Enemy At The Gates

Stand Firm.
Die but do not Retreat.

Joseph Stalin on
The Siege of Stalingrad
1942-43

War and human misery have always been soul-mates. But rarely do people bear the kind of suffering residents of Stalingrad endured when the German 6th Army became their Enemy at the Gates.

Hitler thought he could conquer the city named after Stalin. Stalin issued a proclamation that anyone who surrendered, or retreated, would be shot.

The lives of ordinary people, trapped in the middle of this tyrannical quest, were reduced to unimaginable horror. Most people died. Those who survived were sustained by little more than the human will to live. That they lived at all is astonishing. Their haunting stories are at once pathetic and terrifying.

Out of the city’s rubble emerged a "Hero of the Soviet Union." His name was Vasily Zaitsev. This is his story.

Author: Carole D. Bos, J.D.