• '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2228373/Human-excrement-piled-waist-high-Full-horror-Stalingrad-revealed-time-interviews-Russian-soldiers-finally-light-day.html#ixzz2BWQS0lln

    "A new book has finally laid bare the full horrors of the Battle Of Stalingrad in the words of ordinary Russian soldiers, whose memories were suppressed by the Soviet authorities for 70 years. The Stalingrad Protocols gathers interviews with hundreds of veterans that Russia had deemed too graphic to publish after the Second World War because only heroism was lauded.

    Historians believe the book, compiled by the German historian Jochen Hellbeck, will change the way the world views the six-month 1942-43 battle that cost over a million men their lives and forever destroyed Hitler’s ambitions to colonize the Soviet Union."


  • Hi Hoffman. Only just read that. Thank you. Not heard of that book. Will look in a bookshop soon, but not sure it is my thing. Have books on Stalingrad; just not my favourite campaign.

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    I am very interested in the Stalingrad battle myself and have always been particularly fascinated by firsthand accounts, which this book seems to have many of. I always wondered, with the being less of a patriotic memory for some countries as it is here, if Russia and Germany would really bother to collect stories and accounts from their veterans as we have from ours. It is good to know that some do exist.

    Glad that I piqued your interest regardless.


  • @LHoffman:

    I am very interested in the Stalingrad battle myself and have always been particularly fascinated by firsthand accounts, which this book seems to have many of. I always wondered, with the being less of a patriotic memory for some countries as it is here, if Russia and Germany would really bother to collect stories and accounts from their veterans as we have from ours. It is good to know that some do exist.

    Glad that I piqued your interest regardless.

    The question is ,Do You/We really wanna know??!

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    @aequitas:

    The question is ,Do You/We really wanna know??!

    Do I/we really want to know… what?

    What it was really like for soldiers at Stalingrad? Then most definitely. First person accounts are tremendously valuable since they are not always going to be available to us. They must be recorded and read. If it is history, and the truth, what else can we ask for. I think everyone goes into reading a book like this expecting it to not be very pleasant.


  • you asked for it!

    Forget about what you watched on TV or on a DVD that is all B.S.!!!

    It must have been somewhere close to Stalingrad were the Wehrmacht had a Hospital, or more like a bigger tent.
    It snowed allready and Temperature droped allready way below zero celsius.
    The russians broke somewhere through and the German soldiers had allready a hard time defending what they still got in that pocket of Stalingrad. So the Oberstabsarzt wich is some higher ranking doc ordered to lay all dead bodies and those who are about to die in low pit. They heard about the Russian attack and that they were coming their direction so they evacuated what they could and was able to walk. After a few hours of combat the Germans regained control of the area and what they found was a nightmare. One T-34  was accidently driving over that pile of wounded and dead bodies, the snow coverd allready a large part of it…I will here save the rest!
    When you hear somebody saying that he carried his comrade a few miles or all the way back, ignore it. When the enemy is behind you with no mercy, you are going to carry squad!..you just run…

    This information you obtain from peoples who fought in WW II of course. If you have been going to a German pub every once in a while, you would have picked up sometimes discussions of those veterans and their Opinions about the war. Most of the Time they will cry and stop talking about it. But on special occasions they release a little bit of their stories or memories.
    After a while you get the puzzle together. For example:

    My Grandpa barley talked about it (WWII). Sometimes he would tell me that he received a torpedo hit in his behind.
    It took me years to figure it out. Simply said ,what do you first expect when somebody gives you this only phrase line of memories of the war. When I was older and did some research,(Asking Grandma, discovered where he may have fought and getting an Idea of the Unit he must have fought for) I found out that his Ship was covering the Scharnhorst.
    He must have been on minesweepers…

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    AEV:  This has all been rather rambling and did not directly address any of the discussion here. Can you be more clear?


  • I modified my comment from 11. Nov 2012  Herr LHoffman and will open for further questions.

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    @aequitas:

    I modified my comment from 11. Nov 2012  Herr LHoffman and will open for further questions.

    Okay, I re-read it… and I still question what you are driving at.

    It is better not to ask or know because what these men wen through was horrific?  Well yes, many went through hell, and those who really have no desire to speak of it will not do so. But don’t you think that ears who will hear should incline to the experiences of these men?

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