The fighting for the grain elevator in Stalingrad

On 18 September 1942, the sixth day of the assault on Stalingrad, the heaviest fighting was going on in two places: on Mamayev Kurgan and in the city centre, where guardsmen ferried across the Volga by night were counter-attacking towards the station, and in the southern part of the city, around the great grain elevator. The concrete silo, the tallest building in Stalingrad, had been surrounded by German infantry and tanks for four days, but its defenders were still beating off attack after attack. On the night of 17–18 September sailors of the 92nd Independent Rifle Brigade crossed over to join them. That same day, north of the city, Soviet troops directed by General of the Army Georgy Zhukov attacked again near Kotluban in an attempt to break through to the cut-off 62nd Army.

Popular chronologies speak of a “battle for the grain silo” in which “the Germans were repulsed”, and say that the Red Army began “ferrying troops across the Volga at night”. Both statements need qualifying. German attacks on the elevator did indeed fail for several days, but the defenders did not hold it: the building fell on the night of 21–22 September. Night crossings, meanwhile, had been going on since the start of the fighting for the city, and from mid-September, when German artillery and aircraft dominated the river, they became the only way of supplying the defenders.

A city cut in two

Stalingrad stretched in a narrow strip along the right bank of the Volga for more than 40 kilometres. After the air raid of 23 August and the fighting on the approaches, the 6th Army of General of Panzer Troops Friedrich Paulus and Colonel General Hermann Hoth’s 4th Panzer Army had pushed the Soviet 62nd Army back into the city. On 13 September the Germans launched a general assault. In the north, in the city centre and on Mamayev Kurgan, the infantry divisions of the 6th Army were attacking, while in the south, in the districts beyond the little Tsaritsa river, the 4th Panzer Army’s panzer corps went in: the 24th Panzer Division, the 14th Panzer Division, the 29th Motorised Infantry Division and the Saxon 94th Infantry Division.

Since 12 September the 62nd Army had been commanded by Lieutenant General Vasily Chuikov, who took it over just as the Germans were beginning their assault. He had fewer than 20,000 men in divisions and brigades bled white in the Don bend, a few dozen serviceable tanks and less and less ammunition. At his back lay the Volga, more than a kilometre wide at this point. The German attack of 14 September reached the river at the central landing stage and at the mouth of the Tsaritsa. From then on the defence was split into several sectors, linked only by the river and the night crossings.

The silo in the south of the city

The elevator stood in the southern district, not far from the Volga, the railway line and Stalingrad II station. It was a modern milling complex built in 1938–1941, with a tall working tower and rows of concrete silos from which the whole surrounding area could be seen. In mid-September there was still grain in the silos. When the building caught fire from the shelling, the grain smouldered for days on end and the smoke choked the defenders.

According to Russian studies, the Germans reached the elevator on 14 September. It was defended by soldiers who had fallen back to it from shattered units of the 62nd Army: guardsmen of the 35th Guards Rifle Division and men of the 10th Rifle Brigade and the 131st Rifle Division. These were remnants, not complete units. Some popular accounts also list NKVD troops among the defenders, but Russian data on the elevator itself speak above all of guardsmen and sailors. NKVD units, mainly the 10th NKVD Rifle Division, were fighting at that time in the city centre and the factory districts.

Sailors from the Northern Fleet

Chuikov, who had no reserves left, could count only on reinforcements from across the river. On the night of 14–15 September Major General Alexander Rodimtsev’s 13th Guards Rifle Division crossed into the city centre, and three nights later, on the night of 17–18 September, the 92nd Independent Rifle Brigade crossed to the southern sector. It had been formed from sailors, largely from the Northern Fleet, who had been sent to the Volga as infantry. According to Russian studies, immediately after crossing the sailors went over to the counter-attack and cleared the Germans from the strip of riverbank between the mouth of the Tsaritsa and the canning factory, and then fought in the surrounding streets and around Stalingrad II station.

A machine-gun platoon under Lieutenant Andrei Khozyainov was sent to the elevator itself. Chuikov later quoted his account in his memoirs: in the building the sailors found about thirty guardsmen, with whom they shared the defence. Every day the Germans, supported by tanks and artillery fire, attacked several times – according to this account, as many as ten times. The defenders fired from the tower and the silos, using any lull to patch up breaches and gather ammunition. The grain was burning, and there was no water, either to drink or to cool the machine guns.

Khozyainov also described a German envoy who approached the building under a white flag and demanded surrender. The defenders refused. This and similar scenes, however, are known only from the recollections of participants, written down or published after the war, and are difficult to verify today against German sources.

“The Germans were repulsed”

For the Germans the elevator was a bigger obstacle than they had expected. Its massive concrete walls protected the defenders from lighter weapons, and from the tower every movement in the surrounding streets could be seen. Assault guns, tanks and heavy artillery were brought up to shell it, while Junkers Ju 87s circled over the district. According to Russian studies, on 19 September the Germans surrounded the elevator on three sides and made two attacks, supported by seven tanks, which broke down with heavy losses. On 21 September came an assault with air support and sixteen tanks. That day the defenders repulsed seven attacks.

In that sense the familiar formula that “the Germans were repulsed” reflects the course of the fighting in the middle of the month: for several days every attack on the silo ended in a retreat. But the odds were too great. By 22 September the defenders had run out of ammunition and water, and part of the tower and the silos were on fire. On the night of 21–22 September, or according to some sources during 22 September, the survivors tried to break out of the encirclement towards the Volga and their own units. Some of them succeeded. Khozyainov, wounded, was taken prisoner, survived the war and only years later told the story of the elevator’s defence. The German soldiers who entered the building are said to have been surprised to find only a few dozen bodies in it, rather than a whole battalion as they had believed.

According to accounts cited in some of the literature, Paulus later wanted the outline of the elevator to appear on a commemorative badge that he intended to institute for participants in the battle once the city had been taken. The badge was never instituted.

Night crossings

The fight for the elevator, like the whole defence of the city, depended on the Volga. The crossings had been operating since the first days of the battle: at the end of August Colonel Sergei Gorokhov’s 124th Rifle Brigade, which went on to defend the northern suburbs, was ferried across the river, and throughout August and September ferries and steamers carried the wounded and civilians to the left bank. It is therefore not accurate that the Red Army “began” ferrying troops at night on 18 September. What changed was something else. From 14 September the Germans had the central landing stage and much of the riverbank within range of their guns, and by day their aircraft dominated the river. Crossing in daylight became almost suicidal, so reinforcements, ammunition and food were brought over almost exclusively after dark, and at dawn the boats and ferries took cover by the left bank and among the islands.

The crossings were worked by the ships and armoured boats of the Volga Military Flotilla (PL), civilian steamers, barges and fishing boats. Under fire and in the light of German flares they carried battalion after battalion across in the course of each night. After the 13th Guards Division and the 92nd Brigade, further rifle divisions sent by the Stavka to the 62nd Army crossed the river in the second half of September. The wounded were taken off on the return trip. Each night decided whether the defenders would have anything to shoot with the next day.

The second attack at Kotluban

On 18 September, north of the city, Soviet troops made another attempt to break through the German corridor between the Don and the Volga. The first attacks, on 3–5 September, had ended in failure. This time the main blow was delivered by Major General Kirill Moskalenko’s 1st Guards Army and the 24th Army, co-ordinated by Zhukov. The attack went in across open steppe in the area of Kotluban station and from the morning came under continuous attack by German aircraft. According to Western studies based on Luftwaffe documents, that morning the dive bombers reported destroying 41 of the 106 Soviet tanks knocked out, and the fighters claimed several dozen aircraft shot down. According to figures cited in the Russian literature, of the 340 tanks the 1st Guards Army had on 18 September, 183 remained serviceable two days later, including replacements.

The attack did not break the German front and was called off after a few days. Like the previous ones, however, it brought the city’s defenders some relief: Paulus had to keep divisions in the north, including panzer divisions, which he lacked for the street fighting, and for part of the day the Luftwaffe was busy with the steppe rather than the ruins.

Place in the war

The elevator fell after eight days of fighting, and by the end of September the Germans had taken almost the whole southern part of Stalingrad and most of the city centre. The defence of the southern districts, however, cost them time and men they lacked for the attack in the north, and its course foreshadowed what the whole battle would look like: single buildings, defended by handfuls of soldiers, tying down entire regiments for days. In the Soviet Union the defenders of the elevator became the object of a cult similar to the one that later surrounded Pavlov’s House, occupied by Rodimtsev’s guardsmen at the end of September.

In October the main weight of the fighting shifted north, to the Tractor Factory, the Barrikady works and the Red October steelworks. The Volga crossings, ever more difficult once ice floes began to drift down the river in November, remained the 62nd Army’s lifeline until the Soviet counter-offensive of 19 November, which encircled Paulus’s 6th Army. At the end of January 1943, in the last days of the battle, there was fierce fighting for the elevator once again: this time it was the Germans who defended it, and it was taken by soldiers of the Soviet 64th Army, including sailors from a naval infantry brigade. After the war the ruined elevator was rebuilt and serves once more as a grain store, and next to it stands a monument to its defenders of 1942 and 1943.