THE BATTLE OF STALINGRAD 1942-1943: HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND IMPORTANCE

Jacques Pauwels

1942: After aerial bombardment has almost totally cleared their path into the city of Stalingrad, German troops make their way through the ruined suburbs. Almost every standing building in Stalingrad served as a firing point for Germans or Soviets, forcing house-to-house combat. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

Awar against the Soviet Union was wanted by the industrialists, bankers, large landowners and other members of Germany’s upper class, the “elite” of the land. That was one of the reasons, and arguably the paramount reason, why they had enabled the coming to power of Hitler, a politician of whom it was widely known that he considered the destruction of the Soviet Union as the great task entrusted to him by providence. Hitler’s so-called “seizure of power”(Machtergreifung) was in reality a “transfer of power,” and this transfer was orchestrated, logically enough, by those who, behind the democratic façade of Weimer Germany, ensconced in the army, judiciary, state bureaucracy, diplomacy, and so forth, wielded power, namely the upper-class.

80th Anniversary of Soviet Red Army breaking siege of Leningrad

Harsh Thakor

Countercurrents | January 20, 2023

80 years ago, Soviet troops battled to open up a narrow corridor to the besieged city of Leningrad. A railroad was constructed through it in literally two weeks and supplies started reaching a city that had been bled dry.

The Red Army only had to traverse a distance of 15 km. Stillt this short distance was at the cost of the lives of thirty thousand Soviet soldiers.

This turn of events played major role in shaping the destiny or determining the path of the Great Patriotic War.

Courage and endurance scaled heights almost unparalleled in history in withstanding and overpowering an oppressor.

Travelling in Pinochet’s Chile

Arriving a year after the brutal coup against the elected socialist government, GRAHAM HOLTON experienced first hand the all-encompassing oppression of the military dictatorship as he travelled — until he too was arrested as a leftist

Morning Star

IT has been nearly 50 years since the infamous coup in Chile on September 11, 1973. The world became aware of the heinous birth of Augusto Pinochet’s coup d’etat when the international television networks showed the Chilean air force’s Harrier jets attacking the Palace de La Moneda, the seat of government.

Truckloads of soldiers across the country arrested thousands of people, who wound up in 13 concentration camps where many were tortured and killed. Some supporters of the Popular Unity (UP) government sought refuge in embassies. Others went into exile.

The life of president Salvador Allende, the world’s first democratically elected socialist president, ended that day. The Pinochet regime tore the fabric of Chilean society asunder, wrenching out the heart of the left. A sinister veil had fallen upon the country, like a plague of locusts devouring everything in its path.

Santhal rebellion in India: Recalling Santhal Hul

Harsh Vardhan & Shivam Mogha

Frontier | Vol 55, No. 3, Jul 17 – 23, 2022

[The Santhal rebellion actually began as a mass movement against exploitation by ‘upper’ caste zamindars, moneylenders, merchants and police officials who had come to dominate the economic sphere of Santhal life. June 30, is considered the anniversary of the beginning six-month santhal rebellion.]

Every year the Santhal rebellion and its leaders Sidhu and Kanhu are remembered in ritualistic way by different political parties and communities, all from different perspectives. But beneath all these different ways of remembering there lies a unitary theme; that the Santhal rebellion was one of the first expressions of revolt against the British colonial regime.

This framework, though true but limited, has become so dominant that the Santhal rebellion is now merely seen as a part in a series of similar such events that took place in colonial India.=

Debunking Noam Chomsky’s Tirade Against Lenin

Caleb Maupin | June 08, 2022

‘Mind blowing’ ancient settlements uncovered in the Amazon

The urban centres are the first to be discovered in the region, challenging archaeological dogma.

Freda Kreier

Nature | May 25, 2022

Researchers uncovered ancient urban centres on forested mounds in the Bolivian Amazon Basin.Credit: Roland Seitre/Nature Picture Library

Mysterious mounds in the southwest corner of the Amazon Basin were once the site of ancient urban settlements, scientists have discovered. Using a remote-sensing technology to map the terrain from the air, they found that, starting about 1,500 years ago, ancient Amazonians built and lived in densely populated centres, featuring 22-metre-tall earthen pyramids, that were encircled by kilometres of elevated roadways.

Victory Speech

J.V. Stalin

Date: May 9, 1945
Source: Thirty Years of the Soviet State Calendar, published by Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1947
Transcription/HTML: Mike B. for MIA, 2008
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2008). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.

COMRADES! FELLOW COUNTRYMEN AND COUNTRYWOMEN! The great day of victory over Germany has arrived. Fascist Germany, forced to her knees by the Red Army and the troops of our Allies, has admitted defeat and has announced her unconditional surrender.

On May 7 a preliminary act of surrender was signed in Rheims. On May 8, in Berlin, representatives of the German High Command, in the presence of representatives of the Supreme Command of the Allied troops and of the Supreme Command of the Soviet troops, signed the final act of surrender, which came into effect at 24 hours on May 8.

Knowing the wolfish habits of the German rulers who regard treaties and agreements as scraps of paper, we have no grounds for accepting their word. However, this morning, the German troops, in conformity with the act of surrender, began en masse to lay down their arms and surrender to our troops. This is not a scrap of paper. It is the actual capitulation of the armed forces of Germany. True, one group of German troops in the region of Czechoslovakia still refuses to surrender, but I hope the Red Army will succeed in bringing it to its senses. We now have full grounds for saying that the historic day of the final defeat of Germany, the day of our people’s great victory over German imperialism, has arrived.

The great sacrifices we have made for the freedom and independence of our country, the incalculable privation and suffering our people have endured during the war, our intense labours in the rear and at the front, laid at the altar of our motherland, have not been in vain; they have been crowned by complete victory over the enemy. The age-long struggle of the Slavonic peoples for their existence and independence has ended in victory over the German aggressors and German tyranny.

Henceforth, the great banner of the freedom of the peoples and peace between the peoples will fly over Europe.

Three years ago Hitler publicly stated that his task included the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the severance from it of the Caucasus, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Baltic and other regions. He definitely said: “We shall destroy Russia so that she shall never be able to rise again.” This was three years ago. But Hitler’s insane ideas were fated to remain unrealized — the course of the war scattered them to the winds like dust. Actually, the very opposite of what the Hitlerites dreamed of in their delirium occurred. Germany is utterly defeated. The German troops are surrendering. The Soviet Union is triumphant, although it has no intention of either dismembering or destroying Germany.

Comrades! Our Great Patriotic War has terminated in our complete victory. The period of war in Europe has closed. A period of peaceful development has been ushered in.

Congratulations on our victory, my dear fellow countrymen and countrywomen!

Glory to our heroic Red Army, which upheld the independence of our country and achieved victory over the enemy!

Glory to our great people, the victor people!

Eternal glory to the heroes who fell fighting the enemy and who gave their lives for the freedom and happiness of our people!

[THIS ARTICLE IS POSTED HERE FOR NON-PROFIT, NON-COMMERCIAL, EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE. THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS ARTICLE ARE THAT OF ITS AUTHOR(S) AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEW OF THE JOP]

Fate Of The 2 Million Red Army Soldiers – Participants In The Second World War Is Still Unknown

Veronica Kulakova

Izvestia.ru | May 09, 2022

77 years after the end of the Great Patriotic War, the fate of 2 million soldiers of the Red Army remains unexplained. In the archives, they are listed as missing, but finding the place of their death or burial is increasingly difficult. Last year, the volunteers of the Search Movement of Russia discovered the remains of more than 21 thousand soldiers, but they were able to identify only 1347 of them: the soldiers’ medallions and books of the Red Army soldier were mostly lost or damaged by time. Each established name and destiny is a contribution to the preservation of the historical memory of both the whole people and specific families.

“In the Bydgoszcz area, there was a smell of Stalingrad”: What Izvestia wrote years ago, in the days of WWII

Yaroslava Kostenko

Izvstia.Ru | May 09, 2022

February 1945 in the USSR breathed the promise of a victorious spring: the yellowed newspaper pages are full of reports about the successful battles of the Red Army, and the country itself is preparing to celebrate its 27th anniversary. Soviet troops knocked out the enemy from the territories the enemy occupied, but there is no war without losses – the death of the commander of the 3rd Belorussian Front, General Ivan Chernyakhovsky, falls like a mourning ribbon on the almost melted snow. The union says goodbye to the hero.

What does it cost Soviet Union: How Stalingrad was built after the war?

It took 10 years to restore the destroyed city

Sergey Guryanov

Izvestia.Ru | May 09, 2022

Stalingrad was almost completely destroyed during the Second World War, and then completely rebuilt. What does it cost to rebuild the city, how much time does it take and by whose hands is it done – in the material of Izvestia.

What was Stalingrad like before the fighting?

Now the length of Volgograd, stretching along the right bank of the Volga, is more than 80 km, and in some places it is only a few kilometers wide. In 1940, the city was smaller, but the general proportions were preserved. The fighting took place on a narrow patch of land, on which from July 1942 to February 1943 a monstrous number of bombs and shells fell, on which hundreds of thousands of people died.

Before the war, the city grew rapidly and in 1925 turned from the county Tsaritsyn into the provincial Stalingrad. In the early 1930s, a state district power station, the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, the Shipyard, a hardware plant were built and started operating, enterprises opened before the revolution continued to work – the Krasny Oktyabr metallurgical plant, the Barrikady plant.

The infrastructure was also actively developed, new houses were built. For example, in 1938, a residential building was built on Penzenskaya Street, now known as Pavlov’s House – the legendary battlefield of the Battle of Stalingrad. Grandiose plans appeared to rebuild the city named after Stalin according to the idealistic image of the pre-war USSR – it was supposed to be a city of the future, a garden city. But the plans were not destined to come true.

According to the city statistical office, on August 23, 1942, the population of Stalingrad was 494 thousand people. The Stalingrad regional commission for accounting for the damage caused by the Nazi invaders names an even larger number – 551.5 thousand people.

Pavlov’s house – this house was defended for 58 days by soldiers under the command of senior sergeant Y Pavlov during the Great Patriotic War. Photo: RIA Novosti/ Yakov Ryumkin