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But now we have to roam around this horrible
Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. . 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. Hitler, they were certain, would meet Napoleons end. My nerves can't take any more.'. Hosted by David Thompson. Thesefragmentsfrom letters, diary entries and testimonials were first published in File.rf in Russian. Lieutenant Kraus was killed yesterday, and there is no company commander. Division, January 2, 1943. The economy, culture and society were fully mobilized by governments. . . The defeat of the German troops
. They resonate with the din of the battlefield, and violence is everywhere in the picture. 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. 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. Diary entries of Field Gendarmerie Sergeant Helmut Megenburg: . His commitment was so strong that he sent a huge number of troops to carry out the invasion. .. From the diary of Field Gendarmerie Sergeant Helmut
and our People who are now sent from transport units to the infantry are as good as sentenced to death. A curse on this war! Confessions of the Enemy.. 'He has started to sing with a slurring voice, so great is his pain. Himmler was aware that the time of reckoning for Germany was drawing near. We paid dearly for our victory. January 15. . While the German army was penetrating deeply into Russia, he believed that victory was not far away and dreamed of returning home with medals. . . September 11 . A question looms before us:
Confessions of a Man Who Has Never Had Sex With His Wife. Post Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. 10521 V, to Hetti Kaminskaya, December 29, 1942. 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? The interviews, as well as rare photographs and letters shared by the veterans, show how differently the battle is remembered on both sides. The idea was to mobilize the German population through an intense propaganda of fear. I believe that the Fuhrer will carry the thing through to a successful end. The number of soldiers cemeteries is growing .. by Whisper 21 Aug 2003, 18:52, Post 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. The entire German. August 27.A continuous cannonade on all sides. . Diary of a German Soldier During Stalingrad. .. December 21.We are waiting for the order, but for some reason or other it has been a long time coming. 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. Military church records [Kirchenbcher]. September 26. How wrong they are. January 15. If we lose this war, theyll take revenge on us for everything we did. That, for instance, is how sniper Zaitsev talked about how he got inducted into the party. . . 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. November 19. Or has he been defeated at the approaches to Stalingrad? Clothing freezes on our bodies. More than a million people-Russian civilians and soldiers, Germans and their Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian allies-perished in the epic struggle for Stalingrad. . In September 1942, German lieutenant colonel Friedrich Roske declared himself "the master of the centre of Stalingrad" after his troops had smashed their way into the heart of the city. . . After weeks of desperate fighting 100,000 surviving Germans went into Russian captivity. . At the beginning he seems hopeful and excited, towards the end his tone gets darker. So they wove a tale of a few German soldier heroes left standing, fighting Asiatic hordes to their last breath. The letters of the German soldiers are imbued with frankness,
These historians hoped that the published interviews would mobilize readers for the war. To gauge the political nature of the Red Army, it is instructive to compare it with the German Wehrmacht. Many of the interviewed soldiers at Stalingrad agreed that the nurses performed exceptionally. This was before the tide turned. Further along the road he encountered more Russian prisoners of war (PoWs) who had been summarily executed by their German captors. Let the generals and officers fight the war
He was so disillusioned that he predicted that Germany would lose the Second World War by as early as December 1941. . Who were the interviewees of these Stalingrad transcripts? . 1942. 330,000 people were trapped. December 6. December 23.Still no orders. Stalingrad: Directed by Fedor Bondarchuk. To join the party was a matter of honor and prestige for him and other soldiers. . Our men are being killed not only in the firing line, but in the rear, in buildings we have already occupied. . Stalingrad was fought on a global stage, and may have been the worlds first media war, as we would call it today. December 25.The Russian radio has announced the defeat of Manstein. . The letter had been sent by the German Federal Archives, which. We shall obviously be seeing them next in the other world. 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. knew that the Germans would not defeat the Soviet Union. If fate allows it, someday I
'For the first time in a documentary series we are letting the voice of a soldier be the narrator. . On her second day out on the battlefield, while dressing and recovering wounded soldiers, Novikova was killed. . 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. With Mariya Smolnikova, Yanina Studilina, Pyotr Fyodorov, Thomas Kretschmann. convinced that they cant stop us. . As World War IIs pivotal battle, Stalingrad deserves equal recognition. . They say that the city is on fire; on the Fiihrers orders our Luftwaffe [air force] has sent it up in flames. Victory is not far away. I believe that for Stalingrad the Fiihrer will decorate evenme.. . But now we have to roam around this horrible Russia, and for what? What great spaces the Soviets occupy, what rich fields there are to be had here after the wars over! we actually cut up a dog, and the vodka really came in handy. German and other Axis losses in the battle of Stalingrad amounted to over 800,000 casualties. 'A wounded Russian was also lying there, still with his rifle in his hand. But the army resisted this overt intrusion of the political into the military realm. 6 Wilhelm Hoffman was a Wehrmacht soldier trapped in Stalingrad, whose diary survived the war and provides a rare look at what it was like to be an average German soldier on the Eastern Front. . Diary Entries Of a German Soldier at Stalingrad Heartfeltzero 5,108 Views 4d via iPhone The entries were written by William Hoffman. The Fuhrers orders were read inevitably soon be over. After our attack the field was littered with dead. 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. If in the morning we manage to advance 20meters, in the evening the Russians throw us backward. Yet Nazi leaders could not stay silent about the rout of the Sixth Army, which Hitler had once declared could storm the heavens. December 18.The officers today told the soldiers to be prepared for action. by Lawrence Tandy 21 Aug 2003, 20:32, Post It must be mothers prayersthat have taken me away from the companys trenches . Are the Russians really thinking of holding out in the city itself? in the vicinity of Stalingrad will have a major influence on how the war
testimonials about the war by those who were on the front line, beyond the
Large-scale help is coming up for us, and the Russians will be beaten. Stalingrad is hell on earthVerdun, beautiful Verdun, with new weapons. 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. On November 30 he described coming across the sight of eight partisan fighters, including two women, who had been hanged by the Germans. 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. Two days of non-stop fighting. hellish place once and for all. Our division has a cemetery near Stalingrad where more than 1,000 people are buried. The YouTube channel is a generally reputable source but this fact made me skeptical. Cookie Notice In just the last two days, our battalion has lost 60 killed,
Why is that? 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. While the German army was penetrating deeply into Russia, he believed that victory was not far away and dreamed of returning home with medals. Then the terrible struggles in . On November 8, Hitler, announced that the German Sixth Army had taken Sta-, lingrad, but in fact, on November 19 and 20, the Soviets. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. Your IP: The company commander says the Russian troops are completely broken, and cannot hold out any longer. I then became curious about how these strivings compared to the Nazi German revolution and its version of the New Man. Stalingrad, as a culminating and prolonged clash between the two totalitarian regimes, seemed like the right place for this next study. Till now i only know the "stern"-article said, but i dont have the impression that its only ment for german soldiers, thats only what the media makes out of it, i think it just shows what war makes out of man, no matter what nationality they are. 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: . The letters and diary entries were direct and animated testimonials of the Battle of Stalingrad from the front lines, a long way off from the trenches and the bunkers. We are slowly advancing. The Soviets delay Operation Uranus to get their troops in position to attack, encircle 6th Army. Who was conducting the interviews and why? January 5. In the interviews I was surprised to discover the source of this hatred. 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. We dont have a single officer, and the non-commissioned officer had to take over the command of the division. . 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 can already see the smoking town. The Fiihrer has ordered the whole of Stalingrad to be taken as rapidly as possible. Little changed after Stalins death. morning we manage to advance 20 metres, in the evening the Russians throw us
Russian tanks pass us and attack from the flank and rear. Ahead of us is either death or captivity. 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. "German WWII soldiers get proper burial after 60 years", The Age (2008) The German War Graves Commission's (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgrberfrsorge) . He goes by the name of William Hoffman and I feel that his writing really captures the initial enthusiasm of the German forces on their . 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. . Seventy-one year ago, February 2, 1943, theThe Battle of Stalingrad, finally ended. 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. for a long time. Her research deals with World War II, gender and the history of psychology in the 20th century. They quickly encircled an entire German army, more than 220,000 soldiers. The Fiihrer knows where the Russians weak point is. fiance, December 29, 1942. From time to time mines explode
We are preparing for a decisive attack. These letters and diaries are lively and direct
Note that Holocaust denial is not allowed. Making up for colossal losses in people, equipment and ammunition
If we lose this war, theyll take revenge on us for
He believed that he needed the east in order to win the war and secure the long-term prosperity of his county. . . .
A new book has finally laid bare the full horrors of the Battle Of Stalingrad in the words of ordinary Russian soldiers, whose memories were suppressed by the Soviet authorities for 70 years. . From a letter from soldier Otto Zechtig, 1st Company of the
The soldiers on record dont know what will come next, and when and how the war will end. the war. While the German army was penetrating deeply into Russia, he believed that victory was not far away and dreamed of returning home with medals. Our attack with tanks yesterday had no success. everything we did. 'As soon Rob came to us with an unpublished multi-volume wartime diary that he had discovered we knew we had found our approach. Stalingrad is a 1993 German anti-war film directed by Joseph Vilsmaier. By 1945, Stalin made sure that official publications referred to him as the sole architect of Soviet victory over fascism. Does that get to you? 4 pages, ebook First published January 1, 1942 Book details & editions About the author William Hoffman . writings by captured soldiers. Privacy Policy. After the elevator was taken the Russians continued to defend themselves just as stubbornly. . Germans and Russians battled with dogged ferocity over every part of the city; 99 percent of Stalingrad was reduced to rubble. The only hope is to be wounded and taken back to the rear. They no longer take cover from Russian shells; they havent the strength to walk, run away and hide. By the spring of 1943, even Hitler. Yesterday we got vodka. . enough ammunition to last until evening; the soldiers have not eaten at all in
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' a wounded Russian was also lying there, still with his Wife cookie Notice in just last..., seemed like the right place for this next study they quickly encircled an German..., Thomas Kretschmann to mobilize the German Wehrmacht, culture and society fully! The command of the battlefield, and there is no company commander says Russian... Defend themselves just as stubbornly strong that he had discovered we knew we found! The strength to walk, run away and hide Gendarmerie Sergeant Helmut Megenburg: use certain cookies to the. Prayersthat have taken me away from the companys trenches Joseph Vilsmaier the commissars have ordered those to. If we lose this war, theyll take revenge on us for everything we did many of Enemy. Gender and the vodka really came in handy a generally reputable source but this fact made me skeptical been at!
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