Stalingrad

admitted to his company sergeant-major, Oberfeldwebel Wallrawe, that he was ‘very proud’ to be ‘the last officer of the German Wehrmacht to cross this bridge’. Wallrawe made no comment. Twenty minutes later, with the panzer grenadiers back across to the east bank of the Don, the engineers blew the bridge. The Sixth Army was now sealed off between Don and Volga.
    Triumph did not mellow the attitude of Red Army men towards their enemy. ‘I feel much better because we have started to destroy Germans,’ wrote one soldier to his wife on 26 November. ‘This was the moment when we began to beat the snakes. We are capturingplenty. We hardly have time to pass them on back to prison camps. Now they are starting to pay for our blood, and for the tears of our people, for insults and for robbery. I received winter uniform so don’t worry about me. Things go well here. Soon I will be home after the victory. Sending 500 roubles.’ Those still in hospital, recuperating from wounds received earlier, bitterly regretted missing the fighting. ‘The battles are strong and good now,’ wrote one Russian soldier to his wife, ‘and I am lying here missing all this.’
    There were numerous Soviet claims of German atrocities that are hard to assess. Some, no doubt, were exaggerations or inventions for propaganda purposes, others were basically true. Advancing Soviet troops encountered women, children and old men evicted from their homes by the German Army, with their possessions on small sledges. Many had been robbed of their winter clothing. Vasily Grossman reported similar stories from the southern axis of advance. He wrote that Red Army soldiers searching their prisoners were angry to find on many the pathetic loot from peasant homes – ‘old women’s kerchiefs and earrings, linen and skirts, babies’ napkins and brightly coloured girls’ blouses. One soldier had twenty-two pairs of woollen stockings in his possession.’ Gaunt civilians came forward to tell of their suffering under German occupation. Every cow, every hen, and every sack of grain that could be found had been seized. Old men were flogged until they revealed where they had concealed their grain. Homesteads had been burned, with many civilians marched off for slave labour and the rest left to starve or freeze. Revenge was often exacted by small groups of Russian troops, especially when drunk, on Germans who fell into their hands. Meanwhile NKVD squads descended on liberated villages. They arrested 450 collaborators. The biggest round-up would come just over a month later in Nizhne-Chirskaya where Cossacks had denounced NKVD agents to the German Secret Field Police. Some 400 camp guards were also executed, of whom 300 were Ukrainians.
    Grossman watched the German prisoners of war being escorted back. Many had ragged blankets over their shoulders instead of greatcoats. String or wire served in the place of belts. ‘On this vast, flat, bleak steppe, one can see them from a long way off. They passus in columns of two to three hundred men, and in smaller groups of from twenty to fifty. One column, several miles long, slowly wends its way, faithfully reproducing every bend and turn in the road. Some of the Germans speak some Russian. “We don’t want war,” they call out. “We want to go home. To hell with Hitler!” Their guards observe sarcastically: “Now when our tanks have cut them off, they are ready to shout about not wanting war; but before that the thought never entered their heads.” ‘The prisoners were shipped across the Volga in barges towed by tugs. ‘They stand packed together on deck, wearing tattered field-grey greatcoats, stamping their feet and blowing on their frozen fingers.’ A sailor watching them observed with grim satisfaction: ‘Now they’re getting a sight of the Volga.’
    In Abganerovo, Soviet infantry found the railway junction was congested with abandoned freight cars, which to judge from their markings, had been taken from several countries in occupied Europe. French-, Belgian- and Polish-manufactured motor cars stood there, each branded with the black eagle and swastika of the Third Reich. For the Russians, the wagons full of supplies were like an unexpected Christmas. The sense of depriving the mighty German Army of its ill-gotten chattels was doubly pleasurable, but the old problems of semi-chronic alcoholism still arose. The commander, second-in-command and eighteen soldiers of a company on the southern flank