[Rick Lee]

Volgagrad may now span both sides of the river, but I'm pretty sure the vast majority of Stalingrad was on the eastern side. I haven't looked at an old map, but the old film footage showed most of the land west of the Volga to be fields with the city burning on the other side. And I know some of the footage was later staged, but when the Red Army pincers surrounded the Germans and Romanians and met up, it looked like they were out in the middle of nowhere.

BTW, if you ever want to see the German version of Saving Private Ryan, shown from a German perspective, rent Stalingrad. IIRC, the Germas actually executed some of their own for self-inflicted wounds to get on one of the evacuation planes. I knew a German guy who was there, was shot in the collar bone and made it out on the very last plane. I also knew a German who wasn't so lucky and didn't make it home from Siberia until 1952.