Which would explain why, when you watch the video of this event, the last thing you see are Russian street cleaner trucks hosing down the streets.
Stalin did not get the result he wanted from this spectacle. Most of the Russians watched with pity more than anger; the women cried, saying “They are just like our boys.”
This was the only time the Russians did this.
I have, or had, a distant cousin from the part of the family that stayed in Italy. He ended up as a telegraph operator in one of the units Mussolini sent to the Russian front. And that’s all anyone knows. Disappeared, either a nameless body among the tens of thousands dead somewhere near Stalingrad, or one of the tens of thousands who died namelessly in Soviet captivity. There’s one photo I’ve seen, a little guy in a big wool uniform overcoat, looking tired and holding a cigarette.