The German invasion of Russia was infamously the most bloody confrontation in human history with massive losses for both sides. Did any of the German or Soviet soldiers who were fighting on the frontlines on June 22, 1941, survive to the end of WW2 four years later?

by TortaDelBBQ

With the massive losses sustained, did anyone lower than an officer survive the very initial confrontation, from the first day of Barbarossa to the end of WW2?

Did anyone survive it without extreme wounds that disqualified them from military service/being re-conscripted?

Hakoi

I am by no mean a historian, so i only can provide source that might be useful to some actual historian in the future and tell you a couple random stuff. Sorry for possible language mistakes, English is not my first language. Source is: russian ministry of defence recently (22 june 2017) declassified some archives about first days of the war(official site of ministry of defence). And now random stuff. It's actually fairly common phrase in Russia "went through whole war", sometimes with an addition "from Moscow to Berlin", although war didn't began in Moscow, it just implies that a person was in some way fighting in the war. My great-grandfather managed to survive without extreme wounds 2 year in penal military unit and that required extreme amount of luck, but i definitely don't think that he is luckiest soldier in ww2. Just my 2 cents.