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 ...
They and their parents voted Hitler and the Nazi party into power in German in the late 20s and early 30s. Hitler had the full support of the German people when he launched the war in Europe.
Nice.
That also proves my point that our countries are attached at the hip and that’s why it’s important to fight the socialist bastards in both countries.
I don’t know about the Allied advance through France. But we had a friend of the family who was in the American army and served with the infantry in Italy. He said that in the later stages of the war (spring of 1945) German resistance was crumbling, and the Germans - mainly kids - were surrendering in large groups.
He said his unit sometimes shot the German prisoners. That would happen when processing the prisoners would have slowed down the advance - it took too many men away from the unit to escort the prisoners to the rear.
Not even sure what that graph shows
4 later
In the 1840 many of the German Lutheran farmer came over for a new life. When the Bismarck started sending young men to the front line for cannon fodder many came to America instead including our presidents grandfather Frederick Trumpf who joined relatives already here. His son (uncle John) was instrumental in the development of radar for Great Britain (and is responsible for early development in the radiation we now use in cancer treatments).
My German ancestor predate the revolutionary war. They signed the Bradford accord and served under George Washington. Weren’t about to let some English king tell them how to live their lives. Primarily farmers in Pennsylvania, they came here because of religious persecution including from their own government. One of the daughters married a Trump
HItler was not the first ruler to be cruel to his own people.
It goes without saying that ANY German soldier found to have the least relationship with the SS was killed on the spot as a matter of routine. Having a Hitler Youth knife in your ruck could get you killed.
In the book BARBAROSA the author points out that of the multiple millions of soldiers in the Russian western armies few if any didn't have a friend or family member killed by the Germans. That is a fantastic amount of “Payback” the Germans had amassed.
Do not be fooled, both the German Army and the German population as a whole knew what was coming and why.
It's hard to get your mind around sitting here warm and fed 75 years later.
The Soviets viewed the Germans as subhuman scum. Hell, they viewed their own citizens as subhuman scum.
And the Germans viewed the Soviets the same way.
Once you begin viewing your enemy that way, anything is possible. Our POW’s were appalled at the treatment of Soviet POWs.
The graph in post #2 is considered by many to be the cleverest graph ever made. Here’s a brief description of what it’s all about.
http://waterloo200.org/200-object/flow-map-of-napoleons-invasion-of-russia/
In 20/20 hindsight, Hitler & the Axis had no chance of a complete win when they made enemies of China, Russia (Soviet Union) and the USofA. China had a population that would have eventually smothered the Japanese invaders once a solid leadership was formed. If the Kuomintang War Lord faction under Chiang Kai-shek had not been equally fighting the Japanese and the Communists under Mao Zedong (Tse-tung) and vice-versa, the Far East war theater would have been greatly different.
In attacking Russia, the only thing that one can say is that if your enemy does something utterly stupid, don't stop him. It is very debatable as to how long the non-aggression pact of 1939, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, would have lasted, but it was Hitler who broke it when Stalin was keeping it. Sure, the Russians were weak BUT the shear size and population of their country made this a really DUMB move.
Finally there was the German Declaration of War on the USofA following the Axis treaty provisions with Japan in 1941 after Pearl Harbor. About the only logic to be found here is that the new war with Russia was going well and Europe & Africa seemed to be doing the same. Given the prior history of WW1, with the unbelievable USofA mobilization into Europe, you would have thought that a wait-and-see position would have been prudent. Especially when even the stupidest German commercial attaches could have spoken volumes about how America's Great Depression idled industry was roaring back to life!
I am intelligent enough to know that Hitler and his government were 'riding the tiger' and were self-made victims of their very parochial ideologies. Still, the idiocies of megalomaniacs makes one wonder why we give them so much press in popular history. The record for death around them is legion!
Between the two sides over two million soldiers died fighting for that one city. Compare that to less than half a million fatalities in the entire war for the U.S. World War 2 was won and lost on the Eastern Front. The Western Front and the Pacific were mere sideshows compared to tbe it.
Canada was fighting the Nazis two years before the US got into WWII.
Where is the gif of the Asian girl crying crocodile tears?
The living conditions of the CAPTORS was substandard to say the least.
On both sides in Europe.
I always told my boys ‘never surrender’.
I have heard it said that the winners write the history books.
The Russkies of that era had few qualms about putting a bullet in those they found inconvenient - heck, ask any Pole about Katyn forest.
The history of the 20th century should have taught everyone that strong, centralized government are a danger to mankind be it Germany, Russia, China, Ukraine, Laos, North Korea, etc.
Strong centralized governments use every tactic to increase their power from using propaganda against internal or external foes, to scientific studies, to urging temporary actions are needed to protect the homeland, the children, or mother nature. Why people think, this time government will get it right, or it will be great if our party wins, is beyond me.
Except that image is not about Waterloo.
Stalin murdered millions of Russians. What would a few German POWs be to him?
That’s nice I don’t read French and hence everything on the map “graph” is meaningless
Nothing clever about it. It doesn’t give the viewer the information that some think it does
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