BlueBrixx Diorama: Battle of Stalingrad Set 104315

BlueBrixx's Diorama: Battle of Stalingrad is built from 2,667 blocks, measuring 33 × 28.5 × 33.5 cm assembled — a ruined urban scene with damaged buildings, vehicles and figures. Designed by Marco P., released 9 March 2022. No stickers or prints.

Why the model is a building and not a battlefield

Stalingrad is remembered as an enormous battle, and what makes it unlike almost any other is that it was fought indoors.

By October 1942 the front line ran through individual buildings. German soldiers called it Rattenkrieg — rat war — because the fighting was room by room, floor by floor, along corridors and through holes knocked in walls. A factory, a railway station or a grain silo could change hands several times in a day, and units measured their advance in metres.

The most-cited example is a four-storey apartment block near the Volga, held from late September 1942 for around two months by a small Soviet group under Sergeant Yakov Pavlov — perhaps two dozen men, resupplied at night through a trench, holding a single building against repeated attacks. It still stands, with part of the ruined wall preserved as a memorial.

So a diorama of Stalingrad is a diorama of architecture. That is the accurate way to model it, and it is why this set is buildings rather than vehicles.

The battle

From August 1942 to February 1943. The German Sixth Army was encircled in November and surrendered in two parts at the end of January and beginning of February. Casualty estimates on both sides together run to well over a million, including civilians; of roughly 91,000 Germans taken prisoner, around 5,000 came home.

It is generally taken as the point at which the war in the east turned.

Specifications

Pieces: 2,667 · Designer: Marco P. · No stickers
Model dimensions: 33 × 28.5 × 33.5 cm (13.0 × 11.2 × 13.2 in)