Tractors and War

I study the Second World War in an effort to understand it. For an American who has lived a relatively cushy Western existence, it is difficult to fathom the enormity of terrible human destruction that occurred in the war. This was a conflict so brutal in all its dimensions, that it is unparallel in human history. Nothing epitomizes the creation of hell on earth more than the titanic, bloody attrition between Germany and the Soviet Union at what was then known as Stalingrad (now Volgograd). In October of 1942, the Dzerzhinsky Tractor Factory became the site of some of the fiercest fighting of World War Two.

What role did tractors and tractor factories play in World War Two? This is a question that I continue to ask as I study more about the famous Dzerzhinsky Tractor Factory in Stalingrad. The factory still operates in the city of Volgograd as the Volgograd Tractor Factory. The city and the factory both changed their names in the early 1960's to more "politically correct" names. Felix Dzerzhinsky was the first leader of the Soviet Secret Police named the Cheka (later to be reincarnated as the OGPU, the NKVD and KGB) Stalin of course brutalized his people to a level that went far beyond inhumanity. During the Krushchev era, a new openess about the abuses of Stalinism and excesses of the past brought about a rethinking of places named after mass murderers.

During the war, the tractor factory was converted to the manufacture of the famous T-34 tank (pictured above next to the factory) and other military hardware. The T-34, like so many Soviet creations, was designed for maximum utility, serviceabilty and repairability in often impossible conditions. There are amazing stories of these tanks being drivin directly off the assembly line and into battle.

What happened to the over 200,000 tractors that were manufactured in the plant from 1930 to 1940, before war created a new role? What do the tractors from this storied factory look like? After the war, the factory began producing a type of crawler tractor. Was this the same tractor that had been manufactured before the war? Here is a link to a photo of a tractor ourside Volgograd that is a "Monument to the tractors of the land" I wonder if this could be the tractor?