From the very beginning of the war, trains with evacuated civilians from the western part of the country began to arrive in Stalingrad. As a result, the population of the city amounted to more than 800 thousand people, which is two times higher than the pre-war level.
The city's sanitary services could not fully cope with such a flow of immigrants. Dangerous infections have entered the city. The first was typhus, for the fight against which an emergency commission was created in November 1941 in Stalingrad. One of the first measures was the resettlement of 50 thousand evacuees to the Stalingrad region. It was not possible to cope with typhus until the end - the situation stabilized only by the summer of 1942. In the spring, cholera broke out, which was successfully dealt with under the leadership of Zinaida Vissarionovna Ermolyeva. Tularemia turned out to be another misfortune. One of the most important reasons for the appearance of such a dangerous infection was the fields of grain crops that were not harvested in connection with the hostilities. This led to an abrupt increase in the number of mice and ground squirrels, in the population of which the epizootic of tularemia arose. With the onset of cold weather, the army of rodents moved towards humans, into houses, dugouts, dugouts and trenches. And it is very simple to become infected with tularemia: dirty hands, contaminated food, water, and even just inhaling contaminated air. The epidemic covered both German units and the Soviet Southern and Southwestern Fronts. In total, 43 439 soldiers and officers fell ill in the Red Army, 26 districts were affected. They fought tularemia by organizing anti-epidemic detachments engaged in the destruction of rodents, as well as by protecting wells and food.
In the course of hostilities, the front-line units of the Soviet troops often neglected hygienic measures. Thus, there were registered massive influxes of recruits who did not undergo spare parts and appropriate sanitization. As a result, pediculosis and typhus were brought to the front divisions. Fortunately, this obvious blunder of the sanitary-epidemiological service of the fronts was quickly dealt with.
The captured Germans delivered big problems at the beginning of 1943. In the Stalingrad "cauldron" a huge mass of lousy people have accumulated, infected with typhus, tularemia and a host of other infections. It was impossible to keep such a mass of sick people in completely destroyed Stalingrad, and on February 3-4, the walking Nazis began to be taken out of the city.
The Volgograd Medical Scientific Journal mentions the testimony of the captured Wehrmacht Colonel Steidler about that time:
“In order to avoid typhus, cholera, plague and everything else that could arise with such a crowd of people, a large campaign for preventive vaccinations was organized. However, for many, this event turned out to be belated … Epidemics and serious illnesses were widespread even in Stalingrad. Those who fell ill would die alone or among their comrades, wherever they had to: in an overcrowded basement hastily equipped for an infirmary, in some corner, in a snowy trench. Nobody asked why the other died. The overcoat, scarf, jacket of the dead did not disappear - the living needed it. It was through them that very many became infected … Soviet women doctors and nurses, often sacrificing themselves and not knowing rest, fought against mortality. They saved many and helped everyone. And yet, more than one week passed before it was possible to stop the epidemics."
The German prisoners being evacuated to the east were also a terrible sight. The reports of the NKVD recorded:
“The first batch of prisoners of war that arrived on March 16-19, 1943 from the camps of the Stalingrad region in the amount of 1,095 people had 480 people sick with typhus and diphtheria. The lice of prisoners of war was 100%. The rest of the prisoners of war were in the incubation period of typhus disease”.
Hans Diebold in the book “To survive in Stalingrad. Memories of a front-line doctor wrote:
“A gigantic hotbed of infection has emerged among the prisoners. As they were taken to the east, the disease spread with them inland. Russian sisters and doctors contracted typhus from captured Germans. Many of these sisters and doctors died or suffered severe heart complications. They sacrificed their lives to save their enemies."
No matter what
Medical structures on the fronts of Stalingrad faced the main problem - a chronic and acute shortage of personnel. On average, army units were staffed with doctors by 60-70%, while the load on hospitals was several times higher than all standards. It is difficult to imagine the conditions under which doctors had to work during the battles of the Battle of Stalingrad. Sofia Leonardovna Tydman, senior surgeon at evacuation hospital No. 1584, specializing in injuries of tubular bones and joints, described one of the episodes of everyday warfare:
“As soon as we had time to finish one reception, ambulance buses again stopped at our gates along Kovrovskaya Street, from which the wounded were carried out.”
There were days when regimental doctors had to treat up to 250 people every day. The convalescent Red Army fighters came to the aid of doctors and nurses who were working for wear and tear - they deployed tents, and also were engaged in unloading and loading. In some areas, high school and medical students were attracted.
Most of the medical personnel in the evacuation hospitals were civilian medical personnel with little knowledge of military surgery. Many of them had to learn the skills of treating mine-explosive and gunshot wounds directly in the hospital. It didn't always end well. For example, civilian doctors could not effectively treat penetrating abdominal wounds. Such wounded were to be operated on immediately, at the very first stages of the evacuation. Instead, conservative treatment was prescribed, which led in most cases to the death of the unfortunate Red Army soldiers. One of the reasons for this situation was the excessive secrecy of the military medical equipment of specialized universities. Civilian medical students and medical practitioners had never seen or used the military equipment.
A difficult situation has developed in the medical units of the armies with medicines, dressings and disinfectants.
"Amputation of the hand hanging on the flap was performed under krikoin."
Such chilling records could be found in medical documents not only near Stalingrad, but much later, for example, on the Kursk Bulge. Doctors did this in the hope of drawing the attention of their superiors to the problem, but more often than not it only caused irritation and disciplinary action.
There were not enough blood preparations at the front - there were too many wounded. The lack of equipment for transporting blood and its components also contributed to its negative contribution. As a result, doctors often had to donate blood. It is worth remembering that at the same time they worked all daylight hours, resting only 2-3 hours a day. Surprisingly, the doctors managed not only to treat patients, but also to improve the simple available equipment. So, at the conference of doctors of the Voronezh Front, which took place after the battle for Stalingrad, military doctor Vasily Sergeevich Yurov demonstrated a blood transfusion apparatus he collected from an eye pipette and Esmarch's mug. This relic is kept in the History Museum of Volgograd State Medical University. Yurov, by the way, after the war became the rector of this educational institution.
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The shortage of medical equipment, equipment and medicines during the Great Patriotic War on all fronts was observed until the end of 1943. This made it difficult not only to treat, but also to evacuate the sick and recovering to the rear. In Stalingrad only 50-80% of the medical battalions were equipped with sanitary vehicles, which forced doctors to send the wounded to the rear with almost passing transport. Nurses sewed a raincoat to the blankets of the bedridden patients - this somehow saved them from getting wet on the way. By the end of the summer of 1942, evacuation from the city was possible only through the Volga, which was under fire by the Germans. In single boats, under cover of darkness, doctors transported the wounded to the left bank of the river, requiring treatment in the rear hospitals.
After the battle
The Battle of Stalingrad is terrible in its losses: 1 million 680 thousand soldiers of the Red Army and about 1.5 million Nazis. Few people talk about this, but the main problem of Stalingrad after the grandiose battle was the mountains of human corpses and fallen animals. As soon as the snow melted, in the trenches, trenches, and just among the fields, there were more than 1.5 million (according to the "Bulletin of the Russian Military Medical Academy") decaying human bodies. The leadership of the Soviet Union took care of this grandiose problem in advance, when the State Defense Committee of the USSR on April 1, 1942 adopted a decree "On cleaning up the corpses of enemy soldiers and officers and on sanitizing territories freed from the enemy." In accordance with this document, instructions were developed for the burial of corpses, the assessment of the use of clothing and footwear of the Nazis, as well as the rules for disinfection and cleaning of water supply sources. At about the same time, GKO order No. 22 appeared, ordering to collect and bury the corpses of the enemy immediately after the battle. Of course, this was not always possible. So, from February 10 to March 30, the sanitary teams of the Red Army collected and buried 138,572 dead fascists who were not buried in time. Often the detachments had to work in the minefields left by the Nazis. All burials were carefully recorded and for a long time were under the supervision of local authorities. But with the onset of summer, the situation began to deteriorate - the teams did not have time to bury a huge number of decaying corpses. They had to dump them into ravines, cattle burial grounds, and also massively burn them. Often on the landscapes of the Stalingrad region at that time it was possible to find mountains of "volcanic lava" of a bluish color. These were the remnants of fires from sleeping human bodies, soil, combustible substances …
As mentioned earlier, prisoners of war who died in hospitals from wounds, frostbite and diseases brought a big problem to Stalingrad and the region. They received almost no medical assistance in the "cauldron", which doomed many to death in the first days after captivity. They were buried with gravestones in the form of steel posts, which were made at the Krasny Oktyabr plant. There were no surnames and initials on the posts, only the site number and the number of the grave were stamped out. And according to the registration books in the hospital, it was possible to find out who and where was buried.
The story of the director of the Oran rural library, Tatyana Kovaleva, about the life and character of prisoners of war in Stalingrad looks remarkable:
“Prisoners of war began to be transferred here after the Battle of Stalingrad. Initially, they were Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, Italians, Spaniards, Belgians and even French. Old people from our village said that many of those who arrived in the winter of 1943.were terribly frostbitten, emaciated and thoroughly eaten by a vigorous soldier's louse. No wonder the prisoners were taken to the bathhouse. When they were given the order to undress, the prisoners suddenly began to fall one by one to their knees, sobbing and begging for mercy. It turns out that they decided that they were going to be taken to the gas chambers!"
