Battle of Stalingrad from the Stalingrad Front's Political Department on 8 October 1942 that: "The defeatist mood is almost eliminated and the number of treasonous incidents is getting lower" as an example of the sort of coercion Red Army soldiers experienced under the Special Detachments (later to be renamed SMERSH). On the other hand, Beevor noted the often extraordinary bravery of the Soviet soldiers in a battle that was only comparable to Verdun, and argued that terror alone cannot explain such self-sacrifice. Richard Overy addresses the question of just how important the Red Army's coercive methods were to the Soviet war effort compared
The Motherland Monument The Motherland Monument The Motherland Monument (, ) is a monumental statue in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. The sculpture is a part of the Museum of The History of Ukraine in World War II, Kiev. The stainless steel statue stands tall upon the museum main building with the overall structure measuring including its base and weighing 560 tons. The sword in the statue's right hand is long weighing 9 tons, with the left hand holding up a shield with the State Emblem of the Soviet Union. Initially the image of the statue was drawn by Vutchetich from Ukrainian painter