Soviet Sappers at Kharkov

In the autumn of 1941, Operation Barbarossa has broken through the southern front. After the catastrophic encirclement at Kiev in September, the Wehrmacht pushes toward the industrial basin of the Donbass and threatens Kharkov, the fourth-largest city in the USSR and a major center of mechanical engineering, armaments, and tank production. Stalin's order is unambiguous: apply a scorched-earth policy so that nothing usable is left to the occupier. The strategic factories are already being evacuated to the Urals, but time is running short.

In mid-October, German pressure intensifies and the fall of the city is now only a matter of days. Soviet engineer units receive the order to destroy bridges, railways, power plants, and industrial installations in order to durably paralyze the enemy's war effort at this logistical hub. But the exact scale and nature of the demolitions to be carried out in the city center remain to be decided in haste, as the enemy approaches the outskirts.

One constraint weighs heavily on these technical decisions: the civilian population, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, has not been evacuated and will remain in place under the occupation. Every sabotage option therefore engages the fate of the inhabitants as much as that of the enemy. The combat engineer in charge of the mining must decide in the hours to come.