Today, 75 years ago in 1943, Friedrich Paulus - Wikipedia the last Luftwaffe aircraft left Stalingrad. More details, see link above. Stefan.
And from my collection here are a couple of pages from a Wehrpass and a Flugbuch for a pilot in KG zbV 102 who took part in the Stalingrad airlift, flying supplies to and between the main resupply airbases (notice the mention of Salsk and Swerowo in the Flugbuch).
Great, I need to study the documents in detail and check with documents in the Berlin archives to see what happened to the men. Stefan. NB: never realised that my thread would come up with this type of documents, thanks a lot. Stefan.
have now checked all pages and sent off a request to Berlin for more info. This can take up to 4 weeks, Stefan.
We think of Allied prisoners in Japanese hands as being one of the worst possible WW2 experiences. Of the 107,000 Axis servicemen captured at Stalingrad, (91,000 German) only 6,000 survived captivity to be repatriated home in 1955. Twelve years of imprisonment and a 93% fatality rate would rank that experience quite highly on the suffering scale. Under forced labour with death from wounds, disease, malnutrition and maltreatment it obviously rivaled anything the Japanese had meted out.
I guess it depends on the point of view. German POWs that survived the first weeks (were mistreating and death marches were common) often said on the average they were not treatend bad on purpose, but a life was not worth a lot in the UDDSR in general. So basically i red very often that they did´nt had enough food for their own people as well and starvation and hard labour was normal for that time for russians as well. As example: Dieter Peeters Vermisst in Stalingrad: Als einfacher Soldat überlebte ich Kessel und Todeslager. 1941-1949 And the biography of the famous pilot Hartmann (dont remember the books name at the moment). Also i just red the bio of austrian sniper Josef Allerberger which managed to avoid russian POW time - but by his storys soldiers life the last two years on the eastern front was not very different to POW time in russia in terms of freezing, malnutrition and desperation. On the other hand - if you were mistreated in russia on top of the malnutrition and other stuff - probably you did´nt survived to write a book about it. I remembered the story of a veteran that stated after Stalingrad the were put in trains with 100 soldiers per waggon. Since the weren´nt given water for 3 weeks 6 soldiers in his waggon survived. From the japanese i red they were brutal on purpose. So as said, i think it depends on your viewpoint.
Thanks, If Berlin comes up with what he did aftter the war, I'll be back. Pilots never stop flying, it is like driving cars, typically you get yiour licence and drive until you turn 85 ++ or let the wife drive you . Stefan.
