I also found "come and see" quite shocking, especially the final statement that during the war thousands (can't remmeber the exact number)of Russian villages were destroyed by the Germans. In Western Europe we remeber German massacres at Lidice, (a small village outside of Prague), Oradour-sur-Glane, (a small French village) and the Ardeatine Caves, (south of Rome), but this appears to have been a daily occurence on the Russian front.
Finally checked on my previous post Beevor states that there were a couple of hundred Italians (from the firewood collecting party) and about 12,000 Roumanian traped at Stalingrad.
A lot of troops did actually retreat into Staingrad. After the winter of 1941/42 the Germans learnt that to spend a night (let alone possibily 4 months) in an open fox hole on the Steppe in a Russian winter could easily mean death. So troops protecting the flanks had spent sometime building winter quarters consisting of bunkers and dugouts, even using wood from damaged houses in Stalingrad (it wasn't just a good source of firewood) When the Russians kicked them out of these quarters they had the choice of dieing on the freezing Steppe or retreating to the nearest builtup area-Stalingrad. The Sixth Army also had its logistics train behind Stalingrad and when the Russians appeared behind them these non-combat troops (A majority of the troops surronded at Staingrad)retreated to the relative safety of the defensive lines around Staingrad
[ October 03, 2002, 02:32 PM: Message edited by: Private Pike ]