Reconstruction of the battle on the hills in the south of Stalingrad of September 8 - September 10, 1942

Introduction. The result of the Battle of Stalingrad supersedes the course of the battle itself in a great deal of historical literature. Therefore, it is no coincidence that in recent literature Stalingrad is increasingly becoming “mythologized” (A. Isaev), “unknown” (E. Kobyakov) or “forgotten” (A. Chunikhin), the return to the actual history of the Battle of Stalingrad takes the form of criticism of a generalized view, which on examination often turns out to be incorrect. Methods and materials. The work uses the methods of microhistory formulated in 1958 by the American historian J. Stewart. The actions of Red Army units are reconstructed on the basis of documents of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. The actions of Wehrmacht units are described on the basis of captured German documents from Fund 500 of the same archive. The data from the battle log of the XXXXVIII Panzer Corps and the battle log of the 24th Panzer Division of the Wehrmacht were taken from the book of Australian historian J. Mark. Analysis. The terrain to the south and south-east of Stalingrad largely determined the course of battle of the operational group of Major-General N.M. Pozharsky and the right flank divisions of the 64th Army with units of XXXXVIII Panzer Corps of General V. Kämpf. The essence of this confrontation was a fierce struggle for commanding heights. Results. At 16:30 on 11 September Major von der Lancken’s group was disbanded, and the tanks returned to their divisions. As a result of the offensive of September 8-11 the Germans managed to capture key heights in the south of Stalingrad. Nevertheless, in these battles XXXXVIII Panzer Corps suffered losses that it could not make up for. This gave the defenders of Stalingrad a chance, which they took. Due to the large volume of archival materials, the author’s team was divided. A.K. Elokhina processed German sources, and E.V. Stelnik processed data from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. The concept of the article emerged in the course of joint discussions.