The moment of truth for humanity was the Battle of Stalingrad. As if it were said about her: "Between the battle won and lost - the empire" (the catch phrase belongs to Napoleon, who just as unhappily ended the conquest campaign in Russia). "European troops" (in the then terminology of Western newspapers) or "Teutonic armies" (in the words of W. Churchill) laid down their weapons on the banks of the Volga. Hitler's idea of world domination, of a universal third Reich, was buried in the ruins of Stalingrad.

The lessons of Stalingrad are clear, but many still don't like the teacher who taught them. At the same time, friends and enemies are unanimous in their assessment of the "incomparable heroism of the Russian army" (words of US President F. Putin). Roosevelt). In those days, famous as an aphorism was, for example, Pavlov's House, named after a man whose name is among the first on the tablets of the greatest battle in the history of wars.

Our city is stronger than all of Europe

That invasion was completely unprecedented. On the southern wing of the front alone, between the Don and the Volga, the 6th and 4th Panzer Armies, supported by the 4th Air Fleet and the 8th Air Corps, were piled up. The German horde was supplemented by two Romanian, Hungarian and Italian armies. Every fifth infantryman and every third tank was sent to storm Stalingrad. Hitler ordered its capture by August 25, 1942.

For more than six months, more than 2 million soldiers and 2 thousand aircraft fought for the "cornerstone on the Volga" (the forces were equal in these indicators).

Large forces of Friedrich Paulus ' 6th army broke through to the Great Russian River on August 23. During those days, the fascist aviation made up to 2 thousand sorties. Bombs fell on residential areas and industrial enterprises. According to some sources, about 40 thousand civilians were killed (A. Werth "Russia in the war of 1941-1945"). The city was engulfed in a giant fire. I flared up on my own

Volga River from the fire of bombed oil storage tanks and bulk carriers. No water, no electricity. People hid in basements and ravines. Somewhere it is said that Stalin's ban prevented the population from leaving the city in advance. But most likely, our usual reliance on chance also affected. The four-ring system of fortifications that has been under construction since the fall of ' 41 was also incomplete. With incredible difficulties, until September 14, about 300 thousand inhabitants were transported across the Volga. To replace them, to defend their native ashes, the troops moved. From that moment on, there was no other safe shore for the Red Army men. The fate of 100 thousand citizens who did not have time to evacuate also depended on their courage.

Since September 14, Stalingrad has become one huge arena of bloody battles from the center to the outskirts. Factories became fortified areas, surviving buildings-strong points, streets and squares - the front line and no man's land.

It is true that the Stalingrad lists have special standards. For example, I was struck by the fact that even airplanes participated in street battles. Read the story of the Hero of the Soviet Union, Air Marshal I. I. Pstygo, about how the assault Silts hunted German tanks. With the same ferocity and ingenuity, our daredevils fought on the ground, " defending every house and stone that was a house." The resilience of the Red Army men was incredible! From the headquarters of the 37th Guards Division, General Zholudev was informed: "An avalanche of tanks attacks Ananyev's battalion. The 6th company of this battalion, under the command of Guards Lieutenant Ivanov and Political instructor Yerukhimovich, was completely destroyed. Only the messengers were left alive." Yes, that there is a company - regiments died, divisions lost up to 75 percent of their personnel in a day, the entire 62nd army "was very close to complete destruction." On October 14, the epicenter of the battle was a tractor factory. After fighting near its walls, 3,000 enemy corpses were counted.

World news agencies promptly reported on the great difficulties of the same 6th German Army, which at one time swept through France like a hurricane. The BBC highlighted: "This is not a battle for the terrain and rivers, but for the intersections of streets and houses. In 28 days Poland was conquered, and in Stalingrad in 28 days the Germans took several houses. In 38 days, France was conquered, and in Stalingrad, in 38 days, the Germans advanced from one side of the street to the other." In Europe, they were shown their backs-In Russia, the enemy was trapped. The ruins were still standing, and the Reichstag was cracking.

Close combat - it's the most Russian

It was interesting to get to know this person even in absentia, studying one source after another. The epic image was replaced by the modest figure of an ordinary plowman of war, and then suddenly a person covered with legends grew up again. A boy with peasant leaven, originally from Valdai, considered himself unlucky. I asked to join the air force, but I ended up in a military platoon. Nevertheless, he persuaded his superiors to transfer him to a combat position. Yakov Pavlov met the second military autumn as the commander of a machine-gun squad. His native team is the 7th Company, 42nd Regiment, and 13th Guards Division. Six weeks were given to the fighters to prepare for street battles. And on September 12, the advanced units of the division were transferred from the left bank by barges and river trams. We disembarked near Solnechnaya Street and from here we began to take away what was occupied from the Krauts bit by bit. Step by step, they were assigned to the specified areas. More than once, the sergeant recalled the kindness of the officer who trained the non-shot replenishment.

The publicist K. Rasch did not have a chance to fight, but nevertheless he very accurately looked at that situation (see "Siberians against the SS").:

"The Battle of Stalingrad is, in essence, six months of hand-to-hand combat... Never on earth has there been a bloody battle for six months on the streets of one city. There were sieges of cities and fortresses and longer. But no one had ever fought so long and so fiercely within the walls of the city... The world has seen that Russians know how to fight in an environment; moreover, this is the most Russian war, because historically Russia has always been surrounded by enemies."

Based on the battle experience, you can write an ode to small units. Stalingrad assault groups are completely unique detachments. Each such small team, according to V. I. Chuikov, " looked for the enemy everywhere, deliberately went to get close to him before throwing a hand grenade... It delivered sudden attacks from the front, from the flanks, from the rear, did not allow the Germans to rest, exhausted them mentally and physically...";

enemy aircraft and artillery limited their range, fearing to hit their own. And without support, the determination of Hitler's infantry was rapidly waning. "This period of fighting can be called a positional or 'serf war'... The Russians were superior to the Germans in terms of camouflage and were more experienced in barricade battles for individual houses, "writes German General Hans Derr in The Campaign for Stalingrad.

At Yakov's... apple of contention

This house is listed in many reference books. It does not represent any architectural value, but it embodies the wondrous "construction" of the human spirit, characteristic of the warriors of Russia. "A brief World History" reports: "Sergeant Ya. Pavlov and a handful of brave men held one of the buildings for 58 days, turning it into an impregnable fortress." The Military Encyclopedia on the plan-scheme "Battles in the city of Stalingrad" among the most important nodes of resistance under the number 1 placed Pavlov's House on January 9 Square.

I don't pretend to read the feat again - everything has been written out for a long time, and it seems that not a single detail has been missed. Still, why was this particular object fought for with such ferocity, passion, and obsession - as if the fate of the entire campaign depended on retaining it?

The simplest explanation: this "high-rise" really occupied a very favorable position. Facing the square, it was a sort of outrigger position at the front. It was into this structure, the only one left standing in the residential area, that the assault team, hardened in previous alterations, was sent. Together with Pavlov went reliable fighters-V. Glushenko, N. Chernogolov and A. Alexandrov. The city's famous 4-story dormitory (until recently, the "human anthill", a communal paradise for engineering and technical workers and their families) now looked extinct. Protecting each other, they entered the nearest entrance. The wind is blowing in the stairwell and hallway. A long row of empty, ruined apartments. And suddenly someone else's speech comes from one of them. The guards have worked out a course of action in this case: the door opens with a kick, the room is thrown with "lemons", combed with automatic bursts. The result is two dead men on the floor. Another pair of Krauts, who jumped out of the next entrance, got fire from the window. Well, now hold on - the Fuhrer's soldiers will trample on you: take revenge for the corpses of your relatives. After putting the soldiers in their places, the sergeant went down to the basement and found here... lots of people. Women, children, and the elderly. Several wounded Red Army soldiers, and with them - an orderly Kalinin from their company. And the first thing Pavlov was asked was a frightened: "How did you get here? "There were, but they floated away," the sergeant reassured. He found out that there were also tenants in the other basement. The junior commander thought about it: his group was only ordered to scout the situation and return. But how can you leave the poor and unarmed without protection?!

"Later, Pavlov said that it was then, being in this basement, that he really realized that he was not just a Red Army fighter, but a liberator, and that he and his soldiers not only drove the Nazis out of the building - a piece of Soviet territory, but also freed dozens of Soviet people from Fascist slavery. Let this feat be only a drop in the bucket on the huge scale of the war, but after all, there are only four soldiers-only four," writes Colonel - General A. I. Rodimtsev in the book "The Guards Stood to the Death".

From this day, on September 27, the two-month defense of the Pavlovsk Garrison is being counted down. The first onslaught was repulsed by five guards - four submachine gunners plus an orderly with a rifle. The sergeant was sniping from the attic. The others were firing from the lower floors. The forces were clearly not enough: we should have expected a more powerful attack. The head of the garrison sent Kalinin for help. However, he only managed to reach the battalion a day later. Reinforcements did not arrive until the third night. And during all these days, there was not an hour that the enemy did not fire and try to take away the newly-appeared stronghold. This became as much a matter of principle and prestige as Hitler's incredible desire to seize the city named after the leader of the Soviet Union at all costs. Found a scythe on a rock! Two forces, two wills, and finally two different understandings of valor clashed for life and death. A kind of bone of contention. And the enemy attacked the wrong ones! Brave men-plenipotentiaries of the Red Army-fought in such a way as to once and for all discourage the enslavers from any desire to meddle in someone else's territory-whether it was the whole country or an inch of land.

Tears of the "steel citizen"

The triumph of the "grandiose Stalinist plan to encircle the enemy group" was still far away, but Pavlov's associates accelerated the death of the 6th Army with each fire duel. With the arrival of reinforcements, the key position of the Guardsmen acquired the features of a citadel. Their squad grew by 18 people, led by Lieutenant Ivan Afanasyev. Georgian Mosiashvili and Abkhazian Sukba joined the ranks of the riflemen (then these nationalities got along in the same trench). The machine-gun crew was led by the extremely good-natured Ilya Voronov, a collective farmer from Oryol yesterday. A formidable force was represented by the mortar men of Sergeant T. Gridin and the armor-piercing squad of A. Sabgaydy. We set up convenient viewing and shooting areas, and set up round-the-clock surveillance.

And the uninvited guests were not long in coming. Their foot attacks were constantly interspersed with gun and mortar attacks. Hurricane raids were sometimes sheltered in sewer shafts. The roof collapsed, one of the walls collapsed, and fires broke out... Everything that could breathe seemed frozen in that charred box. But as soon as the volleys subsided and the stormtroopers got closer, the loopholes came to life again and snapped with fire, the Red Army men felt themselves masters of the situation...

A short time later, at the Tehran Conference, W. Churchill ceremonially presented Marshal Stalin with the product of hereditary British gunsmiths. And our Supreme Commander-in-Chief gratefully kissed the sword of honor with inscriptions in Russian and English: "Hard as steel, citizens of Stalingrad. A gift from King George VI as a mark of respect from the British people." "Indeed, the citizens of Stalingrad have hearts of steel," the president said with feeling

USA Roosevelt is another member of the "big three". "Where did the precious blade go?" - a delegation of veterans who recently visited Volgograd asks a question.

House on the Volga coast with a view of... Berlin

Someone calculated it: "Twenty-two soldiers, defending this one house, destroyed the Nazis more than they lost during the capture of Paris "(see "Address-mail field", Moscow, 1973). It is a pity that we do not know anything about how, under the influence of the Red Army's victories in the French Resistance, the company "Stalingrad"was formed. The backbone of it was made up of Soviet soldiers who escaped from Nazi captivity. This unit, which became legendary in 1943, fought more than three hundred kilometers. In one month! And in the far West, the Russians set an example of a real fight against the invaders.

...When it came to fame, Yakov Pavlov was ready to "make room". On occasion, he always emphasized the collective nature of that defense. Take at least the lines from his material "Combat Friend" (about the PPSH machine gun): "Here, in the attic, artillery scouts were located and adjusted the fire of our batteries. Snipers came here and hunted enemy soldiers and officers" (see Military Knowledge No. 2, 1950).

I recently had the good fortune to talk to a very interesting person. Retired Major General Artem Fyodorovich Sergeev was Chief of Staff of the 266th Army Artillery Regiment during the Battle of Stalingrad. One of the NP gunners was located just in Pavlov's House. This is how the old soldier remembers those events.

"The fighting in the center of Stalingrad ended sometime after January 28, 1943. We drove the Germans back to the Gumrak airfield. Our artillery regiment directly worked in the interests of the 62nd army.

Everyone had heard about Pavlov's House on the site of General Rodimtsev's 13th Guards Division. And we knew every meter there. Where is this building, then?

We had a couple of days left before loading, so we went to find a tourist attraction. Surprisingly, it turned out to be the same house where the observation post of our 2nd battery of Lieutenant Isaev was located. The control platoon chose the attic, which provided a good observation sector with a break.

On the facade of the building we found an inscription: "Pavlov's House". One squad, of course, would not be enough to hold such an important stronghold. The infantry was entrenched on all floors, firing back, making sorties. Fighters and commanders changed - the losses were great. Sergeant Pavlov, on the other hand, was terribly tenacious. He survived the entire period of the Stalingrad battles, and in this very hell.

When the Germans were driven away, the inhabitants began to return. People sought refuge in preserved buildings and basements. And yesterday's bastion sheltered the wretched. It served as a guide for destitute old people and women with children. The name of the first commandant is etched into the grateful memory of people."

(To be continued)