Coordinates: 48°42′57.6″N 44°31′53.4″E / 48.716000°N 44.531500°E / 48.716000; 44.531500

Pavlov's House.

Pavlov's House in its current state. The inscription on the memorial reads: "In this building fused together heroic feats of warfare and of labor. We will defend / rebuild you, dear Stalingrad!"

Pavlov's House (Russian: дом Павлова dom Pavlova) was a fortified apartment building in which Red Army defenders held for 60 days against a heavy Wehrmacht offensive during the Battle of Stalingrad. The siege lasted from 27 September to 25 November 1942 and eventually the Soviet forces managed to relieve it from the siege. It gained its popular name from Sergeant Yakov Pavlov, who commanded the platoon that seized the building and defended it during the long battle.

The Siege[edit]

The house was a four-story building in the centre of Stalingrad, built perpendicular to the embankment of the river Volga and overseeing the "9th January Square", a large square named for Bloody Sunday. In September 1942, the house was attacked by German soldiers, and a platoon of the Soviet 13th Guards Rifle Division was ordered to defend it. The platoon was led by Junior Sgt. Yakov Pavlov, a non-commissioned officer serving as acting platoon commander since the unit's lieutenant and senior sergeants had all been wounded or killed.

The strategic benefit of the house was that it defended a key section of the Volga bank. The tactical benefit of the house was its position on a cross-street, giving the defenders a 1 km line of sight to the north, south and west.^[1] After several days, reinforcements and resupply arrived for Pavlov's men, bringing the unit up to a 25-man understrength platoon and equipping the defenders with machine guns, anti-tank rifles, and mortars. In keeping with Stalin's Order No. 227—"not one step back", Sgt. Pavlov was ordered to fortify the building and defend it to the last bullet and the last man. Taking this advice to heart, Pavlov ordered the building to be surrounded with four layers of barbed wire and minefields, and set up machine-gun posts in every available window facing the square. In the early stages of the defense, Pavlov discovered that a PTRS-41 anti-tank rifle he had mounted on the roof was particularly effective when used to ambush unsuspecting German tanks; once the tanks had approached to within range of the building, their thin turret-roof armor became exposed to anti-tank rifle fire from above, and were unable to elevate their weapons enough to retaliate.^[2]

For better internal communication, Pavlov's soldiers breached the walls in the basement and upper floors, and dug a communications trench to Soviet positions outside. Supplies were brought in via the trench or by boats crossing the river, defying German air raids and shelling. Nevertheless, food and especially water was in short supply. Lacking beds, the soldiers tried to sleep on insulation wool torn off pipes but were subjected to harassing fire every night in order to try to break their resistance.

The Germans attacked the building several times a day. Each time German infantry or tanks tried to cross the square and to close in on the house, Pavlov's men laid down a withering barrage of machine gun and anti-tank rifle fire from the basement, the windows and from the roof top.

Eventually the defenders, as well as the Soviet civilians who kept living in the basement all that time, held out during intensive fighting from 27 September to 25 November 1942, when they were relieved by the counter-attacking Soviet forces.

Symbolic meaning[edit]

Pavlov's House became a symbol of the incredibly stubborn and dogged resistance of the Russian forces during the Battle of Stalingrad, which eventually ended in a decisive victory for the Soviet forces after months of massive casualties on both sides. The inability of the German blitzkrieg to make headway against such grinding and self-sacrificial attrition warfare made the failure to capture Pavlov's House (despite numerous attempts) stand out as a symbol of resistance against a vastly superior force.

Pavlov's "House" was rebuilt after the battle and is still used as an apartment building today. There is an attached memorial constructed from bricks picked up after the battle on the East side facing the Volga.

Pavlov was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union for his actions.^[3]

Recent reporting[edit]

A Russian TV documentary in 2009, "Legendary Redoubt," (Легендарный редут) on Russian Channel One reported on Pavlov's House. According to the documentary, the house's defense was in fact led by Lieutenant Ivan F. Afanasiev (Иван Ф. Афанасьев). This report does not discount Pavlov's efforts, which led to his earning the Hero of the Soviet Union and those soldiers who took part in the defense, earning numerous decorations of their own. The last member of Pavlov's group, K. Turgunov from Turakurgan District, Namangan Province, Uzbekistan died on 16 March 2015, aged 93.^[4]

Popular Culture[edit]

• In the video game Call of Duty there is a level in which the player, as a conscripted Russian peasant, must participate in capturing and defending this structure from multiple waves of German soldiers and armor until Soviet reinforcements arrive. The squad leader in this mission is named Sgt. Pavlov, based on the real-life Yakov Pavlov.
• In early versions of the Red Orchestra modification for the game Unreal Tournament 2004 there was a level that recreated the fighting between the Soviet and German forces for the control of the building. The 2011 release Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad also includes Pavlov's house as a combat scenario.
• "Pavlov's House" is a structure in the first mission of Close Combat III: The Russian Front, with it starting in German control.
• The house is a distinct landmark on the map "Stalingrad" in the online game World of Tanks.
• "Pavlov's House" Is a 6-8 player community map in the online strategy game Company of Heroes 2.
• Forgotten Hope, a modification for the computer game Battlefield 1942, has Pavlov's house as a map in multiplayer. The map has the house in the center with the Germans surrounding it from 3 sides. The Soviets are on the 4th side. The map makes heavy use of the PPSh-41 Sub-machine-gun.

See also[edit]

• Sihang Warehouse

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Pavlov's House - Stalingrad, September-November 1942 (Poem)
• Map of Pavlov's House and the defenders of the house

Battle of Stalingrad Airfields Axis order of battle Red Army order of battle Bombing of Stalingrad in World War II German commanders German units   Operations  Nazi Germany Donnerschlag Winter Storm  Soviet Union Little Saturn Koltso Saturn Uranus   Formations Army groups and fronts B Centre Don Don Southwestern Stalingrad Voronezh Armies Axis German 4th Panzer German 6th Hungarian 2nd Italian 8th Romanian 3rd and 4th 1st Guards 2nd Guards 3rd Guards 21st 51st 62nd 64th 65th Corps XIV Panzer XL Panzer XLVIII Panzer IV VIII XI LI 8th Air Tank 1st 4th 13th 16th 24th 26th others 4th Mechanised 13th Mechanised 3rd Guards Cavalry 4th Cavalry 8th Cavalry Divisions Panzer 6th 14th 16th 17th 22nd 24th Infantry 3rd Motorised 29th Motorised 60th Motorised 5th 44th 71st 76th 79th 94th 100th 113th 295th 297th 305th 371st 376th 384th 389th Guards Rifle 13th 15th 33rd 35th 36th 37th 39th Rifle 38th 45th 62nd 64th 91st 93rd 95th 112th 138th 157th 169th 173rd 181st 193rd 196th 204th 214th 221st 248th 284th 302nd 308th 422nd others 414th Anti-Tank 149th Artillery 60th Cavalry 81st Cavalry   Notable participants Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler Alexander Edler von Daniels Hermann Göring Wilhelm Hoffman Hermann Hoth Hans-Valentin Hube Erwin König (apocryphal) Erich von Manstein Friedrich Paulus Wolfram von Richthofen Arthur Schmidt Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach Karl Strecker Romania Constantin Constantinescu-Claps Petre Dumitrescu Mihail Lascăr Other Axis members Viktor Pavičić (Croatia) Italo Gariboldi (Italy) Gusztáv Jány (Hungary) Soviet Union Joseph Stalin Hazi Aslanov Vasily Badanov Vasily Chuikov Nikolay Dyatlenko Sasha Filippov Peter Gitelman Vasily Grossman Nikita Khrushchev Dmitry Lelyushenko Rodion Malinovsky Yakov Pavlov Alexander Rodimtsev Konstantin Rokossovsky Alexander Shcherbakov Semyon Timoshenko Aleksandr Vasilevsky Nikolay Voronov Erich Weinert Andrei Yeremenko Vasily Zaytsev Aleksey Zhadov Georgy Zhukov   Significant locations Barmaley Fountain Barrikady Factory Grain Elevator Gumrak Kalach Mamayev Kurgan Pavlov's House Pitomnik Airfield Red October Steel Factory River Don River Volga Tatsinskaya Airfield Tsaritsa Gorge Tractor Plant   In memoriam The Motherland Calls Stalingrad Madonna Sword of Stalingrad Battle of Stalingrad in popular culture See also Battle of the Caucasus Battle of Kursk Battle of Nikolayevka Case Blue Operation Barbarossa Second Battle of Kharkov Third Battle of Kharkov Volgograd