The Battle of Stalingrad
Survivor testimonies recorded in the Center for Oral History.
Steliu Lambru, 25.08.2025, 14:00
In the history of great armed conflicts, there is typically one epic battle, either owing to the very large number of losses, the fact that it turned the tide of the war or simply because a military or political leader was killed, a city was destroyed and so on. In World War I, the Battle of Verdun was called the “mother of all battles” due to the bloodshed it caused. In World War II, one of the great battles both in terms of people who got killed and the effects on the entire war was the Battle of Stalingrad from August 1942 to February 1943.
A lot has been written about the Battle of Stalingrad in many different ways, artifacts have been unearthed, numerous documentaries have been made, and pretty much everything that could be said has been said. The Romanian army participated in the battle as an ally of the German, Italian, Hungarian and Croatian armies and lost between 110,000 and 200,000 soldiers, dead, wounded or taken prisoner. Romanian memories of Stalingrad were recorded in the sound archive of the Center for Oral History of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation. One of them was that of lawyer Vladimir Boantă who, in 1995, remembered how he left Stalingrad the day before the start of the Soviet offensive.
“The front seemed to have stabilized. Let me tell you something: with the opening of the front in the West, the Germans had withdrawn many of their troops. And we realized this because we saw less and less German troops. But, other than that, the activity of the German aviation had diminished greatly. On the other hand, the actions of the Soviet aviation had intensified. Some very fast planes had appeared, which I later learned were called ‘Yak’ because Yakovlev was the engineer who manufactured them. Well, those Yaks were a surprise for me, I could say an unpleasant one, because they were very fast. Until then, when their planes passed, I would say ‘There goes another motorcycle!’, because they made a noise like a motorcycle and were slow”.
The war was fought in extremely harsh conditions for all combatants. Axis soldiers, however, were particularly struggling, as their numbers were decreasing, they were far from home and supplies were getting harder and harder to come by. Vladimir Boantă. “Crossing the endless stretches of land and sustaining constant losses that could not be compensated by bringing in new troops, we had reached a very thin line. Apart from the only unit that was actually in Stalingrad, we were 12 kilometers southwest of Stalingrad. And we were standing 15 to 30 meters apart in some round holes in that miserable, sandy land near Stalingrad, with a weapon in our hand that was freezing, you couldn’t handle it anymore because the grease inside had frozen. And the people were obviously very weak, the food was awful, they had no warm clothes”.
But life follows its unpredictable course, even in difficult times. And everyday events and people’s behavior become just as important as the acts of heroism on the battlefield. Vladimir Boantă.
“Things had stabilized in such a way that, at a certain point, we received a transmission from the German army that made us laugh. Because it said: ‘Tourist visits to Stalingrad are prohibited!’ The reality was that there were certain shops and bookstores there with office supplies that were no longer operating. The bookstores had been abandoned because of the bombings. But our people, who needed to get one thing or another, went to see if there was something left in the shops they could scavenge. This was the kind of ‘visit’ the transmission referred to, which had nothing to do with the tourist meaning of the word”.
The Soviet offensive was the beginning of the end, Vladimir Boantă explained.
“The Battle of Stalingrad started as follows: one morning, when the forecast was for thick fog, meaning you couldn’t see anything 3 meters in front of you, the Soviet tanks started rolling towards our positions. They were followed by soldiers who were drunk and all fired up, mounted on cars, equipped only with automatic weapons, for the most part, only with machine guns that, as far as is known, had 72 rounds in each drum. They advanced without being seen. We could barely hear them coming, no one saw anything. And they went over the holes and trenches where our Romanian soldiers were dug in. Imagine, what could they do, fire their rifles? No! So they passed this first line of fire. They reached the artillery position, whose guns were trampled by tanks and destroyed, after which they advanced to the line of military commands”.
The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the landmark battles of World War II. People and ideas clashed, leaving behind much for posterity to reflect on. (VP)
