In Europe

every house they passed was plundered. ‘I have never eaten as much as I have here,’ a company commander wrote. ‘We eat honey by the spoonful, until we are sick of it, and in the evening we have boiled ham.’
    By the end of the afternoon on 23 August the advance guard had reached Rynok, a northern suburb of Stalingrad. The soldiers could barely believe their eyes: suddenly they were standing at the Volga. They photographed each other on their armoured cars, in the background the river and Stalingrad in flames. They took out the last of the Russian anti-aircraft positions, sank a few ships on the river – not knowing they were full of fleeing civilians – and then they dug in amid the vineyards, the oleander and the fruit trees. The headquarters of the army engineers was tucked away beneath a huge pear tree, the soldiers ate of the fruit till they grew nauseous. This little paradise had become the Reich's new eastern border.
    That Sunday was a historical moment for the Soviets as well: from now on, they realised, this war was going to be a life-or-death struggle. They had never imagined that Paulus’ troops would be able to break through so quickly and reach the Volga so easily. Enraged, Stalin gave the order to defend ‘his’ city – which had been named after him back in 1925 – at any price. He forbade the undermining of factories or any other activities ‘that could be seen as a sign that Stalingrad is being surrendered’.His Ukrainian confidant Nikita Khrushchev was given command over the underground headquarters.
    For Hitler, too, this battle was largely one of prestige. The original objectives of the German march on Stalingrad – to destroy the arms industry and block all traffic on the Volga – had already been achieved in late August, but Hitler suddenly decided that, despite the risk of over-extending his supply lines, the city was also to be taken and held.
    Stalin's determination was shared by the people of Stalingrad. The majority of the city's population reported for duty. Schoolgirls were put to work as medics – to bring back the wounded they often had to crawl under heavy fire to the front lines. An eighteen-year-old girl medical student was put in charge of an entire hospital company. A whole female bomber-support squadron was set up, led by the young and lovely Marina Raskova.
    Within two weeks the Soviets had launched their first counterattack. They landed on the German side of the Volga, drove the enemy away from the railway station there, suffered enormous losses, but held their positions in the centre of town. In the neighbouring tractor plant, which had been converted for the production of T-34s, volunteers climbed into the turrets even before the paint was dry. They drove straight off the production line into battle. The
Red Star
army gazette published a poem by Ilya Ehrenburg, written for the occasion:
    Do not count the days, do not count the metres
Count only the Germans you have killed.
Kill the German: that is your mother's plea.
Kill the German: thus cries your Russian earth.
Do not hesitate.
Do not let up.
Kill!

    Stalingrad – Volgograd since 1961 – stretches out like a Dutch peat-mining village; equally boring, but many times bigger. It is a typical, elongated, riverside town, a narrow strip of buildings along the waterfront, only afew streets deep but almost a hundred kilometres long, an endless row of apartment districts, factories, power plants, dullness piled upon dullness. On all sides of that strip, stretching far into the horizon, is the steppe, a hot dusty plain reminiscent of Texas or Arizona: huge fields of grain, an occasional tree, telephone wires, a few barns, an unlatched door banging in the wind. Every once in a while a group of colossal bulldozers and excavators will loom up, working on a new road, digging a new irrigation canal. The mentality is that of Las Vegas: build it up, break it down and get out.
    I take a ride on the municipal railway, examine the frown of the woman whose job it is to mark each and every ticket by hand – the stamping machine has not yet reached Volgograd – and walk around the streets and through the parks. Particularly noteworthy is the bearing of its young people: nowhere else in the former Eastern Bloc have I seen so much home-made elegance, so many women in such conspicuously beautiful apparel. Creations that would catch the eye in Paris, London or Milan pass by on the street here every couple of minutes.
    Later that