During the battle for Stalingrad, the Soviet Union lost 1.3 million soldiers killed and wounded. For Germany and its allies - Romania, Italy, Hungary, Finland and Croatia, the battle for Stalin's city cost 1.5 million killed, wounded and prisoners. The defeat at Stalingrad was the greatest tragedy for the Germans, in which they consider Wehrmacht soldiers to be victims.
Modern people in Germany remember their compatriots as frozen, hungry, ragged, exhausted people surrendering to the enemy. They were destined to go through the hell of Soviet captivity, and only a few of them returned home alive. The Germans do not remember the well-fed and well-armed Wehrmacht soldiers in the summer of 1942, when the battle for the city was just beginning.
Army of martyrs
The son of Martin Bormann, one of the leaders of Nazi Germany, recalled: “I perfectly remember the Germany crushed by the news, gloomy faces, flags with swastikas at half-mast. It was hard to believe, did the Russians really bury our best warriors in the snow? Over time, knowledge came about both the atrocities of the SS, and about the concentration camps, and it became clear that May 9 was not a defeat. But Stalingrad still remains a grim picture in the minds of Germans. Paulus's soldier is considered not the occupiers, but the victims of the war."
Wolf Hess, the son of another famous Nazi, Rudolf Hess, put it this way: Stalingrad is something terrible, an octopus from the depths of the ocean, even anti-fascists feel pity for the Germans who died there. Modern Germans sincerely condemn the crime of the German army and the SS, however, Stalingrad for them is a symbol of the personal sadness of their people. The soldiers of the 6th Army, led by Paulus, are perceived as the sufferers paying the price for Hitler's imperial ambitions.
The German film "Stalingrad", released in 1993, was of great importance in shaping this view of the past. In it, a unit of kind and cheerful German soldiers from warm Italy ends up in the terrible Stalingrad. All soldiers die during the battle, and the last two freeze to death in the steppe.
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They killed everyone indiscriminately and the wounded and prisoners
At the same time, the Germans do not ask themselves the question of what their troops did in the middle of the Russian steppes and how they showed themselves at the beginning of the battle. So the former infantryman Dieter Birtz, who was lucky enough to survive in the battles on the Volga, recalled that the command conveyed to them the order of the Fuehrer to wipe Stalingrad off the face of the earth. The veteran said: “I saw how our planes bombed not only factories with train stations, but also schools, kindergartens, trains with refugees. It seemed to us that we should take this city, and the war would end, the Russians would surrender. My colleagues, mad with anger, killed everyone indiscriminately, both the wounded and the prisoners."
In addition to soldiers on both sides, hundreds of thousands of civilians died in Stalingrad. At the start of the battle, out of 400 thousand people, only 100 thousand were evacuated. During the first bombing, at least 90,000 residents were killed, and half of the buildings were destroyed. Large casualties were caused by the special approach of the German aviation to the fulfillment of the task assigned to them.
After high-explosive bombs, incendiary charges were dropped on the city, which created vortexes of fire that burn everything in its path. Immediately after the liberation of Stalingrad, a population census was carried out there. According to her, 10 thousand people survived, of which 994 were children.
In 1943, Churchill handed over to the USSR the Sword of Stalingrad, forged on behalf of King George. On his blade was written: “Citizens of Stalingrad, strong as steel. From King George VI as a token of the deep admiration of the British people. " At the time of the transfer of arms to Stalin at the Tehran conference, US President Roosevelt, present in the hall, said: "Indeed, they had hearts of steel."
Alexander Brazhnik