Letter home from a soldier, 389th Infantry Division, German Sixth Army, August 14, 1942. After writing that the fighting had been hard, he tells his family:
"The only consolation is that we will be able to have peace and quiet in Stalingrad, where we'll move into winter quarter, and then, just think of it, there'll be a chance of leave."
The division, along with the entire Sixth Army, would be destroyed in the Battle of Stalingrad. Unless the writer was among the few wounded who were evacuated, it is highly likely he was killed or taken prisoner (95% of non-officers taken prisoner at Stalingrad died in Soviet captivity).
Came across this while rereading Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor (1998).
Beevor also reports that the official Soviet propaganda line was "the morale of an army depends on the socially just and progress order of the society it defends". It also helps morale if you are defending your country against Nazis. The Soviets provided additional support to their troops by executing 160,000 for desertion or cowardice during the first 18 months of the war, and sentencing hundreds of thousands of others to punishment detachments in which 400,000 perished. The United States executed one soldier during the entire war for desertion or cowardice.
For more on this turning point of the war read Life And Fate.
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