Pavlov's House

Dom Pavlova) was an apartment building converted into a fortified position, which Red Army defenders held for around 60 days against the Wehrmacht offensive during the Battle of Stalingrad.

[1] It gained its popular name from Sergeant Yakov Pavlov, who commanded the platoon that seized the building and defended it during the long battle.

The tactical benefit of the house was its position on a cross-street, giving the defenders a 1 km (0.6 mi) line of sight to the north, south and west.

[4][3] After several days, reinforcements and resupply arrived for Pavlov's men, bringing the unit up to a 25-man understrength platoon and equipping the defenders with machine guns, anti-tank rifles, and mortars.

Taking this advice to heart, Pavlov ordered the building to be surrounded with four layers of barbed wire and landmines, and set up machine-gun posts in every available window facing the square.

In the early stages of the defense, Pavlov discovered that an anti-tank rifle—a PTRS-41—he had mounted on the roof was particularly effective when used to ambush unsuspecting German tanks.

Lacking beds, the soldiers tried to sleep on insulation wool torn off pipes but were subjected to harassing fire every night in order to try to break their resistance.

Each time German infantry or tanks tried to cross the square and to close in on the house, Pavlov's men laid down a withering barrage of machine gun and AT rifle fire from the basement, the windows and the roof.

The inability of the German blitzkrieg to make headway against such grinding and self-sacrificial attrition warfare made the failure to capture Pavlov's House, despite numerous attempts, stand out as a symbol of resistance against a supposedly superior force.

[12] The last member of Pavlov's group, Kamoljon Turgunov from Turakurgan District, Namangan Region, Uzbekistan died on 16 March 2015, aged 93.