Posted on 03/10/2018 3:14:49 AM PST by NorseViking
Of the 108,000 soldiers of the Sixth German Army capitulating in the winter of 1943 at Stalingrad, only 6,000 returned home in 1955. What has led to such incredible losses?
he attitude of the German soldiers who fought on the eastern front was unequivocal: "Russians do not take prisoners", they believed. This fear of captivity was the result of Nazi propaganda, which was constantly subjected to soldiers - mostly young people. But maybe it was not just this?
The facts are as follows: from the Wehrmacht soldiers captured in the Soviet captivity, their number is estimated at a minimum of 108 thousand and a maximum of 130 thousand people - only 5 thousand or 6 thousand returned to Germany or Austria alive. Many of them did it only in the mid-50's. Thus, the losses from the total number of prisoners amounted to approximately 95%, which is much larger than in any other battle.
Does this mean that the Red Army really did not take the Germans into captivity? Rüdiger Overmans, a military historian and best specialist in both the narrow field of studying losses in the Second World War and this topic as a whole, writes: "In unprecedented quantitative scales, Soviet soldiers shot German prisoners of war, whether from bitterness and thirst for revenge, reluctance to mess with the transportation of the wounded or from the desire to rid the unnecessarily suffering of the seriously wounded, who could not help one way or another.
(Excerpt) Read more at welt.de ...
The lucky ones got captured by the US or Britain.
The Russians as Marxist were worse than the Germans were. Though the Germans were awful especially toward Slavs. And of course SS units were inhuman toward everyone.
In the end we should have joined forces with the remaining German armies and destroyed the Soviets. As Patton wanted. But somehow he was killed
leftists today - they see the failure of regime after regime, but “this time” they’ll get it right.””
No doubt the attitude of the liberal masses, but the elites at the top simply want the masses of slaves to enrich them and keep them in power.
There are but a few microns of difference between the ancient feudal system, communism, socialism, dictatorships, Kings, and gang leaders. Every one of them designed to control people and milk the fruits of their labors.
Breaking the truce with Russia was the biggest mistake. But not continuing the war against England was huge too. Compound mistakes
Are you saying Eisenhower ordered the execution of German prisoners?
That’s true to a certain extent, but IMHO, the war was lost when North American P-51 Mustangs appeared over the skies of Europe, flying Allied bomber escort missions and crushing what was left of the Luftwaffe. That signaled the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany because rgey could no longer defend their airspace and industrial output.””
Agreed.
ping
I’m not saying anything, except that the book is interesting.
The U.K. Turned out to be a whole lot tougher than Hitler ever imagined.
I meant, does the book make that claim?
You are right, that is an amazing story. From 1979-1983 I was stationed at a small air base in Germany very close to the French border. The wife and I traveled quite a lot through Germany, enjoying the people and the culture. Two things I found about the Germans; when it was time to work they worked and when it was time to play they played. With few exceptions, the outward evidence of World War 2 had disappeared in only one generation. But everybody had stories to tell like the man you worked with. I had a neighbor who was in the German Army and was at one of the British beaches on D-Day. He looked out and saw ships from horizon to horizon. A few weeks later he was captured by the British and remained a POW until 1948. He said in many ways it was the best thing that could have happened to him. Feed, clothed, warm place to sleep. Came back to Germany when the building boom started, made his fortune, married and raised his wife. Interesting story.
Well, he certainly did not. But, I suspect a Michael Mann made a great deal of use of the blackened line portion of that graph.
Yeah. And declaring war on America wasn’t exactly brilliant either
Exactly.
I can understand why it was done, considering the conditions (and although the case has been made that there were isolated cases of intentional starvation, the truth is in 1945 in central Europe, there simply was not enough food) but some aspects are morally questionable or worse. For example, you could argue that German prisoners may as well as anyone else be put to work clearing minefields, but they were often worked at a torrid pace, with absolutely minimal equipment -- knives, shovels -- which needlessly increased casualties.
Thanks for a good tale among the so many sad ones.
I read it when it first came out, but I do remember that the author cites stats regarding the extremely high death rate among German POW’s, particularly those “shot while trying to escape” and those who died from diseases caused by malnutrition. He also talks about the high rate of death among those held by France who was allowed to keep something like 100,000 German POW’s as laborers for something like 10 years, as part of a reparations deal.
If I remember correctly, the author says that these deaths may not have been deliberately caused, but that the US and France were not particularly concerned with the conditions such as housing during the winter, and food, under which the prisoners were living. This lack of concern led to the high death rate.
The Soviets simply murdered them: BY starvation, BY neglect (no housing, unheated train cars for days traveling to Siberia), BY medical malpractice and deliberate actions), BY shooting on capture (”both hands shot” on capture), BY working conditions in the camps and mines in Siberia and between Stalingrad and Siberia, etc.
It was as deliberate as the millions of rapes and assaults in 1944-1945 on the German civilians as they came back to German soil.
The writer breaks out the different conditions as if to say “the Soviets didn’t kill the Germans - but the Germans simply died in captivity due to other things and in other categories of death than murder. See, here are 17,000 who were not counted, so they were not murdered.”
Get’um young and bring’um up right, I says
In Canada they were pumping out thousands of pilots a month for the supermarine and hurricanes.
England didn’t stand alone, but Germans sure got more than they bargained for.
I think some Americans also flew in 39.
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