Battle of Stalingrad but Paulus – ordered not to surrender by Hitler – did not respond. The German High Command informed Paulus, "Every day that the army holds out longer helps the whole front and draws away the Russian divisions from it." The Germans inside the pocket retreated from the suburbs of Stalingrad to the city itself. The loss of the two airfields, at Pitomnik on 16 January 1943 and Gumrak on the night of 21/22 January, meant an end to air supplies and to the evacuation of the wounded. The third and last serviceable runway was at the Stalingradskaya flight school, which
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,