In the USSR, the topic of captivity of German soldiers and officers was actually prohibited for research. While Soviet historians were full of condemnation of the Nazis for their treatment of Soviet prisoners of war, they did not even mention that during the war there were crimes against humanity on both sides of the front.
To be fair, it should be noted that it is only little known in our country (by “us” the author means not only Ukraine, but the entire “post-Soviet space”). In Germany itself, the study of this issue was approached with purely German thoroughness and pedantry. Back in 1957, a scientific commission was created in Germany to study the history of German prisoners of war, which, starting in 1959, published 15 (!) plump volumes in the series “On the history of German prisoners of war in the Second World War,” seven of which were devoted to stories of German prisoners of war in Soviet camps.
But the topic of captivity of German soldiers and officers was actually prohibited from research. While Soviet historians were full of condemnation of the Nazis for their treatment of Soviet prisoners of war, they did not even mention that during the war there were crimes against humanity on both sides of the front.
Moreover, the only Soviet study on this topic (albeit published in Germany) was the work of Alexander Blank - a former translator of Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus during the latter's time in Soviet captivity - Die Deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in der UdSSR (published in Cologne in 1979. ). Her theses were later included in the book “The Second Life of Field Marshal Paulus,” published in Moscow in 1990.
Some statistics: how many were there?
To try to understand the history of German prisoners of war, one should first of all answer the question about their number in . According to German sources, approximately 3.15 million Germans were captured in the Soviet Union, of which approximately 1.1-1.3 million did not survive captivity. Soviet sources cite a significantly lower figure. According to official statistics of the Office of Prisoners of War and Internees (on September 19, 1939, it was organized as the Office of Prisoners of War and Internees (UPVI); from January 11
1945 - Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees (GUPVI) of the USSR; from March 18, 1946 - Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR; from June 20, 1951 - again UPVI; On March 14, 1953, the UPVI was disbanded, and its functions were transferred to the Prison Directorate of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs) Soviet troops from June 22, 1941 to May 17, 1945 captured a total of 2,389,560 military personnel of German nationality, of which 376 generals and admirals, 69,469 officers and 2,319,715 non-commissioned officers and soldiers. To this number should be added another 14.1 thousand people immediately placed (as war criminals) in special camps of the NKVD, not included in the UPVI/GUPVI system, from 57 to 93.9 thousand (there are different figures) German prisoners of war who died even before they got into the UPVI/GUPVI system, and 600 thousand were released right at the front, without being transferred to camps - an important caveat, since they are usually not included in the general statistics of the number of prisoners of war in the USSR.
The problem, however, is that these figures do not indicate the number of Wehrmacht and SS soldiers captured by the Soviet side. UPVI/GUPVI kept records of prisoners of war not by their nationality or membership in the armed forces of any country, but by their nationality, in some cases, and ethnicity in others (see table). As a first approximation, the number of Wehrmacht and SS troops captured by the Soviets is 2,638,679 people, and together with 14.1 thousand war criminals, 93.9 thousand who did not live to be placed in the camp, and 600 thousand. liberated who left the camp, gives the figure 3,346,679 people. - which is even slightly higher than the assessment of German historians.
It should also be noted that German prisoners of war actively tried to “disguise” among other nationalities - as of May 1950, such “camouflaged captured Germans,” according to official Soviet data, were identified among prisoners of war of other nationalities, 58,103 people.
At the same time, it should be noted that summing up “national lines” does not give an accurate picture. The reason is simple: the statistics (even those intended purely for internal needs) of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs are lame. Some certificates from this department contradict others: for example, in a certificate from the Ministry of Internal Affairs dated 1956, the number of prisoners of German nationality registered was 1,117 people. less than was recorded “on fresh tracks” in 1945. It is unclear where these people disappeared.
But this is a minor discrepancy. The archives also contain other documents showing both the manipulation of data on the number of prisoners of war that took place at the government level, and much larger discrepancies in reporting.
Example: USSR Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, in a letter to Stalin dated March 12, 1947, wrote that “in total there are 988,500 German prisoners of war soldiers, officers and generals in the Soviet Union, 785,975 people have been released from captivity to date. (that is, at that time there were 1,774,475 living prisoners of war of German nationality, including those already released - out of 2,389,560 people; how does this correlate with the fact that of the number of German prisoners of war in the UPVI/GUPVI system, only 356 seemed to have died 768 people, - again, it’s unclear - S.G.). We consider it possible to announce the number of German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union, with a reduction of approximately 10%, taking into account their increased mortality."
But... a TASS statement dated March 15, 1947 said that “there are currently 890,532 German prisoners of war remaining on the territory of the Soviet Union; since the surrender of Germany, 1,003,974 German prisoners of war have been released from captivity and returned from the USSR to Germany” (that is, the release of 218 thousand more prisoners of war was announced than they were released according to Molotov’s note; where did this figure come from and what was intended to hide - also unclear. - S.G.). And in November 1948, the leadership of the GUPVI proposed to the First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Colonel-General Ivan Serov, “to write off 100,025 released German prisoners of war” from the general operational-statistical record, allegedly... registered twice.
In general, historians believe that the repatriation of at least 200 thousand Germans “was not correctly documented by the Soviet side.” That is, this may mean that these prisoners did not exist, or (this is more likely) that they died in captivity, and (this is even more likely) that there is a combination of these options. And this brief review, apparently, only indicates that the statistical aspects of the history of German prisoners of war in the USSR are not only still not closed, but will probably never be completely closed.
"The Hague-Geneva Question"
A little about the international legal status of prisoners of war. One of the controversial issues in the history of Soviet prisoners in Germany and German prisoners in the USSR is the question of whether the Hague Convention “On the Laws and Customs of War on Land” of October 18, 1907 and the Geneva Convention “On the Maintenance of Prisoners of War” dated June 27, 1929
It comes to the point that, intentionally or out of ignorance, they confuse the already mentioned Geneva Convention “On the Maintenance of Prisoners of War” of 06/27/1929 with the Geneva Convention - also of 06/27/1929 - “On the improvement of the lot of the wounded, sick and injured persons shipwreck, from the armed forces at sea." Moreover, if the USSR did not sign the first of the mentioned Geneva Conventions, it joined the second back in 1931. Therefore, the author will try to clarify this issue.
The prerequisites for the mandatory implementation of the Hague Convention “On the Laws and Customs of War on Land” are:
1) signing and ratification of this convention by the contracting parties;
2) participation in a land war only of parties that are contracting parties (“clausula si omnes” - “on universal participation”).
The prerequisites for the mandatory implementation of the Geneva Convention “On the Maintenance of Prisoners of War” of 1929 were only the signing and ratification of the contracting parties to this convention. Her Art. 82 stated: “The provisions of this convention shall be observed by the high contracting parties in all circumstances. If, in the event of war, one of the belligerents turns out not to be a party to the convention, nevertheless, its provisions remain binding between all belligerents who have signed the convention.”
Thus, the articles of this Convention not only do not contain a clausula si omnes, but also specifically stipulates the situation when the belligerent powers C1 and C2 are parties to the Convention, and then power C3, which is not a party to the Convention, enters the war. In such a situation, there is no longer a formal possibility of non-compliance with this Convention on the part of the C1 and C2 powers between them. Should powers C1 and C2 comply with the Convention in relation to power C3 - directly from Art. 82 should not.
.png)
The results of this “legal vacuum” were immediate. The conditions established first by Germany for Soviet prisoners, and then by the USSR in relation to prisoners of war from among the Wehrmacht and SS troops, as well as the armed forces of states allied to Germany, could not be called human even to a first approximation.
Thus, the Germans initially considered it sufficient for prisoners to live in dugouts and eat mainly “Russian bread,” made according to a recipe invented by the Germans: half from sugar beet peelings, half from cellulose flour, flour from leaves or straw. It is not surprising that in the winter of 1941-42. these conditions led to mass mortality of Soviet prisoners of war, exacerbated by a typhus epidemic.
According to the Directorate for Prisoners of War Affairs of the High Command of the German Armed Forces (OKW), by May 1, 1944, the total number of exterminated Soviet prisoners of war reached 3.291 million people, of which: 1.981 million people died in camps, were shot and killed during the attempt to flee - 1.03 million people, died on the way - 280 thousand people. (most of the victims occurred in June 1941 - January 1942 - then more than 2.4 million prisoners died). For comparison: just for 1941-1945. The Germans captured (there are different data, but here is the figure considered by the author to be the most reliable) 6.206 million Soviet prisoners of war.
The conditions of detention of German prisoners of war in the USSR were initially just as difficult. Although, of course, there were fewer casualties among them. But only for one reason - there were fewer of them. For example, as of May 1, 1943, only 292,630 military personnel of the German and allied armies were taken into Soviet captivity. Of these, 196,944 people had died by the same time.
In conclusion of this chapter, I note that back on July 1, 1941, the USSR government approved the “Regulations on Prisoners of War.” Prisoners of war were guaranteed treatment appropriate to their status, provision of medical care on an equal basis with Soviet military personnel, the opportunity to correspond with relatives and receive parcels.
Even money transfers were formally allowed. However, Moscow, widely using the “Regulation on Prisoners of War” for propaganda aimed at the Wehrmacht, was in no hurry to implement it. In particular, the USSR refused to exchange lists of prisoners of war through the International Red Cross, which was a fundamental condition for them to receive help from their homeland. And in December 1943, the Soviet Union completely broke off all contacts with this organization.
Long Russian captivity: stages of liberation
German prisoners of war returning home, April 1, 1949. Ethat photo was provided to Wikimedia Commons German Federal Archives (Deutsches Bundesarchiv)
On August 13, 1945, the State Defense Committee (GKO) of the USSR issued a decree “On the release and return to their homeland of 708 thousand prisoners of war of ordinary and non-commissioned officers.” The number of prisoners of war to be sent home included only disabled and other non-able-to-work prisoners.
The Romanians were the first to be sent home. On September 11, 1945, in pursuance of the resolution of the State Defense Committee, it was ordered to release 40 thousand Romanian prisoners of war of ordinary and non-commissioned officers from the camps of the GUPVI NKVD of the USSR “according to the attached allocation for regions and camps”, “to begin sending released Romanian prisoners of war from September 15, 1945 . and finish no later than October 10, 1945." But two days later, a second document appears, according to which soldiers and non-commissioned officers of a number of nationalities are to be sent home:
a) all prisoners of war, regardless of physical condition, of the following nationalities: Poles, French, Czechoslovaks, Yugoslavs, Italians, Swedes, Norwegians, Swiss, Luxembourgers, Americans, British, Belgians, Dutch, Danes, Bulgarians and Greeks;
b) sick prisoners of war, regardless of nationality, except for highly infectious patients, except for Spaniards and Turks, as well as participants in atrocities and persons who served in the SS, SD, SA and Gestapo troops;
c) prisoners of war Germans, Austrians, Hungarians and Romanians - only the disabled and weakened.
At the same time, “participants in atrocities and persons who served in the SS, SD, SA and Gestapo troops, regardless of their physical condition, are not subject to release.”
The directive was not fully implemented. In any case, this conclusion can be drawn from the fact that prisoners of war of many nationalities mentioned in it were ordered to be released by order of the NKVD of January 8, 1946. According to it, Czechoslovaks, Yugoslavs, Italians, Dutch, Belgians, Danes, Swiss, Luxembourgers, Bulgarians, Turks, Norwegians, Swedes, Greeks, French, Americans and British.
At the same time, “persons who served in the SS, SA, SD, Gestapo, officers and members of other punitive bodies are not subject to deportation,” but with one exception - “French prisoners of war are subject to deportation without exception, including officers.”
Finally, on October 18, 1946, an order appeared for the repatriation to their homeland of officers and military personnel of the nationalities listed in the order of January 8, who served in the SS, SD and SA, as well as all Finns, Brazilians, Canadians, Portuguese, Abyssinians, Albanians, Argentines and Syrians. In addition, on November 28, 1946, it was ordered to release 5 thousand captured Austrians.
But let's return from foreign prisoners from among the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS military personnel to the Germans themselves. As of October 1946, 1,354,759 German prisoners of war remained in the GUPVI camps, special hospitals of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and working battalions of the Ministry of the Armed Forces of the USSR, including: generals - 352, officers - 74,506 people, non-commissioned officers and privates - 1,279 901 people
This number has been declining rather slowly. For example, in pursuance of the resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of May 16, 1947 “On the sending to Germany of disabled prisoners of war of the former German army and interned Germans”, it was ordered (May 20): “to be released in 1947 from the camps of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, special hospitals, working battalions of the Ministry Armed Forces and internment battalions and send to Germany 100 thousand disabled prisoners of war of the former German army (Germans) and 13 thousand disabled interned Germans.” At the same time, some officers were also subject to release - up to and including the rank of captain. The following were not subject to exemption:
a) prisoners of war - participants in atrocities who served in units of the SS, SA, SD and Gestapo, and others who have relevant incriminating materials, regardless of their physical condition;
b) interned and arrested groups “B” (this group included Germans arrested by the Soviet authorities on German territory during and after the war, in relation to whom there was reason to believe that they were involved in crimes against the USSR or Soviet citizens in the occupied territories);
c) non-transportable patients.
A little earlier, captured Germans were required to remove their shoulder straps, cockades, awards and emblems, and captured junior officers were equated with soldiers (although they retained officer rations), forcing them to work on an equal basis with the latter.
Nine days later, a directive from the Ministry of Internal Affairs was issued, ordering in May-September 1947 to send home a thousand anti-fascist Germans who had proven themselves to be excellent production workers. This dispatch was of a propaganda nature: it was ordered to widely inform the prisoners of all camps about it, especially emphasizing the labor achievements of those being released. In June 1947, a new directive from the Ministry of Internal Affairs followed to send 500 captured Germans with anti-fascist sentiments to Germany according to personal lists. And by order from
On August 11, 1947, an order was given to release all Austrian prisoners from August to December, with the exception of generals, senior officers and SS men, members of the SA, SD and Gestapo employees, as well as persons under criminal investigation. Patients who were not transportable could not be sent. By order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of October 15, another 100 thousand captured Germans are repatriated - mostly transportable sick and disabled military personnel from privates to captains inclusive.
By the end of 1947, it was possible to determine with sufficient clarity the policy of the USSR in the matter of liberating prisoners - to return to their homeland prisoners gradually and precisely categories that could least influence the development of political life in Germany and other countries that fought against the USSR in a direction undesirable for the Soviet Union.
Patients will be more concerned with their health than with politics; and soldiers, non-commissioned officers and junior officers can influence events at home much less than generals and senior officers. As the pro-Soviet government became established and strengthened in the eastern part of Germany, the flow of returned prisoners increased.
The order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of February 27, 1948 determined the procedure and deadline for sending the next 300 thousand captured Germans to their homeland. First of all, all weakened soldiers, non-commissioned officers and junior officers, sick and disabled senior officers were subject to release. Captured soldiers, non-commissioned officers and junior officers over 50 years of age and senior officers over 60 years of age were also released.
Next, healthy (fit for heavy and moderate physical labor) soldiers, non-commissioned officers and junior officers under 50 years of age, healthy senior officers under 60 years of age, generals and admirals are held captive. In addition, military members of the SS, members of the SA, Gestapo employees, as well as German prisoners of war sentenced to punishment for military or ordinary crimes for which criminal cases were being conducted, and non-transportable patients remained in captivity.
In total, by the end of 1949, there were still 430,670 German military personnel in Soviet captivity (but German prisoners of war were detained, brought from the USSR to Eastern European countries for restoration work). This was a clear violation of the USSR’s obligations: in 1947, the fourth session of the Conference of the Foreign Ministers of Great Britain, France, the USSR and the USA decided to complete the repatriation of prisoners of war located on the territory of the Allied powers and other countries by the end of 1948.
Meanwhile, the German generals began to be released. By order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of June 22, 1948, five Wehrmacht generals, Austrians by nationality, were released from captivity. The next order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (dated September 3 of the same year) - six “correct” German generals (members of the National Committee of Free Germany and the Union of German Officers). On February 23, 1949, the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs issued order No. 00176, which determined the timing and procedure for sending home all German prisoners during 1949. Military and criminal criminals, persons under investigation, generals and admirals, and non-transportable patients were excluded from this list.
In the summer of 1949, armed guards were removed from prisoner-of-war camps and self-guarding of prisoners was organized (without weapons, only whistles and flags). A very interesting document appears on November 28, 1949. This is the order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs No. 744, in which the Minister of Internal Affairs, Colonel General Sergei Kruglov, demands that order be put in place in the registration of prisoners of war, since it has been revealed that there is no proper registration and search for those who escaped, many prisoners of war are being treated alone in civil hospitals, independently find employment and work in various enterprises and institutions, including sensitive ones, state farms and collective farms, marry Soviet citizens, different ways evade registration as prisoners of war.
On May 5, 1950, TASS transmitted a message about the completion of the repatriation of German prisoners of war: according to official data, 13,546 people remained in the USSR. — 9,717 convicts, 3,815 persons under investigation and 14 sick prisoners of war.
The resolution of the issue with them dragged on for more than five years. Only on September 10, 1955, negotiations began in Moscow between the delegation of the German government, headed by Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, and representatives of the USSR government. The West German side asked for the release of 9,626 German citizens. The Soviet side called convicted prisoners of war “war criminals.”
Then the German delegation reported that without resolving this issue it was impossible to establish diplomatic relations between the USSR and Germany. When discussing the issue of prisoners of war, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Nikolai Bulganin made claims regarding the repatriation of Soviet citizens located in West Germany. Adenauer recalled that these people settled in West Germany with the permission of the occupation authorities - former allies of the USSR, and German representatives did not yet have power. However, the federal government is ready to review their cases if the relevant documents are provided to it. On September 12, 1955, negotiations on the issue of prisoners of war ended with a positive decision.
However, the concession of the USSR at these negotiations was not spontaneous. Anticipating the possibility of Adenauer raising the issue of prisoners of war, the Soviet government in the summer of 1955 created a commission to review the cases of convicted foreign citizens. On July 4, 1955, the commission decided to agree with the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany on the advisability of repatriating to the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany (in accordance with the place of residence before captivity) of all convicted German citizens in the USSR, and it was proposed to release most of them from further serving their sentences, and those who committed serious crimes on the territory of the USSR should be transferred as war criminals to the authorities of the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany.
First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev, in a secret letter to the First Secretary of the SED Central Committee Walter Ulbricht and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the GDR Otto Grotewohl, said that “the issue of prisoners of war will undoubtedly be raised during negotiations with Adenauer on the establishment of diplomatic relations ...”, and in the event of successful completion of negotiations with the Chancellor of Germany, the USSR authorities intend to release 5,794 people from further serving their sentences. (that is, somewhat less than was ultimately released).
On September 28, 1955, a Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Court “On the early release of German citizens convicted by the judicial authorities of the USSR for crimes they committed against the peoples of the Soviet Union during the war” was signed (in connection with the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR and the Federal Republic of Germany). In 1955-1956 3,104 people were released early from places of detention in the USSR and repatriated to the GDR, 6,432 people to the Federal Republic of Germany; 28 Germans were detained at the request of the KGB (their further fate is not traced in the sources), four people were abandoned due to their filing of applications for Soviet citizenship. The release of prisoners of war was one of the first successes of the German government in the international arena.
The next year, 1957, the last of the Japanese prisoners returned to their homeland. This is where the page called “captivity” for World War II soldiers finally ended.
The attitude of the German soldiers who fought on the eastern front was clear: “Russians don’t take prisoners,” they believed. This fear of capture was the result of Nazi propaganda to which the soldiers, mostly young men, were constantly exposed. But perhaps it was not only that?
The facts are as follows: of the Wehrmacht soldiers captured by the Soviets - their number is estimated at a minimum of 108 thousand and a maximum of 130 thousand people - only 5 thousand or 6 thousand returned to Germany or Austria alive. Many of them succeeded only in the mid-50s. Thus, the losses from total number The number of prisoners taken was approximately 95%, which is significantly more than in any other battle.
Does this mean that the Red Army really did not take the Germans prisoner? Rüdiger Overmans, a military historian and the best specialist both in the narrow field of studying losses in the Second World War and this topic in general, writes: “On a scale that defies precise quantitative assessment, Soviet soldiers shot German prisoners of war, whether out of anger and a thirst for revenge, reluctance to tinker with the transportation of the wounded, or out of a desire to save the seriously wounded from unnecessary suffering, who could no longer be helped one way or another.
In addition, there were also executions of healthy German prisoners; in some cases, junior and mid-level officers documented the presence of an order “take no prisoners,” which clearly contradicts military law. However, Overmans argues that “there is no doubt that the killing of prisoners of war was not a principled policy of the USSR.”
But if there was no direct order to kill prisoners of war, then why were the losses among the Germans captured at Stalingrad an incredible 95 percent? This circumstance requires at least an explanation.
It is absolutely established that after the end of the fighting, surrounded by approximately 91,000 Wehrmacht soldiers, they began to be counted as prisoners of war. Thus, from 17 thousand to 40 thousand military personnel were not even included in the official statistics.
There were many reasons for this: after being surrounded for eight weeks without a normal food supply, all German soldiers suffered from exhaustion. The first deaths from starvation were recorded before Christmas, and there were even several cases of cannibalism. However, many soldiers kept themselves alive with the illusory hope that they would be rescued from the “cauldron.” However, when they realized that these hopes were futile, their desire to survive faded.
Context
Desperate times call for desperate measures
ABC.es 02/11/2018Pre-election appeal of Putin's supporters
The Wall Street Journal 02/07/2018This day ended Battle of Stalingrad
The Telegraph UK 02.02.2018Of course, among the soldiers there were also wounded who survived in improvised shelters until the end of January 1943, but who no longer had the strength to go into captivity. It is not possible to determine their exact number, especially since it is generally unknown when and how many Wehrmacht soldiers exactly surrendered. Beginning on January 22, 1943, when Soviet troops broke through the last German lines of defense, waves of advancing troops simply rolled over huge numbers of German soldiers. Disarmed and at best only formally guarded, they waited for several days for the battle to end.
But why is it that out of those 91,000 military personnel who actually fell into Soviet captivity, less than 10 percent remained alive? The main reason was that there were no prepared camps for prisoners of war; in any case, there were no places in which at least some living conditions would have been created. In fact, in January 1943, the command of the Red Army equipped only two transit camps near the battle-torn city - in Beketovka and Krasnoarmeysk.
The first camp was just a village with resettled residents, surrounded by a fence, the second consisted of several buildings, some of which did not even have roofs and absolutely all were deprived of windows and doors. There were practically no sanitary conditions for tens of thousands of people, the medical posts did not have the most necessary things, and it was not possible to heat these premises.
At least six cases of cannibalism
The supply in both camps was catastrophic. At least six acts of cannibalism were recorded in Beketovka, but this probably actually happened much more often.
Since the supply of the Soviet soldiers guarding the prisoners was also poor, part of the already meager supplies of food for the prisoners went “to the left.” They say that military doctors worked in Krasnoarmeysk, treating patients only for a fee, although this was contrary to their official, professional and human duty. However, there is no reliable and documented evidence for such reports.
The consequences of all of the above in both camps were catastrophic: by June 1943, more than 27,000 people died in Beketovka, that is, more than half of all prisoners. Other sources put the death toll at least 42,000. It is likely that the picture was no better at Krasnoarmeysk, since the total number of prisoners of war captured at Stalingrad and killed in the next four months amounted to two-thirds of the total number of prisoners of war.
Not only ordinary soldiers suffered: of the 1,800 German military officers imprisoned in one of the former monasteries in Elabuga, almost three quarters died during the same period.
A different situation was observed with 22 captured German generals. Of these, four or five died in Soviet captivity (data vary), the rest survived and were released between 1948 and 1955.
In the spring of 1943, the Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees of the NKVD of the USSR began to transfer Germans from the Stalingrad transit camps to other places of detention. The Germans ended up in special zones on the edge of the Gulag complex - usually in Siberia or other areas poorly suited for life. Only a small number of prisoners were left near Stalingrad, where they were used to dismantle the ruins.
Transportation of prisoners was carried out, as a rule, in unheated carriages, and food was provided irregularly. This caused another wave of deaths: of the 30,000 prisoners of war transferred to the new - now permanent - camps, only half arrived.
According to Rüdiger Overmann, a noticeable improvement in the situation of prisoners of war occurred only in the summer of 1943, when food and other aid from the United States began to arrive in the Soviet Union, part of which was distributed among German prisoners of war. However, by this time, of the 91,000 people captured at Stalingrad, only 20,000 remained alive. In the second half of 1943, the Prisoner of War Administration received an order to provide 50,000 people for work - but in reality they managed to collect only 5,200 able-bodied men.
Many of the German soldiers captured at Stalingrad were not considered normal prisoners of war in the USSR. After the inter-allied conference in Moscow, they were released to their homeland between 1947 and the end of 1948. By this time, approximately 1.1 million German soldiers had been released from the USSR, about 900,000 more remained in various camps, and from 1.2 to 1.3 million people died in custody.
However, some of the survivors of the Battle of Stalingrad were classified as war criminals, these people continued to be held captive, many of them were convicted by Soviet military courts. Both actual war criminals and completely innocent people could fall into this group. Several thousand representatives of this category of prisoners, including a number of generals, were able to return home in 1955-1956 thanks to the agreements reached by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer during his visit to Moscow in 1955.
InoSMI materials contain assessments exclusively foreign media and do not reflect the position of the editorial board of InoSMI.
Historians are still arguing about how many Nazis, as well as soldiers and officers of the armies who fought on the side of Germany, were captured. Little is known about their life in the Soviet rear.
"Orava" had the right
According to official data, during the war years, 3 million 486 thousand military personnel of the German Wehrmacht, SS troops, as well as citizens of countries that fought in alliance with the Third Reich fell into the hands of the Red Army.
Of course, such a horde had to be housed somewhere. Already in 1941, through the efforts of employees of the Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees (GUPVI) of the NKVD of the USSR, camps began to be created where former soldiers and officers of the German and Hitler-allied armies were kept. In total, there were over 300 such institutions. They, as a rule, were small and accommodated from 100 to 3-4 thousand people. Some camps existed for a year or more, others for only a few months.
They were located in various parts of the rear territory of the Soviet Union - in the Moscow region, Kazakhstan, Siberia, Far East, in Uzbekistan, Leningrad, Voronezh, Tambov, Gorky, Chelyabinsk regions, Udmurtia, Tataria, Armenia, Georgia and other places. As the occupied regions and republics were liberated, camps for prisoners of war were built in Ukraine, the Baltic states, Belarus, Moldova, and Crimea.
The former conquerors lived in conditions that were new to them, in general, tolerantly, if we compare Soviet prisoner of war camps with similar Nazi ones.
The Germans and their allies received 400 g of bread per day (after 1943 this norm increased to 600-700 g), 100 g of fish, 100 g of cereals, 500 g of vegetables and potatoes, 20 g of sugar, 30 g of salt, and also a little flour, tea, vegetable oil, vinegar, pepper. Generals, as well as soldiers suffering from dystrophy, had a richer daily ration.
The working day of prisoners was 8 hours. According to the circular of the NKVD of the USSR dated August 25, 1942, they had the right to a small monetary allowance. Private and junior commanders were paid 7 rubles a month, officers - 10, colonels - 15, generals - 30 rubles. Prisoners of war who worked in rationed jobs were given additional amounts depending on their output. Those who exceeded the norm were entitled to 50 rubles monthly. The foremen received the same additional money. With excellent work, the amount of their remuneration could increase to 100 rubles. Prisoners of war could keep money in excess of the permitted norms in savings banks. By the way, they had the right to receive money transfers and parcels from their homeland, could receive 1 letter per month and send an unlimited number of letters.
In addition, they were given free soap. If the clothes were in a deplorable state, then the prisoners received padded jackets, trousers, warm hats, boots and foot wraps for free.
Disarmed soldiers of the armies of the Hitler bloc worked in the Soviet rear where there were not enough workers. Prisoners could be seen at logging sites in the taiga, on collective farm fields, at machine tools, and at construction sites.
There were also inconveniences. For example, officers and generals were forbidden to have orderlies.
From Stalingrad to Yelabuga
The operational Krasnogorsk camp held important persons who were captured, for example, Field Marshal Paulus. Then he “moved” to Suzdal. Other famous Nazi military leaders who were captured at Stalingrad were also sent to Krasnogorsk - generals Schmidt, Pfeiffer, Korfes, Colonel Adam. But the bulk of the German officers captured in the Stalingrad “cauldron” were sent after Krasnogorsk to Yelabuga, where camp No. 97 awaited them.
The political departments of many prisoner of war camps reminded Soviet citizens who served there as guards, worked as communications technicians, electricians, and cooks, that the Hague Prisoner of War Convention must be observed. Therefore, the attitude towards them on the part of Soviet citizens in most cases was more or less correct.
Saboteurs and Pests
The bulk of prisoners of war behaved in a disciplined manner in the camps, labor standards sometimes they were overfulfilled.
Although no large-scale uprisings were registered, emergencies occurred in the form of sabotage, conspiracies, and escapes. In camp No. 75, which was located near the village of Ryabovo in Udmurtia, prisoner of war Menzak avoided work and pretended to be. At the same time, doctors declared him fit to work. Menzak tried to escape, but was detained. He did not want to come to terms with his situation, cut off his left hand, and then deliberately delayed treatment. As a result, he was transferred to a military tribunal. The most inveterate Nazis were sent to a special camp in Vorkuta. The same fate befell Menzak.
Prisoner of war camp No. 207, located in the Krasnokamsk region, was one of the last to be disbanded in the Urals. It existed until the end of 1949. There were still prisoners of war, whose repatriation was postponed due to the fact that they were suspected of preparing sabotage, atrocities in the occupied territories, connections with the Gestapo, SS, SD, Abwehr and other Nazi organizations. Therefore, in October 1949, commissions were created in the GUPVI camps that identified among the prisoners those who engaged in sabotage and were involved in mass executions, executions, and torture. One of these commissions worked in the Krasnokamsk camp. After verification, some of the prisoners were sent home, and the rest were put on trial by the Military Tribunal.
Fears about convinced Nazis who were ready to plot sabotage and other crimes were not groundless. Obersturmführer Hermann Fritz, who was held in Berezniki camp No. 366, stated during interrogation that back on May 7, 1945, a special order was issued for the SS division “Totenkopf”: all officers, in case of capture, were to “organize sabotage, carry out sabotage, conduct espionage.” intelligence work and do as much harm as possible."
Camp No. 119 was located within the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in the Zelenodolsk region. Romanian prisoners of war were also kept here. In the fall of 1946, an incident occurred in the camp, which became known in Moscow. Former Romanian lieutenant Champaeru publicly struck his fellow countryman several times with a board because he signed an appeal addressed to the famous Romanian anti-fascist Petru Groza. Champaeru stated that he would deal with other prisoners of war who signed this document. This case was mentioned in the Directive of the NKVD of the USSR, signed on October 22, 1946, “On identified fascist groups opposing anti-fascist work among prisoners of war.”
But such sentiments did not receive mass support among prisoners, the last of whom left the USSR in 1956.
By the way
From 1943 to 1948, in the entire system of the GUPVI NKVD of the USSR, 11 thousand 403 prisoners of war escaped. Of these, 10 thousand 445 people were detained. 3% remained undetected.
During the arrest, 292 people were killed.
During the war years, about 200 generals surrendered to the Red Army. Such famous Nazi military leaders as Field Marshals Friedrich Paulus and Ludwig Kleist, SS Brigadefuehrer Fritz Panzinger, and Artillery General Helmut Weidling were captured in Soviet captivity.
Most of the captured German generals were repatriated by mid-1956 and returned to Germany.
In Soviet captivity, in addition to German soldiers and officers, there were large numbers of representatives of Hitler's allied armies and SS volunteer units - Austrians, Finns, Hungarians, Italians, Romanians, Slovaks, Croats, Spaniards, Czechs, Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, French, Poles, Dutch , Flemings, Walloons and others.
Warning: photographic materials attached to article +18. BUT I STRONGLY ASK YOU TO SEE THESE PHOTOS
The article was written in 2011 for the website The Russian Battlefield. All about the Great Patriotic War
the remaining 6 parts of the article http://www.battlefield.ru/article.html
During the times of the Soviet Union, the topic of Soviet prisoners of war was under an unspoken ban. At most, it was admitted that a certain number of Soviet soldiers were captured. But there were practically no specific figures; only the most vague and incomprehensible general figures were given. And only almost half a century after the end of the Great Patriotic War we started talking about the scale of the tragedy of Soviet prisoners of war. It was difficult to explain how the victorious Red Army under the leadership of the CPSU and the brilliant leader of all time during 1941-1945 managed to lose about 5 million military personnel only as prisoners. And after all, two-thirds of these people died in German captivity; only a little more than 1.8 million former prisoners of war returned to the USSR. Under the Stalinist regime, these people were “pariahs” of the Great War. They were not stigmatized, but any questionnaire contained a question about whether the person being surveyed was in captivity. Captivity is a tarnished reputation; in the USSR it was easier for a coward to arrange his life than for a former warrior who honestly paid his debt to his country. Some (though not many) who returned from German captivity spent time again in the camps of their “native” Gulag only because they could not prove their innocence. Under Khrushchev it became a little easier for them, but the disgusting phrase “was in captivity” in all kinds of questionnaires ruined more than one thousand destinies. Finally, during the Brezhnev era, prisoners were simply bashfully kept silent. The fact of being in German captivity in the biography of a Soviet citizen became an indelible shame for him, attracting suspicions of betrayal and espionage. This explains the paucity of Russian-language sources on the issue of Soviet prisoners of war.
Soviet prisoners of war undergo sanitary treatment
Column of Soviet prisoners of war. Autumn 1941.
Himmler inspects a camp for Soviet prisoners of war near Minsk. 1941
In the West, any attempt to talk about German war crimes on the Eastern Front was regarded as a propaganda technique. The lost war against the USSR smoothly flowed into its “cold” stage against the eastern “evil empire”. And if the leadership of the Federal Republic of Germany officially recognized the genocide of the Jewish people, and even “repented” for it, then nothing similar happened regarding the mass extermination of Soviet prisoners of war and civilians in the occupied territories. Even in modern Germany, there is a strong tendency to blame everything on the head of the “possessed” Hitler, the Nazi elite and the SS apparatus, as well as in every possible way to whitewash the “glorious and heroic” Wehrmacht, “ordinary soldiers who honestly fulfilled their duty” (I wonder which one?). In the memoirs of German soldiers, very often, as soon as the question comes about crimes, the author immediately declares that the ordinary soldiers were all cool guys, and all the abominations were committed by the “beasts” from the SS and Sonderkommandos. Although almost all former Soviet soldiers say that the vile attitude towards them began from the very first seconds of captivity, when they were not yet in the hands of the “Nazis” from the SS, but in the noble and friendly embrace of “wonderful guys” from ordinary combat units, “ who had nothing to do with the SS."
Distribution of food in one of the transit camps.
Column of Soviet prisoners. Summer 1941, Kharkov region.
Prisoners of war at work. Winter 1941/42
Only from the mid-70s of the 20th century did attitudes towards the conduct of military operations on the territory of the USSR begin to slowly change; in particular, German researchers began studying the fate of Soviet prisoners of war in the Reich. The work of Heidelberg University professor Christian Streit played a big role here. "They are not our comrades. The Wehrmacht and Soviet prisoners of war in 1941-1945.", which refuted many Western myths regarding the conduct of military operations in the East. Streit worked on his book for 16 years, and it is currently the most complete study about the fate of Soviet prisoners of war in Nazi Germany.
Ideological guidelines for the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war came from the very top of the Nazi leadership. Long before the start of the campaign in the East, Hitler, at a meeting on March 30, 1941, stated:
"We must abandon the concept of soldier's comradeship. The communist has never been and will never be a comrade. We are talking about a struggle for destruction. If we do not look at it this way, then, although we defeat the enemy, in 30 years the communist danger will arise again... "(Halder F. "War Diary". T.2. M., 1969. P.430).
“Political commissars are the basis of Bolshevism in the Red Army, bearers of an ideology hostile to National Socialism, and cannot be recognized as soldiers. Therefore, after being captured, they must be shot.”
Hitler stated about his attitude towards civilians:
“We are obliged to exterminate the population - this is part of our mission to protect the German nation. I have the right to destroy millions of people of the lower race who multiply like worms.”
Soviet prisoners of war from the Vyazemsky cauldron. Autumn 1941
For sanitary treatment before shipping to Germany.
Prisoners of war in front of the bridge over the San River. June 23, 1941. According to statistics, NONE of these people will survive until the spring of 1942 
The ideology of National Socialism, coupled with racial theories, led to inhumane treatment of Soviet prisoners of war. For example, of the 1,547,000 French prisoners of war, only about 40,000 died in German captivity (2.6%), the mortality rate of Soviet prisoners of war according to the most conservative estimates amounted to 55%. For the fall of 1941, the “normal” mortality rate of captured Soviet military personnel was 0.3% per day, that is, about 10% per month! In October-November 1941, the mortality rate of our compatriots in German captivity reached 2% per day, and in some camps up to 4.3% per day. The mortality rate of Soviet military personnel captured during the same period in the camps of the General Government (Poland) was 4000-4600 people per day. By April 15, 1942, of the 361,612 prisoners transferred to Poland in the fall of 1941, only 44,235 people remained alive. 7,559 prisoners escaped, 292,560 died, and another 17,256 were “transferred to the SD” (i.e., shot). Thus, the mortality rate of Soviet prisoners of war in just 6-7 months reached 85.7%!
Finished off Soviet prisoners from a marching column on the streets of Kyiv. 1941
Unfortunately, the size of the article does not allow for any sufficient coverage of this issue. My goal is to familiarize the reader with the numbers. Believe me: THEY ARE TERRIFYING! But we must know about this, we must remember: millions of our compatriots were deliberately and mercilessly destroyed. Finished off, wounded on the battlefield, shot at the stages, starved to death, died from disease and overwork, they were purposefully destroyed by the fathers and grandfathers of those who live in Germany today. Question: what can such “parents” teach their children?
Soviet prisoners of war shot by the Germans during the retreat.
Unknown Soviet prisoner of war 1941.
German documents on attitude towards Soviet prisoners of war
Let's start with the background that is not directly related to the Great Patriotic War: during the 40 months of the First World War, Russian imperial army lost 3,638,271 people captured and missing. Of these, 1,434,477 people were held in German captivity. The mortality rate among Russian prisoners was 5.4%, and was not much higher than the natural mortality rate in Russia at that time. Moreover, the mortality rate among prisoners of other armies in German captivity was 3.5%, which was also a low figure. In those same years, there were 1,961,333 enemy prisoners of war in Russia, the mortality rate among them was 4.6%, which practically corresponded to the natural mortality rate on Russian territory.
Everything changed after 23 years. For example, the rules for the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war prescribed:
"... the Bolshevik soldier has lost all right to claim to be treated as an honest soldier in accordance with the Geneva Agreement. It is therefore entirely consistent with the point of view and the dignity of the German armed forces that every German soldier should draw a sharp line between himself and Soviet prisoners of war. "The treatment must be cold, although correct. All sympathy, much less support, must be avoided in the strictest manner. The sense of pride and superiority of the German soldier assigned to guard Soviet prisoners of war must at all times be noticeable to those around him."
Soviet prisoners of war were practically not fed. Take a closer look at this scene.
Unsealed by emergency investigators State Commission USSR mass grave of Soviet prisoners of war 
Driver
In Western historiography, until the mid-70s of the 20th century, there was a quite widespread version that Hitler’s “criminal” orders were imposed on the opposition-minded Wehrmacht command and were almost not carried out “on the ground.” This "fairy tale" was born during the Nuremberg trials (action of the defense). However, an analysis of the situation shows that, for example, the Order on Commissars was implemented in the troops very consistently. The “selection” of the SS Einsatzkommandos included not only all Jewish military personnel and political workers of the Red Army, but in general everyone who could turn out to be a “potential enemy.” The military leadership of the Wehrmacht almost unanimously supported the Fuhrer. Hitler, in his unprecedentedly frank speech on March 30, 1941, “pressed” not on the racial reasons for the “war of annihilation,” but rather on the fight against an alien ideology, which was close in spirit to the military elite of the Wehrmacht. Halder's notes in his diary clearly indicate general support for Hitler's demands; in particular, Halder wrote that “the war in the East is significantly different from the war in the West. In the East, cruelty is justified by the interests of the future!” Immediately after Hitler's keynote speech, the headquarters of the OKH (German: OKH - Oberkommando des Heeres, High Command of the Ground Forces) and OKW (German: OKW - Oberkommando der Wermacht, High Command of the Armed Forces) began to formalize the Fuhrer's program into specific documents. The most odious and famous of them: "Directive on the establishment of an occupation regime on the territory of the Soviet Union subject to seizure"- 03/13/1941, "On military jurisdiction in the Barbarossa region and on the special powers of the troops"-05/13/1941, directives "On the behavior of troops in Russia"- 05/19/1941 and "On the treatment of political commissars", more often referred to as the “order on commissars” - 6/6/1941, order of the Wehrmacht High Command on the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war - 09/8/1941. These orders and directives were issued at different times, but their drafts were ready almost in the first week of April 1941 (except for the first and last document).
Unbroken
In almost all transit camps our prisoners of war were kept under open sky in conditions of monstrous crowding 
German soldiers finish off a wounded Soviet man
It cannot be said that there was no opposition to the opinion of Hitler and the high command of the German armed forces on the conduct of the war in the East. For example, on April 8, 1941, Ulrich von Hassel, together with the chief of staff of Admiral Canaris, Colonel Oster, visited Colonel General Ludwig von Beck (who was a consistent opponent of Hitler). Hassel wrote: “The hair stands on end from what is documented in the orders (!) signed by Halder and given to the troops regarding actions in Russia and from the systematic application of military justice in relation to civilian population in this caricature that mocks the law. By obeying Hitler's orders, Brauchitsch sacrifices the honor of the German army." That's it, no more and no less. But opposition to the decisions of the National Socialist leadership and the Wehrmacht command was passive and, until the very last moment, very sluggish.
I will definitely name the institutions and personally the “heroes” on whose orders genocide was unleashed against the civilian population of the USSR and under whose “sensitive” supervision more than 3 million Soviet prisoners of war were destroyed. This is the leader of the German people A. Hitler, Reichsführer SS Himmler, SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich, Chief of the OKW Field Marshal General Keitel, Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces, Field Marshal General f. Brauchitsch, Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces, Colonel General Halder, headquarters of the operational leadership of the Wehrmacht and its chief artillery general Yodel, head of the legal department of the Wehrmacht Leman, department "L" of the OKW and personally its chief, Major General Warlimont, group 4/Qu (head of department f. Tippelskirch), general for special assignments under the Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces, lieutenant general Muller, Chief of the Army Legal Division Latman, Quartermaster General Major General Wagner, head of the military administrative department of the ground forces f. Altenstadt. And also ALL commanders of army groups, armies, tank groups, corps and even individual divisions of the German armed forces fall into this category (in particular, the famous order of the commander of the 6th Field Army, F. Reichenau, duplicated almost unchanged for all Wehrmacht formations) falls into this category.
Reasons for the mass captivity of Soviet military personnel
The unpreparedness of the USSR for a modern highly maneuverable war (for various reasons), the tragic start of hostilities led to the fact that by mid-July 1941, out of 170 Soviet divisions located in border military districts at the beginning of the war, 28 were surrounded and did not emerge from it, 70 formations class divisions were virtually destroyed and became unfit for combat. Huge masses Soviet troops They often rolled back randomly, and German motorized formations, moving at a speed of up to 50 km per day, cut off their escape routes; the Soviet formations, units and subunits that did not have time to retreat were surrounded. Large and small “cauldrons” were formed, in which most of the military personnel were captured.
Another reason for the mass capture of Soviet soldiers, especially in initial period war, was their moral and psychological state. The existence of both defeatist sentiments among some of the Red Army soldiers and general anti-Soviet sentiments in certain strata of Soviet society (for example, among the intelligentsia) is no longer a secret.
It must be admitted that the defeatist sentiments that existed in the Red Army caused a number of Red Army soldiers and commanders to go over to the enemy’s side from the very first days of the war. Rarely, it happened that entire military units crossed the front line in an organized manner with their weapons and led by their commanders. The first precisely dated such incident took place on July 22, 1941, when two battalions went over to the enemy side 436th Infantry Regiment of the 155th Infantry Division, under the command of Major Kononov. It cannot be denied that this phenomenon persisted even at the final stage of the Great Patriotic War. Thus, in January 1945, the Germans recorded 988 Soviet defectors, in February - 422, in March - 565. It is difficult to understand what these people were hoping for, most likely just private circumstances that forced them to seek salvation of their own lives at the cost of betrayal.
Be that as it may, in 1941, prisoners accounted for 52.64% of the total losses of the Northwestern Front, 61.52% of the losses of the Western Front, 64.49% of the losses of the Southwestern Front and 60.30% of the losses of the Southern Front.
Total number of Soviet prisoners of war.
In 1941, according to German data, about 2,561,000 Soviet troops were captured in large “cauldrons”. Reports from the German command reported that 300,000 people were captured in cauldrons near Bialystok, Grodno and Minsk, 103,000 near Uman, 450,000 near Vitebsk, Mogilev, Orsha and Gomel, near Smolensk - 180,000, in the Kiev area - 665,000, near Chernigov - 100,000, in the Mariupol area - 100,000, near Bryansk and Vyazma 663,000 people. In 1942, in two more large “cauldrons” near Kerch (May 1942) - 150,000, near Kharkov (at the same time) - 240,000 people. Here we must immediately make a reservation that the German data seems to be overestimated because the stated number of prisoners often exceeds the number of armies and fronts that took part in a particular operation. The most striking example of this is the Kiev cauldron. The Germans announced the capture of 665,000 people east of the Ukrainian capital, although the total strength of the Southwestern Front at the start of the Kyiv defensive operation did not exceed 627,000 people. Moreover, about 150,000 Red Army soldiers remained outside the encirclement, and about 30,000 more managed to escape from the “cauldron.”
K. Streit, the most authoritative expert on Soviet prisoners of war in the Second World War, claims that in 1941 the Wehrmacht captured 2,465,000 soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, including: Army Group North - 84,000, Army Group "Center" - 1,413,000 and Army Group "South" - 968,000 people. And this is only in large “boilers”. In total, according to Streit, in 1941, the German armed forces captured 3.4 million Soviet troops. This represents approximately 65% of the total number of Soviet prisoners of war captured between June 22, 1941 and May 9, 1945.
In any case, the number of Soviet prisoners of war captured by the Reich's armed forces before the beginning of 1942 cannot be accurately calculated. The fact is that in 1941, submitting reports to higher Wehrmacht headquarters about the number of captured Soviet soldiers was not mandatory. An order on this issue was given by the main command of the ground forces only in January 1942. But there is no doubt that the number of Red Army soldiers captured in 1941 exceeded 2.5 million people.
There is also still no exact data on the total number of Soviet prisoners of war captured by the German armed forces from June 1941 to April 1945. A. Dallin, using German data, gives a figure of 5.7 million people, a team of authors led by Colonel General G.F. Krivosheeva, in the edition of her monograph from 2010, reports about 5.059 million people (of which about 500 thousand were called up for mobilization, but captured by the enemy on the way to military units), K. Streit estimates the number of prisoners from 5.2 to 5 .7 million
Here it must be taken into account that the Germans could classify as prisoners of war such categories of Soviet citizens as: captured partisans, underground fighters, personnel of incomplete militia formations, local air defense, fighter battalions and police, as well as railway workers and paramilitary forces of civil departments. Plus, a number of civilians who were taken for forced labor in the Reich or occupied countries, as well as taken hostage, also came here. That is, the Germans tried to “isolate” as much of the USSR’s male population of military age as possible, without really hiding it. For example, in the Minsk prisoner of war camp there were about 100,000 actually captured Red Army soldiers and about 40,000 civilians, and this is practically the entire male population of Minsk. The Germans followed this practice in the future. Here is an excerpt from the order of the command of the 2nd Tank Army dated May 11, 1943:
“When occupying individual settlements, it is necessary to immediately and suddenly capture existing men aged 15 to 65 years, if they can be considered capable of bearing arms, and send them under guard by rail to transit camp 142 in Bryansk. Captured, capable of bearing arms , to announce that they will henceforth be considered prisoners of war, and that at the slightest attempt to escape they will be shot.”
Taking this into account, the number of Soviet prisoners of war captured by the Germans in 1941-1945. ranges from 5.05 to 5.2 million people, including about 0.5 million people who were not formally military personnel.
Prisoners from the Vyazma cauldron.
Execution of Soviet prisoners of war who tried to escape
THE ESCAPE
It is also necessary to mention the fact that a number of Soviet prisoners of war were released from captivity by the Germans. Thus, by July 1941, a large number of prisoners of war had accumulated in assembly points and transit camps in the OKH area of responsibility, for whose maintenance there were no funds at all. In this regard, the German command took an unprecedented step - by order of the Quartermaster General dated July 25, 1941 No. 11/4590, Soviet prisoners of war of a number of nationalities (ethnic Germans, Balts, Ukrainians, and then Belarusians) were released. However, by order of OKB dated November 13, 1941 No. 3900, this practice was stopped. A total of 318,770 people were released during this period, of which 292,702 people were released in the OKH zone and 26,068 people in the OKV zone. Among them are 277,761 Ukrainians. Subsequently, only persons who joined volunteer security and other formations, as well as the police, were released. From January 1942 to May 1, 1944, the Germans released 823,230 Soviet prisoners of war, of which 535,523 people were in the OKH zone, 287,707 people were in the OKV zone. I want to emphasize that we do not have the moral right to condemn these people, because in the overwhelming majority of cases it was for a Soviet prisoner of war the only way to survive. Another thing is that most of the Soviet prisoners of war deliberately refused any cooperation with the enemy, which in those conditions was actually tantamount to suicide. 
Finishing off an exhausted prisoner
Soviet wounded - the first minutes of captivity. Most likely they will be finished off.
On September 30, 1941, an order was given to the commandants of the camps in the east to keep files on prisoners of war. But this had to be done after the end of the campaign on the Eastern Front. It was especially emphasized that the central information department should be provided only with information on those prisoners who, “after selection” by the Einsatzkommandos (Sonderkommandos), “finally remain in the camps or in the corresponding jobs.” It directly follows from this that the documents of the central information department do not contain data on previously destroyed prisoners of war during redeployment and filtration. Apparently, this is why there are almost no complete documents on Soviet prisoners of war in the Reichskommissariats “Ostland” (Baltic) and “Ukraine”, where a significant number of prisoners were held in the fall of 1941.
Mass execution of Soviet prisoners of war in the Kharkov area. 1942
Crimea 1942. A ditch with the bodies of prisoners shot by the Germans.
Paired photo to this one. Soviet prisoners of war are digging their own grave.
The reporting of the OKW Prisoner of War Department to the International Committee of the Red Cross covered only the OKW subordinate camp system. The committee began to receive information about Soviet prisoners of war only in February 1942, when a decision was made to use their labor in the German military industry.
System of camps for holding Soviet prisoners of war.
All matters related to the detention of foreign prisoners of war in the Reich were handled by the Wehrmacht prisoners of war department, consisting of general management armed forces, led by General Hermann Reinecke. The department was headed by Colonel Breuer (1939-1941), General Grewenitz (1942-1944), General Westhoff (1944), and SS-Obergruppenführer Berger (1944-1945). In each military district (and later in the occupied territories), transferred under civilian control, there was a “commander of prisoners of war” (commandant for prisoners of war affairs of the corresponding district).
The Germans created a very wide network of camps for holding prisoners of war and “ostarbeiters” (citizens of the USSR forcibly driven into slavery). Prisoner of war camps were divided into five categories:
1. Collection points (camps),
2. Transit camps (Dulag, Dulag),
3. Permanent camps (Stalag, Stalag) and their variety for the command staff of the Red Army (Oflag),
4. Main work camps,
5. Small work camps.
Camp near Petrozavodsk
Our prisoners were transported under such conditions in the winter of 1941/42. Mortality during the transfer stages reached 50%
HUNGER
Collection points were located in close proximity to the front line, where the final disarmament of prisoners took place, and primary accounting documents were compiled. Transit camps were located near major railway junctions. After “sorting” (precisely in quotes), the prisoners were usually sent to camps with permanent place location. The Stalags varied in number and simultaneously housed a large number of prisoners of war. For example, in “Stalag -126” (Smolensk) in April 1942 there were 20,000 people, in “Stalag - 350” (outskirts of Riga) at the end of 1941 - 40,000 people. Each "stalag" was the base for a network of main work camps subordinate to it. The main work camps had the name of the corresponding Stalag with the addition of a letter; they contained several thousand people. Small work camps were subordinate to the main work camps or directly to the stalags. They were most often named after the name of the locality in which they were located and after the name of the main work camp; they housed from several dozen to several hundred prisoners of war.
In total, this German-style system included about 22,000 large and small camps. They simultaneously held more than 2 million Soviet prisoners of war. The camps were located both on the territory of the Reich and on the territory of the occupied countries.
In the front line and in the army rear, the prisoners were managed by the corresponding OKH services. On the territory of the OKH, only transit camps were usually located, and the stalags were already in the OKW department - that is, within the boundaries of the military districts on the territory of the Reich, the General Government and the Reich Commissariats. As the German army advanced, the dulags turned into permanent camps (oflags and stalags).
In the OKH, prisoners were dealt with by the service of the Army Quartermaster General. Several local commandant's offices were subordinate to her, each of which had several dulags. The camps in the OKW system were subordinate to the prisoner of war department of the corresponding military district.
Soviet prisoner of war tortured by the Finns
This senior lieutenant had a star cut out on his forehead before his death.
Sources:
Funds of the Federal Archive of Germany - Military Archive. Freiburg. (Bundesarchivs/Militararchiv (BA/MA)
OKW:
Documents from the Wehrmacht propaganda department RW 4/v. 253;257;298.
Particularly important cases according to the Barbarossa plan of the L IV department of the Wehrmacht operational leadership headquarters RW 4/v. 575; 577; 578.
Documents of GA "North" (OKW/Nord) OKW/32.
Documents from the Wehrmacht Information Bureau RW 6/v. 220;222.
Documents of the Prisoners of War Affairs Department (OKW/AWA/Kgf.) RW 5/v. 242, RW 6/v. 12; 270,271,272,273,274; 276,277,278,279;450,451,452,453. Documents of the Department of Military Economics and Armaments (OKW/WiRuArnt) Wi/IF 5/530;5.624;5.1189;5.1213;5.1767;2717;5.3 064; 5.3190;5.3434;5.3560;5.3561;5.3562.
OKH:
Documents of the Chief of Armaments of the Ground Forces and the Commander of the Reserve Army (OKH/ChHRu u. BdE) H1/441. Documents of the Department of Foreign Armies "East" of the General Staff of the Ground Forces (OKH/GenStdH/Abt. Fremde Heere Ost) P3/304;512;728;729.
Documents of the head of the archive of the ground forces N/40/54.
A. Dallin "German rule in Russia 1941-1945. Analysis of occupation policy." M. From the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1957.
"SS in action." Documents about crimes. M. IIL 1960
S. Datner “Crimes of the Nazi Wehrmacht against prisoners of war in World War II” M. IIL 1963
"Criminal goals - criminal means." Documents on the occupation policy of Nazi Germany on the territory of the USSR. M. "Politizdat" 1968
"Top secret. For command only." Documents and materials. M. "Science" 1967
N. Alekseev “Responsibility of Nazi criminals” M. “International Relations” 1968
N. Muller "The Wehrmacht and the occupation, 1941-1944. On the role of the Wehrmacht and its governing bodies in the implementation of the occupation regime on Soviet territory" M. Military Publishing House 1974
K. Streit "Do not consider them soldiers. The Wehrmacht and Soviet prisoners of war 1941-1945." M. "Progress" 1979
V. Galitsky. "The problem of prisoners of war and the attitude of the Soviet state towards it." "State and Law" No. 4, 1990
M. Semiryaga "The Prison Empire of Nazism and Its Collapse" M. "Legal Literature" 1991
V. Gurkin "On human losses on the Soviet-German front in 1941-1945." NiNI No. 3 1992
"The Nuremberg Trials. Crimes against humanity." Collection of materials in 8 volumes. M. "Legal literature" 1991-1997.
M. Erin "Soviet prisoners of war in Germany during the Second World War" "Questions of History" No. 11-12, 1995
K. Streit "Soviet prisoners of war in Germany/Russia and Germany during the years of war and peace (1941-1995)." M. "Gaia" 1995
P. Polyan "Victims of two dictatorships. Life, work, humiliation and death of Soviet prisoners of war and ostarbeiters in a foreign land and at home." M. "ROSSPEN" 2002
M. Erin "Soviet prisoners of war in Nazi Germany 1941-1945. Research problems." Yaroslavl. YarSU 2005
"War of Extermination in the East. Crimes of the Wehrmacht in the USSR. 1941-1944. Reports" edited by G. Gortsik and K. Stang. M. "Airo-XX" 2005
V. Vette "The Image of the Enemy: Racist Elements in German Propaganda against the Soviet Union." M. "Yauza", EKSMO 2005
K. Streit "They are not our comrades. The Wehrmacht and Soviet prisoners of war in 1941-1945." M. "Russian Panorama" 2009
"The Great Patriotic War without the classification of secrecy. The book of losses." A team of authors led by G.F. Krivosheeva M. Evening 2010
After defeat in World War II, millions of ethnic Germans were deported from Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Prussia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. Historians say that this was the largest deportation of the population in the 20th century.
The Germans wore special stripes
The Germans were required to wear a white patch on their arm with a special sign “N”, meaning “German”. They were not allowed to ride bicycles, cars or public transport. It was allowed to enter shops only in certain hours. It was also forbidden to walk on the sidewalks, much less speak German. It was necessary to register with the local police and go there regularly to mark your whereabouts. Then the Germans were deprived of their lands and property.
Brunn Death March in Czechoslovakia
The President of Czechoslovakia, on the basis of paragraph 11 of the Potdstam Agreement, signed a law depriving all Germans living in the Sudetenland of citizenship.
According to official figures, three million people were expelled from Czechoslovakia within two years.
According to official data, three million people were deported from Czechoslovakia within two years. At the same time, 18,816 died: 5,596 people were killed, 3,411 committed suicide, 6,615 died in concentration camps, 1,481 people died during transportation, immediately after transportation - 705, during the escape - 629, for unknown reasons - 379.
Law enforcement agencies often found cases of rape of women in a sophisticated form.
The Brunn Death March entered the history of the deportation of Germans: on May 29, the local national committee decided to evict all women, children and old people. About 20 thousand people were gathered into one formation and driven towards Austria. The Germans could take with them only what they could carry. Only able-bodied men were spared, who were left in the city to restore the economy destroyed by the war.
Přerov shooting
Czechoslovakian counterintelligence officers stopped a train with German refugees that was passing through the city of Přerov. The night from June 18 to 19 will be the last for 265 people. All the property of the internally displaced persons was plundered. Lieutenant Pazur, under whose leadership this action took place, was arrested and convicted.
Ustica massacre
In the city of Ústí nad Labem, an explosion occurred at one of the military warehouses in the middle of summer, which killed 27 people. Without waiting for the end of the investigation, the main culprits were named - participants in the German underground ("Werewolf"). The hunt for the Germans immediately began - they were easy to recognize by their white bandage with the letter “N”. Those caught were thrown into the river, beaten, and shot. The number of killed, according to various estimates, ranged from 43 to 220 people.
In the two years following World War II, more than two million people were deported from Czechoslovakia. But it took another three years for this country to completely get rid of the Germans: in 1950, the “German question” was finally resolved. About three million people were deported.
The NKVD is worried about the Germans
“Up to 5,000 Germans arrive in Germany every day from Czechoslovakia, most of whom are women, old people and children. Being ruined and having no prospects for life, some of them commit suicide by cutting the veins in their arms with a razor. For example, on June 8, the district commandant recorded 71 corpses with open veins. In a number of cases, Czechoslovak officers and soldiers in populated areas, where the Germans live, in the evening they set up reinforced patrols in full combat readiness and open fire on the city at night. The German population, frightened, runs out of their houses, abandoning their property, and scatters. After this, the soldiers enter the houses, take away valuables and return to their units.”
Poland - the largest expulsion
In 1945, Poland was given three German territories - Silesia, Pomerania and East Brandenburg, where more than four million Germans lived. Also on the territory of Poland there were about 400 thousand Germans, historically living here since the First World War. In addition, the territory of East Prussia, which came under the control of the Soviet Union, was also settled by Germans: there were more than two million of them.
All of them were subject to eviction as soon as possible.
According to historians, this was the largest deportation of the population in the 20th century.
Hungarians paid for becoming Germans
In Hungary, which was also an ally of Germany, in 1945 a decree was passed “on the deportation of traitors to the people,” according to which property was subject to complete confiscation, and persons subject to the law were deported to Germany. Almost half a million people fled their homeland. After all, many of them preferred to indicate in their questionnaires during the years of occupation that they were Germans, although in fact these people were Hungarians. Many of them were the “fifth column” of the fascist regime during the war.
There was devastation and famine in Germany
After the forced deportation, the surviving Germans began to live in Germany. The country was destroyed. Women, children and old people are the main share of repatriates. In some regions of the country it reached 45 percent. They united in different societies to tell the world about the Germans expelled from many countries. According to the German public organization “Union of Exiles,” between 12 and 14 million Germans were deported after the end of World War II.