According to the Daily Mail, the battle of Stalingrad was the biggest and most devastating battle of World War 2. After 75 years, the mass graves of nearly 2,000 German soldiers were found in the city of Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad).
The grave was discovered by accident when Russian workers were digging in the ground to install new water pipes. They informed the authorities, including the German side.
The excavation campaign took place carefully to recover the remains of the dead. Russian archaeologists have found a total of 1,837 sets of remains. All were German soldiers.
Besides, people also found horse carcasses along with those who fell in the battle that killed nearly 2 million people. Experts will analyze the specimen to verify the body’s identity and notify relatives in Germany.
The items were found inside the mass grave.
The city will also bury the remains carefully in accordance with military protocol if no one claims it.
Mass grave measuring 131 meters long, 7 meters wide and 2 meters deep, in Angarsky district, Volgograd. The initial number of skeletons found was 800, but then more than 1,000 new sets of remains were discovered.
“At the beginning, we received information about a mass grave containing 800 bodies of German soldiers,” the Russian official said. So far, the excavation is complete, instead of 800, the final number is 1,837.
The state of war at that time forced people to immediately bury the dead in mass graves, to prevent disease.
An item engraved with the name of a German soldier.
“Mass graves are often found in Volgograd. But a tomb of such a large size and containing nearly 2,000 people as above is very rare.”
Many German soldiers who died in battle still carry metal tags that make it easier for Russian experts to verify their identities. “Relatives back home will feel more relieved if they know what happened to their father or uncle.”
The battle of Stalingrad was a disaster for the entire German 6th Army. This force amounted to more than 240,000 people, but only about 5,000 people returned. Another 147,200 died in the battle of Stalingrad and 91,000 were taken prisoner.
The defeat at Stalingrad left the 6th Corps completely paralyzed and unable to recover for the rest of the war.
German soldiers fighting in Stalingrad.
Michael Jones, author of the book on the battle of Stalingrad said: “In March 1943, Soviet officer Vladimir Gelfand arrived in Stalingrad. All this soldier saw was corpses and rubble. Many bodies are not properly buried.”
Some Soviet veterans alive today have spoken out against the government’s careful burial of the remains of German soldiers.
Hero of the Soviet Union Mikhail Borisov said: “The Germans occupied large swaths of Russia, killing and enslaving millions of people. We should not remember any of them on this land.”
