| German survivors of 6th Army after surrendering at Stalingrad are photographed at Beketovka camp 108. The state of most prisoners at the time of the surrender was so pitiful that a considerable death rate was predictable in the weeks and months to follow. How far this was exasperated by ill-treatment, casual brutality, and above all logistical deficiencies is impossible to calculate. The Soviet Red Army itself acknowledged in subsequent reports that orders for the care of prisoners had been ignored, and it is impossible to tell how many Nazi Germans were shot out of hand during or soon after their surrender, often as vengeance for deaths of relatives or comrades. The Nazi German hospitals, bulging with 4,000 casualties, were just abandoned; Soviet medical personnel stole their supplies and the NVD and Red Army executed Nazi German doctors and chaplains. Those that were still alive weeks later were moved to Beketovka without any medical treatment. Other Germans remained in Stalingrad to help reconstruct the city they had devastated. 3,500 Soviet civilians, and then 1,200 Nazi German prisoners of war, were put to work as burial parties. Most of the work was done with improvised sleds and handcarts; there were a few camels. The Nazi German corpses were frozen solid and stacked like cordwood. They were buried in bunkers or in the huge anti-tank ditch on the Mamayev Kurgan. Almost all of the burial parties died of typhus. The Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (NKVD; “People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs”) routinely shot “dozens each day” of prisoners on their way to and from work details. The rest were death marched to Beketovka. In such a weakened state, the journey took 5 days in 30 below 0 (minus 34 celsius) degree weather. The NKVD executed anyone who collapsed in the snow. Thirst was as great as threat as hunger. While surrounded by snow, those that consumed it perished when they consumed the frozen ice, lowering their core temperature. Once in Beketovka, the death rate in camps was appalling. At 1st, the Soviets provided no rations at all. Even though surrender was known to be imminent, the Soviet Red Army had made no provisions available, no guards ready, no camps prepared. The Soviet predilection to incompetent indifference and bureaucratic sclerotic slowness was exacerbated by a lack of cooperation between the Red Army and the NKVD. The Soviets were not only angry about atrocities; a national shortage of food when the Nazi Germans occupied Ukraine and other breadbasket areas meant that feeding prisoners of war met with deep resentment. Most Red Army soldiers were badly undernourished, and civilians were even worse. Some ate nothing but turnips and beets for months. Giving food to captured invaders in those circumstances seemed almost perverse to some Communists. It was almost 2 weeks before rations arrived; even then, 1 loaf of bread was split between 10 men. Watery soup with a few millet seeds and salted fish was all they could get. Cannibalism sprung up among the Romanian, Italian, and German prisoners of war. Witnesses reported finding corpses without arms or legs, or finding men cooking tracheas over a fire. The Soviets responded by arming Nazi German officers with crowbars and ordering them to beat to death any perpetrators of cannibalism. They could find them by the tell-tale fires at night as they murdered and butchered their victims. But cannibalism became so rife, the anti-cannibalism squads could not seriously reduce the practice. Those that did not wish to consume flesh would sift through human waste for millet seeds and corn, rinse it in snowmelt, and eat what they could steal. While 2nd-line Soviet units and the NKVD had picked through the belongings of the 6th Army prisoners, many hid watches and wedding rings, and traded them for bread. Magnanimous officers gave their possessions to gain a loaf of bread for their surviving men, saving the last, smallest piece for themselves. Others hoarded all the bread for their own consumption. As the gold rings, watches, and jewelry were traded, typhus was also traded, and many were infected and died. Discipline broke down; Austrians demanded better treatment, blaming Prussian generals, not the Austrian-born Führer und Reichskanzler (“Leader and Reich Chancellor”) Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945). Enlisted men did not heed the instructions of their officers. Italians and Romanian prisoners of war openly fought, verbally and physically, with the Nazi Germans and had to be separated at times into their own camps. When starved or overworked, men would throw lice at their captors, earning an immediate execution. Those that stood out in some way – the tallest, the flamboyant, the resistors, the chatty – would be singled out for punishment or death. The short, thin, quiet men were the most likely to survive. Typhus swept through the prisoner of war ranks; in March the Russians dug a ditch at Beketovka and dumped nearly 40,000 German bodies into a mass grave. Of the 91,000 Nazi Germans taken prisoner at the end of the Battle of Stalingrad in February 1943, half had died by the time Spring had arrived. The NKVD reported that 55,228 died by April 15, 1943. Only 5,000 of the 6th Army Nazi soldiers who entered captivity returned to Germany in 1955. | |
| Image Filename | wwii1983.jpg |
| Image Size | 286.20 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 1600 x 1199 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | March 1, 1943 |
| Location | |
| City | Beketovka |
| State or Province | Astrakhan |
| Country | Soviet Union |
| Archive | Library of Congress |
| Record Number | LC-USZ62-120345 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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