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The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II where Nazi Germany and its allies unsuccessfully fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia. The battle was marked by fierce close-quarters combat and direct assaults on civilians in air raids, with the battle epitomizing urban warfare. The Battle of Stalingrad was the deadliest battle to take place during the Second World War, and is one of the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare, with an estimated 2 million total casualties. Today, the Battle of Stalingrad is universally regarded as the turning point in the European Theatre of war, as it forced the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht to withdraw considerable military forces from other areas in occupied Europe to replace German losses on the Eastern Front, ending with the rout of the six field armies of Army Group B, including the destruction of Nazi Germany's 6th Army and an entire corps of its 4th Panzer Army. The victory at Stalingrad energized the Red Army and shifted the balance of power in the favour of the Soviets.
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The 369th (Croatian) Reinforced Infantry Regiment was a regiment of the German Army raised to fight on the Eastern Front during World War II. The regiment was formed in July 1941 by Croatian volunteers from the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), including a Bosnian Muslim battalion. It was commonly referred to as the Croatian Legion. The troops swore a joint oath of allegiance to the Führer, the Poglavnik, the German Reich and the NDH. The unit was sent to the Russian front where it was attached to the 100th Jäger Division. In 1943, as part of the 6th Army, it was the only non-German unit to participate in the battle of Stalingrad where it was virtually destroyed. On 31 January 1943, the 800 surviving Croatian legionaries, led by their commander Marko Mesić, surrendered to the Red Army.
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Approximately three million German prisoners of war were captured by the Soviet Union during World War II, most of them during the great advances of the Red Army in the last year of the war. The POWs were employed as forced labor in the Soviet wartime economy and post-war reconstruction. By 1950 almost all surviving POWs had been released, with the last prisoner returning from the USSR in 1956. According to Soviet records 381,067 German Wehrmacht POWs died in NKVD camps. A commission set up by the West German government found that 3,060,000 German military personnel were taken prisoner by the USSR and that 1,094,250 died in captivity. According to German historian Rüdiger Overmans ca. 3,000,000 POWs were taken by the USSR; he put the "maximum" number of German POW deaths in Soviet hands at 1.0 million. Based on his research, Overmans believes that the deaths of 363,000 POWs in Soviet captivity can be confirmed by the files of Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt), and additionally maintains that "It seems entirely plausible, while not provable, that 700,000 German military personnel listed as missing actually died in Soviet custody."
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Helmuth Schlömer was a German general in the Wehrmacht during World War II and commanded the XIV Panzer Corps in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943.
Willy Riedel was a highly decorated Major in the Wehrmacht during World War II. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves. The Knight's Cross, and its variants were the highest awards in the military and paramilitary forces of Nazi Germany during World War II. He was severely wounded in early 1943 by a grenade splinter and taken prisoner of war by the Soviet Army. Following World War II, he served in the National People's Army of East Germany.
Heinrich Gerlach was a German soldier in the 14th Panzer Division during the Second World War, who later became a Latin and German teacher. His semi-autobiographical novel, The Forsaken Army, was published in West Germany in 1957. It was rewritten with the help of hypnosis after the original manuscript was seized by the Soviets. In 2012, Carsten Gansel discovered the original manuscript in the State Russian Military Archive. It was then published in Germany in 2016 and its English translation was published in 2017 as Breakout at Stalingrad.
References
- 1 2 3 Die getarnte Armee: Geschichte der Kasernierten Volkspolizei der DDR, 1952-1956, by Torsten Diedrich & Rudiger Wenzke, Hrsg. vom Militargerchichtlichen Forschungsamt, Berlin, 2003, page 892, ISBN 3-86153-242-5
- ↑ Die 295. Infanterie-Division van 1940 bis 1945, by Wolfgang Kirstein, 2004, page 13, ISBN 3-00-012242-7
- 1 2 3 Ich Bitte Erschossen Zu Werden, Der Spiegel, December 2, 1949, page 16
- 1 2 3 The Free Germany movement: a case of patriotism or treason?, by Kai P. Schoenhals, Greenwood Press, 1989, pp. 51, 59, 61
- ↑ Paulus - Das Trauma von Stalingrad, by Torsten Deidrich, 2008, page 321