German Sixth Army Soldiers March Into Captivity

German soldiers of Friedrich von Paulus's Sixth Army march into captivity. Estimates of Germans taken in the Stalingrad pocket vary; some contemporary sources said 300,000 men were trapped in the pocket, but casualties and evacuations reduced that number prior to surrender. Some 90,000 German soldiers were actually surrendered; only 5-6,000 returned to Germany after the war. The truck in the center of the photo is a Soviet-built GAZ Type AA, a licensed copy of the Ford Model AA. Note the two medics marching at the front of the column. Germans in Soviet captivity received very little food or medicine. The Soviets believed that prisoners of war should receive food and medicine after the general population, and both were in short supply throughout the war. The German soldier most likely to survive captivity was short and relatively thin before their ordeal began.