If they could only see what Stalingrad has done to our army. What are your main findings? . The YouTube channel is a generally reputable source but this fact made me skeptical. This morning outstanding soldiers were presented with decorations. From a letter from Senior Lance Corporal Arno Bitz of the
. The turning point of World War II came at Stalingrad. Military church records [Kirchenbcher]. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. Wherever you look is fire and flames. by Whisper 21 Aug 2003, 18:52, Post When, as part of the campaign to fight Stalins cult of personality, his city was renamed Volgograd in 1961, many veterans objected: With Stalingrad gone, they felt written out of history as well. There are very few men left in the companies. Soviet soldiers found the diary in December 1942 or January 1943, probably among the possessions of its deceased owner. . . . In the north our troops capture a part of Stalingrad and reach theVolga, but in the south the doomed divisions are continuing to resist bitterly. It was the most powerful formation of the whole 'Heer' (German Army). Then the terrible struggles in . and rage. Hitler remarked that with the 6th Army, he "could storm the Heavens". . convinced that they cant stop us. Maybe they should start a travelling museum showing cities firebombed or discussing the rapes of their own women, daughters and grandmothers. In his memoirs, Chuikov writes that he issued a sharp rebuke to his cowardly officers. In the interviews I was surprised to discover the source of this hatred. about the combats in the Stalingrad region, and soldiers assessment of the
Stalingrad is a grave for the German soldiers. We are apparently going to attack the factories, the chimneys of which we can see clearly. . In the last few days our battalion has several times tried to attack the Russian positions, . Yes, leading generals of the Stalingrad battle, like Chuikov, were able to publish accounts of their role in the battle, but they carefully omitted any reference to executions within the Red Army. 28329 D, to his
Look at the confidence and aggression on the face of the soldiers. Diary of a German Soldier (161 results) by Whisper 21 Aug 2003, 22:23, Post We stay in our cellar; you cant go out into the street. Over 1.8 million became casualties. There are barely
by August 21 Aug 2003, 11:24, Post The idea was to mobilize the German population through an intense propaganda of fear. An extract for August 24 described the horrific aftermath of one fight his crews engaged in. They snapped at the gates of Moscow from October 1941 to January 1942, in vicious fighting that nevertheless set the stage for Soviet counter-offensives. Infantry Division, and his adjutant, Lieutenant Karl Gottschaldt, January 15,
Fritz is telling me about a conversation he heard: the soldiers prefer to defect or surrender to captivity. That has a tremendous impact.. Ive had my fill. 87th Artillery Regiment of the 113th Infantry Division, no. "German WWII soldiers get proper burial after 60 years", The Age (2008) The German War Graves Commission's (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgrberfrsorge) . God protect me . A Russian counteroffensive in November trapped the German Sixth Army. At one point near the northwest boundary of the pocket we were allowed to look around and . . around us. There was an enormous membership drive over the course of the war, so much so that by the end of the war, the Red Army was predominantly communist, and the party had features of a military organization. Discussions on the Holocaust and 20th Century War Crimes. At the time of the invasion German combat effectiveness had reached its peak and the forces invading Russia represented the best it had to offer. . injured and frostbitten men; more than 30 men have escaped; there is only
.. The Germans became very impressed with this. an effort to communicate impressions to relatives, an effort to share the truth
A German newspaper described Stalingrad as the most fateful battle of the war that was in early August 1942, even before Hitlers soldiers began their assault on the city. The entries are written by William Hoffman and records the fighting and general situation around him from the 29th of July to the 26th of December 1942. Clothing freezes on our bodies. . Her research deals with World War II, gender and the history of psychology in the 20th century. We make the 60-mile March through the steppe. We have never been through anything like this. Our battalion, plus tanks, is attacking the [grain storage] elevator, from which smoke is pouring-the grain in it is burning, the Russians seem to have set light to it themselves. Then the terrible struggles in . Among the last Wehrmacht soldiers to leave Stalingrad by air were a group of 18 wounded and sick Croat legionnaires, including Lt. Barievi, who were flown out by Luftwaffe pilots and were landed on the last serviceable German airfield at Staljingradskaja near the 369th's artillery section positions on the night of 22 to 23 January 1943. . . Mr Schaefer said: 'These diaries are absolutely unique and quite amazing. Making up for colossal losses in people, equipment and ammunition sustained by the German armed forces as a result of the perishing of the 6th Army will require huge effort and a lot of time. That was how Wehrmacht soldiers and officers viewed their plight after they ended up in the middle of the circle of fire formed by the Red Army in the Stalingrad area. . 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. . Shes expecting me home when victoryswon. . In them, Leutnant Sander described in harrowing detail the barbaric deaths of both German comrades and Russian soldiers, with as many as 15 men executed before his eyes on one occasion. Mr Snow added: 'The invasion launched by Hitler against Stalin 80 years ago this month was the start of the most terrible clash in human history. Let the generals and officers fight the war
Many of the interviewed soldiers at Stalingrad agreed that the nurses performed exceptionally. 'He has started to sing with a slurring voice, so great is his pain. August 25, 1942. will there be a way out, of the cauldron. What were the main ways in which survivors remembered Stalingrad? . Reese's account shows how the Nazi war machine corrupted ordinary people. They only differed in their interpretations of this resistance. September 18. Our regiment, and the whole division, are today celebrating victory. This morning katyushi attacks caused the company heavy losses: twenty-seven dead and fifty wounded. by Oleg Grigoryev 21 Aug 2003, 22:48, Return to Holocaust & 20th Century War Crimes. Confessions of a Man Who Has Never Had Sex With His Wife. themselves. As Stalingrad was about to fall into German hands in September 1942, the Red Army came up with a plan for a counter-attack that would eventually smash the enemy. One day I shot a magpie and cooked it. Excerpt from a letter of Private First Class Walter Oppermann, no. After marching through the night we have established ourselves in a shrubcovered gully. If fate allows it, someday I
140 of us, but by September 1, after two weeks of battle, only 16 remained. That was one reason why these interviews could not be published at the time. Up to then, the German army had seen victory after victory and Hoffman felt confident they could conquer Stalingrad and then the rest of Russia. We had no peace all night from the Russian artillery and aero planes. After five months of unrelenting battle, the retreat of the Nazis became the turning point of World War II. Something incomprehensible is, in fact, going on. 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. The German 6th Army (300 000 men) was formed at the inception of Operation Barbarossa (the invasion of the Soviet Union). Stalingrad is hell on earthVerdun, beautiful Verdun, with new weapons. All rights reserved by Rossiyskaya Gazeta. Diary of a German Soldier During Stalingrad. 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. After months of bitter fighting, 100,000 surviving Germans, huddled in the ruined city, surrendered to Soviet troops.During the battle and shortly after its conclusion, scores of Red Army commanders and soldiers . God, let it be! I read the ultimatum, and a burning malice toward our generals boiled up in me. In the blocks captured two days ago Russian soldiers appeared from somewhere or other and fighting has flared up with fresh vigour. and December of 1942 and the first half of January 1943. I highly recommend the Book "Forgotten Soldier".
The Russians have two alternatives, either to flee across theVolga or give themselves up. Swansong 1945: A Collective Diary of the Last Days of the Third Reich - Walter Kempowski 2015-04-13 . . defect or surrender to captivity. The economy, culture and society were fully mobilized by governments. everything we did. Wilhelm Hoffman's Stalingrad diary is a FAKE TIKhistory 269K subscribers Subscribe 124K views 1 year ago I've just discovered that Wilhelm Hoffman's famous "Diary of a German Soldier". 'I myself alone counted 15 men who were lying in a ditch.'. January 15. . August 23. Russian cannon and machine-guns are firing out of the burning city. We can already see the smoking town. 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. As World War IIs pivotal battle, Stalingrad deserves equal recognition. Ideology was the cement that the Red Army command used to bind together its diverse soldier body. The Russians lauded the 'everyday heroism' of their troops, while the Germans cast the Soviet soldiers as subhuman beings who fought without any respect for life, even their own. military publishing house of the Peoples Commissariat of the Defence of the
trenches and bunkers. A lot of Russian tommy gunners have appeared. 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. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. Yes, the Fuehrer promised that we would end the war in the autumn of 1941, but he was a little mistaken. November 10. If in the
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. In the summer of 1942 Paulus advanced toward Stalingrad with 250,000 men, 500 tanks, 7,000 guns and mortars, and 25,000 horses. November 21. 55 was specifically designed to encourage Germans to desert, and, although the stark injunction - 'If German soldiers and officers give themselves up, the Red Army must take them prisoner and spare their lives' - was not exactly reassuring, Red Army propaganda did become more sophisticated in the course of the battle of . . . After five months of unrelenting battle, the retreat of the Nazis became the turning point of World War II. From time to time mines explode
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. Every day I write two or three reports about them. Among the documents collected by the Historical Commission in Stalingrad were two excerpts from the diary of a German private 1st class. More than a million people-Russian civilians and soldiers, Germans and their Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian allies-perished in the epic struggle for Stalingrad. BERLIN: A guilt-ridden account of an ordinary German soldier's experiences in World War two is countering a recent trend among historians to portray Germans as victims of the war. Russian. The defeat of the German troops
October 28. He wrote: 'That isn't a good idea when facing tank men like us - floor the accelerator, turn left and run over him. 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. Schwarz, 10th Company of the 131st Infantry Regiment of the 44th Infantry
They say that the city is on fire; on the Fiihrers orders our Luftwaffe [air force] has sent it up in flames. 15:59 GMT 17 Jun 2021 . It was all a bluff with Manstein. From a letter from soldier Otto Zechtig, 1st Company of the
The entire German. already cut up four dogs, yet my comrades cant eat their fill. Privacy Policy. The remarkable 'lost' diaries of German tank commander Leutnant Friedrich Sander, who went from being a hardened Nazi to a broken soldier in just a few weeks of fighting in the Second World War . . Wilhelm Hoffman was a soldier in the 267th Infantry Regiment, 94th Infantry Division of the German 6th Army who chronicled the Battle of Stalingrad in his journal, and is cited in many documentaries and books concerning that topic. During that meeting, Lyolya Novikova was posthumously accepted into the Communist Party. . Also revealed in the new documentary are Leutnant Sander's unseen images of the doomed invasion. On November 8, Hitler announced that the German Sixth Army had taken Sta- lingrad, but in fact, on November 19 and 20, the Soviets attacked German positions north and south of Stalingrad, and by November 23 they had surrounded the German forces. children around Kiev and Kharkov. Cookie Notice 30 men in the company. . August 12. When I think about this, Im ready to howl from annoyance and rage. While the German army was penetrating deeply into Russia, he believed that victory was not far away and dreamed of returning home with medals. knew that the Germans would not defeat the Soviet Union. 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). Damn this Stalingrad! The Russians are firing on allsides. In just the last two days, our battalion has lost 60 killed,
Part of Senior Lance Corporal Arno Bitzs letter, 87th Artillery Regiment of the 113th Infantry Division, no. German soldiers and officers drink water at Stalingrad. 'It is just awful. Stalin's order no. . He is still sitting in the driver's seat. .. This is simply unbelievable. There is no way out, nor will there be a way out, of the cauldron. On February2, 1943, the remnants of the Sixth Army surrendered. . And the reaction will be unequivocal: this battle for us is a symbol of the madness of war, its senselessness. July 29 1942. . The Fiihrer knows where the Russians weak point is. '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. We can already see theVolga; firing is going on all the time. The victory came at a high cost; about two-fifths of the American planes were shot down. Even civilians were considered vital defenders of Fortress Stalingrad and not allowed to evacuate until several days after the beginning of the bombardment. . What role did Bolshevism play in the fighting? His 'unique and amazing' diaries that run to 150,000 words have been unearthed by German military historian Robin Schaefer. The only hope is to be wounded and taken back to the rear. On the morning of January 10 we read a pamphlet that
It may just be me, but every time people start to realize that maybe the Germans were not a race of butchers and that maybe Germans were also subjected to the horrors of total war, that something like this comes out of left field to paint them all as murdering scum again. We are all by Christmas. Soviet forces launched a counteroffensive against the Germans arrayed at Stalingrad in mid-November 1942. . Stalingrad is hell on earthVerdun,
. German. I did the same to another who pretended to be dead.'. . From the diary of Field Gendarmerie Sergeant Helmut
The Soviets were able to psychologically wear down the Germans and make them slowly lose motivation. He wrote them throughout the battle of Stalingrad. backward. He banked on the psychological blow that the fall of Stalins city, which is what Stalingrad literally means, would deliver to Stalin. We are advancing towards Stalingrad along the railway line. After five months of unrelenting battle, the retreat of the Nazis became the turning point of World War II.. Less than twenty miles to go to Stalingrad. 44111, to his brother, November 18, 1942. Soon her home was destroyed in the . The book is based on interviews with Red Army soldiers that you found in the archives. The soldiers are calling Stalingrad the mass grave of the Wehrmacht [German army]. Will I really go back to Elsa without a decoration? Everyone expects us home for Christmas. The Russians are defending themselves with insane stubbornness. Thats what everyone is saying. 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. The pincer movement that would break through both flanks of the extended Axis front and encircle more than 300,000 of their soldiers was a daring maneuver and testified to the Red Armys tactical learning curve. the rest were wounded and killed. So, there it is- -theVolga, victory and soon home to our families! .. Life in the Third Reich & Weimar Republic, Kriegsmarine surface ships and Kriegsmarine in general, Luftwaffe air units and Luftwaffe in general, German Strategy & General German Military Discussion, NSDAP, other party organizations & Government, The Dieter Zinke Axis Biographical Research Section, The Ron Klages Panzer & other vehicles Section, Panzer & other vehicles - Photo threads, Axis Documents, Feldpost numbers, Postcards & Other Paper Items, The United Kingdom & its Empire and Commonwealth 1919-45, The Allies and the Neutral States in general, German Colonies and Overseas Expeditions, The end of the Ottoman Empire 1908-1923, Translation help: Breaking the Sound Barrier, http://www.newindpress.com/Newsitems.as ld&rLink=0. 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. 22-25 November. The weather is getting worse and worse. 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. Jochen Hellbeck is a leading historian of the Soviet period who teaches at Rutgers University in New Jersey. by Whisper 21 Aug 2003, 19:07, Post September 8. That has a tremendous impact.'. which both sides took severe losses. The Nazi regimes first response after the successful Soviet encirclement in November was denial. The Russians have gone over to the offensive along the whole front. This is nothing new. When during my research I discovered a trove of wartime interviews with Soviet defenders of the city, I decided that my book should centrally focus on the comparatively little-known, Soviet side of the story. 10 Women Who Gave Creepy Guys A Chance, Describe Their Experiences, A Few Videos Guaranteed To Make You Feel Better About Life. by Lawrence Tandy 21 Aug 2003, 22:24, Post I found them in the archive of the Institute for Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Fanatics. . 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. To Holocaust & 20th Century War Crimes German military historian Robin Schaefer grave for the German soldiers the psychological that..., 7,000 guns and mortars, and the first half of January 1943 done to our!... Pivotal battle, Stalingrad deserves equal recognition interpretations of this hatred in the autumn of 1941, he... 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