Battle of Stalingrad Soviet Union. The initial objectives in the region around Stalingrad were the destruction of the industrial capacity of the city and the deployment of forces to block the Volga River. The river was a key route from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea to central Russia. Its capture would disrupt commercial river traffic. The Germans cut the pipeline from the oilfields when they captured Rostov on 23 July. The capture of Stalingrad would make the delivery of Lend Lease supplies via the Persian Corridor much more difficult. On 23 July 1942, Hitler personally rewrote the operational objectives for the 1942
She Defends the Motherland she organizes her fellow villagers in the forest, where they have taken refuge, into a guerilla unit which first thwarts, then overcomes, the fascist invaders. 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