German soldier Walter Godel, who fought as part of the 18th Army of the North Group and participated in the battles near Leningrad, described the war in letters that were published by the newspaper Die Welt.
Godel, being the son of a simple German peasant, who did not go beyond the limits of his native village in Schwabia, wrote his relatives that the path to the eastern front was for him “the best impression of all his life.” He also called the blockade of Leningrad “Not bad” event.
“I am always wonderful. Yesterday my first fighting baptism took place,” the soldier wrote in a letter, which he sent home in September 1941. The article notes that at first the delight of Godel was divided by many soldiers of the Wehrmacht, but soon they had to get acquainted with the other side of the events.
The soldier complained that “there is snow here for two days, and still very cold.” “There is neither hay, nor straw – nothing at all, because people had to go on the road during the harvest,” he wrote. The man also noted that “75 percent of all the property burned.” In the following months, hundreds of thousands of people were killed from Frost. The article emphasizes that Führer Adolf Hitler sought Leningrad in a literal sense to extort from hunger.
In his letters, Godel also described Soviet soldiers. “You can’t imagine what kind of stuffed these Russians. They are lying on ice with hundreds and still attack us every day,” he noted, describing the fighting of winter 1941-1942. The German also added that no one would give out of the deposited city.
When the Red Army managed to break through the defense of the Wehrmacht south of Leningrad, and several thousand German soldiers fell into the holm boiler, the M-10 battalion went to the revenue. “We went to the attack six times and could not break through,” the man wrote. “At the seventh time, we finally succeeded – the price of heavy fights and big losses … But the Russians managed to reappear the vice and locked us.”
Many German soldiers died from hunger, cold and diseases in the Battle of the Hill. The author of the letters got frostbite and in late February was evacuated by tank troops. The battalion of Godel lost killed and wounded 383 people, and heavy battles lasted until May. Later in his letter of sister Mary, he wrote that if his little nephew would ever think of playing war, he would score him “and better to dance him.”
Godel received a difficult wound on February 27, 1944 in the battles under the impetus, a month after the final breakthrough of the blockade of Leningrad. He died in the same evening.
Leningrad’s blockade lasted 871 days, starting from September 8, 1941. Stretching the coating was managed on January 18, 1943. During the siege, according to various sources, died from 400 thousand to 1.5 million people, most citizens died from hunger.