He expects victory of us. . . The Fiihrer knows where the Russians weak point is. Does that get to you? A question looms before us: what should be done? He wrote: 'That isn't a good idea when facing tank men like us - floor the accelerator, turn left and run over him. This diary covers the period from April 1942 to March 1943, the momentous year when the tide of battle turned in the East. On November 30 he described coming across the sight of eight partisan fighters, including two women, who had been hanged by the Germans. My question is, what happened to him? . 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. 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. The film is the second German movie to portray the Battle of Stalingrad. There are barely ', He went on: 'Some of the gunned down Russians in front are still moving. Our companys interpreter has interrogated a captured Russian officer. If in the A lot of Russian tommy gunners have appeared. October 28. Mr Snow said: 'We have been searching to find a way to do this conflict justice, to get beyond the statistics, the tens of millions killed, wounded and brutalised and tell the story of what it was actually like. Im sick of this. . Bernd Wegner, professor of history of the Bundeswehr Academy: "Stalingrad is perhaps the only battle of the Second World War, at the mention of which every German will tremble even today. Stalingrad, and the final desperate battles inside Germany at the end of the war. 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. In Germany everyone believes we already hold Stalingrad. They also wanted to create an archival record for posterity. From the testimony of captured Private First Class Joseph In a total war for refusing to . military publishing house of the Peoples Commissariat of the Defence of the . November 29. this was a good position from which to . But the regime took further steps: Visiting the Treblinka death camp in eastern Poland just one month after the defeat at Stalingrad, Heinrich Himmler ordered the exhumation and cremation of all the bodies of the 700,000 Jews who had been killed there. A big turning point for Leutnant Sander came on October 2 when many tanks were destroyed in a minefield near Wjasma, between Smolensk and Moscow. For the socialist motherland! and For comrade Stalin! these were some of the slogans of those fighting in Stalingrad. There was in addition ample violence within the Red Army, perpetrated against soldiers who were unwilling to risk their lives. I believe that for Stalingrad the Fiihrer will decorate evenme.. . Shes expecting me home when victoryswon. . 'You see young girls, children hanging from trees in the park. We have been told we are soon going to be withdrawn to be brought back up to strength. What was the meaning of defeat for the Germans? commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 518th Infantry Regiment of the 295th $152,972. In three weeks we have occupied about five and a half square miles. To join the party was a matter of honor and prestige for him and other soldiers. Cookie Notice At that time we actually cut up a dog, and the vodka really came in handy. They evidently decided to bury us in this hellish place once and for all. And the reaction will be unequivocal: this battle for us is a symbol of the madness of war, its senselessness. The defeat of the German troops in the vicinity of Stalingrad will have a major influence on how the war proceeds. He wrote: 'In total more than 20 corpses lay around the destroyed tank. . Clothing freezes on our bodies. 14 Therapist Reveal Unusually Common Things They Often Hear, That People Are Hesitant To Disclose, Confessions of a Man Who Shot Himself In The Head And Survived, Caveman Circus | Contact | Privacy Policy | DMCA Copyright 2023 StomachPunch Media, LLC. Then aged 24, he recalled the moment he and his colleagues stood around to listen to Adolf Hitler's address at the start of the operation that would result in almost one million deaths. 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. September 11 . Stalingrad is a grave for the German soldiers. December 3. Victory is not far away. Hosted by David Thompson. With the help of an arctic wstopped just before Moscow. Can you talk about the nature of the violence? I have enough. Lieutenant Kraus was killed yesterday, and there is no company commander. They resonate with the din of the battlefield, and violence is everywhere in the picture. 330,000 people were trapped. . This consisted of around 3,400 tanks which were supported by 2,700 of the Luftwaffe. . The book is based on interviews with Red Army soldiers that you found in the archives. . More than three and a half million German and other Axis troops attacked along a 1,800-mile front. USSR in a compact volume titled The Defeat of the Germans at Stalingrad. November 21. .. December 25.The Russian radio has announced the defeat of Manstein. In this sense, too, Stalingrad marked a turning point in world history. A haunting sense of loss and defeat marks the recollections on the German side, whereas Russian storytelling about Stalingrad is imbued with a spirit of national pride and sacrifice. . The battle for the elevator is still going on. 27800, to his parents, November 20, 1942. 'His spine is broken, and he is totally paralysed. .. A bored and cold German soldier plays a game of "eenie-meenie-miny-moe", aiming at a group of children, most too young to even comprehend the danger. We shall obviously be seeing them next in the other world. This morning katyushi attacks caused the company heavy losses: twenty-seven dead and fifty wounded. We dont have a single officer, and the non-commissioned officer had to take over the command of the division. Also revealed in the new documentary are Leutnant Sander's unseen images of the doomed invasion. Excerpt from a letter of Private First Class Walter Oppermann, no. decided to give ourselves up to capture in order to save our soldiers lives. Stalingrad is hell on earthVerdun, beautiful Verdun, with new weapons. 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 retreat of the Nazis in that particular battle is seen by many historians as the turning point of WWII. This could not fail to influence our decision. .. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. A letter from Elsa today. Two Soldiers, Two Lost Fronts: German War Diaries of the Stalingrad and North Africa Campaigns by Don A. Gregory; William R. Gehlen and a great selection of related books, art and collectibles available now at AbeBooks.com. In the last few days our battalion has several times tried to attack the Russian positions, . This was before the tide turned. Did he survive the war? . After five months of unrelenting battle, the retreat of the Nazis became the turning point of World War II. "It is pure hell here." 6 Dec. 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. 'The diaries are so powerful, so vivid and so rich that interviews with historians, presenters and re-enactment are all unnecessary. formed by the Red Army in the Stalingrad region. Russian. Even civilians were considered vital defenders of Fortress Stalingrad and not allowed to evacuate until several days after the beginning of the bombardment. Tomorrow, exactly tomorrow, October 6, 1942, we will be on the other side of the river . 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". In just the last two days, our battalion has lost 60 killed, . By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. A Russian counteroffensive in November trapped the German Sixth Army. In the interviews I was surprised to discover the source of this hatred. Harry Howard For Mailonline But what I find most striking about the memory of Stalingrad is how little, by comparison, it seems to affect state leaders and publics outside of Russia. From time to time mines explode around us. I just want to scream it all away. . The elevator is occupied not by men but by devils that no flames or bullets can destroy. "German WWII soldiers get proper burial after 60 years", The Age (2008) The German War Graves Commission's (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgrberfrsorge) . Up to that point, German propaganda had confidently predicted a new order for Europe under Germanic rule; after Stalingrad, it began to sound alarms about the future of Germany, Europe, and civilization.. William Hoffman, "Diary of a German Soldier" Participated in the Battle of Stalingrad Germans seek to conquer Stalingrad Decline in German confidence over the years Faith in the leader We are all convinced that they can't stop us The Russians will be beaten The Nazis' eastward expansion was halted and the Soviets went on the offensive until the end of the war. In this cauldron, 22 divisions and more than 160 separate morning we manage to advance 20 metres, in the evening the Russians throw us It includes the source in the post and a link to an imgur post with the translated diary in. superiority in the Pacific. Yes, leading generals of the Stalingrad battle, like Chuikov, were able to publish accounts of their role in the battle, but they carefully omitted any reference to executions within the Red Army. The book became a bibliographic rarity. Among the trophies of the Soviet troops was an . We can already see the smoking town. The economy, culture and society were fully mobilized by governments. 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. We can already see theVolga; firing is going on all the time. 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. Winter privations and Soviet, attacks, however, forced the Germans to surrender on, February 2, 1943 (see the box above). . . His commitment was so strong that he sent a huge number of troops to carry out the invasion. . By 1945, Stalin made sure that official publications referred to him as the sole architect of Soviet victory over fascism. While the German army was penetrating deeply into Russia, he believed that victory was not far away and dreamed of returning home with medals. The interviews were recorded in Stalingrad, during the final stage of the battle and its immediate aftermath. 10521 V, dated December 29, 1942 toHetti Kaminskaya: . by Odessa2 21 Aug 2003, 19:09, Post and December of 1942 and the first half of January 1943. Large-scale help is coming up for us, and the Russians will be beaten. One day I shot a magpie and cooked it. There have been a number of cases of self inflicted wounds and malingering among the men. . Our division has a cemetery near Stalingrad where more Do we even know? I briefly jump onto the tank to look at Weigand. 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 . 28329 D, dated December 29, 1942 to hisfiance: . The prevailing notion in scholarship is that Stalin was politically bankrupt when the war began duped by the Germans, on the defensive, and deeply unpopular. When we got to Stalingrad, there were 140 of us, but by September 1, after two weeks of battle, only 16 remained. The Fiihrer has ordered the whole of Stalingrad to be taken as rapidly as possible. The most informative letters were published in 1944 by the . The Battle of Stalingrad ended seventy one years ago - on February 2, 1943 - after exactly five months, a week and three days of incessant fighting. It may just be me, but every time people start to realize that maybe the Germans were not a race of butchers and that maybe Germans were also subjected to the horrors of total war, that something like this comes out of left field to paint them all as murdering scum again. . Force of the 212th Regiment. Splendid news-north of Stalingrad our troops have reached theVolga and captured part of the city. We are preparing for a decisive attack. Hetti, I have already cut up four dogs, yet my comrades cant eat their fill. Division, no. On January 14, 1942 he added: 'Even if we manage, against my expectations, to stop the Russian advance, then no one needs to know more than necessary about the hammering we have received. Hitler commanded General Friedrich Paulus to, stand firm with his Sixth Army and forbade attempts to, break out of the encirclement. All our sacrifices would have been in vain.'. The devastating Panzer division was also deployed - seventeen in total. I was extraordinarily lucky to have been the first historian to fully explore the 215 interviews conducted with Soviet defenders of Stalingrad, and publish them. . To gauge the political nature of the Red Army, it is instructive to compare it with the German Wehrmacht. .. The stash showed how they tried to communicate their impressions to their loved ones, how they wanted them to see their situations as they fought in the Stalingrad region and how they see the Red Army. 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 . We are on hunger rations and waiting for the rescue that the Fuhrer promised. Archival documentation tells me that at least some Soviet historians read the interviews, but it seems that they were at a loss about how to integrate individual, subjective voices, as they called them, into a mandated objective (communist) history of the war, and so the documents were overlooked and forgotten. Entries from the diary of Officer F. P. of the 8th Light Small-Arms Force of the 212th Regiment: . How wonderfully we could live if it werent for this damned war! Wherever you look is fire and flames. When I think about this, Im ready to howl from annoyance and rage. August 12. . by Lawrence Tandy 21 Aug 2003, 20:32, Post Clothing freezes on our bodies. printed on the simplest paper and released as a paperback not meant to be kept Diary Entries Of a German Soldier at Stalingrad Heartfeltzero 5,108 Views 4d via iPhone The entries were written by William Hoffman. 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