Customer Reviews

Doctor at Stalingrad

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This book is a great read and an account that portrays what it was like to fall into Russian captivity after the German surrender at Stalingrad. Be warned, this book is not for the faint hearted as the author descibes the appalling and ghastly conditions experienced as he remained in Stalingrad with the worst cases of the sick and wounded. The author creates a picture of the 'living dead' as the remnants of the Sixth Army waste away with starvation and diease as he and his fellow doctors work unrelentlessly to keep them alive. This is no easy task considering the doctors are suffering under the same conditions as that of the other German prisoners, conditions of a cruel Russian winter, no adequate warm clothing and shelter and near to nothing in way of food and medical supplies. Incredibly the author bears no grudges againsnt the Russians and at times shows them with a compassion and in a more favourable light than some of the German prisoners.

Although this a book of much suffering, death and dispair, it is also a book of survival and shows the grim results of war and how man can endure such terrible conditions. Conditions of living in darkness in the Timoshenko bunker with condensation dripping off the walls, thousands of lice and rampant diseases of typhus, dysentery, scurvy to name a few and of course starvation. These conditions destroyed the soul and will to live of many. Those that survived had the ultimate courage and faith in mankind but would be tormented mentally or physically for the rest of their lives for what they experienced.

A special thankyou should go to the publishers Aberdeen Books for reprinting this rare and tragic account of life after the battle of Stalingrad. This is an essential read.

Very good book, written by somebody who is not a writer but just wants to let people know how captivity was after the collapse of the 6th Army.

A true, no nonsense, no sugarcoating story that is unique in its kind.

From medical standpoint, a very interesting book.

He tapers off a little bit at the end and I didn't really like the way the book ended. But that does not take away the value of his expierence.

Although we never want the bad guys to win,reading this book you cannot but feel compassion for those wounded German soldiers who are there with hardly any medical aid,The descriptions,you would think belong in a fantasy book,not something that did actually happen.Well worth a good read to show us just how dreadful it can be to be with the minimum of care and the devoted doctors and medics who went well beyond the call of duty.A sad books that will always leave an imprint on your mind.

This is one of the rare first hand accounts of the fall of Stalingrad and the end of the German 6th Army. This first rate book was produced with a very high quality binding and with great care given to the choice of paper used as a reproduction. Limited numbers of these books have been printed.

As an historian and avid reader who purchases dozens of books each year and who researches each purchase beforehand, I rarely have cause to be disappointed in the books I buy. This book, however, was a major exception. I found it less than compelling reading; poorly written, disjointed, confusing and certainly not worth the purchase price.

Also, I found that the author's underlying theme of his own martyrdom and that of his fellow German prisoners in Soviet Prisoner of War camps, irritated me tremendously. Indeed, the book's full title, "Doctor at Stalingrad. The Passion of a Captivity" says a great deal about the image the author wished to create.

One wonders about his piety and those of his fellow soldiers when the German armed forces were running rampant over the Soviet Union, exterminating Jews and Slavs, razing cities, and starving the population of the Soviet Union. German historians have now made it very clear that the German army played a major role, alongside the SS, in the large-scale atrocities committed throughout Soviet Russia. Indeed, most of the prisoner of war camps, in which some millions of Soviet POWs died, were run by the German army. And thus it is hard to pity Hans Dibold or his comrades taken prisoner after the German Sixth Army's debacle at Stalingrad.

Yes, life in Soviet POW camps was terrible, a virtual hell, but Dibold and his colleagues were only reaping the hate-filled whirlwind they had sown. And unlike millions of Red Army soldiers who fell captive to the Germans, Hans Dibold survived. Had the Red Army not defeated the Third Reich in battles such as Stalingrad, Hitler's Wehrmact would have exterminated a good part of the Soviet population, while enslaving the rest. And it would have been virtually impossible, without the hundreds of Wehrmact divisions tied down by the Soviet Army, for the remainder of the Allies to invade and liberate Europe.

Rather than buy this book readers would do better to turn to some of the new histories and Red Army memoirs of the Eastern Front in World War II. Most are much better written and a great deal more compelling, honest and insightful than this book.