This is episode 10 and the marauding Wehrmacht is at Stalingrad’s door – the enemy is at the gates. As we’ll hear, the savage air raids the were a precursor to the main event that symbolised the start of the months of a battle that would change the world. We’ll also hear the extraordinary story of truly courageous young women just out of high school and what they managed to achieve to the north of the city. We’ll begin by joining German units and hear individual stories from soldiers who...

It's the first two weeks of August 1942 where the German Sixth and Fourth Panzer armies are closing in on the city with Joseph Stalin’s name. We will also visit some of the other battles taking place in early August across Russia and further afield to provide some additional awareness about why certain decisions were being taken. It was a world war after all and despite our focus on Stalingrad, we can’t lose sight of the bigger picture across the globe. Last week we spent some time with...

This week we’ll join the citizens of Stalingrad as they feverishly prepare for what look like an inevitable attack as the Sixth Army under General Paulus heads towards the Don River. The obvious approach would see the attack come across the land bridge between the Don and Volga Rivers. And by mid-July 1942 the German intention had become a certainty. The Fourth Panzer Army had crossed the Don and reached the heights of Kotelnikovo and its spearhead, instead of turning south to protect the...

This episode we’re starting the week-to-week coverage of the battle and it’s the end of July 1942. As we’ve heard, Hitler had split his Southern Army in two sending the Fourth Panzers to the Black Sea to secure the coast while the 6th Army continued onwards towards the Don River. Hitler had ignored General Halder’s protestations about the buildup of Soviet troops to the East of these units – at least a million men were now based across the Volga River and in the Caucuses. The Soviets were...

This week the Germans launch Operation Blue where Army Group South is supposed to head towards the Caucuses to secure the all-important oil. We heard last week how Adolf Hitler was under the false impression that seizing the oil would also damage Russia’s fighting capability – but little did he know that the Soviet Union had vast resources in other regions as I explained. The Upper Volga and Kama area in the Urals and in the northern region of Ukhta also produced oil as well as a narrow...

This episode we’ll join the 6th Army as it began to move inexorably towards the city that bore the name of the Soviet Union’s President and which be the grave for almost two million people. But first, we need to take a closer look at General Paulus who was to lead the army to its doom. Unlike other commanders such as Rommel, Guderian, Hoth and Halder, Paulus possessed what historian Anthony Beevor calls an exaggerated respect for the chain of command. He was an oddity in many ways,...

This episode will focus on the failed Army Group Centre’s attack on Moscow during the winter of 1941 and its ramifications for those living in Stalingrad as Hitler began to focus his energies on the oil producing region of the Caucuses. The city of Stalingrad lay in the way, so too did the Crimea and Sebastopol. We’ll hear how Hitler planned to take the region around Baku but then changed his mind and split his force. He decided he’d go for the two for one option. One army, two goals....

This is episode three, the Reich attacks with fingers instead of a fist. We are building up to the start of the Battle of Stalingrad by describing how the initial phases of the invasion of Russia by the Germans’ led inexorably to the city with Stalin’s name. Alexander Werth was a British journalist based in Moscow as the German army approached in 1941 and he describes how quickly the city went from being relatively normal including cigarette and food vendors on most street corners to...