Russia 1942/43 ▶ Battle of Stalingrad - Pathological Examination and Study of Starvation of the 6th Army in the Pocket of Stalingrad (December 1942)
when they simply died more and more deaths without previous wounding or
illness alarmed the leadership of the sixth army trapped in stalingrad at the end of 1942.
hypothermia and exhaustion were suspected none of the 600 or so doctors in the pocket dared to
speak of starvation in order to gain clarity one of the pathologists of the sixth army dr
med hans gurgeon zone who was outside the pocket was requested he reports about his special mission
the order arrived in tazinsky and the don step in the afternoon of december 15
1942 having been designated for the mission after a bad night of bombing i went to the staff of the
army doctor outside the pocket to morozovskaya where the senior field doctor explained to me the
mission the clarification of the cause of death among the unwounded soldiers and demonstrated
on the map the imminent unloading of the pocket from the southwest which failed six days later
at dawn on december 17 1942 on the airfield issuing orders to the four-man crew of the
fighter plane that it stacked ammunition boxes and commissary bred as cargo and was to take me along
to fly around the russian anti-aircraft barrage on the don river to the south
to break north between the barrage and the russian fighter airfields to the pocket to fly alone if
there was cloud cover otherwise only with the requested fighter protection the pilot said to
me we don't have a parachute for you you fly at your own risk clouds until the dawn then blue sky
far and wide no german fighter turned back on december 18 1942 the same approach but between
the dawn and the volga scattered clouds jumping from cloud to cloud the tailgunner bumps into me
we were lucky peternick is down there i saw a brown crater landscape in the white snow cover
staff physician dr segel instructed me determined my location in an army field hospital in a banker
ravine near the gumrack railroad station close to the army high command where i also found the two
section assistants and arranged via the division physicians for direct telephone notification to me
of the deaths to be examined a car with driver and sufficient gasoline with strictest
rationing in the pocket was at my disposal the accommodation was luxurious by pocket standards
an earth bunker in the clay of the steep balka wall with a wooden wall in front
in it two double-decker cots with sheets a table and an iron stove heated with wood from the house
rubble of stalingrad the wounded lay in an erected wooden barrack in a very confined space a large
tent could only be used for material because of the cold the trips to the sections in the pocket
which was 30 to 50 kilometer in diameter were exhausting it was necessary to improvise and
find unconventional ways to carry out the mission successfully an earth bunker if a
village was available a temporarily vacated room in a hut a railroad car or a tent were provided
as section rooms once i conducted three sections in a row in the open air in a snow hollow at minus
30 degrees and under the rumble of repeated low-flying air raids hot water was repeatedly
brought from a small bunker so that i could thaw my frozen fingers stuck in rubber gloves
i noted most of the starvation deaths in the unfortunate 113th infantry division
as i was told the paymasters had been awarded medals for cutting rations in the fall before
the onset of the mud period with temporary interruption of food supplies thus hoarding
sufficient supplies for that period during the load balancing in the pocket
because some divisions had lost all supplies the well-supplied division had to give up everything
and with its already malnourished soldiers became the preferred victim of starvation
the problem of thawing frozen corpses was difficult to solve in most cases the medical
services of the individual units succeeded in leaving the corpse in a covered room until
dissection often however the dead man could not be brought back from the positions until he was
frozen at the already mentioned 113th division in the rasashka valley i dissected several times in
an earth bunker the night before a medic had to heat the iron stove and turn the corpse over and
over at the stove to thaw it at one point the overtired and exhausted man had fallen asleep
the result was a corpse frozen on the left and seared on the right
after the dissection of three heavies these were soviet soldiers willing to help who were
prisoners of war and served in german units the young german officer of the unit asked me about
the cause of death to my diagnosis starved to death he declared obviously completely surprised
that is impossible they get the same rations as we do three slices of bread and half a liter of
good horse meat soup which consisted of water with four to five small meat cubes
the momentous diagnosis could be made only if another cause of death could be excluded
which i found after all in half of the cases and the pathological changes with the complete loss of
fatty tissue the reduction atrophy of the heart and liver the loss of skeletal muscles and the
enlargement of the right ventricle were proving only one repeated in a larger number of cases
death by starvation is undramatic the light of life burning only with the smallest of flames is
suddenly extinguished like a spent candle it was not uncommon for a soldier lying in position to
declare to the sergeant or nco making the rounds i'm fine i want to eat something now often a small
piece of canned fatty meat which was flown in his particularly high calorie and preference
and was found dead on the next round the necropsy then regularly revealed in the completely fat
tissue free mesentery of the small intestine a plump yellow filling of all lymphatic vessels
with the resorbed fat as can otherwise only be seen in anatomical injection preparations
the onset of the digestive work had overwhelmed the circulation and led to death in the period
from december 19 to 31 1942 i made 50 corpse openings exactly 25 of these dead were starved
to death many of the other cases highly emaciated that was enough irrefutable proof
on new year's eve i wrote the report to the army doctor and on new year's morning handed it over
to the staff physician dr sagel who immediately forwarded it to colonel general friedrich paoloz
the proof of death by starvation inconceivable as it may seem to us today was a surprise and hit
like a bomb but it was too late the inadequate supplies from the air collapsed altogether
on january 10 1943 the final offensive of the soviet army began on february 2nd 1943 i marched
into captivity for seven years with the consulting surgeon professor gross whom i had met by chance
in the last days in the so-called northern pocket dr segel shot himself as did many other officers
of the quarter of a million people trapped in the stalling grad pocket
apart from wounded who were flown out the consensus estimate is that 5000 to 6000 returned
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