Stalin prevented civilians from
leaving the city on the premise that their presence would encourage greater
resistance from the city's defenders[20]. Civilians, including women and
children, were put to work building trenchworks and protective fortifications.
A massive German air bombardment on August 23 caused a firestorm, killing
thousands and turning Stalingrad into a vast landscape of rubble and burnt
ruins[21]. Ninety percent of the living space in the Voroshilovskiy area was
destroyed[22][23].
The Soviet Air Force, the
Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily (VVS), was swept aside by the Luftwaffe. The VVS unit in
the immediate area lost 201 aircraft from 23-31 August, and despite meager
reinforcements of some 100 aircraft in August, it was with just 192 servicable
aircraft which included just 57 fighters[24]. The Soviets poured aerial
reinforcements into the Stalingrad area in late September but continued to
suffer appalling losses. The Luftwaffe had complete control of the skies.
The burden of the initial defense of
the city fell on the 1077th Anti-Aircraft (AA) Regiment, a unit made up mainly
of young women volunteers who had no training on engaging ground targets.
Despite this, and with no support available from other Soviet units, the AA
gunners stayed at their posts and took on the advancing Panzers. The German
16th Panzer Division reportedly had to fight the 1077th’s gunners "shot
for shot" until all 37 AA batteries were destroyed or overrun.[21][25] In
the beginning, the Soviets relied extensively on "Workers' militias"
composed of workers not directly involved in war production. For a short time,
tanks continued to be produced and then manned by volunteer crews of factory
workers. They were driven directly from the factory floor to the front line,
often without paint or even gunsights. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
By the end of August, Army Group South
(B) had finally reached the Volga, north of Stalingrad. Another advance to the
river south of the city followed. By September 1, the Soviets could only
reinforce and supply their forces in Stalingrad by perilous crossings of the
Volga, under constant bombardment by German artillery and aircraft.
On September 5, the Soviet 24th and
66th Armies organised a massive attack against XIV Panzerkorps. The Luftwaffe
helped the German forces repulse the offensive by subjecting Soviet artillery
positions and defensive lines to heavy attack. The Soviets were forced to
withdraw at midday after only a few hours. Of the 120 tanks the Soviets
committed, 30 were lost to air attack[26]. Soviet operations were constantly
hampered by the Luftwaffe. On 18 September, the Soviet 1st Guards and 24th Army
launched an offensive against VIII Armeekorps at Kotluban. VIII Fliegerkorps
dispatched wave after wave of Stuka dive-bombers to prevent a breakthrough. The
offensive was repulsed, and the Stukas claimed 41 of the 106 Soviet tanks
knocked out that morning while escorting Bf 109s destroyed 77 Soviet aircraft,
shattering their remaining strength[27]. Amid the debris of the wrecked city,
the Soviet 62nd and 64th Armies, which included the Soviet 13th Guards Rifle
Division, anchored their defense lines with strongpoints in houses and
factories. Fighting was fierce and desperate. The life expectancy of a
newly-arrived Soviet private in the city dropped to less than 24 hours, while
that of a Soviet officer was about 3 days. Stalin's Order No. 227 of July 27,
1942, decreed that all commanders who order unauthorized retreat should be
subjects of a military tribunal. “Not a step back!” was the slogan. The Germans
pushing forward into Stalingrad suffered heavy casualties.
German military doctrine was based on
the principle of combined-arms teams and close cooperation by tanks, infantry,
engineers, artillery, and ground-attack aircraft. To counter this, Soviet
commanders adopted the simple expedient of always keeping the front lines as
close together as physically possible. Chuikov called this tactic
"hugging" the Germans. This forced the German infantry to either
fight on their own or risk taking casualties from their own supporting fire; it
neutralized German close air support and weakened artillery support. Bitter
fighting raged for every street, every factory, every house, basement and
staircase. There were fire-fights in the sewers. The Germans, calling this
unseen urban warfare Rattenkrieg ("Rat War"), bitterly joked about
capturing the kitchen but still fighting for the living-room.
Fighting on Mamayev Kurgan, a
prominent, blood-soaked hill above the city, was particularly merciless. The
position changed hands many times.[28] During one Soviet counter-attack, the
Russians lost an entire division of 10,000 men in one day[citation needed].
This division was the 13th Guards Rifle Division, assigned to retake Mamayev
Kurgan and Railway Station No. 1, on September 13. Both objectives were
successful, only to temporary degrees. The railway station changed hands 14
times in 6 hours. By the following evening, the 13th Guards Rifle Division did
not exist, but its men had killed an approximately equal number of Germans.
According to Antony Beevor, two bodies were exhumed atop Mamayev Kurgan in 1944
during restoration, one German, one Soviet, who had apparently killed each
other by simultaneous bayonet impalement through the chests, and who had at
that moment been buried by an exploding artillery shell. At the Grain Silo, a
huge grain-processing complex dominated by a single enormous silo, combat was
so close that at times Soviet and German soldiers could hear each other
breathe. Combat raged there for weeks. When German soldiers finally took the
position, only forty Soviet bodies were found, though the Germans had thought
there to be many more Soviet soldiers present due to the ferocity of Soviet
resistance. The Soviets burned the heaps of grain as they retreated.[who?] In
another part of the city, a Soviet platoon under the command of Yakov Pavlov
turned an apartment building into an impenetrable fortress. The building, later
called “Pavlov's House,” oversaw a square in the city center. The soldiers
surrounded it with minefields, set up machine-gun positions at the windows, and
breached the walls in the basement for better communications[21]. They were not
relieved, and not significantly reinforced, for two months. Well after the
Battle, Chuikov liked to joke, perhaps accurately, that more Germans died
trying to capture Pavlov's House than died capturing Paris. According to
Beevor, after each wave, throughout the second month, of the Germans' repeated,
persistent assaults against the building, the Soviets had to run out and kick
down the piles of German corpses in order for the machine and anti-tank gunners
in the building to have clear firing lines across the square. Sgt. Pavlov was
awarded the "Hero of the Soviet Union" for his actions.
With no end in sight, the Germans
started transferring heavy artillery to the city, including the gigantic 800 mm
railroad gun nicknamed Dora. The Germans made no effort to send a force across
the Volga, allowing the Soviets to build up a large number of artillery
batteries there. Soviet artillery on the eastern bank continued to bombard the
German positions. The Soviet defenders used the resulting ruins as defensive
positions. German tanks became useless amid heaps of rubble up to 8 meters
high. When they were able to move forward, they came under Soviet antitank fire
from wrecked buildings.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Soviet snipers also successfully used
the ruins to inflict heavy casualties on the Germans. The most successful
sniper was Vasily Zaytsev who is also the most famous [29][30]. Zaytsev was
credited with 242 confirmed kills during the battle and a grand total of more
than 300; he was also credited with killing a specially-sent, though
potentially fictional German sniper known by the names Erwin König and Heinz
Thorvald. Zaitsev fixed a standard Moisin-Nagant rifle scope to a Soviet 20mm
anti-tank rifle for use against Germans hiding behind walls under window sills.
The 20mm rounds easily penetrated the brick and the soldier behind it.
For both Stalin and Hitler, the battle
of Stalingrad became a prestige issue in addition to the actual strategic
significance of the battle. The Soviet command moved the Red Army's strategic
reserves from the Moscow area to the lower Volga, and transferred aircraft from
the entire country to the Stalingrad region.
The strain on both military commanders
was immense: Paulus developed an uncontrollable tic in his eye, which
eventually afflicted the left side of his face, while Chuikov experienced an
outbreak of eczema that required him to bandage his hands completely. Troops on
both sides faced the constant strain of close-range combat.
Attack on a factory in Stalingrad.
Attack on a factory in Stalingrad.
Determined to crush Soviet resistance,
Luftflotte 4s Stukawaffe flew 700 individual sorties against Soviet positions
at the Dzherzhinskiy Tractor Factory on 5 October. Several Soviet regiments
were wiped out; the entire staff of the Soviet 339th Infantry Regiment were
killed the following morning during an air raid[31].
By mid-October, the Luftwaffe
intensified its efforts against remaining Red Army positions holding the west
bank. By now, Soviet aerial resistance had ceased to be effective. Luftflotte 4
flew 2,000 sorties on 14 October and 600 tons of bombs were dropped while
German infantry surrounded the three factories. Stukageschwader 1, 2, and 77
had silenced Soviet artillery on the eastern bank of the Volga to a large
degree before turning their attention to the shipping that was once again
trying to reinforce the narrowing Soviet pockets of resistance. The 62nd Army
had been cut in two, and, due to intensive air attack against its supply
ferries, were now being paralyzed.
With the Soviets forced into a
1,000-yard (910 m) strip of land on the western bank of the Volga, over 1,208
Stuka missions were flown in an effort to eliminate them[32]. Despite the heavy
air bombardment (Stalingrad suffered heavier bombardment than that inflicted on
Sedan and Sevastopol), the Soviet 62 Army, with just 47,000 men and 19 tanks,
prevented the VI Armee and IV Panzerarmee from wrestling the west bank out of
Soviet control.
The Luftwaffe remained in command of
the sky into early November, and Soviet aerial resistance during the day was
nonexistent, but after flying 20,000 individual sorties, its original strength
of 1,600 serviceable aircraft had fallen 40% to 950. The Kampfwaffe (bomber
force) had been hardest hit, having only 232 out of a force of 480 left[33].
Despite enjoying qualitative superiority against the VVS and possessing eighty
percent of the Luftwaffe's resources on the Eastern Front, Luftflotte 4 could
not prevent Soviet aerial power from growing. By the time of the
counter-offensive, the Soviets were superior numerically.
The Soviet bomber force, the Aviatsiya
Dalnego Destviya (ADD), having taken crippling losses over the past 18 months,
was restricted to flying at night. The Soviets flew 11,317 sorties in this
manner, from 17 July to 19 November over Stalingrad and the Don-bend sector.
These raids caused little damage and were of nuisance value only.[34][35] The
situation for the Luftwaffe was now becoming increasingly difficult. On 8
November substantial units from Luftflotte 4 were removed to combat the
American landings in North Africa. The German air-arm found itself spread thin
across Europe, and struggling to maintain its strength in the other southern
sectors of the Soviet-German front[36].
After three months of carnage and slow
and costly advance, the Germans finally reached the river banks, capturing 90%
of the ruined city and splitting the remaining Soviet forces into two narrow
pockets. In addition, ice-floes on the Volga now prevented boats and tugs from
supplying the Soviet defenders across the river. Nevertheless, the fighting,
especially on the slopes of Mamayev Kurgan and inside the factory area in the
northern part of the city, continued as fiercely as ever. The battles for the
Red October Steel Factory, the Dzerzhinsky tractor factory, and the Barrikady
gun factory became world famous. While Soviet soldiers defended their positions
and took the Germans under fire, factory workers repaired damaged Soviet tanks
and other weapons close to the battlefield, sometimes on the battlefield
itself. These civilians also volunteered as tank crews to replace the dead and
wounded, though they had no experience or training in operating tanks during
combat.[citation needed]
Recognizing that German troops were
ill prepared for offensive operations during the winter, the Stavka decided to
conduct a number of offensive operations of its own to exploit this weakness,
with the recognition that most of the German troops were redeployed elsewhere
on the southern sector of the Eastern Front.
Seen in post-war history as a pivotal
strategic period of war that began the Second Period of the Great Patriotic War
(19 November 1942 - 31 December 1943), these operations would open the Winter
Campaign of 1942-1943 (19 November 1942 - 3 March 1943) taking on the strategic
and operational planning structure below, employing several Fronts, and some 15
Armies.
Stalingrad Strategic Offensive
Operation 19 November 1942 - 2 February 1943 Southwestern, Don, Stalingrad
Fronts
* Operation Uranus 19 November 1942 - 30
November 1942
o
Southwestern Front 1st Guards, 21st, 5th Tank, 17th Air Armies, and the 25th
Tank Corps
o Don Front
24th, 65th, 66th, 16th Air Armies
o Stalingrad
Front 28th, 51st, 57th, 62nd, 64th, 8th Air Armies
* Kotelnikovo Offensive Operation 12 December
1942 - 31 December 1942
o Stalingrad Front
2nd Guards, 5th Shock, 51st, 8th Air Armies
* Middle Don Offensive Operation (Operation
Little Saturn) 16 December 1942 - 30 December 1942
o
Southwestern Front
o Don Front
* Operation Koltso (English: Operation Ring) 10
January 1943 - 2 February 1943
o Don Front
21st, 24th, 57th, 62nd, 64th, 65th, 66th, 16th Air Armies
The German offensive to take
Stalingrad had been halted by a combination of stubborn Red Army resistance
inside the city and local weather conditions. The Soviet counter-offensive
planning used deceptive measures that eventually trapped and destroyed the 6th
Army and other Axis forces around the city, becoming the second large scale
defeat of the German Army during Second World War.[37] During the siege, the
German, Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian armies protecting Army Group B's
flanks had pressed their headquarters for support.[38] The Hungarian Second
Army, consisting of mainly ill-equipped and ill-trained units, was given the
task of defending a 200 km section of the front north of Stalingrad between the
Italian Army and Voronezh. This resulted in a very thin line, with some sectors
where 1–2 km stretches were being defended by a single platoon. Soviet forces
held several bridgeheads on the western bank of the river and presented a
potentially serious threat to Army Group B. http://web.mac.com/lousheehan
Similarly, on the southern flank of
the Stalingrad sector the front south-west of Katelnikovo was held only by the
Romanian VII Corps, and beyond it a single German 16th Motorized Infantry
Division.
However, Hitler was so focused on the
city itself, that requests from the flanks for support were refused. The chief
of the Army General Staff, Franz Halder, expressed concerns about Hitler's
preoccupation with the city, pointing at the Germans' weak flanks, claiming
that if the situation on the flanks was not rectified then 'there would be a
disaster'. Hitler had claimed to Halder that Stalingrad would be captured and
the weakened flanks would be held with 'national socialist ardour, clearly I
cannot expect this of you (Halder)'. Halder was then replaced in mid October
with General Kurt Zeitzler.
In autumn the Soviet generals
Aleksandr Vasilyevskiy and Georgy Zhukov, responsible for strategic planning in
the Stalingrad area, concentrated massive Soviet forces in the steppes to the
north and south of the city. The German northern flank was particularly vulnerable,
since it was defended by Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian units that suffered
from inferior training, equipment, and morale when compared with their German
counterparts. This weakness was known and exploited by the Soviets, who
preferred to face off against non-German troops whenever it was possible, just
as the British preferred attacking Italian troops, instead of German ones,
whenever possible, in North Africa. The plan was to keep pinning the Germans
down in the city, then punch through the overstretched and weakly defended
German flanks and surround the Germans inside Stalingrad. During the
preparations for the attack, Marshal Zhukov personally visited the front, which
was rare for such a high-ranking general. http://louis_j_sheehan_esquire.blogs.friendster.com/my_blog
The operation was code-named “Uranus” and launched in
conjunction with Operation Mars, which was directed at Army Group Center. The
plan was similar to Zhukov's victory at Khalkin Gol three years before, where
he had sprung a double envelopment and destroyed the 23rd Division of the
Japanese army. Lou Sheehan
On November 19, the Red Army unleashed
Uranus. The attacking Soviet units under the command of Gen. Nikolay Vatutin
consisted of three complete armies, the 1st Guards Army, 5th Tank Army, and
21st Army, including a total of 18 infantry divisions, eight tank brigades, two
motorized brigades, six cavalry divisions and one anti-tank brigade. The preparations
for the attack could be heard by the Romanians, who continued to push for
reinforcements, only to be refused again. Thinly spread, outnumbered and poorly
equipped, the Romanian Third Army, which held the northern flank of German
Sixth Army, was shattered. On November 20, a second Soviet offensive (two
armies) was launched to the south of Stalingrad, against points held by the
Romanian IV Corps. The Romanian forces, made up primarily of infantry,
collapsed almost immediately. Soviet forces raced west in a pincer movement,
and met two days later near the town of Kalach, sealing the ring around
Stalingrad. The Russians later reconstructed the link up for use as propaganda,
and the piece of footage achieved worldwide fame.
Stalingrad Pocket
Because of the Soviet pincer attack,
about 230,000 German and Romanian soldiers Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire, as well
as the Croatian 369th Reinforced Infantry Regiment http://www.myspace.com/louis_j_sheehan_esquire
and other volunteer subsidiary troops, found themselves
trapped inside the resulting pocket. Inside the pocket (German: kessel) there
also were the surviving Soviet civilians—around 10,000,[21] and several thousand
Soviet soldiers the Germans had taken captive during the battle. Not all German
soldiers from Sixth Army were trapped; 50,000 were brushed aside outside the
pocket. The encircling Red Army units immediately formed two defensive fronts:
a circumvallation facing inward, to defend against any breakout attempt, and a
contravallation facing outward, to defend against any relief attempt.
Adolf Hitler had declared in a public
speech (in the Berlin Sportpalast) on September 30 that the German army would
never leave the city. At a meeting shortly after the Soviet encirclement,
German army chiefs pushed for an immediate breakout to a new line on the west
of the Don. But Hitler was at his Bavarian retreat of Obersalzberg in
Berchtesgaden with the head of the Luftwaffe, Göring. When asked by Hitler, Göring
replied, after being convinced by Hans Jeschonnek[42], that the Luftwaffe could
supply the Sixth Army with an "air bridge". This would allow the
Germans in the city to fight on while a relief force was assembled.
A similar plan had been used successfully
a year earlier at the Demyansk Pocket, albeit on a much smaller scale: it had
been only an army corps at Demyansk as opposed to an entire army. Also, Soviet
fighter forces had improved considerably in both quality and quantity in the
intervening year. But the mention of the successful Demyansk air supply
operation reinforced Hitler's own views, and was endorsed by Hermann Göring
several days later.
The head of the Fourth Air Fleet
(Luftflotte 4), Wolfram von Richthofen, tried to have this decision overturned
without success. The Sixth Army would be supplied by air. The Sixth Army was
the largest unit of this type in the world, almost twice as large as a regular
German army. Also trapped in the pocket was a corps of the Fourth Panzer Army.
It should have been clear that supplying the pocket by air was impossible --
the maximum 117.5 tons they could deliver a day was less than the 800 tons/day
needed by the pocket[43]. To supplement the limited number of Junkers Ju 52
transports, the Germans equipped aircraft wholly inadequate for the role, such
as the bomber He-177 (some bombers performed adequately -- the Heinkel He-111
proved to be quite capable and was a lot faster than the Ju 52). But Hitler
backed Göring's plan and reiterated his order of "no surrender" to
his trapped armies.
The air supply mission failed.
Appalling weather conditions, technical failures, heavy Soviet anti-aircraft
fire and fighter interceptions led to the loss of 488 German aircraft. The
Luftwaffe failed to achieve even the maximum supply capacity of 117 tons that
it was capable of. An average of 94 tons of supplies per day was delivered to
the trapped German Army. Even then, it was often inadequate or unnecessary; one
aircraft arrived with 20 tonnes of Vodka and summer uniforms, completely
useless in their current situation[44]. The transport aircraft that did land
safely were used to evacuate technical specialists and sick or wounded men from
the besieged enclave (some 42,000 were evacuated in all). The Sixth Army slowly
starved. Pilots were shocked to find the troops assigned to offloading the
planes too exhausted and hungry to unload food. General Zeitzler, moved by the
troops' plight at Stalingrad, began to limit himself to their slim rations at
meal times. After a few weeks of such a diet he'd grown so emaciated that
Hitler, annoyed, personally ordered him to start eating regular meals again.
The expense to the Transportgruppen
was heavy. Some 266 Junkers Ju 52s were destroyed, one-third of the fleets
strength on the Soviet-German front. The He 111 gruppen lost 165 aircraft in
transport operations. Other losses included 42 Junkers Ju 86s, nine Fw 200
"Condors", five He 177 bombers and a single Ju 290. The Luftwaffe
also lost close to 1,000 highly experienced bomber crew personnel. http://www.myspace.com/louis_j_sheehan_esquire
So heavy were the Luftwaffe's losses
that four of Luftflotte 4s transport units (KGrzbV 700, KGrzbV 900, I./KGrzbV 1
and II./KGzbV 1) were "formallydissolved" http://members.greenpeace.org/blog/purposeforporpoise
Operation Saturn
Main articles: Operation Saturn and Operation
Wintergewitter
Soviet forces consolidated their
positions around Stalingrad, and fierce fighting to shrink the pocket began.
Operation Wintergewitter (Operation Winter Storm), a German attempt to relieve
the trapped army from the South, was successfully fended off by the Soviets in
December. The full impact of the harsh Russian winter set in. The Volga froze
solid, allowing the Soviets to supply their forces more easily. The trapped
Germans rapidly ran out of heating fuel and medical supplies, and thousands
started to die of frostbite, malnutrition, and disease.
On December 16, the Soviets launched a
second offensive, Operation Saturn, which attempted to punch through the Axis
army on the Don and take Rostov. If successful, this offensive would have
trapped the remainder of Army Group South, one third of the entire German Army
in Russia, in the Caucasus. The Germans set up a "mobile defense" in
which small units would hold towns until supporting armor could arrive. The
Soviets never got close to Rostov, but the fighting forced von Manstein to
extract Army Group A from the Caucasus and re-establish the frontline some 250
km away from the city. The Tatsinskaya Raid also caused significant losses to
Luftwaffe’s transport fleet. The Sixth Army now was beyond all hope of German
reinforcement. The German troops in Stalingrad were not told this however, and
continued to believe that reinforcements were on their way. Some German
officers requested that Paulus defy Hitler’s orders to stand fast and instead
attempt to break out of the Stalingrad pocket. Paulus refused, as he abhorred
the thought of disobeying orders. Also, whereas a breakout may have been
possible in the first few weeks, at this late stage, Sixth Army was short of
the fuel required for such a breakout. The German soldiers would have faced
great difficulty breaking through the Soviet lines on foot in harsh winter
conditions. http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire.blog.ca
The Germans inside the pocket
retreated from the suburbs of Stalingrad to the city itself. The loss of the
two airfields at Pitomnik on 16 January and Gumrak on the 25 January
http://louis1j1sheehan.usmeant an end to air supplies and to the evacuation of the wounded.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Other sources indicate Luftwaffe's last flight from Gumrak
was night 21st to 22nd of January 1943. http://louis6j6sheehan.blogspot.com
. Third and last serviceable runway
was Stalingradskaja flight school which reportedly had last Luftwaffe landings
and takeoff night 22nd to 23rd of January 1943. [50]. After daytime 23rd of Jan
1943 there were no more reported landings except for continuous air drops of
ammunition and food until the end. The Germans were now not only starving, but
running out of ammunition. Nevertheless they continued to resist stubbornly,
partly because they believed the Soviets would execute those who surrendered.
In particular, the so-called "HiWis", Soviet citizens fighting for the
Germans, had no illusions about their fate if captured. The Soviets, in turn,
were initially surprised by the large number of German forces they had trapped,
and had to reinforce their encircling forces. Bloody urban warfare began again
in Stalingrad, but this time it was the Germans who were pushed back to the
banks of the Volga. They fortified their positions in the factory districts and
the Soviets encountered almost the same tooth-and-nail ferocity that they
themselves displayed a month earlier. The Germans adapted a simple defense of
fixing wire nets over all windows to protect themselves from grenades. The
Soviets responded with the simple solution of fixing fish hooks to the grenades
so they stuck to the nets when thrown. The Germans now had no usable tanks in
the city. Those tanks which still functioned could at best be used as
stationary cannons. The Soviets did not bother employing tanks in areas where
the urban destruction ruined their mobility. A Soviet envoy made Paulus a
generous surrender offer—that if he surrendered within 24 hours, the Germans
would receive a guarantee of safety for all prisoners, medical care for the
German sick and wounded, a promise that prisoners would be allowed to keep
their personal belongings, "normal" food rations, and repatriation to
whatever country they wished to go to after the war—but Paulus, ordered not to
surrender by Adolf Hitler, did not reply, ensuring the destruction of the 6th
Army. http://www.friendster.com/louis4j4sheehan4esquire44
Hitler promoted Friedrich Paulus to
Generalfeldmarschall on January 30, 1943, (the 10th anniversary of Hitler
coming to power). Since no German Field Marshal had ever been taken prisoner,
Hitler assumed that Paulus would fight on or take his own life. Nevertheless,
when Soviet forces closed in on Paulus' headquarters in the ruined GUM
department store the next day, Paulus surrendered. The remnants of the German
forces in Stalingrad surrendered on February 2; 91,000 tired, ill, and starving
Germans were taken captive. To the delight of the Soviet forces and the dismay
of the Third Reich, the prisoners included 22 generals. Hitler was furious at
the Field Marshal’s surrender and confided that "Paulus stood at the
doorstep of eternal glory but made an about-face". According to the German
documentary film Stalingrad, over 11,000 German and Axis soldiers refused to
lay down their arms at the official surrender, seemingly believing that
fighting to the death was better than what seemed like a slow end in Soviet camps.
These forces continued to resist until early March 1943, hiding in cellars and
sewers of the city with their numbers being diminished at the same time by
Soviet forces clearing the city of remaining enemy resistance. By March, what
remained of these forces were small and isolated pockets of resistance that
surrendered. According to Soviet intelligence documents shown in the
documentary, 2,418 of the men were killed, and 8,646 were captured. http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com
Only 5,000 of the 91,000 German
prisoners of war survived their captivity and returned home. Already weakened
by disease, starvation and lack of medical care during the encirclement, they
were sent to labour camps all over the Soviet Union, where most of them died of
overwork and malnutrition. A handful of senior officers were taken to Moscow
and used for propaganda purposes and some of them joined National Committee for
a Free Germany. Some, including Paulus, signed anti-Hitler statements which
were broadcast to German troops. General Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach offered
to raise an anti-Hitler army from the Stalingrad survivors, but the Soviets did
not accept this offer. It was not until 1955 that the last of the handful of
survivors were repatriated.
The German public was not officially
told of the disaster until the end of January 1943, though positive reports in
the German propaganda media about the battle had stopped in the weeks before
the announcement. It was not the first major setback of the German military,
but the crushing defeat at Stalingrad was unmatched in scale. On February 18,
the minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, gave his famous Sportpalast speech
in Berlin, encouraging the Germans to accept a total war which would claim all
resources and efforts from the entire population.
The battle of Stalingrad was one of
the largest battles in human history. It raged for 199 days. Numbers of
casualties are difficult to compile due to the vast scope of the battle and the
fact that the Soviet government did not allow estimates to be made, for fear
the cost would be shown to be too high. In its initial phases, the Germans
inflicted heavy casualties on Soviet formations; but the Soviet encirclement by
punching through the German flank, mainly held by Romanian troops, effectively
besieged the remainder of German Sixth Army, which had taken heavy casualties
in street fighting prior to this. At different times the Germans had held up to
90% of the city, yet the Soviet soldiers and officers fought on fiercely. Some
elements of the German Fourth Panzer Army also suffered casualties in
operations around Stalingrad during the Soviet counter offensive. http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-jmbPCHg9dLPh1gHoZxLG.GpS?list=1
Various scholars have estimated the
Axis suffered 850,000 casualties of all types (wounded, killed, captured...etc)
among all branches of the German armed forces and its allies, many of which were
POWs who died in Soviet captivity between 1943 and 1955,: 400,000 Germans,
200,000 Romanians, 130,000 Italians, and 120,000 Hungarians were killed,
wounded or captured. http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com
Of the 91,000 German POW's taken at Stalingrad 27,000 died
within weeks http://www.soulcast.com/post/show/132346
and only 5,000 returned to Germany in 1955. The remainder of
the POWs died in Soviet captivity http://sheehan.myblogsite.com
. In the whole Stalingrad area the
Axis lost 1.5 million killed, wounded or captured.
http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.wordpress.com50,000 ex-Soviets Hiwis (local volunteers incorporated into the
German forces in supporting capacities) were killed or captured by the Red
Army. According to archival figures, the Red Army suffered a total of 1,129,619
total casualties Louis Joseph Sheehan, Esquire
; 478,741 men killed and captured and
650,878 wounded. These numbers are for the whole Stalingrad Area; in the city
itself 750,000 were killed, captured, or wounded. Also, more than 40,000 Soviet
civilians died in Stalingrad and its suburbs during a single week of aerial
bombing as the German Fourth Panzer and Sixth armies approached the city; the
total number of civilians killed in the regions outside the city is unknown. In
all, the battle resulted in an estimated total of 1.7 million to 2 million Axis
and Soviet casualties.
Besides being a turning point in the
war, Stalingrad was also revealing of the discipline and determination of both
the German Wehrmacht and the Soviet Red Army. The Soviets first defended
Stalingrad against a fierce German onslaught. So great were Soviet losses that
at times, the life expectancy of a newly arrived soldier was less than a day, Louis
Joseph Sheehan
and the life expectancy of a Soviet officer was three days.
Their sacrifice is immortalized by a soldier of General Rodimtsev, about to
die, who scratched on the wall of the main railway station (which changed hands
15 times during the battle) “Rodimtsev’s Guardsmen fought and died here for
their Motherland.” http://louis-j-sheehan.us/ImageGallery
For the heroism of the Soviet
defenders of Stalingrad, the city was awarded the title Hero City in 1945.
After the war, in the 1960s, a colossal monument, Mother Motherland was erected
on Mamayev Kurgan, the hill overlooking the city. The statue forms part of a
War memorial complex which includes ruined walls deliberately left the way they
were after the battle. The Grain Silo, as well as Pavlov's House, the apartment
building whose defenders eventually held out for two months until they were
relieved, can still be visited. Even today, one may find bones and rusty metal
splinters on Mamayev Kurgan, symbols of both the human suffering during the
battle and the successful yet costly resistance against the German invasion.
On the other side, the German Army
showed remarkable discipline after being surrounded. It was the first time that
it had operated under adverse conditions on such a scale.
Hitler, acting on Göring's advice, ordered
that the German 6th Army be supplied by air; the Luftwaffe had successfully
accomplished an aerial resupply in January 1942, as a German garrison had been
surrounded in Demyansk for four months. In this case, however, there were
obvious differences. The encircled forces at Demyansk were a much smaller
garrison, while an entire army was trapped in Stalingrad.
During the latter part of the siege,
short of food and clothing, many German soldiers starved or froze to death.[21]
Yet, discipline was maintained until the very end, when resistance no longer
served any useful purpose. Friedrich Paulus obeyed Hitler's orders, against
many of Hitler's top generals' counsel and advice including that of von
Manstein, and did not attempt to break out of the city. German ammunition,
supplies, and food became all too scarce.
Paulus knew that the airlift had
failed and that Stalingrad was lost. He asked for permission to surrender to
save the life of his troops but Hitler refused and instead promoted him to the
rank of Generalfeldmarschall. No German officer of this rank had ever
surrendered, and the implication was clear. If Paulus surrendered, he would
shame himself and would become the highest ranking German officer ever to be
captured. Hitler believed that Paulus would either fight to the last man or
commit suicide. Choosing to live, Paulus surrendered, commenting that: "I
have no intention of shooting myself for that Bavarian corporal".
The Order of Cistercians (OCist;
Latin: Cistercienses), sometimes called the White Monks (from the colour of the
habit, over which a black scapular or apron is sometimes worn) is a Roman
Catholic religious order of enclosed monks. The first Cistercian abbey was
founded by Robert of Molesme in 1098, at Cîteaux Abbey. Two others, Saint
Alberic of Citeaux and Saint Stephen Harding, are considered co-founders of the
order, and Bernard of Clairvaux is associated with the fast spread of the order
during the 12th century.
The keynote of Cistercian life was a
return to a literal observance of the Rule of St Benedict, rejecting the
developments the Benedictines had undergone, and tried to reproduce the life
exactly as it had been in Saint Benedict's time, indeed in various points they
went beyond it in austerity. The most striking feature in the reform was the
return to manual labour, and especially to field-work, which became a special
characteristic of Cistercian life. The Cistercians became the main force of
technological diffusion in medieval Europe.
The Cistercians were badly affected by
the Protestant Reformation, the Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry
VIII, the French Revolution, and the revolutions of the 18th century, but some
survived and the order recovered in the 19th century. In 1892 certain abbeys
formed a new Order called Trappists (Ordo Cisterciensium Strictioris
Observantiae - OCSO), which today exists as an order distinct from the Common
Observance.
The founders of Cîteaux: Saints
Robert, Alberic, and Stephen Harding venerating the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The founders of Cîteaux: Saints
Robert, Alberic, and Stephen Harding venerating the Blessed Virgin Mary.
In 1098 a band of 21 Cluniac monks
left their abbey of Molesme in Burgundy and followed their Abbot, Robert of
Molesme (1027–1111), to establish a new monastery. The group was looking to
cultivate a monastic community in which monks could carry out their lives in
stricter observance of the Rule of St Benedict. On March 21, 1098, the small
faction acquired a plot of marsh land just south of Dijon called Cîteaux (Latin:
"Cistercium"), given to them expressly for the purpose of founding
their Novum Monasterium. http://louisjsheehanesquire.wetpaint.com
During the first year the monks set
about constructing lodging areas and farmed the lands. In the interim, there
was a small chapel nearby which they used for Mass. Soon the monks in Molesme
began petitioning Pope Urban II to return their abbot to them. The case was
passed down to Archbishop Hugues who passed the issue on down to the local
bishops. Robert was then instructed to return to his position as abbot in
Molesme, where he remained for the rest of his days. A good number of the monks
who helped found Cîteaux returned with him to Molesme, so that only a few remained.
The remaining monks elected Prior Alberic as their abbot, under whose
leadership the abbey would find its grounding. Robert had been the idealist of
the order, and Alberic was their builder.
Upon assuming the role of abbot,
Alberic moved the site of the fledgling community near a brook a short distance
away from the original site. Alberic discontinued the use of Benedictine black
garments in the abbey and clothed the monks in white cowls (undyed wool). He
returned the community to the original Benedictine ideal of work and prayer,
dedicated to the ideal of charity and self sustenance. Alberic also forged an
alliance with the Dukes of Burgundy, working out a deal with Duke Odo the
donation of a vineyard (Meursault) as well as stones with which they built
their church. The church was sanctified and dedicated to The Virgin Mary on
November 16, 1106 by the Bishop of Chalon sur Saône.[2]
On January 26, 1108 Alberic died and
was soon succeeded by Stephen Harding, the man responsible for carrying the
order into its crucial phase. Stephen created the Cistercian constitution,
called Carta Caritatis (the Charter of Charity). Stephen also acquired farms
for the abbey in order to ensure its survival and ethic, the first of which was
Clos Vougeot. He handed over the west wing of the monastery to a large group of
lay brethren to cultivate the farms.
The lines of the Cistercian polity
were adumbrated by Alberic, but it received its final form at a meeting of the
abbots in the time of Stephen Harding, when was drawn up the Carta
Caritatis,[3][4] a document which arranged the relations between the various
houses of the Cistercian order, and exercised a great influence also upon the
future course of western monachism. From one point of view, it may be regarded
as a compromise between the primitive Benedictine system, in which each abbey
was autonomous and isolated, and the complete centralization of Cluny, where
the abbot of Cluny was the only true superior in the body.
On the one hand, Citeaux maintained
the independent organic life of the houses: each abbey had its own abbot
elected by its own monks, its own community belonging to itself and not to the
order in general, and its own property and finances administered without
interference from outside. On the other hand, all the abbeys were subjected to
the general chapter, which met yearly at Cîteaux and consisted of the abbots
only. The abbot of Cîteaux was the president of the chapter and of the order,
and the visitor of each and every house. He had a predominant influence and the
power of enforcing everywhere exact conformity to Cîteaux in all details of the
exterior life observance, chant, and customs. The principle was that Cîteaux
should always be the model to which all the other houses had to conform. In
case of any divergence of view at the chapter, the side taken by the abbot of
Cîteaux was always to prevail.
The spread of the Cistercians from
their original sites during the Middle Ages
The spread of the Cistercians from
their original sites during the Middle Ages
By 1111 the ranks had grown
sufficiently at Cîteaux, and Stephen sent a group of 12 monks to start a
"daughter house", a new community dedicated to the same ideals of the
strict observance of Saint Benedict. It was built in Chalon sur Saône in La Ferté
on May 13, 1113.[6] Also in 1113, Bernard of Clairvaux arrived at Cîteaux with
30 others to join the monastery. In 1114 another daughter house was founded,
Pontigny Abbey. Then, in 1115 Bernard founded Clairvaux, followed by Morimond
in the same year. Later, Preuilly, La Cour-Dieu, Bouras, Cadouin and Fontenay
were established. At Stephen's death (1134) there were over 30 Cistercian
daughter houses; at Bernard's death (1154) there were over 280; and by the end
of the century there were over 500 daughter houses. Meanwhile, the Cistercian
influence in the Roman Catholic Church more than kept pace with this material
expansion, so that St Bernard saw one of his monks ascend the papal chair as
Pope Eugene III.
There were 333 Cistercian abbeys in
1152.[7] By the end of the 13th century, the Cistercian houses numbered 500.[8]
At the order's height in the 15th century, it would have nearly 750 houses.
Nearly half of the houses had been
founded, directly or indirectly, from Clairvaux, so great was St Bernard's influence
and prestige. Indeed he has come almost to be regarded as the founder of the
Cistercians, who have often been called Bernardines. The order spread all over
western Europe, chiefly in France, but also in Germany, Bohemia, Moravia,
Silesia, Croatia, England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Italy (where the Certosa
di Pavia is their most famous edifice), Sicily, Poland, Hungary, Romania
(Kerz), Norway, Sweden, Spain and Portugal (where some of the houses, like the
Monastery of Alcobaça, were of almost incredible magnificence). One of the most
important libraries of the Cistercians was in Salem, Germany.
The keynote of Cistercian life was a
return to a literal observance of St Benedict's rule: how literal may be seen
from the controversy between St. Bernard and Peter the Venerable, abbot of
Cluny.[9] The Cistercians rejected alike all mitigations and all developments,
and tried to reproduce the life exactly as it had been in St Benedict's time,
indeed in various points they went beyond it in austerity. The most striking
feature in the reform was the return to manual labour, and especially to
field-work, which became a special characteristic of Cistercian life.
To make time for this work they cut
away the accretions to the divine office which had been steadily growing during
three centuries, and which in Cluny and the other Benedictine monasteries had
come to exceed greatly in length the regular canonical office: one only of
these accretions did they retain, the daily recitation of the Office of the
Dead.
It was as agriculturists and horse and
cattle breeders that, after the first blush of their success and before a
century had passed, the Cistercians exercised their chief influence on the
progress of civilisation in the later Middle Ages: they were the great farmers
of those days, and many of the improvements in the various farming operations
were introduced and propagated by them, and this is where the importance of
their extension in northern Europe is to be estimated.
The Cistercians at the beginning
renounced all sources of income arising from benefices, tithes, tolls and
rents, and depended for their income wholly on the land. This developed an
organised system for selling their farm produce, cattle and horses, and notably
contributed to the commercial progress of the countries of western Europe. With
the foundation of Waverley Abbey in 1128, the Cistercians spread to England,
and many of the most beautiful monastic buildings of the country, beautiful in
themselves and beautiful in their sites, were Cistercian, as Tintern Abbey,
Rievaulx Abbey, Byland Abbey and Fountains Abbey. A hundred were established in
England in the next hundred years, and then only one more up to the
Dissolution.[11] Thus by the middle of the 13th century, the export of wool by
the English Cistercians had become a feature in the commerce of the country.
In Spain, one of the earliest
surviving Cistercian houses - the Real Monasterio de Nuestra Senora de Rueda in
the Aragon region - is a good example of early hydrologic engineering, using a
large waterwheel for power and an elaborate hydrological circulation system for
central heating.
Farming operations on so extensive a
scale could not be carried out by the monks alone, whose choir and religious
duties took up a considerable portion of their time; and so from the beginning
the system of lay brothers was introduced on a large scale. The lay brothers
were recruited from the peasantry and were simple uneducated men, whose
function consisted in carrying out the various fieldworks and plying all sorts
of useful trades: they formed a body of men who lived alongside of the choir
monks, but separate from them, not taking part in the canonical office, but
having their own fixed round of prayer and religious exercises.
A lay brother was never ordained, and
never held any office of superiority. It was by this system of lay brothers
that the Cistercians were able to play their distinctive part in the progress
of European civilisation. But it often happened that the number of lay brothers
became excessive and out of proportion to the resources of the monasteries,
there being sometimes as many as 200, or even 300, in a single abbey. On the
other hand, at any rate in some countries, the system of lay brothers in course
of time worked itself out; thus in England by the close of the 14th century it
had shrunk to relatively small proportions, and in the 15th century the régime
of the English Cistercian houses tended to approximate more and more to that of
the Black Monks.
The first Cistercian abbey in Bohemia
was founded in Sedlec near Kutná Hora in 1158. In the late 13th and early 14th
centuries, the Cistercian order played an essential role in the politics and
diplomacy of the late Přemyslid and early Luxembourg state, as reflected in the Chronicon
Aulae Regiae, a chronicle written by Otto and Peter of Zittau, abbots of the
Zbraslav abbey (Latin: Aula Regia, ie, Royal Hall; today situated on the
southern outskirts of Prague), founded in 1292 by the king of Bohemia and
Poland, Wenceslas II. The order also played the main role in the early Gothic
art of Bohemia; one of the outstanding pieces of Cistercian architecture is the
Alt-neu Shul, Prague.
Knowledge of certain technological
advances was transmitted by the order, and the Cistercians are known to have
been skilled metallurgists.
According to Jean Gimpel, their high level of industrial technology
facilitated the diffusion of new techniques: "Every monastery had a model
factory, often as large as the church and only several feet away, and
waterpower drove the machinery of the various industries located on its
floor." Iron ore deposits were often donated to the monks along with
forges to extract the iron, and within time surpluses were being offered for
sale. The Cistercians became the leading iron producers in Champagne, France,
from the mid-13th century to the 17th century, also using the phosphate-rich
slag from their furnaces as an agricultural fertiliser.
For a hundred years, till the first
quarter of the 13th century, the Cistercians supplanted Cluny as the most
powerful order and the chief religious influence in western Europe. But then in
turn their influence began to wane, chiefly, no doubt, because of the rise of
the mendicant orders, who ministered more directly to the needs and ideas of
the new age. But some of the reasons of Cistercian decline were internal.
In the first place, there was the
permanent difficulty of maintaining in its first fervour a body embracing
hundreds of monasteries and thousands of monks, spread all over Europe; and as
the Cistercian very raison d'être consisted in its being a reform, a return to
primitive monachism, with its field-work and severe simplicity, any failures to
live up to the ideal proposed worked more disastrously among Cistercians than
among mere Benedictines, who were intended to live a life of self-denial, but
not of great austerity.
Relaxations were gradually introduced
in regard to diet and to simplicity of life, and also in regard to the sources
of income, rents and tolls being admitted and benefices incorporated, as was
done among the Benedictines; the farming operations tended to produce a
commercial spirit; wealth and splendour invaded many of the monasteries, and
the choir monks abandoned field-work.
The later history of the Cistercians
is largely one of attempted revivals and reforms. The general chapter for long
battled bravely against the invasion of relaxations and abuses.
The English Reformation was disastrous
for the Cistercians in England, as Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries
saw the confiscation of church land throughout the country. Laskill, an
outstation of Rievaulx Abbey and the only medieval blast furnace so far
identified in Great Britain, was the one of the most efficient blast furnaces of
its time. Slag from contemporary furnaces contained a substantial concentration
of iron, whereas the slag of Laskill was low in iron content, and is believed
to have produced cast iron with efficiency similar to a modern blast furnace.
The monks may have been on the verge of building dedicated furnaces for the
production of cast iron, but the furnace did not survive Henry's Dissolution in
the late 1530s, and the type of blast furnace pioneered there did not spread
outside Rievaulx. Some historians believe that the suppression of the English
monasteries may have stamped out an industrial revolution.
In 1335, Pope Benedict XII, himself a
Cistercian, had promulgated a series of regulations to restore the primitive
spirit of the order, and in the 15th century various popes endeavoured to
promote reforms. All these efforts at a reform of the great body of the order
proved unavailing; but local reforms, producing various semi-independent
offshoots and congregations, were successfully carried out in many parts in the
course of the 15th and 16th centuries.
In the 17th another great effort at a
general reform was made, promoted by the pope and the king of France; the
general chapter elected Richelieu (commendatory) abbot of Cîteaux, thinking he
would protect them from the threatened reform. In this they were disappointed,
for he threw himself wholly on the side of reform. So great, however, was the
resistance, and so serious the disturbances that ensued, that the attempt to
reform Cîteaux itself and the general body of the houses had again to be
abandoned, and only local projects of reform could be carried out.
In the 16th century had arisen the
reformed congregation of the Feuillants, which spread widely in France and
Italy, in the latter country under the name of Improved Bernardines. The French
congregation of Sept-Fontaines (1654) also deserves mention. In 1663 de Rancé
reformed La Trappe (see Trappists).
The Reformation, the ecclesiastical
policy of Joseph II, the French Revolution, and the revolutions of the 18th
century, almost wholly destroyed the Cistercians; but some survived, and since
the beginning of the last half of the 19th century there has been a
considerable recovery. Mahatma Gandhi visited a Trappist abbey near Durban in
1895, and wrote an extensive description of the order:
The settlement is a quiet little model village,
owned on the truest republican principles. The principle of liberty, equality,
and fraternity is carried out in its entirety. Every man is a brother, every
woman a sister. The monks number about 120 on the settlement, and the nuns, or
the sisters as they are called, number about sixty… None may keep any money for
private use. All are equally rich or poor…
A Protestant clergyman said to his audience that
Roman Catholics were weakly, sickly, and sad. Well, if the Trappists are any
criterion of what a Roman Catholic is, they are, on the contrary, healthy and
cheerful. Wherever we went, a beaming smile and a lowly bow greeted us, we saw
a brother or a sister. Even while the guide was decanting on the system he
prized so much, he did not at all seem to consider the self-chosen discipline a
hard yoke to bear. A better instance of undying faith and perfect implicit
obedience could not well be found anywhere else.
At the beginning of 20th century they
were divided into three bodies:
* The Common Observance, with about 30
monasteries and 800 choir monks, the large majority being in Austria-Hungary;
they represent the main body of the order and follow a mitigated rule of life; they
do not carry on field-work, but have large secondary schools, and are in manner
of life little different from fairly observant Benedictine Black Monks; of
late, however, signs are not wanting of a tendency towards a return to older
ideals;
* The Middle Observance, embracing some dozen
monasteries and about 150 choir monks;
* The Strict Observance, or Trappists, with
nearly 60 monasteries, about 1600 choir monks and 2000 lay brothers.
There has also always been a large
number of Cistercian nuns; the first nunnery was founded in the diocese of
Langres, 1125; at the period of their widest extension there are said to have
been 900 nunneries, and the communities were very large. The nuns were devoted
to contemplation and also did field-work. In Spain and France certain
Cistercian abbesses had extraordinary privileges. Numerous reforms took place
among the nuns. The best known of all Cistercian convents was probably
Port-Royal, reformed by Angélique Arnaud, and associated with the story of the
Jansenist controversy.
Cistercian monasteries have continued
to spread, with many founded outside Europe in the 20th century. In particular,
the number of Trappist monasteries throughout the world has more than doubled
over the past 60 years: from 82 in 1940 to 127 in 1970, and 169 at the
beginning of the 21st century.In 1940, there were six Trappist monasteries in
Asia and the Pacific, only one Trappist monastery in Africa, and none in Latin
America. Now there are 13 in Central and South America, 17 in Africa, and 23 in
Asia and the Pacific.In general, these communities are growing faster than
those in other parts of the world.
Over the same period, the total number
of monks and nuns in the Order decreased by about 15%. There are approximately
2500 Trappist monks and 1800 Trappist nuns in the world today.[18] There are on
average 25 members per community - less than half those in former times. As of
2005, there are 101 monasteries of monks and 70 of nuns.Of these, there are
twelve monasteries of monks and five of nuns in the United States.
The abbots and abbesses of each branch
meet every three years at the Mixed General Meeting, chaired by the Abbot
General, to make decisions concerning the welfare of the Order. Between these
meetings the Abbot General and his Council, who reside in Rome, are in charge
of the Order's affairs. The present Abbot General is Dom Bernardo Olivera of
Azul, Argentina.
At the time of monastic profession,
five or six years after entering the monastery, candidates promise
"conversion" — fidelity to monastic life, which includes an
atmosphere of silence. Cistercian monks and nuns, in particular Trappists, have
a reputation of being silent, which has led to the public idea that they take a
Vow of silence.This has actually never been the case, although silence is an
implicit part of an outlook shared by Cistercian and Benedictine monasteries.
In a Cistercian monastery, there are three reasons for speaking:
functional communication at work or in community
dialogues, spiritual exchange with one’s superiors or with a particular member
of the community on different aspects of one’s personal life, and spontaneous
conversation on special occasions. These forms of communication are integrated
into the discipline of maintaining a general atmosphere of silence, which is an
important help to continual prayer.
Many Cistercian monasteries produce
goods such as cheese, bread and other foodstuffs. Many monasteries in Belgium
and the Netherlands, such as Orval Abbey and Westvleteren Abbey, brew beer both
for the monks and for sale to the general public. Trappist beers contain
residual sugars and living yeast, and, unlike conventional beers, will improve
with age.These have become quite famous and are considered by many beer critics
to be among the finest in the world.
In the United States, many Cistercian
monasteries support themselves through argriculture, forestry and rental of
farmland. Additionally, the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank, in
Sparta, Wisconsin, supports itself with financial investing, real estate, and a
group called "Laser Monks"; which provides recycled laser toner and
ink jet cartridges.
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The Order of Saint Benedict (Latin
name: Ordo Sancti Benedicti) is a Roman Catholic religious order of independent
monastic communities that observe the Rule of St. Benedict. Within the order,
each individual community (which may be a monastery, abbey, or priory)
maintains its own autonomy, while the organization as a whole exists to
represent their mutual interests. Today the terms "Order of St
Benedict" and "Benedictine Order" are also used frequently to
refer to the total of the independent Roman Catholic Benedictine abbeys,
thereby giving the wrong impression of a "generalate" or "motherhouse"
with jurisdiction over dependent communities. The Benedictine Confederation,
which was established in 1883 by Pope Leo XIII in his brief Summum semper, is
the international governing body of the order.
The monastery at Monte Cassino
established in Italy by St. Benedict of Nursia circa 529 was the first of a
dozen monasteries founded by him. Even so, there is no evidence to suggest that
he intended to found an order. To the contrary, the Rule of St Benedict
presupposes the autonomy of each community. Despite the absence of a Benedictine
order, since most monasteries founded during the Middle Ages adopted the Rule
of St Benedict, it became the standard for Western Monasticism.
The Benedictine monasteries went on to
make considerable contributions not only to the monastic and the spiritual life
of the West, but also to economics, education, and government, so that the
years from 550 to 1150 may be called the "Benedictine centuries".
Even today Benedictine monasticism is
fundamentally different from other Western religious orders insofar as its
individual communities are not part of a religious order with
"Generalates" and "Superiors General". Rather, in modern
times, the various autonomous houses have formed themselves loosely into
congregations (for example, Cassinese, English, Solesmes, Subiaco, Camaldolese,
Sylvestrines) that in turn are represented in the Benedictine Confederation
that came into existence through Pope Leo XIII's Apostolic Brief "Summum
semper" on July 12, 1883. This organization facilitates dialogue of
Benedictine communities with each other and the relationship between
Benedictine communities and other religious orders and the church at large.
The Rule of Saint Benedict is also
used by a number of religious orders that began as reforms of the Benedictine
tradition such as the Cistercians and Trappists although none of these groups
are part of the Benedictine Confederation.
The largest number of Benedictines are
Roman Catholics, but there are also Benedictines within the Anglican Communion
and occasionally within other Christian denominations as well, for example,
within the Lutheran Church.
The Rule of St Benedict (ch. 58.17)
requires candidates for reception into a Benedictine community to promise
solemnly stability (to remain in the same monastery), conversatione morum (an
idiomatic Latin phrase suggesting "conversion of manners"), and
obedience (to the superior, because the superior holds the place of Christ in
their community). This solemn commitment tends to be referred to as the
"Benedictine vow" and is the Benedictine antecedent and equivalent of
the evangelical counsels professed by candidates for reception into a religious
order.
Benedictine abbots and abbesses have
full jurisdiction of their abbey and thus absolute authority over the monks or
nuns who are resident and have full authority to, for example, to assign them
duties, to decide which books they may or may not read, to take charge of their
comings and goings, and if necessary to punish and even to excommunicate them.
A tight communal timetable (horarium)
is meant to ensure that the time given by God is not wasted but in whichever
way necessary used in his service, whether for prayer, work, meals, spiritual
reading, sleep.
The Benedictines make no vow of
silence, nevertheless the hours of stricter silence are fixed, and even at
other times, out of fraternal love, silence is maintained as much as is
practically possible. Social conversations tend to be limited to communal
recreation times. But such details, like many others details of the daily
routine of a Benedictine house that the Rule of St Benedict leaves to the
discretion of the superior, are set out in its customary.
In the Roman Catholic Church according
to the norms of the Code of Canon Law 1983 a Benedictine abbey is a
"Religious Institute", and its professed members are therefore
members of the "Consecrated Life", commonly referred to as
"Religious". All Benedictine monks and nuns who have not been
ordained are members of the laity among the Christian faithful. Only those
Benedictine monks who have been ordained as a deacon or priest are also members
of the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church. Benedictine Oblates, who are not
members of the consecrated life, nevertheless endeavour to embrace the spirit
of the Benedictine vow in their own life in the world.
It's been called "the ultimate
estate plan": moving to a desert island or other far-off locale to escape
the clutches of the Internal Revenue Service.
523 Louis Sheehan
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