Battle of Stalingrad Quotes

“People hid inside their homes and made no sound so that the Soviet soldiers would assume the building was unoccupied.”
― Hourly History, Battle of Stalingrad: A History from Beginning to End

“on February 23, 1943, Great Britain celebrated Red Army Day, and King George VI had a commemorative sword forged, the Sword of Stalingrad,”
― Hourly History, Battle of Stalingrad: A History from Beginning to End

“one Russian sniper managed to kill 224 Germans before November ended.”
― Hourly History, Battle of Stalingrad: A History from Beginning to End

“There were positions in the city that saw control switch from German to Russian possession as many as fifteen times.”
― Hourly History, Battle of Stalingrad: A History from Beginning to End

“the typical life expectancy of a soldier arriving to reinforce the city was twenty-four hours”
― Hourly History, Battle of Stalingrad: A History from Beginning to End

“Order No. 227 was issued: civilians were not to evacuate, and the defenders of Stalingrad were not to take a step back. His reasoning was that with the civilians in the city, the army would fight harder to protect them and the city that bore his name. Stalingrad felt the force of the Nazi might on August 23, 1942, when one thousand planes began to drop incendiary bombs on the city, which is especially effective in a city with so many wooden buildings. One raid consisted of 600 planes and killed 40,000 of the city’s residents”
― Hourly History, Battle of Stalingrad: A History from Beginning to End

“Each commander, Red Army soldier and political commissar should understand that our means are not limitless. The territory of the Soviet state is not a desert, but people - workers, peasants, intelligentsia, our fathers, mothers, wives, brothers, children. The territory of the USSR which the enemy has captured and aims to capture is bread and other products for the army, metal and fuel for industry, factories, plants supplying the army with arms and ammunition, railroads. After the loss of Ukraine, Belarus, Baltic republics, Donetzk, and other areas we have much less territory, much less people, bread, metal, plants and factories. We have lost more than 70 million people, more than 800 million pounds of bread annually and more than 10 million tons of metal annually. Now we do not have predominance over the Germans in human reserves, in reserves of bread. To retreat further - means to waste ourselves and to waste at the same time our Motherland . . . This leads to the conclusion, it is time to finish retreating. Not one step back! Such should now be our main slogan.” —Josef Stalin”
― Hourly History, Battle of Stalingrad: A History from Beginning to End

“The Germans had advanced 200 miles into the Soviet Union. By September, the Germans had captured 600,000 prisoners from the battles that encircled Kiev”
― Hourly History, Battle of Stalingrad: A History from Beginning to End

“On the first day, the German air attack destroyed over 1,400 Soviet aircraft. Within three days, the losses were over 3,000, causing Herman Göring to have the numbers rechecked out of disbelief because they were so high.”
― Hourly History, Battle of Stalingrad: A History from Beginning to End

“Stalin failed to react as swiftly as he should have, in part because he believed that Hitler had not authorized the invasion and that the nonaggression pact which the two countries would prevent Germany from breaking its word. This delay led to the loss of Soviet territory and troops.”
― Hourly History, Battle of Stalingrad: A History from Beginning to End

“Hitler not only ignored the lessons of Napoleon’s failed invasion a century before, but that he failed to prepare the German industrial sector for a more intense military endeavor than it had seen thus far.”
― Hourly History, Battle of Stalingrad: A History from Beginning to End

“Any Soviet leader who had read Mein Kampf was already aware that Hitler’s future included plans to invade the Soviet Union.”
― Hourly History, Battle of Stalingrad: A History from Beginning to End

“Hitler had a chance to make use of his artistic skills when he designed the Party logo, a swastika inside a white circle on a red background.”
― Hourly History, Battle of Stalingrad: A History from Beginning to End

“received the Iron Cross Second Class in 1914 and the Iron Cross First Class in 1918; that same year, he also received the Black Wound Badge. His commanding officers, one of them Jewish, spoke of his bravery and Hitler regarded his military experience as a positive one.”
― Hourly History, Battle of Stalingrad: A History from Beginning to End

“but Adolf wanted to become an artist. The boy rebelled against his father and did poorly in school, a decision that, according to Mein Kampf, was because he wanted to convince his father to let him follow his dream.”
― Hourly History, Battle of Stalingrad: A History from Beginning to End

“The man who hoped to avenge Germany’s humiliating defeat in World War I and who committed himself to the promise that the Third Reich would last for a thousand years was actually born in Braunau, Austria, a city close to the German border,”
― Hourly History, Battle of Stalingrad: A History from Beginning to End

“but by 1925, Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad in recognition of the role that both the city and Stain had played in the defense against the White Russians.”
― Hourly History, Battle of Stalingrad: A History from Beginning to End

“Stalin and Hitler shared much in common: difficult relations with their fathers, an early interest in the priesthood, immersion in ideologies which supported oppression in the achievement of political goals, a willingness to engage in violence and brutality, and phenomenal egos that convinced them they were the saviors of their nations.”
― Hourly History, Battle of Stalingrad: A History from Beginning to End