← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · seq
Thread ID: 4688 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2003-01-30
2003-01-30 04:53 | User Profile
Starving, frostbitten, plagued by lice and rodents (Beevor [Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943] recounts how one soldier awoke to find that mice had eaten two of his frostbitten toes), afflicted with typhus, jaundice and dysentery, with almost no ammunition, reduced to three ounces of bread a day, too weak to dig trenches when under fire, engaged day after day and night after night in all-out combat, it's incredible that the abandoned, hopeless German troops were able to resist the final Russian assaults as fiercely as they did. Even at the end, many of them still believed that Hitler would save them. After their surrender, they were marched away into captivity (those who couldn't walk were either shot on the spot or abandoned to die), newsreels capturing the endless lines, 95,000 men walking through the endless snow to the gulags. Ninety-five percent of the German enlisted men taken prisoner after Stalingrad died. Of the original 330,000 men in the 6th Army, about 5,000 survived the war. Other German armies also suffered appalling casualties, but the Russian losses were far higher: A million Red Army troops may have perished at Stalingrad. [url=http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2001/03/28/stalingrad/index.html]http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/200...grad/index.html[/url]
"...In Stalingrad to question God means to deny Him. I must tell you that, dear Father, and I am doubly sorry for it. You brought me up, because I had no mother, and you always kept God before my eyes and my soul. And I doubly regret my words, for they will be my last. After this I will be able to speak no others which could compensate or reconcile.
You are a clergyman, Father. In oneââ¬â¢s last letter one says only what is true or what he believes to be true. I have looked for God in every shell crater, in every destroyed house, in every corner, among all my comrades when I lay in my hole, and in the sky. God did not show Himself, when my heart cried out for Him. Houses were destroyed. My comrades were as brave or as cowardly as I. Hunger and murder were on the earth. Bombs and fire came from the heavens. But God was not there. No, Father, there is no God. I write it again, and know that it is terrible and that I cannot make amends for it. And if in spite of all there should be a God, then it will be only with you, in the hymnbooks and prayers, the pious sayings of priests and pastors, the ringing of chimes, and the smell of incense. But not in Stalingrad.ââ¬Â (Excerpt from Letter 17, Last Letters from Stalingrad, Translated by John E. Vetter, Coronet Press, 1955.)
February 2, 1943 the starving, frostbitten northern pocket, remnants of the 6th Army under General Strecker, were the last to surrender. The battle for Stalingrad was now over. The Russian winter won.
February 3,1943 Hitler announced the fall of Stalingrad to the German people. He declared four days of national mourning. The reading of the official announcement over German radio was preceded by the roll of muffled drums and followed by the playing of the second movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
Stalingrad, the biggest and most important battle of World War II and, in retrospect, of Western history. The West lost.
2003-01-30 06:12 | User Profile
Agreed. This was the hinge. And Beevor captured it best. As he did for the actual Goeterdaremerung: Berlin.