing us about 10 to 15 times more in terms of casualties and tanks and planes being destroyed to actually hold the line. So by the time the Germans are striving for Stalingrad, the whole country, the Soviet Union, was thinking, well, this is make or break for us now. If we can't hold Stalin's city on the Volga, we'll lose the Volga. The country gets split in half.
00:26:15
Speaker
And then basically in a few months time when the next summer campaign starts, then they really will capture the Caucasus. So that was the thinking at the time that it really was kind of last roll of the dice for the Red Army.
00:26:28
Speaker
Let's start then at September of 1942 when the siege actually starts. Who are some of the players on the German side and the Russian side? Who's in leadership for both of the armies? On the German side, to get back to that point I made about Barbarossa had been war-gamed before they actually started in 41.
00:26:54
Speaker
It's just the irony is the commander that was in charge of the German 6th Army that was now surrounding Stalingrad and about to attack was
00:27:04
Speaker
I call General Friedrich Paulus. Sometimes there's a mistake. People call him von Paulus. He didn't have a von. It's just Friedrich Paulus. But he had been in charge. He was a brilliant administrator. He was a brilliant staff officer. And there's no argument about that. And he'd worked very well all the way through the war in the West. And then in the first year of the war in Russia, that's basically what he'd been doing.
00:27:33
Speaker
And he was one of the main guys who'd war-gamed this at the very beginning and actually had said, this will be so-so, this is quite impractical to do this, but they'd gone ahead and done it.
00:27:45
Speaker
But through happen chance, the guy who was going to command this new offensive on Reichenau, who Paulus reported to, died of a stroke days before they were about to launch this offensive. So Hitler had promoted Paulus into the hot seat. Primarily, I would argue because he was a guy that wasn't going to question Hitler's orders, wasn't going to question the command structure.
00:28:13
Speaker
which Hitler had found the year before when Barbarossa was failing, a lot of his commanders were.
00:28:18
Speaker
were arguing with them, and he'd fired quite a lot, a few senior commanders because of that. So he wanted Paulus. So Paulus was the main driver. Like I said, he was a brilliant administrator, brilliant staff officer, but he wasn't the frontline commander. And that would hamper the Sixth Army when it really came to the crunch of when they're fighting in this city, this new urban combat. It just wasn't something he was used to.
00:28:45
Speaker
on the flip side he would be against a man total opposite in character and ability to him and that was a guy called General Vasily Chuikov and Chuikov would be in charge of the 62nd army and they were designated to defend the center of the city and Chuikov was everything Paulus wasn't he was
00:29:07
Speaker
A, he was a die-hard communist. You couldn't really say Paulus was a die-hard Nazi. He just wasn't. Even though, to be fair, he'd gone along with commanding or had been part of the senior management of the 6th Army that had helped commit atrocious atrocities as though making their way through the Eastern.
00:29:26
Speaker
territories, the 6th Army logistically helped a lot of what happened with the Holocaust in Ukraine, and Belorussia was on their doorstep, and Paulus was part of that. But he wasn't a die-hard Nazi, where Chukov was a die-hard communist. He'd led a regiment, aged 19 in the Russian Civil War, he'd led a regiment of cavalry. I mean, he was that good a frontline commander.
00:29:50
Speaker
Hard-bitten, hard-nosed, I should say, followed orders implacably, wasn't averse to shooting people himself if he thought they weren't toeing the line or following orders correctly, or had disobeyed orders, obviously. So he's the kind of guy you want in charge of leading what was a really tenacious, die-hard defense against an overwhelming force that Paulus was commanding against him, and that's what he did.
00:30:18
Speaker
And it's very, when I was reading the combat diaries of both the armies, it's very telling that at no point was Chuikov ever more than, say, 200 meters away from the bitterest fighting on the front line in the city during the Battle of Stalingrad, whereas Paulus, for the bulk of the time of the fighting, he was at least more than 20, 25 kilometers away in HQ. And again, that kind of shows you the characters.
00:30:46
Speaker
But then when it drills down to what I talk about in my book, what I wanted to offer the reader was instead of offering the overall strategy of the battle, which, you know, you can go to people like David Glantz, who's fantastic. Obviously, Anthony Beevor's book on Stalingrad is amazing. They offer the whole story of the whole campaign. I wanted to drill down to a very human story and talk about just two single units, two divisions opposing each other in the center of the city.
00:31:14
Speaker
one of which reported ultimately to Paulus, one of which ultimately reported to Chuikov, who I've just talked about, 71st Infantry Division on the German side and the 13th Guards Rifle Division on the Soviet side. They both fought for those five months from the beginning right to the end of the battle, slugging it out in the centre of the city, street by street, building by building, room by room, floor by floor, and they suffered horrendous casualties. So you're talking about a division of men,
00:31:43
Speaker
anywhere between nine to 12,000 men. And they both ended up with less than 200 of the original number of combatants they took into the city. So you've got that kind of thing. And so they're the kind of characters that I wanted to talk about.
00:31:57
Speaker
Well, let's go right into the
Urban Combat and Soviet Tactics in Stalingrad
00:31:59
Speaker
fighting then. And let's talk about some of those characters. So I guess in the initial days of the siege, what's the fighting like? And then talk a little bit. So the book is The Lighthouse of Stalingrad. Talk a little bit about then The Lighthouse of Stalingrad in buildings like that.
00:32:18
Speaker
Well, like I was saying right at the top of the talk, it's almost like Verdun in France in the Great War. This just sucks in, it's like a vortex that just sucks in hundreds of thousands of troops on both sides as the battle rages back and forth in the city.
00:32:39
Speaker
As I was saying before about Stalingrad, the city itself, geographically, the bulk of it is on the western side of the Volga River. So on the eastern side, which is where the Soviets still held the line, you've got staging posts and landing platforms
00:32:59
Speaker
but it's all very small scale in terms of buildings and people living their population. Stalingrad, on the other hand, on the western side, on the Volga, which is what the Germans were invading. That's got well over 70-odd thousand buildings. It's got this giant factory in the north, giant factory complex in the north, a modern city in the center, and then the existing old city of Tsaritsyn in the south.
00:33:26
Speaker
That's just cobbled streets and wooden shacks and buildings no more than two to three stories high. In the centre of the city, which is what you and I were talking about, that's the modern city that's been built. So it's got buildings that are five, six stories high. It's got boulevards, theatres, apartment blocks, all that kind of thing that we know as a modern city should.
00:33:47
Speaker
that's where the main bulk of the fighting is so Paulus originally has a roughly around about 140 150 000 troops so that you're talking about 20 to 25 divisions he's got the fourth panzer army coming up from the south because
00:34:06
Speaker
Hitler switched them from going down further into the Caucasus, and he said, you know, you're capturing Stalingrad now, you're going to come up from the south and take the city that way. So you've got the 6th Army coming in from the north and the west, and then from the south you've got the 4th Panzer Army. The Soviets have been retreating all the way through, falling back, falling back, falling back. So they're now in the city. Lots of troops will be coming on Echelon to reinforce them.
00:34:33
Speaker
But these are the troops that have been defending the center of Russia because they'd been expecting this new campaign that had been launched in 42. Stalin and his generals have been expecting that Hitler would just repeat what he'd done the year before and they're going to smash their way through because they want their ultimate goals to capture Moscow. As soon as they realize, ah, actually they're not attacking the center, they're going south, they're going south for the oil.
00:34:56
Speaker
It took a while for the penny to drop, but that was going to happen. But by the time it did drop, they are starting to send divisions down to the South to protect the South. But they're coming in on echelon because it takes time to move all these divisions down. So what would happen, which I'll explain to the listeners, as these battles raging for the city, they've got to hold the city. They succeed in stopping the Germans taking the whole of the city on the West Bank. They're holding out through little pockets
00:35:25
Speaker
as the Ukrainians are doing in Batmut at the moment. But because they're holding on, it allows these fresh divisions that are coming on the eastern side of the Volga to then be sent in the nick of time piecemeal across the city through a hail of German artillery shells and aircraft assaults. They get across the city and they just keep this tenuous defense, tenacious defense, going
00:35:50
Speaker
that causes what I was saying this vortex of the Germans are just losing so many men because ultimately what we're talking about here is urban combat which the German blitzkrieg tactics just weren't used to they're more used to via combined arms they smash through the front of any extended line through these pincer points which then they can drive wedges in behind the enemy that's static come behind them surround them
00:36:18
Speaker
then reduce them and then they work on the next line. That's how blitzkrieg works. But when you're in an urban area where you're fighting, as I was saying, street by street, building by building, room by room, that's a different type of battle. And that's what the Soviets were depending on because now this new tactic of storm groups where you have small groups of men. So instead of massed frontal assaults, you have these small groups heavily armed with submachine guns, grenades, flamethrowers,
00:36:47
Speaker
They're not just trying to attack you from the front. They're trying to go sneak behind you through the sewers, through jumping through buildings, jumping over, jumping from roof to roof, that kind of thing. It's very dirty. The Germans call it Ratenkrieg, rat's war. And that's what I'm talking about, vortex. It's impossible to figure out how best to combat this.
00:37:10
Speaker
And the German way of doing it was they ruled the skies over the city basically for the bulk of the fighting because they'd shot the Russian air force out of the skies at the beginning. They just bombed from the air. They bombed with artillery assaults. And it was just this mass kind of assaults that they were doing. But that's just the kind of fighting the Russians wanted. They wanted the Germans to come onto them. So to get to the lighthouse, the lighthouse was just a code name for a building.
00:37:40
Speaker
Like I was saying, at the centre of the fighting, as the Germans were edging their way ever closer to the Volga, capturing the city, building by building, block by block, street by street, by the time you get to the lighthouse, the Soviet defence was in very small isolated pockets, no more than 200 metres deep until you get to the Volga. They're hanging on by the skin of their teeth.
00:38:06
Speaker
Germans owned probably or occupied probably about at least 90% of the city. The lighthouse found itself in no man's land and it was just a large apartment block that had originally been built for the party elite and for technicians and engineers who worked in the factory district to the north. If you were somebody you'd want to live in this building because it had the latest technology, it had hot and cold running water, gas mains, electricity,
00:38:32
Speaker
very comfortable living compared to what you normally get. And fundamentally, it was built with reinforced girders. So despite all the carnage that was going on around it, and there were several buildings very much in the same architectural design as this building, these were the smashed out
00:38:52
Speaker
hulks that were dotted around the centre of the city that both sides were fighting for because they could turn them into mini fortresses. So this building called the lighthouse was in the centre between the lines and it was codenamed the lighthouse by the Russians because you're at the top of this four-storey building
00:39:12
Speaker
It gives you a perfect view, 360 degree view, five kilometers in any direction. You'll get to see what the enemy's doing. The Germans want it because for the exact same reason, they can see where the Russians are now sending reinforcements across the Volga to these final lines that they're trying to capture. So they're organized by a storm group and the Russians captured it, gave it the code name, the lighthouse.
00:39:36
Speaker
And that's where this legend begins that I talk about in my book that Soviets have been believing for the last 80 years, which my research proved, well, it's more propaganda than truth. So the lighthouse of Stalingrad, which also is referred to as Pavlov's house, correct? Exactly. That's the legend, is Pavlov's house. Yeah.
00:39:59
Speaker
So the types of fighting that, so Russian troops, are there snipers in the windows? Are there machine guns set up? What kind of resistance are people in this building putting up against the Germans? And then how are the Germans trying to overcome them in this building? Well, yeah, I mean, both sides were very adept. I mean, the Germans were just as good at sneaking into buildings, sneaking into houses, and then turning them into fortresses and fighting for them.
00:40:27
Speaker
maximizing the losses to the other side. Soviets and the Germans were exactly the same, it was the same kind of fighting really. But this kind of thing, the legend of Pavlov's house is basically, it's a metaphor, and the way it was portrayed during the fighting itself, because that's where the legend comes from, is a metaphor for how the Soviets were seeing their troops heroically fighting and sacrificing themselves.
00:40:53
Speaker
to hold Stalin's city. So you're mentioning snipers. So there's a lot of legends and almost psychological terror tactics that the Soviets were putting on the Germans via their own propaganda and media was it's not safe to be around the city during the daytime if you're a Germans, because we've got all these incredible Soviet snipers that are just going to pick you off. People like Vasily Zaitsev, which is the film, the famous film with Jude Law, Enemy at the Gates. He's Vasily Zaitsev.
00:41:23
Speaker
He's taking out hundreds of Germans during the daytime. But then Pavsos House was part of this campaign as well. So he was a sergeant and a leader of a storm group. And the storm group was roughly about four to six people. This is the commanding officer general of the 62nd Army Chuukov wanted to happen. It was his way of guerrilla tactics to take this new fight to the Germans. And they were armed to the teeth, some machine guns, bayonets, grenades.
00:41:53
Speaker
And it was his job to go out to No Man's Land to see if there were any Germans in the house because they knew there were some there. And the legend that Soviet school children have been taught for decades is they got to the house, they drove out or killed the Germans that were occupying the house. They then fortified it and they were reinforced with their own platoon who came out to see them. So you're talking about another 20 to 30 men.
00:42:16
Speaker
The legend goes that all these men came from all 15 republics of the Soviet Union. So the whole Soviet Union is represented in this house. And then they proceeded to hold off in a very kind of Alamo style, a hugely overwhelming number of German forces that were trying to take this house for the reason I gave you that it was strategically important. And the propaganda and the story that you can buy in a bookshop if you go if you're in Moscow, now you can buy this story is
Myths vs Reality: Pavlov's House
00:42:45
Speaker
You know, they fought off basically the strength of a German division. And you talk about thousands of men, tanks, armored cars, airstrikes, et cetera, et cetera. And Pavlov led the fight to hold this for 58 days. Famously, that's what they call it. It was a 58-day siege, when in effect, if you check the records, they actually occupied this building for the rest of the battle. So it's well over 100 days. It's only called 58-day siege because that's when Pavlov was injured.
00:43:13
Speaker
wounded in battle and he was shipped out and that actually did happen. Yeah, well then talk about that then. Talk about your research and how you learned that maybe some of the stories that have been told about the lighthouse or Pavlov's house, how did you discover that maybe those stories didn't match reality? Yeah, well, it was kind of obviously say spoiler alert. If you bought the book and you want to know, get a surprise, don't listen to this. But yeah, I mean,
00:43:41
Speaker
I'd always, like I said, I'd been fascinated by the battle. I've read many of the books on it. So I knew the legend of Pavlov's house. And it just so happened that Pavlov's house falls into the area of combat that I wanted to talk about with my book, as I mentioned, of these two divisions that were fighting against each other for control of the center of the city. And what I did was I was very lucky and considering it was in lockdown as well.
00:44:09
Speaker
On the Soviet side, I managed to get an academic travel visa to go to Russia in lockdown and go to Volgograd. I befriended one of the directors of the museum there who was very happy and willing for me to come over because he was saying, you know, no one ever comes to this archive to look at our material. I'd love you to come over, see what you can find. So Pavlov came from the 13th Guards Rifle Division. So I just
00:44:37
Speaker
It's just doing detective work, really. I gave the names of the units that are relevant to Pavlov's house that were on that area, who the officers were, who the units were. And I'd said to the museum, if you have any testimonies from these men of these units, that's what I want to come and look for. And just very quickly, the backstory to this is
00:45:02
Speaker
Panorama Museum in Volgograd is incredible in terms of the material it's got. It's been going since the mid-50s. In the 50s through the 60s, it had a nationwide campaign to ask the Russian people, did you fight at Stalingrad? If so, we would love to have some of your testimony right to the museum and we will archive it. So the museum archives have thousands of pieces of material.
00:45:28
Speaker
of the hundreds of thousands, if not a couple of million Soviet citizens that were involved in the fighting there. So I only literally dipped my toe in the water in terms of research. I just wanted to look at one division of the 50 or so divisions that had fought there. So that's what I had. So when I went there for seven to eight days of research, I literally just sat in the archives and I could have looked at hundreds and hundreds of files and I managed to look at three to 400 files that were connected
00:45:58
Speaker
Pavlov's house. Then I looked at the German file of the division that was opposite and for that I advertised in the German press because lockdown I couldn't get to the archives there because they're all closed. So I got about 35 to 40 various replies which gave me really valuable information about what had happened there. To surmise anyway what I found out was that obviously Pavlov wasn't in charge
00:46:27
Speaker
of the house. It had, there was a lieutenant, Affinicev, was in charge, and he'd been given the orders by Captain Zhukov to go there, and Zhukov was actually in charge of that bit of front. It goes all the way up to regimental and divisional command. You just follow the paper trail and realise, well, actually, this is not what happened, this is what happened, and that's what my book will tell the story of. But equally on the German side, you realise that
00:46:55
Speaker
A, they didn't send a whole division to try and recapture this building. They didn't have the strength at the time. And actually, the fighting had died down in that area. And I said earlier on, they captured the city in pieces. So they captured the south, then they captured the center, the bulk of the center anyway. Like I said, there were still small pockets of resistance that they never captured. But by the time that Pavlov's story is being told in the Russian press,
00:47:25
Speaker
fighting had moved to the factory district in the north that's where it was really really at least fiercest. In the centre by the time this reporter turns up at the house to talk about well you know what's going on here there's hardly any fighting both sides are kind of happy to let other than sporadic you know firing each other and you might get the odds
00:47:47
Speaker
Storm group goes across the battleground, no man's land, to capture somebody to find out what's going on. There is no big fighting going on. So there was never any massive fighting or legendary resistance for this house. And that's what I tell. And then I just did more digging and found out, well, how did this story get told? Who was the reporter who invented or created this story?
Soviet Propaganda During the Battle
00:48:12
Speaker
And then how did that suddenly become a national story
00:48:16
Speaker
to where Stalin's favorite narrator on the radio, favorite broadcaster, tells the rest of the Russian public across the whole country, this is Pavlov, this is his house, this is the fighting that's being done to stave off defeat. And that's what my book's ultimately about. So why do you think the story was told the way that it was? For the right reasons. I say this in talks. I'm not trying, I'm certainly not trying to,
00:48:44
Speaker
What's the word? I'm not trying to belittle anyone. I'm certainly not trying to say Pavlov himself wasn't a brave soldier because he was. I mean, he was seriously wounded across the Great Patriotic War. Like many Red Army soldiers, he was wounded severely in battle. He was shipped back past the line. He'd recover, and then he was shipped straight back out again, and he'd be fighting again.
00:49:12
Speaker
So he was wounded seriously three times in battle, finished the war as a lieutenant of artillery, and won various medals. So it's not about that. It's not about kind of taking him down. But what it is is you can understand why the Soviets were doing it. Because as you and I were talking about earlier on, at the point they're fighting for their lives at Stalingrad,
00:49:40
Speaker
We, 80 years later, know what's going to happen. We know the Soviets are going to counter-attack, surround the 6th Army and destroy the best Army the Wehrmacht ever had. We know that that's going to happen. But when they're fighting at the time, they didn't know that's happening. They think this is make or break. If we lose the city, we might well lose the Second World War on the Eastern Front. Lots of newspapers in the West, America, Britain, all around the Commonwealth,
00:50:07
Speaker
You look in the archives at newspapers, could be the Washington Post, could be New York Times, could be the Sunday Times, whatever. They're all reporting on their front pages day in, day out what's going on at Stalingrad. All eyes were on Stalingrad because everybody thought this is the pivotal point. So to get to my comment before, I can understand why the Soviets needed to do what they did in terms of propaganda. They've got to instill
00:50:37
Speaker
belief, gird the loins of the defenders that are hanging on by their fingernails, watching all their comrades die around them. By inventing these kind of stories or maximising the truth, we should say, the stories, it instills in them more belief that they should hold out, as in, if Pavlov can do this to hold out a house, I need to do my job too. So I can understand why they did it.
00:51:03
Speaker
So today, the story of Pavlov's house, is it still a story that all Russians know? Yeah, I mean, basically, it's a story that becomes too big to fail because the Pavlov's legend was established during the fighting.
00:51:26
Speaker
But then as they, as I talk about it in my book, as they then start rebuilding Stalingrad and then other cities in European Russia and Ukraine and Belorussia, so places ironically like Sevastopol or Dessa, Kiev, Smolensk, all these cities need rebuilding. It costs money, time and human effort. So Pavlov was, and the story of Pavlov was a great kind of, it's almost like selling war bonds.
00:51:55
Speaker
shot in the arm for the nation to have someone like him traveling around the country saying well look they're rebuilding Stalingrad and one of the first buildings they rebuilt as quickly as they could was the house I've just you know almost cost me my life to defend so he was almost like a poster boy uh for the authorities to uh to encourage this rebuilding because a lot of it was done by voluntary and inverted commas voluntary by
00:52:24
Speaker
the communist groups and local militias that had said, we'll do this in our own free time of our own free will to rebuild these cities. And he was part of that. But that then feeds through to the next all the way through the Cold War. So the story of Pavlov was written up. It's been written up several times. It's been dramatically staged in the theater in Moscow and in all the major theaters around the USSR. As I said, it was dramatized on national radio.
00:52:54
Speaker
And so somewhere, this kind of story is accepted now as the truth. So generations of Soviet schoolchildren have learned about the legend of Pavlov and accept it as the truth. Today, you will see dozens, if not hundreds of tourists day in, day out taking photos of the house that's been rebuilt, but they kept part of it as the original is almost like a skeleton that's stuck on the end of the new building that's been rebuilt because
00:53:24
Speaker
It's like the Alamo, it's to show that this did happen, the building did exist, and all the events that you've learned over your lifetime so far did happen. Yeah, that's really interesting and a parallel that I didn't think I'd be drawing with your book in a book that I interviewed a previous guest on. So I had a history professor on who wrote a book about the American Revolution, and it was about some of the things that
00:53:53
Speaker
Part of it was about some of the things that we believe to be true about the American Revolution that aren't actually true. One of the things that comes to mind is growing up as a kid, here in America, you hear a lot about Paul Revere and his midnight ride shouting that the British are coming, the British are coming, and everybody's now warned. But Paul Revere never would have said that because people considered themselves British here in America. But the story itself,
00:54:23
Speaker
was just like, you know, it's like a heroic kind of act where Paul Revere is like going around and stirring up. I think what it represents is what it represents. It represents the feeling of the time, of the period. And I suppose the motivation people needed to fight. So what I say in the book is you can endorse what they were doing at the time during the battle because they needed
00:54:51
Speaker
You use any method, don't you? You use any kind of, anything that will help you win, get over the line to really maintain morale, you will do. Everyone does. I mean, I'm sure there's dozens of legends and stories that we've all learned of what the Allies did in any theater of the war that you would, as we say, you could take a pinch of salt with. And if you dug deep enough, you would find that it wasn't that person, it was a different person,
00:55:20
Speaker
and they didn't kill X amount of men, they killed this amount of men. It goes on and on. Whereas with, like I said, with Pavlov, I mean, I gave a school talk the other day is the 80th anniversary of the battle, of the victory, which was February just gone. Again, if you Google it, you will see that Vladimir Putin's regime have made a, as they always do, they make a big play of the commemoration. He gave his big speech.
00:55:49
Speaker
And politically, it's great to have that as the backdrop when you're talking about your countries at war in Ukraine. And the city was covered in banners that all relate to the victory in the Second World War. And lo and behold, one of the big banners that pretty much took up a whole block of buildings, like Six, Seven Story Eye, was a banner of Sergeant Pavlov, because he is seen as one of the iconic heroes of the battle, like Zaitsev was for sniper.
00:56:19
Speaker
I wonder if certainly here in America, whenever if there is a story like a national story that maybe some research comes out saying, well, that wasn't the truth. There's generally some pushback. I wonder if you've gotten pushback then on this research that you've done in your findings.
Insights from Researching Soviet Propaganda
00:56:40
Speaker
Are people generally receptive to the revision of this story?
00:56:45
Speaker
Well, I was going to say I'm talking primarily to a Western audience, aren't I? So it makes it slightly easier because that audience has access to a lot of books that have gone before me. So Anthony Beaver's book is amazing. It opened so many people's eyes to this is what actually happened on the Eastern front. This is what actually happened at Stalingrad in terms of, say, for instance, I mean, it's a story today, actually, in terms of
00:57:14
Speaker
the blocking units, the Red Army imposed upon its own people, as in they were going to shoot troops that were retreating. That story came up today because apparently that's been going on on the front line in Ukraine. But also in terms of the amount of Soviet prisoners of war that actually helped the Germans, there was well over 50, 60,000 Red Army prisoners of war. They were called Hiwis that were actually captured at the end of the battle. And obviously they were either imprisoned or killed outright.
00:57:45
Speaker
Those kinds of stories, a Western audience already knows, because Western historians have had access. This small window has been allowed to us to actually access Soviet archives. So I managed to get to the archives in Volgograd, but I doubt many other people are. But just as one point, the very first night I had arrived in Volgograd, so I've yet to go into the archives.
00:58:11
Speaker
And I got a call in my hotel room for the reception. They said, oh, there's some guys downstairs want to meet you. And instantly I'm thinking, oh, my God, what's this about? Who knows? Who knows I'm here? And I came downstairs and it was a group of local historians and academics. And they just wanted to say hello to me and have a drink, have something to eat. And it's because for the last three or four years, they'd been setting up a you would call it a pressure group, but it's not really that it was more of a discussion group.
00:58:41
Speaker
And they were doing exactly what I was doing or intended to do. They wanted to research, well, what actually did happen at Pavlov's house, because we're not sure he was in charge. We think it was this guy and we think the name of the house should be changed, which is completely accurate. So they wanted to meet me because they couldn't get access to the archives that they were now giving me access to.
00:59:04
Speaker
So they wanted to know, what did you, you know, if you find anything there, please tell us. They couldn't get access to it. No, no, no, they weren't, they couldn't get in there. So, uh, why is that? That's what I'm saying. I'm a Western historian. I was, I was lucky enough that they wanted to, uh, to let me in. Uh, so there's, there's that too. So I've, I've, I've only had, I'm trying to think, I haven't had any, any criticism. I haven't had, I haven't had anything online. I was expecting it, but I haven't had it.
00:59:34
Speaker
I've had one Russian lady in the UK at a literary festival come up to me and she was more critical of the fact that I don't speak or read Russian than what I was actually saying in the book.
00:59:47
Speaker
She didn't, she wasn't even critical of the book. She was more interested about that. And what I'd said to her obviously was, well, I don't, I'm just really interested. I speak, I can speak and read German to a degree. That really helped me. But I can't speak or read Russian. And that's why I used three Russian translators on different levels, because I've got to get this material 101% accurate before I put it in the book. And I spent a lot of money and time and effort just on translating. I mean, I
01:00:16
Speaker
The archives, I came away with about 180,000 words of translated material. And that all had to get translated absolutely correctly. Otherwise, I couldn't, I wouldn't have used it because I can't afford to put something inaccurate in the book if I'm going to make this claim that, well, this didn't happen, actually. It didn't happen the way they said it happened. So she was only a bit annoyed about that.
01:00:43
Speaker
But that was it. Apart from that, no. I would argue, I mean, it's out there. The book's been reviewed brilliantly. I'm so grateful. It's been reviewed brilliantly in all the broadsheets in the UK, like The Times, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, New Statesman magazine. Develops, reviewed it brilliantly in Germany.
01:01:05
Speaker
and Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post in the States. So I'm very happy. Wonderful. Well, Ian, I know our time is ticking down here. So final question, if first of all, thanks so much for coming on the show. It's been a great discussion. I really have learned a lot. If folks want to find you, if they want to check out what you're up to, where can they find you?
Conclusion and Where to Find Ian McGregor
01:01:32
Speaker
social media. Yeah, social media. I'm on Instagram, just typing. My name is Ian with two eyes. I a I n and as McGregor, m a c. So I'm on Instagram. They're on Twitter. I'm at Ian underscore McGregor one. And then my website is www dot in the grega.com. And you can email me on that site. And I always reply.
01:02:01
Speaker
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Ian McGregor, the Lighthouse of Stalingrad, the hidden truth and the heart of the greatest battle of World War II. Go pick up a copy, go to your library, read it. You'll learn a lot from it. And Ian, thank you so much. Thank you.