Battle of Stalingrad the regular ferries were quickly destroyed by the Luftwaffe, which then targeted troop barges being towed slowly across the river by tugs. It has been said that Stalin prevented civilians from leaving the city in the belief that their presence would encourage greater resistance from the city's defenders. Civilians, including women and children, were put to work building trenchworks and protective fortifications. A massive German air raid on 23 August caused a firestorm, killing hundreds and turning Stalingrad into a vast landscape of rubble and burnt ruins. Ninety percent of the living space in the Voroshilovskiy area was destroyed. Between
She Defends the Motherland She Defends the Motherland She Defends the Motherland, () is a 1943 Soviet drama film starring Vera Maretskaya and directed by Fridrikh Ermler. It was distributed in the United States by Artkino Pictures as No Greater Love, also in 1943, with a dubbed-English soundtrack. Praskovya Lukyanova, a rural villager in the USSR, first loses her husband in battle at the outbreak of WWII, and then her only, small son, who is run over deliberately by a Nazi tank driven by a soldier wearing a eyepatch, as the Germans take over the village. Thus convicted of the need to fight back,