Battle of Stalingrad: Key Sites in Volgograd

On 13 September 1942 German forces attacked the city centre, and this hill, marked "Height 102.0" on military maps, saw particularly fierce fighting because holding it meant controlling the city. Soviet troops recaptured it on 16 September, and the hill changed hands several times. By the end the soil held 500 to 1,250 metal splinters per square metre. Today it is a memorial complex built between 1959 and 1967 and crowned by The Motherland Calls; 34,505 defenders are buried here.

Visitor guidance: A memorial complex; The Motherland Calls stands at the top of the hill.

A ferocious battle raged for several days at the giant grain elevator in the south of the city. About fifty Red Army defenders, cut off from supplies, held it for five days and fought off ten assaults. Only forty dead Soviet fighters were found, though the Germans believed there were many more. The Soviets burned large amounts of grain when they pulled back, to deny it to the enemy. Paulus later chose the elevator and silos as the symbol of Stalingrad for a commemorative patch.

Location precision: The sources describe the elevator in the south of the city without naming the building; the pin is a search result for a grain elevator in Volgograd.

A four-story apartment building overlooking 9th January Square became a fortress. Sergeant Pavlov's men ringed it with four layers of barbed wire and mines, and an anti-tank rifle on the roof ambushed German tanks. Civilians sheltered in the basement. German maps labelled it Festung, "Fortress", and the defenders held out from 27 September to 25 November 1942. General Chuikov joked that the Germans lost more men trying to take it than they did taking Paris. It was rebuilt and is an apartment building today, with a memorial wall facing the Volga.

Visitor guidance: The building is still lived in; view it and the memorial wall from the street.

Opened on 17 June 1930 and designed by Albert Kahn Associates, the plant turned to war work and built the T-34 tank. Tanks were driven unpainted and without gun-sights straight from the factory floor to the front line. It was one of three giant factories, with Red October and Barrikady, hit by the great German assault of 14 October 1942. That day the forward assault group reached the tractor factory and the Volga, splitting the 62nd Army in two.

On 31 January 1943 the southern pocket collapsed and Soviet forces reached the entrance to the German headquarters in the ruined GUM department store. Major Soldatov recalled the basement as unbelievably filthy, with the doors blocked. Paulus claimed he had not surrendered. The northern pocket held out two more days, until 2 February. A violent battle had also been fought for the Univermag department store on Red Square; it may be the same building, but the sources do not say.

Location precision: The sources name a GUM or Univermag department store without an address; the pin marks a search result near the central square.