How badly did the surrendered army of Germany after the Battle of Stalingrad? Why did only 5,000 people live?
February 1943. The turning point of World War II came, when Field Marshal Paulus of the German Sixth Army accepted the terms of surrender offered by the Soviet Union. Together with the various ** soldiers around him, a total of nearly 100,000 people, surrendered to the Soviet army.
Interestingly, after this order was issued, more than 10,000 officers and soldiers refused to surrender to the Soviet Union, and they wanted to continue to fight for the Führer. At this time, the Soviet army did not relent, and soon executed and purged the remaining German soldiers.
During this period, the German army was directly wiped out with two or three thousand people, and by the end of the month. The remnants of the German army were wiped out.
It is said that the Soviets promised him when they negotiated terms with Paulus. All German prisoners of war were given food, and were allowed to leave their personal belongings without being stripped naked. The wounded can also be treated. But after the surrender, things were not so simple.
Half of the more than 90,000 people who have surrendered died within two months. After the war, it was found that many of these prisoners of war had died due to epidemics.
To be scary, there are some survivors who tell **. To the southeast of Stalingrad there was a concentration camp called Beektovka. At that time, for fear of being dragged down, the Soviet Union executed about 20,000 sick prisoners of war.
Due to the harsh environment in the Soviet Union at that time, the temperature was very low, and there was a lack of medical treatment, the surrendered prisoners of war of the Sixth Army died quickly and in large numbers. This caused some problems for the top of the USSR. The Battle of Stalingrad shattered the myth of Germany's invincibility, and the situation on the battlefield began to shift from offensive to defensive.
The USSR propagandized vigorously and said that they were on the side of justice. If you think about it, if the righteous side can't protect the prisoners of war, all these people are dead. It is to tell the rest that they must resist to the end, and that there is no moral obligation in the international arena.
So by the middle of 1943, the Soviet Union began to pay attention to solving the problem of Stalingrad's uniforms. However, due to the fact that there were too many difficulties, the final situation was still relatively miserable. Of all the surrendering German troops, only about 5,000 survived and returned home safely.