This week marks the 73rd anniversary of the defeat of German forces at the Battle of Stalingrad, often called the turning point of the Second World War. Wayne Vansant’s online webcomic graphic novel Katusha Book Two: The Shaking of the Earth covers the battle in it’s opening chapter. Book Two has just started daily serialization at the official Katusha webcomic site, katushagirlsoldier.com, where it begins it’s run simply as Chapter Seven, continuing on from Katusha Book One’s Chapter Six.
As the book opens, Katusha, Milla, and Taras have been driven east from their native Ukraine, enter the city only to find it under siege. As they help a local mortar unit (made up of girls Katusha and Milla’s age, and led by their school teacher) they are driven into the city where they run into the girls father, who is there to contribute his valuable technological experience to the war effort.
It is decided that the girls will go east, to train in tank school, but first they must escape the German onslaught. As they flee by boat the ships in the surrounding Volga river explode, victims to German planes and artillery. Reaching the safety of the riverbank, Katusha looks across at the vision of hell that was the Battle of Stalingrad.
Vansant has produced comics and graphic novels on an enormous range of military history topics over a three decade career. Starting with his long run on the seminal Vietnam War comic book, The ‘Nam (with writer Doug Murray), Vansant has used graphic novels and comics to tell fictional tales and non-fiction histories about conflicts including multiple books on World War II and the American Civil War, as well as World War I and the Korean War.
The Battle of Stalingrad has long been seen as a “turning point” in the war. Vansant commented,
“It has been argued by many what the true turning point of the Second World War really was: The Battle of Moscow proved to Hitler that he could not win the war ‘On his terms.’ The Battle of Kursk is called ‘The Military Turning Point.’ But Stalingrad was the ‘moral turning point.’ The people of occupied France believed that they would be in Nazi manacles for 20 years. But after Stalingrad, the French, the Dutch, the Poles, and all the other captive people of Europe knew that the corner had been turned. It was more than a turning point in war, it was a turning point in history, and the Russian people have every reason to be proud of their accomplishment.”
About Katusha Girl Soldier of the Great Patriotic War:
Now running as a daily webcomic at katushagirlsoldier.com, Katusha Girl Soldier of the Great Patriotic War is a graphic novel trilogy by Wayne Vansant. It is a story of courage, survival and family; of self-sacrifice, betrayal, brutality, and suffering; it is a tale of love, told against the backdrop of the bloodiest conflict in human history: the 1941-1945 war between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Sixteen-year told Katusha and her family flee the 1941 German invasion of Soviet Ukraine to the forests to begin a partisan war against the occupiers. Later, Katusha enters the Red Army where she is trained as a tank driver. By 1945, Katusha commands her own tank, and takes part in the final battle for Berlin. Katusha Book One: Edge of Darkness and Katusha Book Two: the Shaking of the Earth are available in print and digital format from katushagirlsoldier.com, Amazon.com, Comixology, and many others. Contact katushagirlsoldier@gmail.com for all rights inquiries.