#tsaritsyn

A White armored train on the way to Tsaritsyn in June 1919.

June 30 1919, Tsaritsyn [Volgograd]--Denikin’s Volunteer Army had been concentrating on defeating Red forces in the Donbass in the spring; this allowed him to secure his base of operations and recruit a sizable force of Cossacks that had decidedly turned against the Reds due to the genocidal “decossackization” efforts of the Red Terror.  In June, Denikin was able to push out of the Donbass; on June 26, his forces took Kharkov from Makhno’s Black Army of anarchists (who had temporarily allied themselves with the Reds).  Meanwhile, forces under Wrangel pushed north towards Tsaritsyn on the Volga.  An attempt in mid-June to take the city with cavalry alone was beaten off, but his forces were able to seize and repair the railway line linking Tsaritsyn to the Kuban, allowing to bring up reinforcements and heavy equipment.

The reinforcements included six British tanks, which proved highly effective at scaring off the Red defenders and letting the Whites break into Tsaritsyn’s outer defenses.  For the final push on the city on June 30, however, the Whites had essentially run out of petrol for the tanks, and was only able to scrounge up enough for a single tank.  This proved enough, however, and the single tank, under the command of a British officer, led the White forces into the city.  Forty thousand Reds were taken prisoner, along with huge stores of materiel.

The capture of Tsaritsyn did come far later than many Whites would have liked, however.  The Don Cossacks had attempted to take the city in 1918, but were repulsed by Red forces under Stalin (an action memorialized under Stalin’s regime by renaming the city to Stalingrad).  In 1919, Wrangel had strongly urged an offensive towards Tsaritsyn in the spring, hoping to link up with Kolchak’s Ufa offensive; by the end of June, Kolchak’s forces had already been thrown back across the Urals.

Source: Battlefield 1 - Russian Revolution Trailer

http://civilization-history.ru/post/143207702271

http://civilization-history.ru/post/102529632286