Hitler hated the whole Russian population, and his propaganda machine portrayed the people as neolithic subhuman creatures with deformed skulls of huge proportions. His barrage and destruction of that city held more of a symbolic significance to him than a military strategy. It was one dictator against a city named after another. He intended its obliteration as a sign that his will was the strongest. After complete destruction of the place he planned on bulldozing whatever was left, after the artillery and bombing had finished, and erecting, on Mamayev Kurgan the highest point, an allegorical monument designed by his architect Albert Speer. It would show Mother Russia suspended upside-down from a gallows, clutching her heart whilst a perpetual flame burnt below her head. That was how the G
