Regards, Ivan
Posted on 02/11/2003 5:26:11 PM PST by MadIvan
Veterans of one of history's bloodiest battles meet and remember after 60 years. Ben Aris reports from Volgograd
In the snow and icy winds of the midwinter Russian steppe, German veterans of the battle of Stalingrad returned to the scene of their defeat 60 years ago.
Past enmities were forgotten as the men, most of them in their 80s, were reunited with their former opponents in the Red Army and talked of the hardships both sides went through.
The battle began in August and Hitler assumed that the city would fall within a few weeks, so the German 6th Army was never fully equipped with winter gear. Most soldiers fought in summer fatigues.
At the Red Army's low point it held only a few hundred yards of the city, with its men's backs to the Volga river, but they held out until reinforcements encircled the Germans. As temperatures fell to -35C as many Germans died of cold and hunger as from the Russians' bullets.
Former private Karl Schneider, who was captured and spent seven years in a Siberian prisoner of war camp, said: "The Russians were as poor as us."
Pitor Dodkin, who joined the Soviet army as a teenager, had one of the most dangerous jobs in the battle, clearing anti-tank mines ahead of attacks on the German lines. He later rose to the rank of colonel.
"We fought against each other then, but time heals suffering," he said. "We have no animosity towards our fellow soldiers now as we have this in common: we both lived through this terrible battle."
Colonel Count Heino Vitzthum, 89, of the 60th Motorised Division, was flown out of Stalingrad in one of the last three planes to land within the shrinking ring of advancing Soviet troops.
He said: "We knew that we would be shot, wounded - which meant certain death - or captured. I had given up all hope of leaving alive."
Temperatures fell to -15C when the veterans visited the German cemetery at Rossoshka, just outside the city, now renamed Volgograd, to lay flowers at a memorial.
Former private Erich Burkhard, 86, accompanied by his grandson, Jan, said: "It was even colder when I was here last. This is like a summer's day in comparison."
Mr Schneider, now 88, was captured in a battle for a grain silo that had constantly changed hands during the course of the siege. It became a symbol of Russian tenacity after 50 lightly armed soldiers held it for several days against tanks and aerial bombardment with little ammunition and no water.
After the defeat, Mr Schneider was marched with 100,000 other German prisoners to the main square, next to the shop where the 6th Army's commander, Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus, was captured.
"From the square we were marched several kilometres to a camp at Begetovka where we waited," he said. "In the first three days 20,000 of our comrades died of cold, hunger or wounds."
The bodies were dumped on a nearby hill and left in the snow. The hill is now covered with Russians' summer homes but just scratching the earth reveals the bones of the dead. From Begetovka the prisoners were sent all over Russia. Mr Burkhard said: "We were packed 100 to a railway wagon for a trip that lasted three weeks. We had nothing to drink.
"Occasionally the guards opened the door and shovelled in some snow. By the time we arrived only six people were left alive. Four of those died in the following months in the camps." Mr Burkhard was repatriated in 1945 but Mr Schneider ended up in a Siberian camp and was not sent home until 1950. Of the 100,000 prisoners only 6,000 returned to Germany alive.
But since the end of the Cold War, Germany has become Russia's best friend in the west. President Vladimir Putin and his children speak fluent German and Germany is Russia's biggest investor and trade partner.
At a dinner for the veterans - at a hotel next to the site of Field Marshal von Paulus's capture - Vasiliev Orlov, one of the most decorated Russian veterans of the battle, proposed a toast. Only 16 at the start of the siege, he lost his mother and father in the fighting, went over the top more than 50 times, and finished the war as a colonel.
He said: "I'm happy to see that Germany and Russia have the same position on this war looming against Iraq. We as veterans don't want to see a new war. There has been too much killing.
"I drink to peace," he declared, raising his glass to applause from both sides.
Regards, Ivan
Regards, Ivan
The russians shot or starved 95+% of them( and the lower ranking and hence younger ones were the least likely to survive). Of the survivors there are what maybe 10 or so left.
The French tried appeasement and it got the Nazis their parade down the streets of Paris. Chamberlain tried appeasement and it got him the London blitz and tens of thousands of civilian casualties. How much innocent blood is enough for these appeasers?
Honestly, France's and Germany's behavior illustrates that these two cheap whores would sell Poland or any of the other European countries out faster than you could say "cinq euros" or "fuenf euros".
Most German soldiers stole clothes of conquered civilians.
A visiting German General commented that the Werhmacht looked like peasants.
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