This week we’ll join the citizens of Stalingrad as they feverishly prepare for what look like an inevitable attack as the Sixth Army under General Paulus heads towards the Don River.

The obvious approach would see the attack come across the land bridge between the Don and Volga Rivers.

And by mid-July 1942 the German intention had become a certainty. The Fourth Panzer Army had crossed the Don and reached the heights of Kotelnikovo and its spearhead, instead of turning south to protect the flank of the First Panzer Army heading towards the caucuses to the south east, was pointing north and obviously coming up towards Stalingrad.

That wasn’t all. German activity in the great bend of the Don River seemed to indicate the probability of a drive being made across the river and that could only mean one thing – a full attack on Stalingrad instead of a glancing blow.

In Moscow, Stalin and the STAVKA had been issuing orders for a few weeks and now their briefings increased when it came to the southern Front. He had fixated on the German’s attacking Moscow in force once more and had delayed some decisions in the south. Now that it was clear what was going to happen, the preparations escalated.

The tragedy of war had always menaced this region. In 1237 the Golden Horde of the Great Khan had crossed the Volga at this perfect fording point and ravaged the area between the Volga and Don rivers.

From there the Khan swept west into European Russia and were stopped just short of Vienna and the Polish border. During the 13th an 14th Centuries Russian armies marched eastward through the same region – it was a border post from which Moscow attacked the Mongols. Then in 1589 a trading centre was established called Tsaritsyn.

The legendary Cossack leader Stenka Razin took the city in 1670 and held it during a bloody siege. One hundred years later another Cossack named Yemelyan Pugachev decided to challenge Catherine the Great by storming Tsaritsyn but she defeated him and then cut off his head for good measure.

In 1875 a French company built a large steel mill in the city and its population expanded to one hundred thousand. It became a wild west town – or should I say wild east town similar to the growth of American cities. Ramshackle houses followed the river and there were four hundred saloons and brothels which catered for the new settler’s needs.

It was a tough hard-living town – a bit like the myriad of frontier towns that emerged in the American West.

During the Russian Revolution after 1917 the fighting here in the civil war was extremely bitter. As we heard previously, a little-known leader called Joseph Stalin held off three Generals of the White Army for weeks.

But he was eventually driven out of the city and Stalin regrouped his forces on the Steppe before falling on the White Army flanks and defeating the White Army forces. To honour their liberator, the residents renamed the city Stalingrad. The city was then completely redesigned as a model Soviet project and it became a manufacturing centre, exporting vehicles, chemicals, tractors, guns, textiles and lumber to all parts of the Soviet Union.