Letters of soldiers in Stalingrad to their wives, December 1942
Taken from the book ‘Last Letters from Stalingrad’, these two letters were supposedly written in December 1942. They never reached their families: Hitler confiscated them to avoid from being known the morale of troops abandoned on the Volga and so this would affect his glory-filled propaganda in Germany. They were published later years, after being found in army archives. Soldiers who have seen and committed the worst atrocities, starving, surrounded by dead, dismembered bodies, limbless wretches, screaming in pain and waiting for treatments that will never come, can only think to the loving warmth of their bride. They know they are doomed to death, they await it without whimpering, sending a last farewell to their loved ones. A last farewell unaware of censorship and entrusted to the last plane that left Stalingrad.