German survivors of Stalingrad

[jumaboyev]

Hello everyone,

I am working on a documentary about Nachthexen, the Soviet female combat pilots. I would like to speak to some German veterans who fought in Russia, particularly in Stalingrad about what they thought of Nachthexen. Does anybody have contact numbers for those veterans or their associations?

[Delmenhorst]

I think that you are a little too late .....

[Larry]

I have heard that as little as 5,000 men who were at Stalingrad ever saw Germany again and that the majority died in Soviet captivity in the 10 years after WW2. My father met one such survivor in Germany when he was stationed there in 1950's.

[Larry deZeng]

From web site
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSstalingrad.htm :
“The battle for Stalingrad was over. Over 91,000 men were captured and a further 150,000 had died during the siege. The German prisoners were forced marched to Siberia. About 45,000 died during the march to the prisoner of war camps and only about 7,000 survived the war.”

After 3 to 13 years in Soviet captivity, it's rather unlikely any are still with us today.

[Evgeny Velichko]

Also, some of Night Witches are still alive.

http://waralbum.ru/wp-content/upload...90702-nbap.jpg

There were many Night Bomber Air Regiments:

http://www.allaces.ru/cgi-bin/s2.cgi...ruct/p_bap.dat

This book is about a real man - pilots and navigators of the famous U-2 "Kukuruznik". To control the aircraft initial training may not have had special skills and abilities, yet this is not a fighter or a long-range bomber, but the tasks that had to deal with the crew demanded great courage and full commitment. As one of the veterans: "For the U-2 is treated with derision, but to exploit us mercilessly. The crews of these aircraft departures performed in almost any weather conditions, when no other kind of aircraft could not get off the ground. They flew on bombing, reconnaissance, day and night, landing and dropping scouts, supply surrounded by troops and guerrillas, the evacuation of the wounded, to fly to communication and transportation commanders. The whole spectrum of problems lay on the shoulders of the pilots and navigators of the slow biplane flown at a speed barely exceeding the current speed limit of cars on the highway. Cope with all these complex tasks, successive maybe even in a single day could only be real professionals, pilots and navigator who made their own, largely unjustly neglected, work. Paying tribute to the courage of the female pilots 46-th Guards regiment, we must remember that during the war has created more than a hundred night bomber regiments, among whom only one was female. It is on the shoulders of men such as these twelve men, whose memories are collected in the book bore the brunt of the war on a small airplane, do great things.

And dont forget, that there were also daylight bomber (Pe-2) female regiment They were not "night" witches

[Juha]

Hello
one must remember that LW flew out some 23000 men from the encirclement, mostly wounded of which at least 5000 died later because of their wounds. Unwounded outflown were specialists and highly regarded officers who were a bit older men, so if they survived the war they are very probably past away already but some of the younger wounded might still be alive.

Juha

[kolya1]

Don't forget to look at Romanian, Italian, or Hungarian survivors. There still may be some of them alive. Or Germans who were outside the pocket, e.g. people who participated in the failed relief attempt.

As for the Germans in Stalingrad, I think it probable that you may find more survivors among those who were captured in late November/early December 1942 at the time of the Soviet conterattack. Those had not already suffered from hunger when they were taken prisoner. Many of those who surrendered in early 1943 were already ill or famished (or, very often, both) and died in captivity. The death rate in captivity among them was far higher than the average for the whole war.

But I think you may also find recollections of veterans written in the post war period or mail (although, in the latter, you must be aware that people were mostly conscious of the activity of censorship and therefore were careful in what they wrote).

[trburns1]

It's definitely not too late to find any.

One, Former Panzer Captain Winrich Behr, is 92-years old. He tried, in vain, to convince Hitler that the 6th Army's circumstances were hopeless. He has a Wiki page. Anthony Beevor interviewed him in the mid-1990's for his book Stalingrad. I googled some of the other survivors in Beevor's book, and so far he's the only one I found still living.

But there are certain to be a few more. If 5,000 Germans returned from Russia in the 1950's, and one half of a percent of them is still living, that's still 25 men. It's been 67 years since the battle, and the youngest would be in their mid-eighties, but many people live that long - some despite having lived very difficult lives.

This doesn't include the lucky Germans who, due to wounds, specialties, or circumstances, were flown out early and escaped Soviet captivity.

I don't know how you'd find them, but I'm sure they're out there.

Good luck.