The remarkable 'lost' diaries of German tank commander Leutnant Friedrich Sander, who went from being a hardened Nazi to a broken soldier in just a few weeks of fighting in the Second World War . If we lose this war, theyll take revenge on us for . . werent for this damned war! The Russians are throwing in their last forces, Captain Werner explained to me. Who was conducting the interviews and why? The book became a bibliographic rarity. Clothing freezes on the body. Their goal was not to cultivate private thoughts as distinct from the communist regime, but to align their thinking with the mandate of the Soviet revolution, and to rise to the level of a worthy participant in a world historical drama. Diary entries of Field Gendarmerie Sergeant Helmut Megenburg: . While the German army was penetrating deeply into Russia, he believed that victory was not far away and dreamed of returning home with medals. Februar 1943 endet die Schlacht von Stalingrad. Up to a thousand wounded soldiers a day are taken back to the rear from Stalingrad. That, for instance, is how sniper Zaitsev talked about how he got inducted into the party. On November 8, Hitler announced that the German Sixth Army had taken Sta- lingrad, but in fact, on November 19 and 20, the Soviets attacked German positions north and south of Stalingrad, and by November 23 they had surrounded the German forces. writings by captured soldiers. by Oleg Grigoryev 21 Aug 2003, 18:17, Post The letter had been sent by the German Federal Archives, which. Russian resistance in the elevator has been broken. . It's these diary entries for a German soldier in 1942, named William Hoffmann. Its a happy thought that the end of the war is getting nearer. By Most of the writings were dated from November to December 1942 and the first two weeks of January 1943. Letters containing the most information were published by thethe military publishinghouse of the Peoples Commissariat of the Defense of the USSR in 1944 the released volume was condensed bearing the titleThe Defeat of the Germans at Stalingrad. As Stalingrad was about to fall into German hands in September 1942, the Red Army came up with a plan for a counter-attack that would eventually smash the enemy. a magpie and cooked it. From time to time mines explode around us. formed by the Red Army in the Stalingrad region. . Fighting is going on inside the elevator. In Germany everyone believes we already hold Stalingrad. Germans and Russians battled with dogged ferocity over every part of the city; 99 percent of Stalingrad was reduced to rubble. Our battalion, plus tanks, is attacking the [grain storage] elevator, from which smoke is pouring-the grain in it is burning, the Russians seem to have set light to it themselves. Seventy-one year ago, February 2, 1943, the The Battle of Stalingrad, finally ended. They evidently decided to bury us in this hellish place once and for all. What great spaces the Soviets occupy, what rich fields there are to be had here after the wars over! . .. Why is that? . In September 1942, German lieutenant colonel Friedrich Roske declared himself "the master of the centre of Stalingrad" after his troops had smashed their way into the heart of the city. September 13. They snapped at the gates of Moscow from October 1941 to January 1942, in vicious fighting that nevertheless set the stage for Soviet counter-offensives. Over 1.8 million became casualties. Ive had my fill. December 14.Everybody is racked with hunger. 'You see young girls, children hanging from trees in the park. Damn this Stalingrad! The Nazis' eastward expansion was halted and the Soviets went on the offensive until the end of the war. What were the conditions that made the violence and the loss of life so immense? His tone changes from exicted and hopeful to a darker tone toward the end. 1st Battalion of the 227th Infantry Regiment of the 100th Light Infantry attacked German positions north and south of Stalingrad, and by November 23 they had surrounded the German, forces. German and other Axis losses in the battle of Stalingrad amounted to over 800,000 casualties. The soldiers look like corpses or lunatics, looking for something to put in their mouths. Making up for colossal losses in people, equipment and ammunition sustained by the German armed forces as a result of the perishing of the 6th Army will require huge effort and a lot of time. Tell us about this dramatic moment. . At 11 o'clock, Russian tanks and Katyusha attack us. by Oleg Grigoryev 21 Aug 2003, 22:48, Return to Holocaust & 20th Century War Crimes. After marching through the night we have established ourselves in a shrubcovered gully. . $152,972. After the elevator was taken the Russians continued to defend themselves just as stubbornly. Hailed as the single largest confrontation of the war, the battle involved nearly 2.2 million military personnel, with around 1.8-2 million were killed, wounded, or captured. What becomes very clear is the extent to which the Soviet defenders were driven by hatred toward the Germans. Schwarz, 10th Company of the 131st Infantry Regiment of the 44th Infantry German. . Decades later, Prof. Jochen Hellbeck became the first historian to read their stories. . When the Germans resumed their offensive, in spring 1942, their strategic target was the oil fields of the Caucasus. .. . How wonderfully we could live if it The following entries in the diary of William Hoffman, a German soldier who perished at Stalingrad, reveal the decline in German confidence as the battle progressed. I wouldnt judge the book or trying to interpret it in any way without having it read yet. November 19. General Manstein is approaching Stalingrad from the south with strong forces. The film is the second German movie to portray the Battle of Stalingrad. From a letter from soldier Otto Zechtig, 1st Company of the by PAK 21 Aug 2003, 22:11, Post By the end he is starving to death as is everyone around him. The most informative letters were published in 1944 by the I want to scream. Every soldier sees himself as a condemned man. by Oleg Grigoryev 21 Aug 2003, 22:03, Post Six thousand survived, returning to Germany after the war. Division, no. I went on a Stalingrad tour in 2000 and one day we were taken out to see old dugouts and foxholes. Why Do People Stay In Abusive Relationships? Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941 with the aim of invading the Soviet Union to secure future German interests. . It was the most ferocious battle in human history, claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands. December 26. Battle of Stalingrad, (July 17, 1942-February 2, 1943), successful Soviet defense of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd), Russia, U.S.S.R., during World War II. The Germans were being rounded up prior to marched to death. Stalingrad: The City that Defeated the Third Reich: Hellbeck, Jochen, Tauchen, Christopher: 9781610397186: Amazon.com: Books Books History Military Buy new: $12.19 List Price: $18.99 Details Save: $6.80 (36%) Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns FREE delivery Sunday, March 5 if you spend $25 on items shipped by Amazon Wilhelm Hoffman's Stalingrad diary is a FAKE TIKhistory 269K subscribers Subscribe 124K views 1 year ago I've just discovered that Wilhelm Hoffman's famous "Diary of a German Soldier". While it would be more than another year before the Red Army liberated the death camps in Poland, the Battle of Stalingrad disrupted the Nazi death machine. 28329 D, dated December 29, 1942 to hisfiance: . The operation to surround and liquidate the German 6th Army is a strategic masterpiece. . . Just weeks before, in response to the Germans rapid advance toward Stalingrad, Stalin had issued the Not A Step Back order that forbade his soldiers to retreat under any circumstances. He didn't react when I ordered him to raise his arms. On the morning of January 10 we read a pamphlet that contained an ultimatum. . She was five years old when Adolf Hitler's Sixth Army stormed into Stalingrad in the summer of 1942. The battle for the elevator is still going on. The gruesome acts were enough to tip the highly decorated Panzer commander over the edge. But it is for precisely this reason that we need to exert all our strength in order to win the war. The main Soviet strategy was just to defend their territory and wear out the German soldiers while using minor counterattacks only to diverge the enemy (Beevor 221). Cloudflare Ray ID: 7a1250ab68a49c24 The ruthlessness of the German advance was borne out on June 27, 1941, when his crew spotted a Russian soldier who played dead before opening fire on the passing German infantry. It was announced this morning that the Fuhrer has said: The army can trust me to do everything necessary to ensure supplies and rapidly break the encirclement.. Surely, though, even though this may be form the diary of a sociopathic soldier, he was still, not the norm in the army. . Russian tanks pass us and attack from the flank and rear. 17189, dated November 13, 1942 to Private First Class Karl Weitzel: . From the testimony of captured Private First Class Joseph After seeing many colleagues killed and horrifically maimed from driving through a minefield he wrote: 'I have had enough. . The Germans became very impressed with this. Up to then, the German army had seen victory after victory and Hoffman felt confident they could conquer Stalingrad and then the rest of Russia. When, as part of the campaign to fight Stalins cult of personality, his city was renamed Volgograd in 1961, many veterans objected: With Stalingrad gone, they felt written out of history as well. November 29. God protect me . It was the largest invasion force to date. Does that get to you? The battalion is suffering heavy losses. People who are now sent from On her second day out on the battlefield, while dressing and recovering wounded soldiers, Novikova was killed. . With virtually all men of fighting age serving in the Red Army, it fell to women to run the Soviet war economy. Diary Of A German Soldier Fighting In Stalingrad February 6, 2020Leave a Comment In July 1942, the Germans resumed their advance into the U.S.S.R. begun the previous summer, seeking to conquer Stalingrad, a vital transportation center located on the Volga River. There was in addition ample violence within the Red Army, perpetrated against soldiers who were unwilling to risk their lives. Diary of a German Soldier William Hoffman 4.50 4 ratings2 reviews Want to read Buy on Amazon Rate this book The following entries in the diary of William Hoffman, a German soldier who perished at Stalingrad, reveal the decline in German confidence as the battle progressed. "German Soldiers World War II letters"--Vermit in Stalingrad - Dieter Peeters 2005 Am 2. September 5. After months of bitter fighting, 100,000 surviving Germans, huddled in the ruined city, surrendered to Soviet troops.During the battle and shortly after its conclusion, scores of Red Army commanders and soldiers . August 27.A continuous cannonade on all sides. 44111, to his brother, November 18, 1942. Russian cannon and machine-guns are firing out of the burning city. What was womens role in the Battle of Stalingrad? .. It was the most ferocious battle in human history, claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands. If fate allows it, someday I . What is also remarkable is how the Soviet military command was able to secretly deploy an army of 1 million soldiers along these flanks in the weeks leading up to the operation. We are apparently going to attack the factories, the chimneys of which we can see clearly. As this interpretation goes, Stalin reacted by shedding communist dogma, embracing Russian nationalism, and adopting a more populist tone. morning we manage to advance 20 metres, in the evening the Russians throw us From the testimony of captured Captain Kurt Mandelhelm, Frozen potatoes are the best meal, but toget them out of the ice-covered ground under fire from Russian bullets is not so easy. Diary of a German Soldier (161 results) How wrong they are. I want to scream. Our attack with tanks yesterday had no success. . What was the role of world media before and during this battle? 15. They quickly encircled an entire German army, more than 220,000 soldiers. . . . superiority in the Pacific. Preached incessantly and targeting every recruit, it was made up of accessible concepts with an enormous emotional charge: love for the homeland and hatred of the enemy. . The global media reports pushed both sides onward. They drove into the weakly guarded flanks of the German Sixth Army. Yet Stalingrad never fell. In just the last two days, our battalion has lost 60 killed, injured and frostbitten men; more than 30 men have escaped; there is only enough ammunition to last until evening; the soldiers have not eaten at all in three days, and many of them have frostbitten feet. It stopped the German advance into the Soviet Union and marked . . December Recently, the Orthodox Church has incorporated Stalingrad into its prayers, even though the church was hardly present during the battle itself. His commitment was so strong that he sent a huge number of troops to carry out the invasion. We attack on a daily basis. The defeat of the German troops There is no way out, nor will there be a way out, of the cauldron. But the historians drew confidence from history, notably the War of 1812, when the Russian people had been able to defeat a technologically superior invader. The Russians are not men, but some kind of cast-iron creatures; they never get tired and are not afraid of fire. Within four days, they had encircled 300,000 Axis soldiers, trapped in a frozen wasteland in and around Stalingrad. October 3. We dont have a single officer, and the Victory is not far away. Fritz is telling me about a conversation he heard: the soldiers prefer to My question is, what happened to him? .. Ironically, Stalins death and demise [in 1953] dealt another blow to the defenders of Stalingrad. . He was so disillusioned that he predicted that Germany would lose the Second World War by as early as December 1941. November 19. If they could only see what Stalingrad has done to our army. Fanaticism. . So, there it is- -theVolga, victory and soon home to our families! Battle of Stalingrad, seen as the bloodiest fights in WWII, and perhaps, in whole history of war. German soldiers and officers drink water at Stalingrad. .. . . You can scarcely breathe in the daytime: there is nowhere and no one to remove the bodies, so they are left there to rot. . . Perhaps well be home out to us. General Friedrich Paulus, the commander of the 6th Army, was ordered to capture Stalingrad, a city that controlled the rail and waterway communications of southern Russia. December 7.Rations have been cut to such an extent that the soldiers are suffering terribly from hunger; they are issuing one loaf of stale bread for five men. . My nerves can't take any more.'. contained an ultimatum. Before entering Stalingrad with troops and tanks, the Germans began with a two-week long carpet-bombing campaign that burned and razed much of the cityscape and took 40,000 lives. Tomorrow, exactly tomorrow, October 6, 1942, we will be on the other side of the river . and rage. . If fate allows it, someday I will tell you about it. The economy, culture and society were fully mobilized by governments. For the socialist motherland! and For comrade Stalin! these were some of the slogans of those fighting in Stalingrad. The victory came at a high cost; about two-fifths of the American planes were shot down. 30 men in the company. . Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. Yesterday we got vodka. With the help of an arctic wstopped just before Moscow. On November 30 he described coming across the sight of eight partisan fighters, including two women, who had been hanged by the Germans. [Quoting Zaitsev]: Or another time you see young girls, children hanging from trees in the park. Life in the Third Reich & Weimar Republic, Kriegsmarine surface ships and Kriegsmarine in general, Luftwaffe air units and Luftwaffe in general, German Strategy & General German Military Discussion, NSDAP, other party organizations & Government, The Dieter Zinke Axis Biographical Research Section, The Ron Klages Panzer & other vehicles Section, Panzer & other vehicles - Photo threads, Axis Documents, Feldpost numbers, Postcards & Other Paper Items, The United Kingdom & its Empire and Commonwealth 1919-45, The Allies and the Neutral States in general, German Colonies and Overseas Expeditions, The end of the Ottoman Empire 1908-1923, Translation help: Breaking the Sound Barrier, http://www.newindpress.com/Newsitems.as ld&rLink=0. 28329 D, to his precisely this reason that we need to exert all our strength in order to win . 22-25 November. He wrote them throughout the battle of Stalingrad. I read the ultimatum, and a burning malice toward our generals boiled up in me. What was the meaning of defeat for the Germans? We decided to give ourselves up to capture in order to save our soldiers lives. 1943. In the interviews I was surprised to discover the source of this hatred. The Russians are firing on allsides. Realizing that the Sixth Army, exhausted and short of weapons, ammunition, food, and medical supplies, faced annihilation, German generals pleaded in vain with Hitler to permit withdrawal before the Russians closed the ring. All The interviews were conducted by historians from Moscow who responded to the German invasion in 1941 with a plan to document the Soviet war effort in its totality, and from the ground up. The fighting in Stalingrad, lasting from August 1942 to February 1943, and ending with the surrender of Hitlers army, changed the course of World War II and world history. will there be a way out, of the cauldron. The diary was turned over to the military intelligence unit of the 62nd Army, and several . I believe that for Stalingrad the Fiihrer will decorate evenme.. . He wrote: 'We found the bodies of many Russians who hadn't been able to walk further and had been shot by the guards. There is no way out, nor Then the terrible struggles in . It includes the source in the post and a link to an imgur post with the translated diary in. worse and worse. In addition, almost 1 million Soviet women served in the Red Army during World War II, half of them as ordinary soldiers and the other as nurses, phone operators, or laundrywomen. . In this cauldron, 22 divisions and more than 160 separate If we lose this war, theyll take revenge on us for everything we did. It was night but we saw many crosses with our helmets on top. In fact for some people, its essential that they become inhuman and numb to the daily horror that surrounds them, to block out the madness that threatens to engulf all the time. A German soldier rests at Stalingrad. Confessions of the Enemy. The print run was not specified, and the book was 15:59 GMT 17 Jun 2021 Hitler remarked that with the 6th Army, he "could storm the Heavens". January 15. . everything we did. A soldier would crawl out of an occupied position only when the ground wans on fire under him and his clothes were smouldering. After five months of unrelenting battle, the retreat of the Nazis became the turning point of World War II. We are on hunger rations and waiting for the rescue that the Fuhrer promised. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. the war. Soon her home was destroyed in the . All the rest were wounded and killed. September 22. . On the morning of January 10 we read a pamphlet that