Centuur
Posts: 8802
Joined: 6/3/2011 From: Hoorn (NED). Status: offline
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I do know that running burning Russian soldiers was something which happened in Stalingrad... My uncle from Austria was in the "Sturmpioniere" and did put this in his diary, together with a lot of other very grim things which he witnessed there. Yes, it might look laughable and over the top in this trailer, but it doesn't come close to the horrors described in his diary: How about a wounded German soldier lying directly between the Russian and German lines screaming his head of for over a day and nobody could go and help him because of Russian soldiers firing on any soldier who would be so foolish to try to save the guy... Or the hanging of a German captured soldier by Russian soldiers in full view of the other side, but they couldn't fire on them because of the long distance... or the description of the results of a grenade thrown into a cellar, believed to be occupied by Russian soldiers, but which was occupied by civilians... Or when his friend from high school got beheaded due to a panel of metal collapsing from the roof of a building... Or the crazy SS/MP soldiers executing any soldier who wasn't wounded badly enough for desertion at the airfield which was the only way out of the place... Or the friendly fire accidents (which happened plenty, probably on both sides, because sometimes the enemy was only one wall away...). The daily struggle to get food and wood for fires to stay warm was a real stress. Effectively every dead body was searched for items which the soldiers might use to stay alive. My uncle was hit by grenadesplitters in his left arm and his upper back, effectively making his left arm totally useless, but was able to walk 15 km.'s to the airfield and got transportation out of Stalingrad two days before the last German plane left Stalingrad. Out of all the boys (230) which got conscripted into the Sturmpionier out of his village, only 14 survived the war and the Soviet imprisonment afterwards... Let us just say that Stalingrad was a very cruel, very bad place for any soldier or civilian to be in...
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Peter
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