Number of Soviet soldiers at Stalingrad

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Virginian
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Number of Soviet soldiers at Stalingrad

Post by Virginian » 12 Aug 2023 19:30

In Anthony Beevor's introduction to ''Stalingrad'', he claims that 13,500 Soviet soldiers were executed at Stalingrad. This seems unrealistically high, with Glantz quoting a Soviet document in ''Armaggedon in Stalingrad'' that states the 62nd Army detained 1,218, of whom only 21 were shot, between 13 and 15 September. The report of the Stalingrad Front Special Department for 15 October states that 711 soldiers were shot in Stalingrad and Don Fronts between 1 August and 15 October. This sounds much more plausible than Beevor's figure. Is there a total number covering the entire battle available somewhere?

Art
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Re: Number of Soviet soldiers at Stalingrad

Post by Art » 12 Aug 2023 21:28

"At Stalingrad" means withing the city proper or in the battle of Stalingrad? Anyway, you can arrive to such numbers only by taking the entire Soviet military from July 42 to February 43.
Virginian wrote:
12 Aug 2023 19:30
The report of the Stalingrad Front Special Department for 15 October states that 711 soldiers were shot in Stalingrad and Don Fronts between 1 August and 15 October.
That pertains specifically to men arrested by blocking detachments. There were other ways military personnel were arrested and put under trial.

If you take official casualty summaries then the Stalingrad (I)/Don Front suffered 13,783 non-battle casualties from 12.07.42 to 15.2.43, the South-East/Stalingrad (II) Front - 10,477 from 09.08 to 31.12.42, the South-West Front (II) - 3,790 from 25.10 to 31.12.42. Total 28 tousand men. That includes sentences by tribunals (and probably executions without a trial), deaths and injuries to accidents, desertions, suicides etc. My guess is that the number of death and jail sentences was hardly larger than 10-15 thousand. Not including revoked and suspended sentences and penal units.

Generally speaking information on military personnel sentenced to death and captivity (such as name, date, units etc) can be found at:
https://obd-memorial.ru/html/
but filtering results pertaining to Stalingrad is quite tiresome and time-consuming.

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