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
Stalingrad Madonna made for the prisoners' newspaper. He titled it "The Prisoners' Madonna". Reuber did not live to see another Christmas, dying of illness a few weeks later on 20 January 1944. Stalingrad Madonna The Stalingrad Madonna () is an image of the Virgin Mary drawn by a German soldier, Kurt Reuber, in 1942 in Stalingrad (now Volgograd), Russia, during the Battle of Stalingrad. The original is displayed in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Berlin, while copies now hang in the cathedrals of Berlin, Coventry and as a sign of the reconciliation between Germany and the United Kingdom and Russia, which were