Stalingrad Assault

In a composite photo, Soviet soldiers advance through the ruins of Stalingrad. This photo, taken by Georgi Zelma (1906-1984) for Communist newspaper Izvestia, appears in several versions. Zelma admitted manipulating his photos for dramatic effect. The photo is composed of three photos; the Soviet soldiers, the ruins in the background, and the dead man in the center. Zelma spent much of the 200-day siege taking photos, but he was not well known in the West until after the Stalin era. The man in the lower left foreground is firing a Degtyarev DP-28 light machine gun. He also appears to be added into the photo. The other soldiers are carrying Mosin-Nagant rifles and PPSh-41 submachine guns. A Soviet squad advancing in broad daylight across an open expanse such as this would incur high casualties from German snipers. Large numbers of snipers on both sides were highly effective.