Stalingrad 23 Aug 1942: Tactics or Spoliation?

[bf109 emil]

I have never heard of this, and tens of thousands of non-buried bodies decomposing in the summer heat would certainly have been a considerable threat for the 6th army.

What provisions where set up by the Soviet Union to prevent the extensive death of civilians,,,where there bomb shelters available, underground train stations...as for the decomposing of bodies, and the extent of the damage...no one was going to go hunting in rubble and destroyed buildings seeking these bodies?

[David Thompson]

bf109 emil -- You wrote:

What provisions where set up by the Soviet Union to prevent the extensive death of civilians,,,where there bomb shelters available, underground train stations...as for the decomposing of bodies, and the extent of the damage...no one was going to go hunting in rubble and destroyed buildings seeking these bodies?

If the Soviet authorities had taken maximum precautions to minimise casualties before the bombing, what difference would it make to the thread question of whether the German bombing of 23 Aug 1942 was a matter of tactics or spoliation?

[bf109 emil]

If the Soviet authorities had taken maximum precautions to minimise casualties before the bombing, what difference would it make to the thread question of whether the German bombing of 23 Aug 1942 was a matter of tactics or spoliation?

It would have to the Russian civilians without shelter or a place to protect themselves, as discussed as to the number killed, as for tactics, the Russian 62 and 64 army retreating into the city and taking refuge there would have made it a legal and legitimate target to bomb and soften up...had the Soviets provided shelter for the residents, maybe a lower loss of life...I'm unsure but the whole turn towards Stalingrad was a lot swifter and deadlier for it's civilians then say Allied forces flattening Caen prior to there advance to root out German troops there, although less populated the chance to evacuated prior to bombing held casualties down...

as to the Question of whether Stalingrad and it;'s bombing should be considered a war crime, I think this was answered by Soviet forces taking shelter 4 days prior to the air strikes on Aug 23 within the city itself...

Likewise if we are going to debate whether Stalingrad and German bombing was a holocaust housing Soviet troops, then we should also debate every town in Italy and France along the same lines that where "softened up" prior to invading

[David Thompson]

bf109 emil -- The crime of spoliation has to do with the destruction of property, not persons. You're talking about the crime of mass destruction of lives -- a crime against humanity -- which is a different issue.

[bf109 emil]

Okay, and I'm sorry and apoligise, yet still wonder why Stalingrad is debated for destruction of personal property when tens if not hundreds of cities where bombed and flattened worse then Stalingrad was...I assumed it had to deal with the validity of bombing and being a legal target as opposed to discussion of a knocked dwellings and possessions which happened throughout Europe and Asia

[David Thompson]

bf109 emil -- You wrote:

Okay, and I'm sorry and apoligise, yet still wonder why Stalingrad is debated for destruction of personal property when tens if not hundreds of cities where bombed and flattened worse then Stalingrad was...I assumed it had to deal with the validity of bombing and being a legal target as opposed to discussion of a knocked dwellings and possessions which happened throughout Europe and Asia

That's pretty much the point of these threads. These bombings -- whether they involved the bombings of Amsterdam, Coventry, Stalingrad, Berlin, Hamburg, or Dresden, weren't regarded as as war crimes during WWII. That's why now we have the Geneva Convention of 1949 on the protection of civilians during wartime.

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/geneva07.asp

[bf109 emil]

David wrote

That's pretty much the point of these threads. These bombings -- whether they involved the bombings of Amsterdam, Coventry, Stalingrad, Berlin, Hamburg, or Dresden, weren't regarded as as war crimes during WWII. That's why now we have the Geneva Convention of 1949 on the protection of civilians during wartime.

David I understand this and why i was questioning this...not for the fact of numerous cities being bombed, but as to why it is in the Holocaust/war crimes section when their wasn't any crime committed...unsure as maybe it does or is suited to be posted in this section, but if it was legal and not a war crime and after 6 pages of posts, yours is the first it seems to say other then what i claimed as Stalingrad was a legal target, no crimes where committed in it's bombing and hence my curiosity as to why in this category is all

Thank You

[David Thompson]

bf109 emil -- You asked:

why it is in the Holocaust/war crimes section when their wasn't any crime committed...

Some people think (or thought) it was a war crime, and want to know why it wasn't.

[thom]

Oleg, you wrote:

Who said they were collected? Honestly, most people got better things to do under artillery and aerial bombardment (like trying to hide and survive) than running around, collecting the dead

So if they were not collected during the German advance and occupation how comes that after the 6th army's defeat the bodies of only 300 civilians were found and buried (see Stalingradskaia gruppa vojsk, p. 101). 38,000 people don't simply disappear. For me, these are propaganda figures which also answers the question of this thread.

[Jan-Hendrik]

Then, there's General von Richthofen's quote "The city is destroyed, and without any further worthwhile targets." Of course, the Luftwaffe would attack Stalingrad many times in September and October, but then they were attacking particular strongpoints that the defenders had created amid the rubble of the city. On 23 Aug the Luftwaffe was attacking the city, its inhabitants, and any Soviet military targets that happened to be around.

Here is what v.Richthofen really wrote in his dieary :

25/8/42

Um 1100 los, um den grossen Brandangriff gegen
Stalingrad um 1300 zu beobachten. Vorfliegen zu
Wietersheim war nicht möglich, da Rollbahn und damit
Verbindung nach vorn durch russ Feuer unterbrochen
war. Russe griff gerade mit Panzern in dem Loch an,
wurde von Schlächtern und Panzern abgeschmiert.
Landete beim dortigen Kampfgruppenführer und ging zu
den Panzer, bes es ziemlich schoss. In der Ferne die
dicken, schwarzen Brandwolken der Stadt (25km) von den
Sprengbomben her. Flog dann zur 76 I.D. wo Paulus und
Seydlitz (Kdr Gen LI Armeekorps). Lage gespannt, da
kein Kräftezufluss mehr möglich. Infanterie liegt
rechts und links fest und kann vorläufig die
durchgestossenen Panzer nicht entlasten; erst in 3
Tagen. Um 1300 fielen die ersten Brandbomben; um 1400
überstieg der erste, um 1430 der zweite Brandkumulus
die 3,500m. Verbände sahen nichts mehr; meldeten
(natürlich sehr übertrieben): Stadt vernichtet, dort
keine lohnenden Ziele mehr! Beruhigte Paulus, der
reichliche nervös

Jan-Hendrik

[Oleg Grigoryev]

So if they were not collected during the German advance and occupation how comes that after the 6th army's defeat the bodies of only 300 civilians were found and buried (see Stalingradskaia gruppa vojsk, p. 101). 38,000 people don't simply disappear. For me, these are propaganda figures which also answers the question of this thread.

I don't know because it was recent bodies ? They still occasionally find human remains there dated by the times of battle Have you seen the Stalingrad after surrender of 6th army -there was not much left of the far more solid structures -that is thing that far less destructible than human bodies disappear . I am still puzzled why you think that in city, that engulfed in prolonged in battle that consisted of massive aerial bombardments, artillery duels, and one of the most intense urban combat in the war – all factor that barely left a single building intact , it was possible to accurately calculate civilian causalities. Btw how many MIA were reported by Soviet forces during the battle?

[bf109 emil]

So if they were not collected during the German advance and occupation how comes that after the 6th army's defeat the bodies of only 300 civilians were found and buried (see Stalingradskaia gruppa vojsk, p. 101). 38,000 people don't simply disappear. For me, these are propaganda figures which also answers the question of this thread.

are we to assume after 6 months of war in a city which was destroyed and the 6th army was eventually to surrender only 300 bodies where found? when does it say the Soviets took these bodies and how long after the surrender of the 6th army...some 7 months after the bombing by Richtofen at least...and IMHO would Stalin whom army did the counting want to boast the number of lives taken by Germany or downplay this fact...300 killed by one of the biggest bombing raids in a city fully occupied with few shelters or evacuation prior to bombing must have been the lowest casualties of all time IMHO...even the Rotterdam blitz which was puny by comparison of the attack on Stalingrad yielded 3 times the 300 which where supposed to be according to Stalingradskaia gruppa vojsk...something doesn't sound right

Over the course of the battle, the Germans flew 70,000 sorties dropping over a million bombs.

...

Stalingrad was bombed block-by-block for five days.

from a witness

“I will remember the first day of the bombing all my life says Lyubov Zaharovskaya. I was 11 years old then. Mother sent me to take some tobacco to grandfather. Suddenly the sky became dark as it was covered by war planes and for sometime the city was unrecognizable. It was dark and everyone was shouting and running Nearby was an hospital. The asphalt was boiling, the ground burnt and people and animals were also in flames. It was a real hell. Planes were flying low and the Germans were shooting at people with machineguns. My mother died in that hell so also was my brother Only I and my sister 17 at the time survived".
This is the recollection of the nightmare by the then chief of the Stalingrad branch NKVD Alexander Voronin:
“A huge shadow from the twin-engine “Hainkel-111”hung over the city. Each plane carried 4 tons of bombs and among them were mines designed for destroying living apartment buildings, factories and shelters. Countless numbers of flare bombs were dropped on the city causing fires everywhere. The planes made many sorties and they took turns in their devilish mission replacing each other to bomb fresh locations. On dropping its bombs each plane went to an airport for a fresh load of their deadly cargo”.
Even the command headquarter of the city’s defense committee located underground lasted for a short period of time Built in a hurry with the hope that a bomb shelter will not be needed it was destroyed in the first few hours.
Many years later chairman of the defense committee Aleksey Chuyanov was asked: “Why did you not save the people?”. He waved his hands and retorted “It was impossible even to nurse the idea of evacuation” and proceeded to narrate how Stalin rang demanding that steps be taken to prevent an evacuation. “Evacuation is panic” Stalin said.

http://www.vor.ru/55/Stalingrad/History_5_eng.html

[thom]

I am still puzzled why you think that in city, that engulfed in prolonged in battle that consisted of massive aerial bombardments, artillery duels, and one of the most intense urban combat in the war – all factor that barely left a single building intact , it was possible to accurately calculate civilian causalities.

Accurate counting of everybody and everything was part of the Soviet totalitarian system. Look for example at Leningrad. Even in the winter of 1941/42 with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants dying of starvation, with the chaos of evacuation, the city under bombardment, an accurate count of the number of deaths (and births, marriages, divorces, and so on) was still undertaken and documented. What strikes me in the case of Stalingrad is the difference between the number of bodies actually found (2,000) and the number of deaths later declared (40,000). Looks similar to Dresden where in the chaotic last days of the Reich bodies from the February air-raids were collected, buried, and their numbers documented (20-25,000) while post-war calculations were inflated up to 10- or 20-fold.

[Oleg Grigoryev]

Really? You think loses of Leningrad civilians well documented? Is that why the number of losses rounded to nearest hundred thousand? And Leningrad did not suffer nearly as much in terms of actual physical destruction -there was no street fighting in Leningrad. Look - if you want to see if there is a pattern (or anomaly for that matter) compare Stalingrad to the cities that suffered more or less similar fate. Rostov,Warsaw, Budapest etc.

[thom]

Yes Leningrad is well documented - please look at "Leningrad v osade" or "Zhizn' i smert' v blokirovannom Leningrade" (also in English: "Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad"). And btw, Leningrad suffered, with 17,000, even more victims from bombardments than Stalingrad. I chose the example of Leningrad to show that even in the worst times of war there was a functioning statistics in the Soviet Union of vital events, such as births and deaths. This was similar in Germany, as shown on the example of Dresden which I think suffered a fate that can be compared to that of Stalingrad.