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In 1927, when Franz Lehar composed his operetta The Tsarevich, he could not know that fifteen years later one of its songs would grow into a staple among the thousands of German soldiers pushing toward Stalingrad deep in Russia's south. "A soldier stands on the bank of the Volga, keeping guard for his fatherland. . ." - these words, the Germans felt, evoked their victorious stance, spurring them on to capture the city on the legendary river. Through the summer months of 1942, scores of armored German divisions rapidly advanced through the Ukrainian steppes and further east toward Stalingrad, sending the Soviet army into headlong retreat. One year after the beginning of the German invasion, the Soviet regime appeared to be on the brink of collapse. On Stalin's orders, the city tfiat bore his name was designated a fortress, and he commanded that it be defended to die last man. The industrial city of Stalingrad extends along the western banks of the Volga. "No land for us behind the Volga!" became die battìe cry of die approximately fifty diousand Red Army soldiers of die Sixty-Second Army, who desperately sought to withstand the German onslaught.
As die battle for die city raged and Hitler grew impatient to capture it, the Soviet Army command planned a massive operation to encircle die Germans at Stalingrad. On 19 November 1942, one million heavily armed Red Army soldiers closed in on die diree hundred diousand men of the German Sixtii Army. Fixated on die possession of die city, Hider ordered his army to hold out and await his rescue. After seventy more days of incessant fighting, die nearly one hundred thousand famished German soldiers that were still alive fell into Russian captivity. Of them, only six diousand returned to Germany after die war.
We located two dozen survivors of Stalingrad and visited them in their homes in Germany and Russia, to trace the memories of dus pivotal battle of the Second World War in their faces and voices. Two of them are featured here, Anatoly Merezhko and Gerhard Hindenlang. In Stalingrad they came virtually face to face. As lieutenant in the Seventy-First Infantry Division, Hindenlang spearheaded the attack through the center of Stalingrad to the banks of the Volga in...