[Stavka2]

Why not a million? Read Enemy at the Gates, the movie was stupid. There were actually much fewer then that. Now, running up to the city battle, they had problems, but once the city battle started, it all changed. Particularly since the early defense was almost entirely by civilians armed to the teeth. The Red October Metal Works were held for several weeks by the very workers, men and women, armed with machineguns, recoiless rifles and such...they built the T-34s and drove them out to fight...tak shto gaspodin, rastrelivat Ryskih ne nyzno bilo, mnogi shli dobra volna na boye v goradi.

Or read Staligrad by Ballentine Press (I think) says the same thing.

[Burkeman1]

Did you ever read "Stalingrad" by Beevor? That is a great book. This is a book that shows the depravity of both sides. From Stalin not allowing, until the last minute, civilian evacution to Hitler writing off the entire 6th army as traitors because he messed up.

There is testimoney from German soldiers transferred from the Russian Front to the Western Front about how easy and civilized the fighting was. On the Eastern front- weather Russian or German - if you were captured you would most likely be killed or die slowly in a labor camp. On the Western front both sides knew that if they were captured they had a good chance of life in a cozy camp. And even the fighting was not as brutal. Fire fights tended to die down past 5PM- when the officers on both sides wanted to relax. On the Western front numerous truces were called to gather wounded and dead. That almost never happened on the Eastern front because neither Stalin or Hitler cared about the dead or wounded.

To this day one can find bones of American dead on our Cival War battlefields (more Americans died in 1861- 1865 than in all our wars combined). I understand that they are still finding Russian dead all over your land and the Germans routinely discover Wermacht dead all over Germany.