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
Russian tradition of the Knights Hospitaller a number of descendants of the Hereditary Commanders associated with the Russian Grand Priory Association. In 1977, however, Count Nicholas Bobrinsky, along with several of the Hereditary Commanders, also claimed to maintain this tradition and became what is now known as the Orthodox Order of the Knights of St. John, Russian Grand Priory. This international philanthropic and chivalric group in the Russian tradition is based in New York, and has over 600 members including descendants of hereditary Russian nobility including several of the original Hereditary Commander families, as well as descendants of the House of Romanov and other Royal Houses,