On the 3rd February 1943, the German OKW issued an announcement to inform the German public of the defeat at Stalingrad, Russia.

 On the 3rd February 1943, the German OKW issued an announcement to inform the German public of the defeat at Stalingrad, Russia.

The message, read over the radio, was preceded by a solemn drum roll and was followed by the 2nd movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's 5th symphony.

Forbidden to break out by Hitler, the Sixth Army endured until February 1943, when its exhausted remnants surrendered.

The Germans lost a total of 500,000 men during the Stalingrad campaign, including 91,000 taken prisoner.

During the blockade of Stalingrad, many of the German soldiers died of wounds, starvation, and lack of medical care. During the months that followed their capture at Stalingrad, weakened by disease (particularly typhus), malnutrition, and mistreatment, more POWs died.

There were only approximately 6,000 that lived to be repatriated after the war. When the weak economic situation in Russia began to subside in 1943, the death rate in the prisoner of war camps reduced dramatically. Concurrently, the prisoners of war became a significant source of labor for the Russian economy severely deprived of a workforce.

With the formation of the National Committee for a Free Germany and the League of German Officers, pro-communist prisoners of war had better privileges and more rations.

During World War 2, Russian forces captured approximately three million German soldiers. Most of the prisoners of war were arrested during the last year of the war as they were battling the great onslaughts of the Soviet armed troops.

The POWs were utilised as forced labor during the country’s wartime economy and the nation’s rebuilding efforts after the war.

With the creation of a pro-communist state in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany – the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) – in October 1949, all but 85,000 prisoners of war had been released from the Soviet camps and repatriated to Germany.

Most of the remaining German prisoners had been convicted as war criminals; given long sentences – usually 25 years – and sent to forced labor camps.

In 1956, following the intervention of West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in Moscow, the last of these war convicts (Kriegsverurteilte) were repatriated.