Of course, the guard company sent it did not play a big role, there were only more than 100 people, and the combat effectiveness of the guard company was not very good.

This is related to the nature of the work of the guard company.

As mentioned before, combat units are concerned with coordination, cover, and then killing and wounding the enemy, while the task of the guard company is to protect only the chief regardless of the entire battlefield situation.

Therefore, the troops that have been serving as guards for a long time have basically forgotten all their tactical movements and essentials.

It's the factory workers who really make a difference...... At this time, they were all issued rifles, which were usually placed in the firearms room, and there would be instructors to explain the maintenance, use and shooting of firearms to them during the work break.

In fact, this training was carried out not only by the workers, but by almost the entire population of Stalingrad.

These workers, of course, could not be compared with the Germans in terms of combat effectiveness, and their advantage was that they were familiar with the terrain and were numerous.

This was realized after Qin Chuan and others attacked the "Red Barricade" artillery factory.

The initial attack was very smooth, the perimeter wall of the factory was useless for the German army, the tank "rumbled" up a few times and knocked it to the ground, after entering the factory area, it adjusted the muzzle of the gun "boom" and fired a shell at the factory, and the factory immediately burst into flames.

The German soldiers rushed in through the gap in the wall, and rushed forward by the light of the fire.

Gunshots soon came from the darkness, Qin Chuan couldn't help frowning, originally he thought that he would not encounter any resistance in the factory, but now it seems that this is not the case.

It didn't take long for Qin Chuan to understand what was going on, because several German soldiers had taken over several prisoners, these prisoners were not soldiers, they were wearing factory overalls, but they had bullet bags hanging on their bodies.

"Major!" The German soldiers reported: "The workers have guns in their hands, and we are met with armed resistance from the workers!" ”

If it had been a daytime battle, the armed workers might not have been able to cause so much trouble to the Germans. After all, there is a considerable gap in the quality of the two sides.

But it was at night, and the Soviet workers' familiarity with the terrain took advantage of them, and they sometimes came out of here and from there, and fired a few shots at the Germans in the cold.

However, of course, this could not stop the German attack on the factory...... The Germans had come to blow up the factory, not to occupy it.

The latter will have to fight with the enemy room by room, while the former will only need to find a way to destroy it, which will obviously be much easier.

A group of German troops forced out of the fuel depot from the workers...... Most of the machines of this era used oil instead of electricity, which was determined by the fact that power plants still relied on hydroelectric power for most of their purposes.

(Note: At this time, there were no nuclear power plants, and hydroelectric power in the Soviet Union had a very severe seasonality, and it was impossible to generate electricity during the freezing time in winter.)

Then, the German soldiers pushed the barrels of fuel out of the warehouse, and then opened the lid and dumped it outside the factory, and the underground part of the factory also did not let go, filling barrels of fuel at the entrance, and even pushing the entire barrel of fuel into it.

At the last moment, a German soldier of the Brandenburg detachment shouted into the factory with a small loudspeaker: "Comrades workers, as long as you put down your guns and come out and surrender, we will not embarrass you, and you can even go out and escape from our sight!" ”

The German soldier was not lying, they were not really interested in the workers with rifles, and in some way they did not regard them as enemies, even if, in principle, they were no longer workers but soldiers when they took up their weapons.

However, no one came out.

Maybe they didn't dare, maybe they were worried about their families, or maybe they didn't trust the Germans...... They would rather stay in the factory.

After waiting for a while, the German soldiers struck a match and threw it to the ground, and the blue-red flames rushed to the factory like a rising tide along the road where the fuel was poured out, and then a raging fire ignited around the factory with a "Teng" sound, and after a while, it spread to other factories, and there was even an explosion from the underground plant, which shook the ground for a while.

The fire soon spread to the heights, and there were a series of miserable screams from inside, and from time to time there were people covered in fire falling from the roofs, and it was not known whether they were running and falling or whether they consciously hoped that the pain would end soon.

Qin Chuan couldn't bear to look at it any longer, waved his hand and ordered: "Withdraw!" ”

The troops withdrew from the factory in an orderly manner, leaving behind them a raging fire.

On the other hand, the tractor factory was also doing the same thing, because when Qin Chuan and the others walked out, they saw a sky-high fire in the other direction.

Among them, even the fire water trucks of the Soviet army rushed to put out the fire...... The fire brigade apparently had not yet received the relevant enemy situation and did not know the situation, they only saw the light of the fire and rushed to dispatch.

At the same time, when they saw the tank parked in the middle of the road, they took it for granted that it was their own tank, so they didn't care at all, but they didn't expect the tank gun barrel to suddenly "boom" with a bang, and the fire truck led by it was blown up into the sky in a burst of fire.

The fire trucks behind them braked one after another, but because they were too fast and did not react quickly, they slammed into each other violently, almost blocking the entire street.

The tank didn't give up, the machine gun fired rows of bullets, and then fired a few shells into the pile to knock them into a pile of rubble, and then turned around and left satisfied.

When Lieutenant General Lopatin heard the news of the factory fire in his headquarters, beads of sweat the size of beans broke out on his forehead.

He knew what that meant, and that the Germans were trying to capture Stalingrad in at least part because of the industries that remained here, the most important of which were artillery factories and tractor factories...... Stalingrad was a second-tier for the Soviet Union as a whole, and the Soviet Union needed to leave some industry on the second front to support the war on the front lines such as Moscow and Leningrad, which was somewhat similar to the Soviet light industry in Transcaucasia.

In this respect, Stalingrad was more important than Transcaucasia, because it produced tanks and artillery, and it was also a transportation center that could be easily transported to the entire front.

But now they have been burned into a fire by the Germans.

Whether the Germans were able to capture Stalingrad was one thing, at least, they had now achieved part of their strategic objectives.

Stalingrad's defenses would even be made worse by this.

"These bastards!" When Lopatin came to his senses, he slammed his fist on the table and shouted: "Surround these Germans and annihilate them!" ”