1800 Bodies Of WWII German Soldiers Found Inside Stalingrad

The Battle of Stalingrad was the largest and deadliest battle in military history. It was the bloodiest and most fiercely fought battle of the whole of the Second World War, and there were huge numbers of casualties on both sides as the Germans suffered up to 1.5 million casualties and the Soviet Red Army up to 2.6 million. There were thousands of deaths every day, and the fighting was intense. Hitler wanted to smash the very city that carried the name of the Soviet dictator. Still today, there are many soldiers of the conflict who lay buried where they fell in battle or lie inside of mass graves, their sites of burial being unmarked and forgotten. It was a city which Stalin did not want to lose control of and it was vital, but with the defeat of the German forces at Stalingrad, the tide of the Second World War turned against them.

But in 2018, a remarkable discovery was found inside the city of Volgograd, which was formerly Stalingrad, and found with the remains and bodies of over 1,800 German soldiers. But what happened with their deaths, and what did the discovery tell the world about the bloodiest battle in human history?

Stalingrad was a large industrial city which was key in producing armaments and other equipment for the Soviet Red Army, and also was of strategic importance due to its location near to the oil fields of the Caucasus. Hitler wanted control of the city holding Stalin’s name, and he launched a huge assault on the city. The plan was to wipe out the Soviet forces in the South and then either go North to Moscow or continue South to take the rest of the Caucasus.

Soviet forces were able to slow down the advances of the Wehrmacht to begin with north of the city, but Stalin lost over 200,000 soldiers in this. The city’s 400,000 residents were not evacuated, and within a few days the Luftwaffe began to strike in the city, conducting a number of huge assaults on it. There was terror on the streets, as it was said the fighting in Stalingrad was even more terrifying than the impersonal slaughter at Verdun. The close-quarter combat in ruined buildings, bunkers, cellars, and sewers was soon dubbed ‘Rattenkrieg’ by German soldiers. It possessed a savage intimacy which appalled their generals who felt they were rapidly losing control over events.

“The enemy is invisible,” wrote a general to a friend, “ambushes out of basements, wall remnants, hidden bunkers and factory ruins producing heavy casualties amongst our troops.”

The Soviets continued themselves to suffer heavy losses, and by Autumn 1942, the city of Stalingrad was in complete ruins. Stalin ordered his “Not one step back” order, in which any Soviet soldier who took a step to retreat would be liable for execution. One former NKVD officer (Soviet Secret Service) claimed:

“We forced them, the Red Army troops, to fight to the death. If they resisted or ran away, we eliminated them. We shot them, that’s all. They weren’t fighters anymore. It was hard, it was bad, I understand, but what can you do?”

The ruined city became a sight of urban warfare never seen before, and the bombed-out Stalingrad was home to snipers waiting to take out the enemy. It was also said German soldiers made use of the Stalingrad orphans themselves. Daily tasks such as filling out water bottles were dangerous when Soviet snipers lay in wait for any movement, so for the promise of a crust of bread, they would get Soviet boys and girls to take their water bottles down to the Volga’s edge to fill them. When the Soviet side realized what was happening, Red Army soldiers shot children on such missions.

But the Soviets, following launching their counterattack known as Operation Uranus, managed to form a defensive ring around the city by late November 1942, and they trapped 300,000 German and Axis soldiers of the 6th Army. The Soviets blockaded the Germans, and as the winter set in, the Germans were suffering heavily. They tightened the noose around the neck of the Germans, and things got very desperate as there was a lack of food and also a lack of correct clothing and other supplies.

By February 1943, the Soviets had retaken Stalingrad and they captured roughly 100,000 soldiers, but most of these were dying inside of the Gulag prison camps or from disease and starvation. But the discovery of the mass grave in the city of Volgograd was a shocking and brutal reminder of the deadliest battle of the Second World War.

In 2018, workmen who were carrying out building projects, laying new water pipes in the city, discovered a huge mass grave. The pit which was uncovered was 430 feet long, 23 feet wide, and 7 feet deep, and as excavations were carried out, scores and scores of bodies were discovered. Immediately, the German War Graves Commission was notified, and careful excavations were carried out, but no one could have estimated the amount of soldiers’ bodies that were found in the pit. When the builders discovered the grave, they could not have imagined that in total 1,837 bodies, all of them German soldiers, would be discovered. Every few minutes new bodies were being found in the large pit. Also found amongst the men who fell in Stalingrad were the remains of horses who were also victims of the battle.

Archaeologists tried to identify the bodies, and some of them had dog tags on them which allowed names to be put to the victims. Some of the relatives of these men who fell in battle were contacted, and some of the stories of their great-grandparents or grandparents were solved once and for all. Each year there are roughly three to four mass graves found inside of the former city of Stalingrad as different building projects are carried out. These graves were the easiest way to dispose of the huge number of dead, and some of these are Soviet sites and others German.

To begin with, the German authorities thought that they had 800 bodies buried in the mass grave, but then the number rose quickly to over 1,800—over twice of what was predicted. The grave was found inside of the Angarsky District. It was reported that:

“At the beginning of October we reported 800 German war dead in the former Stalingrad, today Volgograd. The excavation work is now complete. Instead of the assumed 100, it was in the end 1,837 war dead. We found numerous killed soldiers along with horse carcasses hastily buried due to the threat of epidemic at the time.”

There was a rush to remove the countless corpses of men and animals as soon as possible. Earth holes, gorges, and streams became mass graves. Every year in the former Stalingrad, on average three to four mass graves are found. A finding on this scale is quite special.

The discovery of the graves showed that the scale of the slaughter inside the city was huge, and this was only one of just a number of mass graves uncovered that tell the story of the end of the battle. It’s likely that these soldiers were part of the 6th Army and that they were buried not by the Germans but instead by the Soviets. There were dead bodies lying all over the city, and many of them had been stripped of their clothing and their possessions, some by the inhabitants of Stalingrad who were taking items to attempt to survive themselves.

There were heaps of dead bodies lying all over the ground. It was said that in March 1943, a gorge near the Angarsky settlement was hurriedly used by the Soviets, fearful of an outbreak of disease as spring approached, as a makeshift burial pit for the remains of thousands of German troops and their horses. It was likely that the German soldiers who were buried in the mass grave were all buried very quickly by the Soviets who did not want disease to spread amongst the population, and they moved swiftly to pile the bodies into these huge burial pits.

But there was some resistance to the discovery and exhumation of the German soldiers. Stalingrad as a city was a terrifying site of death for the Soviets too, and despite being renamed, there were many war veterans who still remember the horror, and they would not have been happy with the exhumation and that the German soldiers were then given a decent burial. One former Soviet soldier stated:

“The Germans seized vast tracts of our country and killed and enslaved millions of our people. There should not be any memorials to them on our land.”

Also discovered in the mass grave were items such as helmets, water canisters, buckles, and other items linked to the German forces, showing that they were not necessarily buried with the most dignity, and that the individual burials did not take place in which Soviet soldiers would have removed the items belonging to the men. They just probably pushed the bodies or bulldozed them into the grave or hole as quickly as they could.

But the story of the 1,800 Germans found at Angarsky has been laid to rest now, as in September 2019, a year after the burial had been discovered, they interred inside of the Rossoshka German War Cemetery 37 km northwest of the city of Volgograd where they were found. The soldiers were buried with dignity and a service was carried out for them.

It’s estimated that 2 million people died in the city of Stalingrad and around it before Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus defied the orders of Adolf Hitler and surrendered to the Red Army. The discovery of the mass grave in Angarsky inside the former city told of the horror of the battlefield, and it evoked thoughts of the past and how much the city had suffered during World War II.

It’s clear that the 1,837 Germans buried in the pit were buried quickly by the Soviets to prevent disease epidemics as they regained control of the city. But it was a dark reminder of the deadliest battle in history, and still today there will be thousands, if not dozens of thousands, of German and Soviet soldiers buried in mass graves around the city of Volgograd, and their stories are yet to be uncovered and told to this world.