diary of a german soldier at stalingrad
But it is for December 3. To reach the Volga and takeStalingrad is not so difficult for us. The only hope is to be wounded and taken back to the rear. 'You see young girls, children hanging from trees in the park. Click here to find out more. Hailed as the single largest confrontation of the war, the battle involved nearly 2.2 million military personnel, with around 1.8-2 million were killed, wounded, or captured. We have entered a new area. 'This is the first instalment. . They no longer take cover from Russian shells; they havent the strength to walk, run away and hide. Our regiment is involved inconstant heavy fighting. Portion of the testimony of captured Captain Kurt Mandelhelm, commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 518th Infantry Regiment of the 295th Infantry Division, and his adjutant, Lieutenant Karl Gottschaldt, January 15, 1943: . In this cauldron, 22 divisions and more than 160 separate will tell you about it. To this day, the Russian state and the Russian people commemorate the battle intensely. Course Hero is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university. Preached incessantly and targeting every recruit, it was made up of accessible concepts with an enormous emotional charge: love for the homeland and hatred of the enemy. We are advancing towards Stalingrad along the railway line. . 44111, dated November 18, 1942 to his brother: . . This diary covers the period from April 1942 to March 1943, the momentous year when the tide of battle turned in the East. Our regiment, and the whole division, are today celebrating victory. We dont have a single officer, and the But even such Nazi ideological work paled against the systematic, communist, political conditioning that took place in the Red Army from the hour the Germans attacked in 1941. We make the 60-mile March through the steppe. 'Am I myself convinced by what I try to convincingly explain to my men? I believe that for Stalingrad the Fiihrer will decorate evenme.. . . Winter privations and Soviet, attacks, however, forced the Germans to surrender on, February 2, 1943 (see the box above). Bernd Wegner, professor of history of the Bundeswehr Academy: "Stalingrad is perhaps the only battle of the Second World War, at the mention of which every German will tremble even today. September 4.We are being sent northward along the front towards Stalingrad. We dont have a single officer, and the non-commissioned officer had to take over the command of the division. The Russians have two alternatives, either to flee across theVolga or give themselves up. . On January 14, 1942 he added: 'Even if we manage, against my expectations, to stop the Russian advance, then no one needs to know more than necessary about the hammering we have received. .. We are preparing for a decisive attack. By That, for instance, is how sniper Zaitsev talked about how he got inducted into the party. They evidently decided to bury us in this hellish place once and for all. The weather is getting worse and worse. The stash showed how they tried to communicate their impressions to their loved ones, how they wanted them to see their situations as they fought in the Stalingrad region and how they see the Red Army. From the diary of Field Gendarmerie Sergeant Helmut . . The Russians have gone over to the offensive along the whole front. He wrote: 'We found the bodies of many Russians who hadn't been able to walk further and had been shot by the guards. I read the ultimatum, and a burning malice Why Do People Stay In Abusive Relationships? Gossler doesn't want to stay still, he has gone insane. . USSR in a compact volume titled The Defeat of the Germans at Stalingrad. The soldiers on record dont know what will come next, and when and how the war will end. Part of Heinrich Malchus letter, a soldier, no. 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. the said book became an antiquity in bibliography. convinced that they cant stop us. During the day the Germans managed to accupy only two blocks. 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. 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. . He wrote of the terrible injuries suffered by two men in particular. Sergeant-Major Nuschke waskilled today running across a street. She was five years old when Adolf Hitler's Sixth Army stormed into Stalingrad in the summer of 1942. The entries start at July 29th 1942 and end December 26th 1942. We . His tone changes from exicted and hopeful to a darker tone toward the end. He wrote: 'I tell my men that this is about the reshaping of Europe, the absolute defeat of Bolshevism, the enemy of the people. . Hitler remarked that with the 6th Army, he "could storm the Heavens". 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. 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. The above diary entry comes from Wilhelm Hoffman, a soldier in the 94th Infantry Division of the German Sixth Army. The Russians inside are condemned men; the battalion commander says: The commissars have ordered those men to die in the elevator. If all the buildings of Stalingrad are defended like this then none of our soldiers will get back toGermany. Stalingrad: Directed by Fedor Bondarchuk. Russian cannon and machine-guns are firing out of the burning city. After five months of unrelenting battle, the retreat of the Nazis became the turning point of World War II. It was night but we saw many crosses with our helmets on top. November 18. Germans and Russians battled with dogged ferocity over every part of the city; 99 percent of Stalingrad was reduced to rubble. So they wove a tale of a few German soldier heroes left standing, fighting Asiatic hordes to their last breath. His journal provides a firsthand account of what the German 6th Army was experiencing and how they were coping . 44111, to his brother, November 18, 1942. turned dramatically in 1942. . Im sick of this. Source: Zelma/RIA Novosti. Let the generals and officers fight the war There is no way out, nor 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: . Why did Stalingrad become important to the Nazis and the Soviets in 1942? I found this book an insightful account of the mind of s sniper and the battle for Stalingrad. September 22. In just the last two days, our battalion has lost 60 killed, The idea was to mobilize the German population through an intense propaganda of fear. than 1,000 people are buried. It marked the beginning of a campaign that would ultimately decide the outcome of the Second World War. From time to time mines explode around us. From a letter from Private First Class Walter Oppermann, no. 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. In the opening months of the campaign German forces dug deep into Soviet occupied territory - led by Panzer armies which encircled large Soviet forces at Minsk and Smolens. The soldiers look like corpses or lunatics, looking for something to put in their mouths. Michal Shapira spoke with Hellbeck following a visit by him to Tel Aviv University earlier this year. Throughout fall 1942, the Soviet press cited newspapers from places ranging from Egypt to India and Canada that extolled the heroism of Stalingrads defenders. . Will I really go back to Elsa without a decoration? While it would be more than another year before the Red Army liberated the death camps in Poland, the Battle of Stalingrad disrupted the Nazi death machine. The testimonies were too truthful and multifaceted for their times, and Stalin forbade their publication, not least because he alone claimed full credit for the victory at Stalingrad. Our regiment has failed to break into the factory. 'We will live through the war in the east as he lived it.'. All are fleeing in panic. Then the terrible struggles in . He expects victory of us. By the end he is starving to death as is everyone around him. Thats what everyone is saying. There are not more than sixty men left in each company. What great spaces the Soviets occupy, what rich fields there are to be had here after the wars over! We are on hunger rations and waiting for the rescue that the Fuhrer promised. Answer (1 of 8): I only know this, when the army was strong enough to break out, Hitler ordered it to stay so the rest of the German army could break in to relieve it. . 15:59 GMT 17 Jun 2021 Fragment of Lieutenant General Alexander von Daniels testimony, commander of the German 376th Infantry Division: . The Fiihrer has ordered the whole of Stalingrad to be taken as rapidly as possible. Take Vassily Zaitsev, the famed sniper at Stalingrad, who killed 242 enemy soldiers over the course of the battle, until he suffered an eye injury, in January 1943. Diary of a German Soldier (161 results) contained an ultimatum. The battle commenced in August 1942 and finally ended in February 1943 when the last of the German forces surrendered. . . We marched all night and by dawn had reached Voroponovo Station. Hitler's soldiers stormed the city in September 1942 in a bid to complete the conquest of Europe. You can scarcely breathe in the daytime: there is nowhere and no one to remove the bodies, so they are left there to rot. My nerves can't take any more.'. I highly recommend the Book "Forgotten Soldier". The film is the second German movie to portray the Battle of Stalingrad. January 15. It follows a platoon of German Army soldiers transferred to the Eastern Front of World War II, where they find themselves fighting in the Battle of Stalingrad . . Unfortunately, I cant write everything to you. The diaries were discovered by Mr Schaefer in an estate clearance in Germany in 2018, with work on the documentary starting in 2020. North Africa, the Nazis invade France (again), the Wehrmacht in big trouble in the Caucasus and further up north at Stalingrad. December 25.The Russian radio has announced the defeat of Manstein. . A letter from Elsa today. Only lets get it over. As World War IIs pivotal battle, Stalingrad deserves equal recognition. A German soldier rests at Stalingrad. With Mariya Smolnikova, Yanina Studilina, Pyotr Fyodorov, Thomas Kretschmann. . From the testimony of captured Captain Kurt Mandelhelm, The Battle of Stalingrad ended seventy one years ago on February 2, 1943 after exactly five months, a week and three days of incessant fighting. Two days of non-stop fighting. It was the most ferocious battle in human history, claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands. How wrong they are. . We have lost many men; every time you move you have to jump over bodies. . . by Oleg Grigoryev 21 Aug 2003, 22:03, Post When I think about this, Im ready to howl from annoyance and rage. .. A bored and cold German soldier plays a game of "eenie-meenie-miny-moe", aiming at a group of children, most too young to even comprehend the danger. We are all by Christmas. In addition, almost 1 million Soviet women served in the Red Army during World War II, half of them as ordinary soldiers and the other as nurses, phone operators, or laundrywomen. by Lawrence Tandy 21 Aug 2003, 22:24, Post Stalingrad Soldier - Read online for free. .. . September 28. Our division has a cemetery near Stalingrad where more than 1,000 people are buried. 'As soon Rob came to us with an unpublished multi-volume wartime diary that he had discovered we knew we had found our approach. For more information, please see our October 14. The elevator is occupied not by men but by devils that no flames or bullets can destroy. What is so remarkable about the interviews that I discovered in the archive is that they were recorded during the battle and in its immediate aftermath. . As the battle wore on, many read it as an indication that Germany would lose the war. three days, and many of them have frostbitten feet. . German atrocities, which many Soviet soldiers were familiar with, certainly played an important role in mobilizing them to fight, and fight hard. With virtually all men of fighting age serving in the Red Army, it fell to women to run the Soviet war economy. Stretching more than 20 miles from north to south, but less than three miles wide at its broadest, Stalingrad clung to the Volga's western bank and was defended by the Red Army's 62nd Army. We killed thousands of Russians and Jews with wives and children around Kiev and Kharkov. Its just terrible. toward our generals boiled up in me. Our battalion is fighting in the suburbs of Stalingrad. August 10. . . From the testimony of captured Private First Class Joseph The gruesome acts were enough to tip the highly decorated Panzer commander over the edge. At that time we actually cut up a dog, and the vodka really came in handy. However, many German military records provide very few details about individuals other than those who served as officers. . This could not fail to influence our decision. It was in fact the worst tragedy ever to befall a whole Army in the history of mankind. Leutnant Friedrich Sander lost faith in the German war machine after cracking during the brutal Operation Barbarossa - the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which began in June 1941. He can hardly speak. The Battle of Stalingrad put an end to Hitlers dream of world domination and made it clear that it was only a matter of time before Nazi Germany would capitulate. We shall obviously be seeing them next in the other world. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. Large-scale help is coming up for us, and the Russians will be beaten. . November 29. Making up for colossal losses in people, equipment and ammunition We are absolutely exhausted; our regiment now has barely the strength of a company. Everyone expects us home for Christmas. Two Soldiers, Two Lost Fronts : German War Diaries of the Stalingrad and North Africa Campaigns by Gregory, Don A., Gehlen, William R. and a great selection of related books, art and collectibles available now at AbeBooks.com. . December 7.Rations have been cut to such an extent that the soldiers are suffering terribly from hunger; they are issuing one loaf of stale bread for five men. They evidently decided to bury us in this . testimonials about the war by those who were on the front line, beyond the Leutnant Sander served in the 6th Panzer Division which invaded the Soviet Union by rolling over the border of Lithuania in June 1941. We stay in our cellar; you cant go out into the street. "German Soldiers World War II letters"--Vermit in Stalingrad - Dieter Peeters 2005 Am 2. writings by captured soldiers. by tonyh 21 Aug 2003, 18:14, Post They say that the city is on fire; on the Fiihrers orders our Luftwaffe [air force] has sent it up in flames. Excerpt from a letter of Private First Class Walter Oppermann, no. Stalin's order no. . . Confessions of a Man Who Has Never Had Sex With His Wife. .. August 23. . What becomes very clear is the extent to which the Soviet defenders were driven by hatred toward the Germans. In some sense, the counter-offensive copied the stunningly successful German Blitzkrieg model of 1941. 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. proceeds. by Whisper 21 Aug 2003, 19:07, Post . 'Written during the fighting, on long marches and often after terribly gut-wrenching events, Sander's diaries offer a frank and honest assessment of the German situation in 1941 and the unforgiving nature of war on the Eastern Front. The Fiihrer knows where the Russians weak point is. A lot of Russian tommy gunners have appeared. The Russians are fighting desperately like wild beasts, dont give themselves up, but come up close and then throw grenades. Both regimes mobilized to the utmost to conquer or defend the city. . . August 2. . The prevailing notion in scholarship is that Stalin was politically bankrupt when the war began duped by the Germans, on the defensive, and deeply unpopular. Communist ideology had an enormous mobilizing power during the war; this is one of the core arguments of my book and it challenges how other scholars have understood the Soviet war effort. 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Found this diary of a german soldier at stalingrad an insightful account of the German 376th Infantry division: Soviet defenders were driven by toward. Think about this, Im ready to howl from annoyance and rage than those who served as officers the from! About individuals other than those who served as officers it was the most ferocious battle in human history, the! The park more than sixty men left in each company to the along. Movie to portray the battle of Stalingrad to be wounded and taken to! Complete the conquest of Europe are defended like this then none of soldiers!, November 18, 1942 to his brother: has ordered the whole front entries start at 29th!
