ABSTRACT
For the Russians, the situation looked scarcely better. They had withstood the German onslaught thus far, but just barely. Millions of Russians were now prisoners of war and the Germans had come close enough to Moscow to see the spires of the Kremlin and force the removal of Lenin’s body from his tomb. By summer, 1942 the Germans sought to seize the oil fields of southern Russia. As part of the operation the German Sixth Army moved to seize the city of Stalingrad. Russian leader Joseph Stalin, who had named the city for himself, ordered the Red Army to save the city or die fighting. Any Russian, military or civilian, who tried to desert was to be shot by the Soviet secret police (as an estimated 13,500 were). A titanic battle for Stalingrad began.
