• Please make sure you are familiar with the forum rules. You can find them here: https://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/index.php?threads/forum-rules.2334636/

Stalingrad POWs

Jump to latest Follow Reply
Sort by date Sort by votes
aktionman

aktionman

Grizzled Veteran
May 10, 2006
399
25
#1
It is common knowledge that about 5000 or 6000 of the about 90 000 Germans captured at Stalingrad, returned to Germany after the war.

What is harder to believe is that only 18 000 of them reached a Soviet POW camp alive:

The prisoners from Stalingrad had to march in a zig zag through the far country. All those who had to give up were shot. When they finnlay reached a collective point they had to stay there for several month. 18.000 of the 91.000, who survived the battle of encirclement and annihilation, reached a POW-camp and only 6.000 of them survived captivity.

 - http://home.arcor.de/kriegsgefangene/russia/russia.html

Since the source of this claim may be questioned, perhaps someone can shed more light on this?
 
#2
Yea I read something like 80% of them died before May of 1943. A book titled "Stalingrad" by Anthony Beevor deals with this subject and there is a documentary movie titled 'Stalingrad" you can rent on Netflix that covers it extensively. It interviews both German and Russian survivors of Stalingrad and without a doubt is one of the saddest tales I ever heard. Still after all these years you can see and hear the German survivors choke up from the horrors they witnessed.
 
Upvote 0
#3
Well,
don't forget the white death (the intense cold and the lack of good clothes) and the unknown death(german and their allies suffered a lot from malnutrition with heavy losses due to this starvation).
If you add the fact that soviet was certainly not keen to provided good clothes and follow medically each prisonner to stop their starvation correctly, it is already a miracle that some succeed to survive to the trip !

There were perhaps also abusive punishment by the guards during the trip like in all the armies.


And from those who reach labor camp, they had to face illness (epidemy or working on removing the dead in the cities) and exhaustive labor and a long period of [SIZE=-1]imprisonnement (more than 10 years).

PS: about the numbers, i don't know if it is exact, i will try to see that in one of my books perhaps
[/SIZE]
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
#4
BubbaG said:
Yea I read something like 80% of them died before May of 1943. A book titled "Stalingrad" by Anthony Beevor deals with this subject and there is a documentary movie titled 'Stalingrad" you can rent on Netflix that covers it extensively. It interviews both German and Russian survivors of Stalingrad and without a doubt is one of the saddest tales I ever heard. Still after all these years you can see and hear the German survivors choke up from the horrors they witnessed.
Click to expand...


Stalingrad the book is well researched and written , have to say that BubbaG knows his stuff:D

Book is worth getting.
 
Upvote 0
#6
LemoN said:
also got anthony Beevors Stalingrad
verry good book

especially like the tale about the soviet general who broke into the iced volga after serveral bottles of vodaka :D
Click to expand...

Yea, none other then General Chuikov himself, the commander of the Russian 62nd Army. Would have froze to death if it wasn't for his fellow soldiers pulling him out in the neck of time.
 
Upvote 0
#9
Several things militated against the Russians making any real systematic efforts to protect the prisoners against the cold or to feed them well.

One was that food and warm clothing were in fairly short supply by this time and prisoners of war certailny weren't front of the queue for these things.

Another thing is that Soviet propagandists (in particular Simonov and Suvorov) were busily putting out the message of hate (e.g. "Then kill a German, kill him soon and every time you see one, kill him" - Simonov) without really priming them for what to do once the battle started to turn.

Finally, there was the feeling amongst the victors that the Germans of the 6th Army had brought about their own wretched condition, and put the Russian encircling forces through a lot of grief, by not surrendering when they knew their situation was hopeless over a month earlier.

Even today, though, the official line is that the prisoners were well treated. I have seen a list of the official daily of foodstuffs for POW generals and I have to say it seems pretty unlikely that many in Russia, least of all normal non-officer POW's were getting this much food.

This is the list I got at the Univermag Museum in Volgograd, it shows what the enemy generals were getting as rations:

pow_rations.jpg


Basically a daily average of 600g of bread, 120g meat, 50g fish, 40g butter, 10g vegetable oil, 400g potatoes, 200g fresh fruit, as well as things like sugar, pepper and a few other things such as soap and so on.

It is possible that this was really given to the generals as a kind of sweetener for their use in propaganda. Paulus and other generals certainly were quite active in anti-nazi propaganda later in the war.

this second list purports to be what prisoners in camps and at NKVD points got:

pow_rations2.jpg


It is basically the same as the other with less meat but with more emphasis on reasonable amounts of vegetables and herbs. I leave you to decide whether it was likley that any prisoners in normal camps actually got that.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
#10
If you could take a rank poll of the 5,000 that lived to see Germany again I would make a good bet that 80-90% of them were mid to high ranking officers. The Russians took very good care of German officers with the rank of major or above for their intelligence and propaganda value. During the siege they tended to be better sheltered and had slightly higher food rations, and warmer clothes. That extra food and better clothing helped them later on maintain their stamina and warmth during the long march to the POW trains and camps.

If you check around most of the enlisted views you hear about were wounded or had high value specialties. It should be noted that the Luftwaffe was able to airlift out anywhere from 30,000 to 35,000 men. (I've heard different figures but all were in the 30,000 range.)
 
Upvote 0
#14
BubbaG said:
If you could take a rank poll of the 5,000 that lived to see Germany again I would make a good bet that 80-90% of them were mid to high ranking officers. The Russians took very good care of German officers with the rank of major or above for their intelligence and propaganda value. During the siege they tended to be better sheltered and had slightly higher food rations, and warmer clothes. That extra food and better clothing helped them later on maintain their stamina and warmth during the long march to the POW trains and camps.

If you check around most of the enlisted views you hear about were wounded or had high value specialties. It should be noted that the Luftwaffe was able to airlift out anywhere from 30,000 to 35,000 men. (I've heard different figures but all were in the 30,000 range.)
Click to expand...

You're quite right, most of the survivors were officers. I don't think they were kept alive mainly for propoganda purposes though. They tended to survive for two reasons.
The first you have identified. Officers were better fed and in overall better condition at the time of surrender than the enlisted men. The high mortality of German POWs at Stalingrad reflects environmental condtions and the state of the 6th Army at surrender as much as Soviet mistreatment/neglect of prisoners.
The other is that the hierarchial nature of the Communist Soviet system simply placed officers above enlisted men, even for enemy POWs. Captured German officers got better food, medical care, transport and living conditions than their lower ranking counterparts. Enlisted men were simply expendable.
 
Upvote 0
#15
thedonster said:
The other is that the hierarchial nature of the Communist Soviet system simply placed officers above enlisted men, even for enemy POWs. Captured German officers got better food, medical care, transport and living conditions than their lower ranking counterparts. Enlisted men were simply expendable.
Click to expand...

This has absolutely nothing to do with the "hierarchial nature of the Communist Soviet system".


I guarantee, that in every army in WWII officer POWs got much better treatment, that enlisted men. (Doesn
 
Upvote 0
#19
Can you help?

Can you help?

Hello,
I have stumbled upon your very informative site and am wondering if anyone could help?

I am helping my friend Michael discover information (before he dies from cancer) about his uncle Rudi who was conscripted from Austria to the Wehrmacht.
Is there a site (or someone I can write to) for information?

Michael knows this only:
his uncle, Rudolf Bohm, born in Vienna, approx 1910 or 1911. Michael believes Rudi was on the Eastern front (Stalingrad).
He knows his grandparents got a short note in 1946 saying that Rudi was killed. So he doesn't know where, how or where he is buried. (or even if there was a body).

I would deeply appreciate any assistance you can offer.

Segapo2002
 
Upvote 0
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply
Jump to latest Follow Reply
Community News
Forums
Merch
Menu