February 3rd 1943 - Stalingrad

February 3rd 1943 - Stalingrad

The Red Army has completed the destruction of 330,000 trapped troops at Stalingrad, the flower of AH's army, Moscow announced last night in a special bulletin.

 This raised the Russians' announced toll of Axis casualties on the Volga since last Fall to more than 500,000 in dead and captured alone.

The communiqué, recorded here by the Soviet monitor, said 91,000 troops, including a field marshal, twenty-three generals and thousands of other officers, had surrendered in the last three weeks.

An announcement on Sunday said more than 100,000 had been killed in twenty days, and a communiqué last Dec. 31 said 175,000 had been killed and 137,650 captured in the preceding six-week period, beginning with the big Red Army Winter offensive on Nov. 19.

Casualties Exceed 500,000

This represents a total of 503,650 Axis troops killed or captured since mid-November, on the basis of Russian announcements, and it does not include Axis casualties in the preceding three months of bitter fighting that raged along the Volga and inside Stalingrad.

The German radio last night acknowledged the end of the trapped Nazi army, but said the battle had cost the Russians more than 300,000 men.

Russia's victory at Stalingrad released additional Red Army divisions for heavier blows 250 miles to the west, where the Russians are pushing into the Ukraine toward Kharkov and threatening Rostov on the Sea of Azov.

The midnight bulletin announced continuing Red Army victories in those drives.  

Other units wheeling south-westward from Tikhoretsk captured Korenovsk, only thirty-five miles from Krasnoday. Another Russian column is within forty miles of Rostov in a drive paralleling the thrust from Tikhoretsk.

Aside from the huge territorial strides of the Russians, the destruction of Axis troops and equipment was regarded as even more important in the Allied fight to force the Nazis to their knees.

More than 2,500 officers were captured, the Russians said. Field Marshal General Friedrich Paulus, commander of the Nazi Sixth Army, surrendered last Sunday with fifteen Axis generals. Last night's bulletin announced that Col.

Gen. Walther Heitz, commander of the Eighth Army Corps; Lieut. Gen. Streicher, commander of the Eleventh Corps, and innumerable other officers had put down their arms.

The Soviet bulletin said "trophies are still being counted in one of the biggest battles in the history of wars," but listed this booty as captured since Jan. 10, when the final push began:

Fifty-six locomotives, 1,125 railway cars, 750 planes, 1,150 tanks, 6,700 guns, 1,462 mortars, 8,135 machine guns, 90,000 rifles, 61,102 trucks, 7,369 motor cycles, 480 carts, tractors and transports; 320 radio transmitters, three armoured trains, 235 ammunition and arms dumps and a large amount of other equipment.

The Moscow radio said Marshal Nikolai N. Voronof and Co. Gen. Konstantin Rokossovsky, the Red Army leaders, sent a message to Premier Joseph Stalin at 6:30 P. M., saying: "Carrying out your order, troops on the Don front at 4 P.M., Feb. 2, finished the rout and annihilation of encircled enemy troops at Stalingrad."

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