We’ve talked about the role that toilet hygiene (or lack of same) played in North Africa in World War Two. Soldierly (and to some extent, civilian) health played a similar, but even more important role, in the struggle for control of Stalingrad.
The Wehrmacht, when it was enthused and operating according to plan, was an awesome logistics machine. The pre-war build up, partly in secret, support of nationalist rebels in the Spanish Civil War [1], and the early blitzkrieg successes were built as much on state-of-the-art transport and supply systems as on training and first-class weapons [2].
The Southern Front in Russia started out the same way. The German army, supplemented with Italian, Romanian, and Hungarian units, spilled across the windy steppe until they could smell the Volga River and the petroleum works south of the city. Fuel, ammunition, rations (including schnapps), equipment, and replacements poured along behind them as they moved east. Famously, the big screw-up in supplies was supposed to have been the decision not to issue winter uniforms, as the campaign was expected to wrap up successfully before they were needed.
That didn’t work out. By October, winter was collapsing around the combatants. The History Channel network has a nice experimental piece illustrating the performance delta between Soviet and German winter uniforms even when the latter had been issued.
But that’s only part of the story. The Wehrmacht suffered a number of health crises during the multi-year campaign, including exceptional rates of tularemia, a microbial disease vectored by rodents (in North America it is particularly prevalent in wild rabbit populations, and hunters need to account for it in cleaning and consuming their catch). It has been surmised [3] that the Soviets used biological weapons at Stalingrad, specifically weaponized tularemia bacteria (Francisella tularensis). Ken Alibeck, in his excellent post-Cold War memoir Biohazard [4] posits the tularemia-as-weapon based on his knowledge of Soviet bioweapons and the fact that many of the Stalingrad cases on both sides involved respiratory exposure.
There is a counterperspective that the Nazis were exposed simply to endemic tularemia due to the breakdown of sanitation, sewage management, and rodent control in the combat zone [3]. For one thing, both sides suffered. The Soviet Air Force lost enough pilots to the disease to be operationally impaired, and the rodent infestation itself was sufficient to cause maintenance problems with aircraft. For another, the tularemia epidemic in the region was noted many months prior to the initiation of battle. Apparently the tendency for pleural manifestation of the symptoms was associated with the use of rodent-infested straw and hay for bedding in the trenches and other military infrastructure. Soviet microbiologists mobilized and developed and tested a live vaccine, and implemented effective pest control protocols when the danger was realized. The Germans failed to follow suit.
The Wehrmacht also suffered from starvation. A medical examiner was flown in to investigate, his findings were unambiguous and his recommendation immediate—provide a tinned product translated as “meat paste” (I believe a vaguely similar thing remains available in North American supermarkets as little cans labeled “potted meat food product”). The nutritional imbalances in the starving soldiers were such that the high-fat, high-electrolyte tinned meat accelerated deaths [5].
Ultimately, the Germans simply overextended themselves in Russia, and when Hitler seized control of the battlefield planning so that his amateur tactics replaced those of the professional generals, the Wehrmacht was destined for toast. However, the lack of attention to hygiene and health issues played at least as great a role in the German defeat as did more specifically military factors.
Notes
[1] It was Nazi units operating on behalf of Franco and the rebellion that bombed Guernica in 1937, leading to Picasso’s works of the same name. The Wikipedia article on the Spanish Civil War appears to be authoritative and well referenced, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War
[2] A very interesting, if uneven and of unknown providence (it appears to be by a Russian historian), discussion of German logistical capabilities in the War is available at http://militera.lib.ru/h/stolfi/11.html
[3] A well-researched paper on this topic is available at http://cns.miis.edu/archive/cbw/tula.htm and the History Channel network has a nicely produced one-hour show emphasizing hygiene and public health parameters at the Battle of Stalingrad.
[4] Alibeck, K. and S. Handelman 2000. Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It. Delta Publishers. Available at Amazon and other online book retailers. An excellent and very readable exposition of chemical and biological weapons programs through the collapse of the USSR.
[5] Kaplan, R. 2000. Medicine at the Battle of Stalingrad. J R Soc Med 93:97-98. I found my copy online.
