Unsung Witnesses of the Battle of Stalingrad

Unsung Witnesses of the Battle of Stalingrad

As many as half a million civilians remained in Stalingrad when the Germans approached in the late summer of 1942. Those who survived the initial onslaught and did not manage to flee, had to eke out a living on a battleground ravaged by incessant bombardment and street fighting. An overwhelming majority of them were women and children.

factory and agricultural machinery, livestock and crops. Ordinary people simply could not get seats on boats because there was no room.

While the authorities dragged their feet, local residents took matters into their own hands: there were instances of people faking illnesses or single women hastily marrying servicemen just to be allowed to leave. It also did not escape their attention when city administrators and the military command began secretly adding their own families to the evacuation rosters. Ordinary residents noted, with resentment, the social inequality and corruption that the evacuation brought to stark contrast.

By the time the German air armada approached the city in the evening of August 23, only about a hundred thousand residents had been evacuated from the total population of seven hundred thousand. The bombing of Stalingrad lasted for a week and left death and desolation in its wake: ninety percent of the housing stock was obliterated, and up to seventy thousand lives lost. The numbers are contested, but casualties must have been staggering in an overpopulated, predominantly wooden city with an inadequate water supply system, an insufficient network of bomb shelters, under-equipped fire brigades and a population untrained in fire defence

After the initial chaos, the authorities began a wholesale removal of civilians across the Volga, which continued until mid-September. Even then, women, children and the elderly fared worse than other groups of citizens deemed more useful by the state: like the wounded and men of draft age, engineers and other specialists, as well as the party leadership. Though city administrators later tried to give an impression of a well-organised and well-planned evacuation, eyewitness accounts paint a different picture of the exodus: it was chaotic and horrifyingly costly.

The crossings were constantly bombed and strafed by German pilots. Soviet soldiers coming from across the river met a heart-breaking sight: masses of desperate people gathered at the ferries amid piles of belongings, dead bodies in the water and on the river bank, children screaming and crying looking for their parents, men seeing off their families. However, getting out of Stalingrad was only half the battle. Initially, there were no reception centres on the far shore. People were simply dumped on the sand and left to fend for themselves. The sight of hungry, disoriented children begging for bread unnerved servicemen heading for the burning city. Things improved somewhat once the authorities became aware of the situation.

Having witnessed or heard of the harrowing stories of the crossing and the uncertainty awaiting them beyond the Volga, many Stalingraders decided against any attempts to leave the city. Women with many children or those caring for sick family members dreaded abandoning their homes, especially with winter drawing near. Elderly residents often succumbed to fatalistic indifference, while others dismissed reports of German atrocities as exaggerations. Faced with the probability of dying during the crossing or afterwards versus weathering the battle in the city, many chose the latter.

Soviet literature later claimed that all remaining residents elected not to leave because they believed that Stalingrad would not be surrendered to the enemy and sought to provide maximum assistance to the front. While it is true that many people felt responsible for the fate of their city and country—after all, 75,000 Stalingraders would join the armed forces in various capacities during the battle—others had no choice but to stay put.

There were three other paths out of Stalingrad, which were almost as deadly as the river crossing: to the south into the unoccupied regions, or to the north and west, right into the enemy’s teeth. The start of street fighting within the city effectively cut off the way out. By mid-September, Stalingrad had turned into a battlefront, and a month later, six out of seven districts were completely or partially occupied by the Germans.

The remaining residents moved into the city’s sewers and cellars. They were now totally at the mercy of the warring armies, with whom they frequently shared their living space: troops on the upper floors, civilians in the basements. Both sides would sometimes use them to perform menial tasks, like cooking, washing and tending to the wounded. Those living directly on the frontline or in the adjacent territory often had to look for new shelter, moving from place to place with their meagre belongings.

armed escort. The army’s efforts, however, were only partially effective. While many had indeed been evacuated, some people never crossed the river and ended up living in the dugouts peppering its western bank; others made themselves useful. Those who knew Stalingrad well, especially its sewer system, and could act as guides, were considered particularly valuable.
The 13th Guards Rifle Division, in whose sector the evacuation measures were carried out, swelled with civilian helpers—many of them children. The division boasted a dozen underaged wards, who carried out various tasks, like bringing provisions or ammunition to forward positions, entertaining soldiers, looking after the wounded and delivering mail. Some of these children would follow the division out of the city as it made its victorious way westwards in the winter of 1943. Their contribution to the battle would be inscribed in the annals of history. Many of their neighbours were not as fortunate.

As the war moved out of Stalingrad in the spring of 1943, a new battle commenced to restore the devastated city. Remembering Stalingrad as the place of fountains and maple trees, the returning residents now christened it “the City of the Dead.” By the end of May, the streets were cleared of 200,000 bodies of servicemen, both Soviet and enemy, as well as 12,000 animal carcasses. Stalingrad itself was so badly damaged that some proposed to build a new city elsewhere and leave the ruins as a memorial to the battle.

For the authorities, this was out of the question. Stalingrad used to be a major industrial center, and the most pressing goal now was to restore and relaunch its industry to ensure a continuous supply to the frontline. So, all the energy was channelled into making it happen as quickly as possible. The burden of restoration initially fell on local women and teenagers who would organise work details after school and working hours. Their initiative was popularised throughout the country, and volunteers from other regions began pouring in, together with trainloads of humanitarian aid and construction materials, some of which came from the Western Allies.
Restoring the physical damage to the city took a long time but reversing the psychological effects of the battle on the civilian population proved to be a much more arduous task. Doctors and the survivors themselves noted a marked difference between them and the newcomers, who were not only better-dressed and better-fed but also well-adjusted and less prone to neuroses. Conversely, common ailments among Stalingraders, particularly  children, were dystrophy, speech disturbances, deaf-mutism and aloofness. Many also suffered from debilitating nightmares, anxiety and depression, frequent crying spells, and restlessness. And there were reportedly cases of stress-related infertility among young women. But there was no public discussion of the psychological consequences of war. With most of the limited resources thrown to treat combat trauma in servicemen to return them to the ranks as quickly as possible, psychiatric help for civilians outside of the capital cities of Moscow and Leningrad was rudimentary at best. The most popular form of rehabilitation was proper nutrition, active participation in socially meaningful work and activities designed to heighten morale.
Thus, the mass involvement of Stalingraders in the reconstruction drive had a therapeutic function. Their work was infused with ideological meaning to prevent them from dwelling excessively on their individual suffering and instead to concentrate on mass heroism in the face of extreme adversity. With the rhetoric of resilience all pervasive, distressed people felt reluctant to draw attention to themselves for fear of being accused of egocentrism—a serious moral transgression in the Soviet worldview. Besides, with acute shortages of the most basic necessities, there was no time for self-examination, especially among adults, who were instead preoccupied with their families’ everyday survival. War was simply not discussed at home; neither were individual experiences talked about elsewhere. Even at school, the opportunity to do so was quickly curtailed. Initially, Stalingrad children were given assignments to write essays about their wartime experiences, but the rapid ideologization of the battle left no space for introspection and instead offered ready-made patterns of expression, like writing compositions about heroic deeds of other people. The war could only be discussed in the context of heroism and endurance. Just as Stalingraders emerged from under the ground, their private pain was buried in their subconscious.

There was a much darker reason as to why those Stalingraders who survived the battle were so reluctant to discuss it in a non-officially prescribed manner. It was fear. The very presence of civilians in the city which had officially been evacuated, aroused suspicion. Those people who found themselves in the occupied territory particularly—which was the reality for the majority of those who stayed behind—feared attracting attention. And for good reason. Together with clearing the streets of rubble, city authorities began “cleansing” the city’s population of traitors. Residents were screened for their past disloyalty and those who failed the test got prosecuted. Local children remember being ostracised by newcomers, who were allowed to join the Communist Youth League and wear red kerchiefs of the Young Pioneers, while their classmates who spent the battle months in Stalingrad were sidestepped. To avoid the stigma attached to anyone who had been in the occupied territory or concentration camps, people kept this information to themselves lest their careers, family, or livelihood suffered. Parents forbade their children on pain of punishment to divulge anything about their past
And they kept quiet: first because of fear and later because their stories did not fit the official narrative. The myth of the city-turned-fortress did not provide for the presence of a civilian population in it. The ideological pressure was so strong that survivors felt their story was trivial or somehow damaging to the accepted image of the Battle of Stalingrad. Their experiences were less about heroics and self-sacrifice, and more about the realities of life in a war zone—which, incidentally, was also full of examples of astonishing human endurance and perseverance.