Records from the diary of a German soldier who fought at Stalingrad in 1942-1943, after being captured, and in 1953 returned home:<br>". December That has a tremendous impact.'. . An excerpt from a letter of soldier Otto Zechtig, 1st Company of the 1st Battalion of the 227th Infantry Regiment of the 100th Light Infantry Division, no. This is worse than any torture. The most informative letters were published in 1944 by the My book shows in great detail how Red Army soldiers were inducted into the Communist Party. But now we have to roam around this horrible The most notable account used in both is the brutal six-day long battle between 16 and 22 September 1942 over a grain elevator where, according to him, only 40 Russian soldiers (he refers to them as "devils") were found dead in the elevator at the end of the engagement, while his battalion in comparison, suffered disastrously heavy losses. The most important condition for a soldier to join the party was not doctrinal knowledge, say, the ability to recite party textbooks, but proof that the soldier had killed Germans. In addition, these records may include the soldier's age, birthplace, residence, occupation, and physical description as well as the names of family members. World War II was a total war, in which civilians as much as soldiers were part of the war. Further along the road he encountered more Russian prisoners of war (PoWs) who had been summarily executed by their German captors. They quickly encircled an entire German army, more than 220,000 soldiers. October 3. The Nazis' eastward expansion was halted and the Soviets went on the offensive until the end of the war. 'This is how I see it at least. During the most ferocious battle in human history, Soviet historians interviewed over 200 Red Army soldiers about the 1943 fighting that helped seal Nazi Germany's fate. Friedrich Paulus - the 6th Army's commander - led his men east across the endless steppe, finally reaching the outskirts of the city on 16 August. In July 1942, the Germans resumed their advance into the U.S.S.R. begun the previous summer, seeking to conquer Stalingrad, a vital transportation center located on the Volga River. The Soviets were able to psychologically wear down the Germans and make them slowly lose motivation. . . Soviet soldiers found the diary in December 1942 or January 1943, probably among the possessions of its deceased owner. From the very beginning, observers on all sides were fixated on the gigantic clash at the edge of Europe. Cloudflare Ray ID: 7a1250ab68a49c24 . October 22. Two men then carefully lift him out. .. The print run was not detailed, the book printed using the simplest of papers and released as a paperback clearly it was not meant to be kept for a long time. I found this post in the history subreddit on, you guessed it, reddit. General Friedrich Paulus, the commander of the 6th Army, was ordered to capture Stalingrad, a city that controlled the rail and waterway communications of southern Russia. There was in addition ample violence within the Red Army, perpetrated against soldiers who were unwilling to risk their lives. December 6. As the battle wore on, many read it as an indication that Germany would lose the war. days. The Russian artillery at the other side of theVolgawont let you lift your head. The following entries in the diary of William Hoffman, a German soldier who perished at Stalingrad, reveal the decline in German confidence as the battle progressed. 'As soon Rob came to us with an unpublished multi-volume wartime diary that he had discovered we knew we had found our approach. I send letters home, but there is no reply. Tomorrow, exactly tomorrow, October 6, 1942, we will be on the other side of the river . The Nazi's loss at Stalingrad was the turning point in the war and Zaitsev played a key role in demoralising the Germans which lead to their ultimate defeat. The interviews were conducted by historians from Moscow who responded to the German invasion in 1941 with a plan to document the Soviet war effort in its totality, and from the ground up. Viktor Nekrasov's novella "In the trenches of Stalingrad" came out to acclaim in 1946, and 10 years later he was able to make a humanistic, de-heroizing screenplay out of it. The retreat of the Nazis in that particular battle is seen by many historians as the turning point of WWII. One day I shot Let the generals and officers fight the war themselves. . Frozen potatoes are the best meal, but toget them out of the ice-covered ground under fire from Russian bullets is not so easy. [Quoting Zaitsev]: Or another time you see young girls, children hanging from trees in the park. Decades later, Prof. Jochen Hellbeck became the first historian to read their stories. Have we really lost so many men? .. August 12. to no avail. What is also remarkable is how the Soviet military command was able to secretly deploy an army of 1 million soldiers along these flanks in the weeks leading up to the operation. . The main Soviet strategy was just to defend their territory and wear out the German soldiers while using minor counterattacks only to diverge the enemy (Beevor 221). 30 men in the company. We dont have a single officer, and the non-commissioned officer had to take over the command of the division. Ive had my fill. . Barbarism. Today, after wed had a bath, the company commander told us that if our future operations are as successful, well soon reach the Volga, take Stalingrad and then the war will quickly end. There is no way out, nor Excerpt from a letter of Private First Class Walter Oppermann, no. . military publishing house of the Peoples Commissariat of the Defence of the Stalingrad is a 1993 German anti-war film directed by Joseph Vilsmaier. September 8. They begin with the attack on the city, highlight the drama of the German soldiers who held out in encirclement, and conclude with the 100,000 surviving Germans who fell into Soviet captivity. . He wrote: 'In total more than 20 corpses lay around the destroyed tank. In some sense, the counter-offensive copied the stunningly successful German Blitzkrieg model of 1941. She was five years old when Adolf Hitler's Sixth Army stormed into Stalingrad in the summer of 1942. 'We will live through the war in the east as he lived it.'. December 21.We are waiting for the order, but for some reason or other it has been a long time coming. 4 pages, ebook First published January 1, 1942 Book details & editions About the author William Hoffman formed by the Red Army in the Stalingrad region. December 1 . injured and frostbitten men; more than 30 men have escaped; there is only . by Oleg Grigoryev 21 Aug 2003, 22:05, Post 'A wounded Russian was also lying there, still with his rifle in his hand. . How and with what are we going to fill our empty stomachs, which, apart from 3%-7 ozs of bread, receive virtually nothing at all? Dr. Michal Shapira is a senior lecturer in history and gender studies at Tel Aviv University. . knew that the Germans would not defeat the Soviet Union. Fierce fighting is going on. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. The interviews, as well as rare photographs and letters shared by the veterans, show how differently the battle is remembered on both sides. November 21. . By the end of February, Stalingrad, the Russian 3D film which became Russias box-office holder for 2013 and grossed $66 million in its one-and-a-half run, will be shown in US theaters for a week. Why Do Some People Look Totally Different In Pictures Than In Real Life? Himmler was aware that the time of reckoning for Germany was drawing near. Every soldier sees himself as a condemned man. Quoted from the testimony of captured Private First Class Joseph Schwarz, 10th Company of the 131st Infantry Regiment of the 44th Infantry Division, January 2, 1943: . It was night but we saw many crosses with our helmets on top. 10 Women Who Gave Creepy Guys A Chance, Describe Their Experiences, A Few Videos Guaranteed To Make You Feel Better About Life. Look at the confidence and aggression on the face of the soldiers. Clothing freezes on our bodies. The YouTube channel is a generally reputable source but this fact made me skeptical. 'For the first time in a documentary series we are letting the voice of a soldier be the narrator. . We have never been through anything like this. I was extraordinarily lucky to have been the first historian to fully explore the 215 interviews conducted with Soviet defenders of Stalingrad, and publish them. He wrote them throughout the battle of Stalingrad. German forces eventually made their way to the gates of Moscow but were pushed back by Soviet forces and in the end had to make a slow retreat from the early months of 1942. 140 of us, but by September 1, after two weeks of battle, only 16 remained. October 14. Hetti, I have already cut up four dogs, yet my comrades cant eat their fill. Only as Army Group South advanced toward Maikop and Grozny did Hitler order a separate attack on Stalingrad. Three questions are obsessing every soldier and officer: When will the Russians stop firing and let us sleep in peace, if only for one night? What was womens role in the Battle of Stalingrad? January 5. thousand wounded soldiers a day are taken back to the rear from Stalingrad. We killed thousands of Russians and Jews with wives and In the blocks captured two days ago Russian soldiers appeared from somewhere or other and fighting has flared up with fresh vigour. . contained an ultimatum. Russia, and for what? Unfortunately, I cant write everything to you. On her second day out on the battlefield, while dressing and recovering wounded soldiers, Novikova was killed. German soldiers and officers drink water at Stalingrad. Historian Omer Bartov has argued that for the Wehrmacht, with rising casualty rates and the destruction of the bands of brothers in front-line units, military commanders increasingly relied on ideological indoctrination to mold troop cohesion. 'Am I myself convinced by what I try to convincingly explain to my men? By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. October 28. I want to scream. Leutnant Sander served in the 6th Panzer Division which invaded the Soviet Union by rolling over the border of Lithuania in June 1941. The battle commenced in August 1942 and finally ended in February 1943 when the last of the German forces surrendered. enormous field post office of the adversary, along with diaries and other November 29. . One day I shot a magpie and cooked it. This could not fail to influence our decision. We havent eaten or slept in three . and December of 1942 and the first half of January 1943. In his interview, Gen. Vassily Chuikov described how he shot several commanders, as their soldiers watched in line formation, for retreating from the enemy without permission. We shall obviously be seeing them next in the other world. On the morning of January 10 we read a pamphlet that contained an ultimatum. . 22-25 November. Hitler, they were certain, would meet Napoleons end. . 'Again and again it is damn hard to get my own head around the fact that everything we are being ordered to do here is right.'. the rest were wounded and killed. That has a tremendous impact.. Stalingrad: Directed by Fedor Bondarchuk. . The problem with this memory is its insular nature: Most existing depictions of the battle that you can read in Germany or other Western countries tell the story predominantly from a German viewpoint. Fritz is telling me about a conversation he heard: the soldiers prefer to The operation to surround and liquidate the German 6th Army is a strategic masterpiece. By If we lose this war, theyll take revenge on us for everything we did. strength of the Red Army. 28329 D, dated December 29, 1942 to hisfiance: . A haunting sense of loss and defeat marks the recollections on the German side, whereas Russian storytelling about Stalingrad is imbued with a spirit of national pride and sacrifice. The weather's getting worse. Nov. 3, 2010 -- August 26, 1916, Guillemont, Somme region, northeastern France: "In front of my hole lies an Englishman who fell there yesterday. His fascinating 2015 book, Stalingrad: The City that Defeated the Third Reich, and the Battle that Changed World History (PublicAffairs; also available in German, Russian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, and Chinese editions), tells the story of this battle from the Soviet side. From 1942 to 1945, they interviewed close to 5,000 people most of them soldiers, but also partisans, civilians who worked in the war economy or fought in the underground, and Soviet citizens who had survived Nazi occupation. trenches and bunkers. August 10. . October 5, 1942.<br>Our battalion finally reached the Volga. Diary Of A German Soldier Fighting In Stalingrad February 6, 2020Leave a Comment In July 1942, the Germans resumed their advance into the U.S.S.R. begun the previous summer, seeking to conquer Stalingrad, a vital transportation center located on the Volga River. On November 30 he described coming across the sight of eight partisan fighters, including two women, who had been hanged by the Germans. All rights reserved by Rossiyskaya Gazeta. . the German 6th Army is a strategic masterpiece. .. Born in Bonn, West Germany, Prof. Hellbeck, 51, is also founder of an online project, facingstalingrad.com, at the heart of which is a series of in-depth interviews conducted jointly in 2009-2010 with photographer Emma Dodge Hanson with surviving veterans of the fateful battle from both Germany and Russia. He wrote of the terrible injuries suffered by two men in particular. . If fate allows it, someday I will tell you about it. This is an apolitical forum for discussions on the Axis nations and related topics hosted by the Axis History Factbook in cooperation with Christian Ankerstjernes Panzerworld and Christoph Awender's WW2 day by day. . Harry Howard For Mailonline After the Stalingrad campaign, Hitler ordered that Soviet-style political officers the so-called commissars be introduced into the Wehrmacht. German intelligence did notice suspicious troop movements, but the German army command did not take these reports seriously, as it was convinced that the Soviets had run out of available human reserves. attacked German positions north and south of Stalingrad, and by November 23 they had surrounded the German, forces. Yet Nazi leaders could not stay silent about the rout of the Sixth Army, which Hitler had once declared could storm the heavens. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. . At the end of February,the Russian 3D film, Stalingrad,will have a one-week engagement in theaters across the United States; Stalingrad became Russias box office record holder in 2013, grossing $66 million in its six-week run. In this cauldron, 22 divisions and more than 160 separate I just want to scream it all away. The German press simply stopped reporting about Stalingrad, including the failed attempts to break through to the trapped soldiers and to supply them by air. Tell us about this dramatic moment. September 26. Privacy Policy. The diary was turned over to the military intelligence unit of the 62nd Army, and several . . Im sick of this. Among the Allied nations, and also in towns and ghettos occupied by the Germans, people were euphoric about the Red Armys ability to withstand the German onslaught and strike back. December 26. will tell you about it. It stopped the German advance into the Soviet Union and marked . They describe shocking violence. 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