During World War II, Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) held by Nazi Germany and primarily in the custody of the German Army were starved and subjected to deadly conditions. Of nearly six million who were captured, around three million died during their imprisonment.
German atrocities committed against Soviet prisoners of war | |
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Part of World War II | |
![]() Distribution of food in a POW camp near Vinnytsia, Ukraine, in July 1941 | |
Location | Germany and German-occupied Eastern Europe |
Date | 1941–1945 |
Target | Captured Soviet troops |
Attack type | Starvation, death marches, summary executions, forced labor |
Deaths | 2.8 to 3.3 million |
Perpetrators | Nazi Germany |
In June 1941, Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union and carried out a war of extermination with complete disregard for the laws and customs of war. Among the criminal orders issued before the invasion was for the execution of captured Soviet commissars and disregard for Germany's legal obligations under the 1929 Geneva Convention. By the end of 1941, over 3 million Soviet soldiers had been captured, mostly in large-scale encirclement operations during the German Army's rapid advance. Two-thirds of them had died from starvation, exposure, and disease by early 1942. This is one of the highest sustained death rates for any mass atrocity in history.
Soviet Jews, political commissars, and some officers, communists, intellectuals, Asians, and female combatants were systematically targeted for execution. More prisoners were shot because they were wounded, ill, or unable to keep up with forced marches. Over a million were deported to Germany for forced labor, where many died within sight of the local population. Their conditions were worse than civilian forced laborers or prisoners of war from other countries. More than 100,000 were transferred to Nazi concentration camps, where they were treated worse than other prisoners. An estimated 1.4 million Soviet prisoners of war served as auxiliaries to the German military or SS; collaborators were essential to the German war effort and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.
Deaths among these Soviet prisoners of war have been called "one of the greatest crimes in military history", second in number only to those of civilian Jews but far less studied. Although the Soviet Union announced the death penalty for surrender early in the war, most former prisoners were reintegrated into Soviet society. Most defectors and collaborators escaped prosecution. Former prisoners of war were not recognized as veterans, and did not receive any reparations until 2015; they often faced discrimination due to the perception that they were traitors or deserters.
Background

Nazi Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. The Nazi leadership believed that war with its ideological enemy was inevitable due to the Nazi dogma that conquering territory to the east—called living space (Lebensraum)—was essential to Germany's long-term survival, and the reality that the Soviet Union's natural resources were necessary to continue the German war effort. The vast majority of German military manpower and materiel was devoted to the invasion, which was carried out as a war of extermination with complete disregard for the laws and customs of war. Due to supply shortages and inadequate transport infrastructure, the German invaders planned to feed their army by looting (although in practice they remained dependent on shipments from Germany) and to forestall resistance by terrorizing the local inhabitants with preventative killings.
The Nazis believed that the Jews had caused the German defeat and the Soviet Union's Slavic population was secretly controlled by an international Jewish conspiracy; by killing communist functionaries and Soviet Jews, they expected that resistance would quickly collapse. The Nazis anticipated that much of the Soviet population (especially in the western areas) would welcome the German invasion, and hoped to exploit tensions between Soviet nationalities in the long run. Soviet citizens were categorized according to a racial hierarchy: Soviet Germans and Balts at the top, Ukrainians and Russians in the middle, Asians and Jews lowest. Informed by Nazi racial theory and Germany's experience during World War I, this hierarchy heavily influenced the treatment of prisoners of war.
Another lesson from World War I was the importance of securing food supplies to avoid a repeat of the blockade-induced famine in Germany. Planners considered cordoning off the Soviet Union's "deficit areas" (particularly in the north) that required food imports from its "surplus areas", especially in Ukraine, to redirect this food to Germany or the German army. If the food supply was cut off as planned, an estimated 30 million people—mostly Russians—were expected to die. In reality, the army lacked the resources to cordon off these large areas. More than a million Soviet civilians died from smaller-scale blockades of Soviet urban areas (especially besieged Leningrad and Jewish ghettos) that were less effective than expected because of flight and black market activity. As prisoners of war were held under tighter control than urban or Jewish civilians, they had a higher death rate from starvation.
Planning and legal basis
Before World War II, the treatment of prisoners of war had occupied a central role in the codification of the law of war and detailed guidelines were laid down in the 1907 Hague Convention. Germany was a signatory of the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, and generally adhered to it with non-Soviet prisoners. These laws were covered in Germany's military education, and there was no legal ambiguity that could be exploited to justify its actions. Unlike Germany, the Soviet Union was not a signatory of either convention; its offer to abide by the Hague Convention's provisions regarding prisoners of war if the German army did likewise was rejected by Adolf Hitler several weeks after the start of the war. The OKW said that the Geneva Convention did not apply to Soviet prisoners of war, but suggested that it be the basis of planning. Law and morality played (at best) a minor role in this planning, in contrast to the demand for labor and military expediency. privately that "we must distance ourselves from the standpoint of soldierly comradeship" and fight a "war of extermination" because Red Army soldiers were "no comrade" of Germans. No one present raised any objection.[28] Although the mass deaths of prisoners in 1941 were controversial within the military, Abwehr officer Helmuth James Graf von Moltke was one of the few who favored treating Soviet prisoners according to the law.
Anti-Bolshevism, antisemitism, and racism are often cited as the main reasons behind the mass death of prisoners, along with the regime's conflicting demands for security, food, and labor. There is still disagreement between historians to what extent the mass deaths of prisoners in 1941 can be attributed to ideological reasons as part of the planned racial restructuring of Germany's empire versus a logistical failure that interrupted German planners' intent to use the prisoners as a labor reserve. More than three million Soviet soldiers were captured by the end of 1941. Though this was fewer than expected by the German military, little planning had been done for housing and feeding the prisoners. During the invasion of France in 1940, 1.9 million prisoners of war were housed and fed; historian Alex J. Kay cites this as evidence that supply and logistics cannot explain the mass death of Soviet prisoners of war. Historians like Alexander B. Rossino and Bob Moore also suggested that German disregard for the Geneva Convention and resulting atrocities against POWs developed incrementally from the Polish campaign of 1939, reaching their apogeum in the USSR a few years later.
Capture



By mid-December 1941, 79 percent of prisoners captured to date (more than two million) had been apprehended during thirteen major battles battles where large Soviet forces were surrounded; three or four Soviet soldiers were captured for each one killed. The number of Soviet soldiers captured fell dramatically after the Battle of Moscow in late 1941. The ratio of prisoners to killed also fell, but remained higher than the German side.
Military factors such as poor leadership, lack of arms and ammunition, and being overwhelmed by the German advance were the most important factors causing the mass surrender of Red Army soldiers. Opposition to the Soviet government was another important factor in surrenders and defections, which far exceeded the defection rate of other belligerents. Historian Mark Edele estimates that at least hundreds of thousands (possibly more than a million) Soviet soldiers defected during the war.
Soviet soldiers were usually captured in encirclements by Axis front-line troops, who took them to a collection point. From there, the prisoners were sent to transit camps. When many of the transit camps were shut down beginning in 1942, prisoners were sent directly from the collection point to a permanent camp. Sometimes the prisoners were stripped of their winter clothing by their captors for their own use as temperatures dropped late in 1941. Wounded and sick Red Army soldiers usually received no medical care.
Summary executions
Especially in 1941, German soldiers often refused to take prisoners on the Eastern Front and shot Soviet soldiers who tried to surrender—sometimes in large groups of hundreds or thousands. The German military did not record deaths that occurred prior to prisoners arriving at the collection points. These murders were not ordered by the high command, and some military commanders recognized their harmfulness to German interests. Nevertheless, efforts to discourage such killing had mixed results at best and no
verdicts against the perpetrators are known. Although the Red Army shot enemy prisoners less commonly than the German Army did, the shooting of prisoners by both armies contributed to a mutual escalation of violence.Thousands or tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers were executed on the spot as partisans. To prevent the growth of a partisan movement, Red Army soldiers overtaken by the German advance without being captured were ordered by the Supreme Command of Ground Forces (OKH) to present themselves to the German authorities under the threat of summary execution. Despite the order, few soldiers turned themselves in; some evaded capture and returned to their families.
Before the beginning of the war, the OKW ordered the execution of captured Soviet commissars and suspicious civilian political functionaries. More than 80 percent of front-line German divisions fighting on the Eastern Front carried out this illegal order, shooting an estimated 4,000 to 10,000 commissars. These killings did not reduce Soviet resistance, and came to be perceived as counterproductive; the order was rescinded in May 1942. Although female combatants in the Soviet army defied German gender expectations, the OKH ordered them to be treated as prisoners of war, they could be shot on sight and few survived to reach prisoner-of-war camps in Germany.
Prisoner-of-war camps

By the end of 1941, 81 camps had been established on occupied Soviet territory.[28] Permanent camps were established in areas under civilian administration and areas under military administration that were planned to be turned over to civilian administration. Due to the low priority attached to prisoners of war, each camp commandant had autonomy limited only by the military and economic situation. Although a few tried to ameliorate their conditions, most did not. At the end of 1944, all prisoner-of-war camps were placed under SS chief Heinrich Himmler's authority. Although military authorities from the OKW down also distributed orders to refrain from excessive violence against prisoners of war, historian David Harrisville says that these orders had little effect in practice and their main effect was to bolster a positive self-image in German soldiers.
Death marches

Prisoners were often forced to march hundreds of kilometers on foot with no or inadequate food or water. Guards frequently shot anyone who fell behind, and the quantity of corpses left behind created a health hazard. Sometimes Soviet prisoners were able to escape due to inadequate supervision. The use of railcars for transport was often forbidden to prevent the spread of disease, though open cattle wagons were used after October 1941, which resulted in the death of some 20 percent of passengers due to cold weather. A figure of 200,000 to 250,000 deaths in transit is provided in Russian estimates.
Housing conditions

Poor housing and the cold were major factors in the mass deaths. Prisoners were herded into open, fenced-off areas with no buildings or latrines; some camps did not have running water. Kitchen facilities were rudimentary, and many prisoners got nothing to eat. Some prisoners had to live in the open for the entire winter, or in unheated rooms, or in burrows they dug themselves which often collapsed. In September 1941, the Germans started preparations for winter housing; the building of barracks was rolled out systematically in November. These preparations were inadequate. The situation improved because the mass deaths made the camps less overcrowded. The death toll at many prisoner-of-war camps was comparable to the largest Nazi concentration camps. One of the largest camps was in Bobruisk, where an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 Red Army soldiers died.
There were relatively few guards and the liberal use of firearms was encouraged by military superiors such as Hermann Reinecke. Both of these factors contributed to brutality. The Germans recruited prisoners—mainly Ukrainians, Cossacks, and Caucasians—as camp police and guards. Regulations specified that the camps be surrounded by watchtowers and double barbed-wire fences 2.5 meters (8 ft 2 in) high. Despite draconian penalties, organized resistance groups formed at some camps and attempted mass escapes. Tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war attempted to escape; about half were recaptured, and around 10,000 reached Switzerland. If they did not commit crimes after their escape, recaptured prisoners were usually returned to the prisoner-of-war camps; otherwise, they were turned over to the Gestapo and imprisoned (or executed) in a nearby concentration camp.
Hunger and mass deaths

Food for prisoners was extracted from the occupied Soviet Union after the occupiers' needs were met. Prisoners usually received less than the official ration due to supply problems. By mid-August 1941, it had become clear that many prisoners would die. The capture of nearly a million and a half million prisoners during the encirclements of Kiev, Vyazma, and Bryansk in September and October caused a sudden breakdown in makeshift logistical arrangements. On 21 October 1941, OKH general quartermaster Eduard Wagner issued an order reducing daily rations for non-working prisoners to 1,487 calories—a starvation amount that was rarely delivered. Working prisoners were also often put on starvation diets due to a lack of supplies. Non-working prisoners—all but one million of the 2.3 million held at the time—would die, as Wagner acknowledged at a November 1941 meeting.
Following setbacks in the military campaign, Hitler ordered on 31 October that labor deployment in Germany for surviving prisoners be prioritized. After this order was issued, death rates reached their apex; the need for prisoner labor could not overcome the other priorities for food distribution. The number of prisoners working declined as those deemed unfit for work or quarantined due to epidemics continued to increase. Although prisoners had not received much food from the beginning, death rates skyrocketed during the fall due to increased numbers, the cumulative effects of starvation, epidemics, and falling temperatures. Hundreds died daily at each camp, too many to bury. German policy shifted to prioritize feeding prisoners at the expense of the Soviet civilian population but, in practice, conditions did not significantly improve until June 1942 due to improved logistics and fewer prisoners to feed. Mass deaths were repeated on a smaller scale in the winter of 1942–1943.
Starving prisoners attempted to eat leaves, grass, bark, and worms. Some Soviet prisoners suffered so much from hunger that they made written requests to their guards to be shot. Cannibalism was reported in several camps, despite capital punishment for this offense. Soviet civilians who tried to provide food were often shot. In many camps, those who were in better condition were separated from prisoners deemed to have no chance of survival. Employment could be beneficial in securing additional food and better conditions, although workers often received insufficient food and death rates exceeded 50 percent on some labor deployments.
Release
On 7 August 1941, the OKW issued an order to release prisoners who were ethnically German, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Caucasian, and Ukrainian. The purpose of the release was largely to ensure that the harvest in German-occupied areas was successful. Red Army women were excluded from this policy. Ethnic Russians, the vast majority of prisoners, were not considered for release, and about half of the Ukrainians were freed. Releases were curtailed due to epidemics and fear that they would join the partisans. Some severely injured prisoners with family living nearby were released; many probably died of starvation soon afterwards. By January 1942, 280,108 prisoners of war—mostly Ukrainians—had been released, and the total number released was around a million by the end of the war. In addition to agriculture, prisoners were released so that they could join military or police collaboration. About one-third entered the German Army, and others changed their status from prisoner to guard. As the war progressed, release for agricultural work decreased and military recruitment increased.
Selective killings

The selective killing of prisoners held by the army was enabled by its close cooperation with the SS and Soviet informers, and soldiers often conducted the executions. The killings targeted commissars and Jews, and sometimes communists, intellectuals, Red Army officers, and (in 1941) Asian-appearing prisoners; about 80 percent of Turkic prisoners were killed by early 1942. German counterintelligence identified many individuals as Jews with medical examinations, denunciation by fellow prisoners, or a stereotypically Jewish appearance.
Beginning in August 1941, additional screening by the Security Police and the SS Security Service in the occupied Soviet Union led to the killing of another 38,000 prisoners. With the army's cooperation, Einsatzgruppen units visited the prisoner-of-war camps to carry out mass executions. About 50,000 Jewish Red Army soldiers were killed, but 5 to 25 percent escaped detection. Soviet Muslims mistaken for Jews were sometimes killed. From 1942, systematic killing increasingly targeted wounded and sick prisoners. Those unable to work were often shot in mass executions or left to die, disabled soldiers were in particular danger when the front approached. Sometimes mass executions were conducted without a clear rationale.
For the prisoner-of-war camps in Germany, screening was carried out by the Gestapo. Those highlighted for scrutiny were interrogated for about 20 minutes, often with torture. If their responses were unsatisfactory, they were stripped of prisoner-of-war status and brought to a concentration camp for execution, to conceal their fate from the German public. At least 33,000 prisoners were transferred to Nazi concentration camps—Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Flossenbürg, Gross-Rosen, Mauthausen, Gusen, Neuengamme, Sachsenhausen, and Hinzert. These killings dwarfed previous killings in the camp system. As the war progressed, increasing manpower shortages motivated the curtailment of executions. After March 1944, all Soviet officers and non-commissioned officers implicated in escape attempts were executed. These resulted in 5000 executions, including 500 officers who took part in an attempted mass escape from Mauthausen. The death toll from direct executions, including the shooting of wounded soldiers, was probably hundreds of thousands.
Torture and mutilation
In numerous documented instances, captured Soviet soldiers were subjected to torture and mutilation, including being branded with red-hot irons; having body parts such as eyes, ears, hands, fingers, and tongues cut out; having their stomachs ripped open; being torn apart after being tied to tanks; and being burned or buried alive.
Auxiliaries in German service

Hitler opposed recruiting Soviet collaborators for military and police functions, blaming non-German recruits for defeat in World War I. Nevertheless, military leaders in the east disregarded his instructions and recruited such collaborators from the outset of the war; Himmler recognized in July 1941 that locally-recruited police would be necessary. The motivations of those who joined are not well known, although it is assumed that many joined to survive or improve their living conditions and others had ideological motives. A large proportion of those who survived being taken prisoner in 1941 did so because they collaborated with the Germans. Most had supporting roles such as drivers, cooks, grooms or translators; others were directly engaged in fighting, particularly during anti-partisan warfare.
A minority of captured prisoners of war were reserved by each field army for forced labor in its operational area; these prisoners were not registered. Their treatment varied, with some having living conditions similar to German soldiers and others being treated as badly as they were in the camps. A smaller number joined dedicated military units with German officers, staffed by Soviet ethnic minorities. The first anti-partisan unit formed from Soviet prisoners of war was a Cossack unit which operated from July 1941. In 1943, there were 53 battalions raised from prisoners of war and other Soviet citizens: fourteen in the Turkestan Legion, nine in the Armenian Legion, eight each in the Azerbaijani and Georgian Legions, and seven in the North Caucasian and Idel-Ural Legions.

Along with those recruited by the German military, others were recruited by the SS to engage in genocide. The Trawniki men were recruited from prisoner-of-war camps; largely ethnic Ukrainians and Germans, they included Poles, Georgians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Tatars, Latvians, and Lithuanians. They helped suppress the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, worked in the extermination camps that killed millions of Jews in German-occupied Poland, and carried out anti-partisan operations. Collaborators were essential to the German war effort and the Holocaust.
If recaptured by the Red Army, collaborators were often shot. After the German defeat at Stalingrad in early 1943, defections of collaborators back to the Soviet side increased; in response, Hitler ordered all Soviet military collaborators transferred to the Western Front late that year. By D-Day in mid-1944, these soldiers were 10 percent of the "German" forces occupying France. Some aided the resistance; in 1945, parts of the Georgian Legion rebelled. Soviet prisoners of war were forced to work in construction and pioneer forces for the army, air force, and navy. Prisoners of war were admitted into anti-aircraft units after April 1943, where they could be as much as 30 percent of their strength. By the end of the war, 1.4 million prisoners of war (out of a total of 2.4 million) were serving in some kind of auxiliary military unit.
Forced labor
Forced labor engaged in by Soviet prisoners of war often violated the 1929 Geneva Convention. For example, the convention forbids work in war industries.
In the Soviet Union

Without the labor of Soviet prisoners of war for military infrastructure in the German rear areas—building roads, bridges, airfields and train depots and converting the Soviet wider-gauge railway to the German standard—the German offensive would soon have failed. In September 1941, Hermann Göring ordered the use of prisoners of war for mine clearing and construction of infrastructure to free up construction battalions. Many prisoners ran away because of poor conditions in the camps (limiting forced-labor assignments), Others died: particularly deadly assignments included road-building projects (especially in eastern Galicia), fortification-building on the Eastern Front, and mining in the Donets basin (authorized by Hitler in July 1942). About 48,000 were assigned to this task, but most never began their labor assignments and the remainder perished from the conditions or had escaped by March 1943.
Transfer to Nazi concentration camps

In September 1941, Himmler began advocating for the transfer of 100,000, then 200,000 Soviet prisoners of war for forced labor in Nazi concentration camps under the control of the SS; the camps previously held 80,000 people. By October, segregated areas designated for prisoners of war had been established at Neuengamme, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Gross-Rosen, Sachsenhausen, Dachau, and Mauthausen by clearing prisoners from existing barracks or building new ones. Most of the incoming prisoners were planned to be imprisoned in two new camps established in German-occupied Poland, Majdanek and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, as part of Himmler's colonization plans.
Despite the intention to exploit their labor, most of the 25,000 or 30,000 who arrived in late 1941 were in poor condition and incapable of work. Kept in worse conditions and provided less food than other prisoners, they had a higher mortality rate; 80 percent were dead by February 1942. The SS killed politically-suspect, sick, and weak prisoners individually, and carried out mass executions in response to infectious-disease outbreaks. Experimental execution techniques were tested on prisoners of war: gas vans at Sachsenhausen and Zyklon B in gas chambers at Auschwitz. So many died at Auschwitz that its crematoria were overloaded; the SS began tattooing prisoner numbers in November 1941 to keep track of which prisoners had died. Contrary to Himmler's assumption, more Soviet prisoners of war did not replace those who died. As the capture of Red Army soldiers dropped off, Hitler decided at the end of October 1941 to deploy the remaining prisoners in the German war economy.
In addition to those sent for labor in late 1941, others were recaptured after escapes or arrested for offenses such as relationships with German women, insubordination, refusal to work, and suspected resistance activities or sabotage or were expelled from collaborationist military units. Red Army women were often pressured to renounce their prisoner-of-war status to be transferred to civilian forced-labor programs. Some refused, and were sent to concentration camps. About 1,000 were imprisoned at Ravensbrück, and others at Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Mauthausen. Those imprisoned in concentration camps for an infraction lost their prisoner-of-war status, in violation of the Geneva Convention. Officers were over-represented among the more than 100,000 men and an unknown number of women who were transferred to Nazi concentration camps.
Deportation elsewhere

In July and August 1941, 200,000 Soviet prisoners of war were deported to Germany to fill the labor demands of agriculture and industry. The deportees faced conditions similar to those in the occupied Soviet Union. Hitler halted the transports in mid-August, but changed his mind on 31 October; along with the prisoners of war, a larger number of Soviet civilians were sent. The camps in Germany had an internal police force of non-Russian prisoners who were often violent towards Russians; Soviet Germans often staffed the camp administration, and were interpreters. Both groups received more rations and preferential treatment. Guarding the prisoners was the responsibility of the army's
.Many Nazi leaders wanted to avoid contact between Germans and prisoners of war, limiting work assignments for prisoners. Labor assignments differed in accordance with the local economy. Many worked for private employers in agriculture and industry, and others were rented to local authorities for such tasks as building roads and canals, quarrying, and cutting peat. Employers paid RM0.54 per day per man for agricultural work, and RM0.80 for other work; many also provided prisoners with extra food to achieve productivity. Workers received RM0.20 per day in
. By early 1942, to combat the fact that many prisoners were too malnourished to work, some surviving prisoners were granted increased rations although significant improvement was politically impossible because supply shortages necessitated a reduction in rations to German citizens. Prisoners remained vulnerable to malnutrition and disease. The number of prisoners working in Germany continued to increase, from 455,000 in September 1942 to 652,000 in May 1944. By the end of the war, at least 1.3 million Soviet prisoners of war had been deported to Germany or its annexed territories. Of these, 400,000 did not survive; most of the deaths occurred in the winter of 1941–1942. Others were deported to other locations, including Norway and the Channel Islands.Public perception

According to Security Service reports, many Germans worried about food shortages and wanted Soviet prisoners to be killed or given minimal food for this reason. Nazi propaganda portrayed Soviet prisoners of war as murderers, and photographs of cannibalism in prisoner-of-war camps were seen as proof of "Russian subhumanity". Although many Germans claimed ignorance of the Holocaust after the war, many Germans were aware of the large number of Soviet prisoners of war who died before most German Jews had been deported.
Soviet propaganda began integrating the atrocities against Soviet prisoners of war as early as July 1941. Information about the Commissar Order, described as mandating the killing of all officers or prisoners captured, was disseminated to Red Army soldiers. Accurate information about the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war reached Red Army soldiers by various means—such as escapees and other eyewitnesses—and was an effective deterrent against defection although many disbelieved the official propaganda.
End of the war


About 500,000 prisoners had been freed by the Red Army by February 1945. During its advance, the Red Army found mass graves at former prisoner-of-war camps. In the war's final months, most of the remaining Soviet prisoners were forced on death marches similar to those of concentration-camp prisoners. Many were killed during these marches or died from illness after liberation. They returned to a country which had lost millions of people to the war and had its infrastructure destroyed by German Army scorched-earth tactics. For years afterwards the Soviet population experienced food shortages. Former prisoners of war were among the 451,000 or more Soviet citizens who avoided repatriation and remained in Germany or emigrated to Western countries after the war. Due to its clear-cut criminality, the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war was mentioned in the International Military Tribunal's indictment.
Soviet policy, intended to discourage defection, held that any soldier who fell into enemy hands was a traitor. Issued in August 1941, Order No. 270 classified surrendering commanders and political officers deserters to be summarily executed and their families arrested. Sometimes Red Army soldiers were told that the families of defectors would be shot; although thousands were arrested, it is unknown if any such executions were carried out. As the war continued, Soviet leaders realized that most of their citizens had not voluntarily collaborated. In November 1944, the State Defense Committee decided that freed prisoners of war would be returned to the army; those who served in German military units or the police would be handed over to the NKVD. At the Yalta Conference, the Western Allies agreed to repatriate Soviet citizens regardless of their wishes.
In an attempt to separate the minority of voluntary collaborators, freed prisoners of war were sent to filtration camps, hospitals, and recuperation centers, where most stayed for one or two months. This process was not effective in separating the minority of voluntary collaborators, and most defectors and collaborators escaped prosecution. Trawniki men were typically sentenced to 10 to 25 years in a labor camp, and military collaborators often received six-year sentences in special settlements. According to official statistics, 57.8 percent returned home, 19.1 percent were remobilized, 14.5 percent were enlisted in the labor battalions of the , and 6.5 percent were transferred to the NKVD. According to another estimate, of 1.5 million returnees by March 1946, 43 percent continued their military service, 22 percent were drafted into labor battalions for two years, 18 percent were sent home, 15 percent were sent to a forced-labor camp, and two percent worked for repatriation commissions. Death sentences were rare. On 7 July 1945, a Supreme Soviet decree pardoned all former prisoners of war who had not collaborated. Another amnesty in 1955 released all remaining collaborators except those sentenced for torture or murder.
Former prisoners of war were not recognized as veterans and were denied veterans' benefits; they often faced discrimination due to the belief that they were traitors or deserters. In 1995, Russia equalized the status of former prisoners of war with that of other veterans. After the fall of the Eastern Bloc, the German government set up the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future to distribute further reparations, from which Soviet prisoners of war were not eligible to make claims.: 134–139 They did not receive any reparations until 2015, when the German government paid a symbolic amount of 2,500 euros to the few thousand still alive.
Death toll

The German Army recorded 3.35 million Soviet prisoners captured in 1941, which exceeds the Red Army's reported missing by up to one million. This discrepancy can be partly explained by the Red Army's inability to keep track of losses during a chaotic withdrawal. Additionally, as many as one in eight of the people registered as Soviet prisoners of war had never been members of the Red Army. Some were mobilized, but never reached their units; others belonged to the NKVD or People's Militia, were from uniformed civilian services such as the railway corps and fortification workers, or were otherwise civilians. Historian Viktor Zemskov says that the German figures represent a minimum value, and should be adjusted upwards by 450,000 to account for prisoners who were killed before arriving in a camp. Zemskov estimates around 3.9 million dead out of 6.2 million captured, including 200,000 killed as military collaborators. Other historians, working from the German figure of 5.7 million captured, have reached lower estimates: 's 3.3 million, Christian Hartmann's 3 million, and Dieter Pohl's 2.8 to 3 million.
A majority of the deaths, about two million, occurred before January 1942. The death rate of 300,000 to 500,000 each month from October 1941 to January 1942 is one of the highest death rates from mass atrocity in history, equaling the peak killings of Jews between July and October 1942. By this time, more Soviet prisoners of war had died than members of any other group targeted by the Nazis; only the European Jews would surpass this figure. An additional one million Soviet prisoners of war died after the beginning of 1942—27 percent of the total number of prisoners alive or captured after that date.
Most of the Soviet prisoners of war who died did so in the custody of the German Army. More than two million died in the Soviet Union; about 500,000, in the General Governorate (Poland); 400,000, in Germany; and 13,000, in German-occupied Norway. More than 28 percent of Soviet prisoners of war died in Finnish captivity; and 15 to 30 percent of Axis prisoners died in Soviet custody, despite the Soviet government's attempt to reduce the death rate. Throughout the war, Soviet prisoners of war had a far higher mortality rate than Polish or Soviet civilian forced laborers, whose rate was under 10 percent.
While the Germans committed atrocities against other Allied POWs, the total number of the deaths of prisoners of war from the Soviet Union greatly exceeded deaths of prisoners from other nationalities. With regards to the mortality rate, it is estimated at forty three to as high as sixty three percent. The second highest mortality rate of prisoners in German captivity was that of Italian military internees (six to seven percent); while in the entire war, another high mortality rate was that of (twenty seven percent). The death rate of German soldiers held by Soviet Union has also been high; it has been estimated at 15% by Mark Edele, and at 35.8% by Niall Ferguson.: 375
Legacy and historiography

Hartmann calls the treatment of Soviet prisoners "one of the greatest crimes in military history". Thousands of books have been published about the Holocaust, but in 2016 there were no books in English about the fate of Soviet prisoners of war. The issue was also mostly ignored by Soviet historiography until the last years of the USSR. Few prisoner accounts were published, perpetrators were not tried for their crimes, and little scholarly research has been attempted. The German historian Christian Streit published the first major study of their fate in 1978, and the Soviet archives became available in 1990. Prisoners who remained in the occupied Soviet Union usually were not registered under their names, so their fates will never be known.
Although the treatment of prisoners of war was remembered by Soviet citizens as one of the worst aspects of the occupation, Soviet commemoration of the war focused on antifascism and those killed in combat. Contemporary Soviet leaders, including Stalin, considered Soviet soldiers who surrendered to be traitors, and Simon MacKenzie noted that some of "those who survived German captivity to 1945 were promptly sent to the Gulag". Bob Moore likewise noted that "the [Soviet] survivors were [...] victimized and ostracized on their return—their sufferings and mortality forgotten"; tens of thousands judged as collaborators were executed. During perestroika in 1987 and 1988, a debate erupted in the Soviet Union about whether the former prisoners of war had been traitors; those arguing in the negative prevailed after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Russian nationalist historiography defended the former prisoners, minimizing incidents of defection and collaboration and emphasizing resistance.
The fate of Soviet prisoners of war was largely ignored in West and East Germany, where resistance activities were a focus. After the war, there were some German attempts to deflect the blame for the 1941 mass deaths. Some blamed the deaths on the failure of diplomacy between the Soviet Union and Germany after the invasion, or on prior starvation of soldiers by the Soviet government. Crimes against prisoners of war were exposed to the German public in the Wehrmacht exhibition around 2000, which challenged the still popular myth that the German military was not responsible for Nazi crimes. Memorials and markers have been established at cemeteries and former camps by state or private initiatives. For the 80th anniversary of World War II, several German historical and memorial organizations organized a traveling exhibition.
Notes
- Approximately 13 cents in contemporary United States dollars, or USD$3 today.
- Approximately 20 cents in contemporary United States dollars, or USD$4 today.
- Approximately 5 cents in contemporary United States dollars, or USD$1 today.
See also
- Prisoners of war in World War II
References
- Pohl 2012, p. 240.
- Kay 2021, p. 167.
- Hartmann 2012, p. 568.
- Gerlach 2016, p. 67.
- Bartov 2023, p. 201.
- Quinkert 2021, p. 173.
- Quinkert 2021, pp. 174–175.
- Quinkert 2021, pp. 175–176.
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Works cited
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- Quinkert, Babette. "Captured Red Army soldiers in the context of the criminal conduct of the war against the Soviet Union". In Blank & Quinkert (2021), pp. 172–193.
- Keller, Rolf. ""...A necessary evil": use of Soviet prisoners of war as labourers in the German Reich, 1941–1945". In Blank & Quinkert (2021), pp. 194–205.
- Kozlova, Daria. "Soviet prisoners of war in the concentration camps". In Blank & Quinkert (2021), pp. 206–223.
- Meier, Esther; Winkel, Heike. "Unpleasant memories. Soviet prisoners of war in collective memory, in Germany and the Soviet Union / Russia". In Blank & Quinkert (2021), pp. 224–239.
- Latyschew, Artem. "History of oblivion, recognition and study of former prisoners of war in the USSR and Russia". In Blank & Quinkert (2021), pp. 240–257.
- Cohen, Laurie R. (2013). Smolensk Under the Nazis: Everyday Life in Occupied Russia. Boydell & Brewer. ISBN 978-1-58046-469-7.
- "Consumer Price Index, 1800–". Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Archived from the original on 29 August 2024. Retrieved 29 November 2019.
- Edele, Mark (2016). "Take (No) Prisoners! The Red Army and German POWs, 1941–1943". The Journal of Modern History. 88 (2): 342–379. doi:10.1086/686155. hdl:11343/238858. JSTOR 26547940.
- Edele, Mark (2017). Stalin's Defectors: How Red Army Soldiers became Hitler's Collaborators, 1941–1945. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198798156.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-251914-6.
- Foreign Claims Settlement Commission (1968). Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the United States: Decisions and Annotations. U.S. Government Printing Office. OCLC 1041397012.
- Gerlach, Christian (2016). The Extermination of the European Jews. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139034180. ISBN 978-0-521-70689-6.
- Harrisville, David A. (2021). The Virtuous Wehrmacht: Crafting the Myth of the German Soldier on the Eastern Front, 1941–1944. Cornell University Press. doi:10.7591/cornell/9781501760044.001.0001. ISBN 978-1-5017-6005-1. JSTOR 10.7591/j.ctv1ffpcrj.
- Hartmann, Christian (2012). Wehrmacht im Ostkrieg: Front und militärisches Hinterland 1941/42 [Wehrmacht on the eastern front: front and rear areas 1941/42] (in German). Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag. ISBN 978-3-486-70226-2.
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- Hertner, Christoph (2023). "»Kriegsgefangenschaft und Internierung«: Das Schicksal sowjetischer Militärpersonen in deutschen, schweizerischen, österreichischen und sowjetischen Quellen, 1941–1946, Workshop der Forschungsstelle Diplomatische Dokumente der Schweiz, der Professur für Neueste Allgemeine und Osteuropäische Geschichte der Universität Bern und des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Moskau in Bern, 24. März 2023" ["War captivity and internment": the fate of Soviet military personnel in German, Swiss, Austrian and Soviet sources, 1941–1946, workshop of the Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland, the Professorship for Modern General and East European History at the University of Bern, and the German Historical Institute Moscow. Bern, 24 March 2023]. Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift. 82 (2): 405–413. doi:10.1515/mgzs-2023-0063.
- Kay, Alex J. (2006). Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder: Political and Economic Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1940–1941. Vol. 10. Berghahn Books. doi:10.3167/9781845451868. ISBN 978-1-84545-186-8. JSTOR j.ctt9qd88d.
- Kay, Alex J. (2021). Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing. Yale University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctv1z9n1qs. ISBN 978-0-300-26253-7. JSTOR j.ctv1z9n1qs.
- Moore, Bob (2022). Prisoners of War: Europe: 1939–1956. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198840398.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-257680-4.
- Overmans, Rüdiger (2022). "Wehrmacht Prisoner of War Camps Introduction". The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume IV: Camps and Other Detention Facilities Under the German Armed Forces. Indiana University Press. pp. 1–37. doi:10.2307/j.ctv22fqbjk.8. ISBN 978-0-253-06091-4. JSTOR j.ctv22fqbjk.8.
- Otto, Reinhard; Keller, Rolf (2019). Sowjetische Kriegsgefangene im System der Konzentrationslager [Soviet prisoners of war in the concentration camp system] (PDF) (in German). New Academic Press. ISBN 978-3-7003-2170-5. Archived (PDF) from the original on 24 February 2024.
- Pohl, Dieter (2012). Die Herrschaft der Wehrmacht: Deutsche Militärbesatzung und einheimische Bevölkerung in der Sowjetunion 1941–1944 [The rule of the Wehrmacht: German military occupation and the local population in the Soviet Union 1941–1944] (in German). Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag. ISBN 978-3-486-70739-7.
- Tooze, Adam (2008). The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. Penguin Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-101-56495-0.
- Wachsmann, Nikolaus (2015). KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-374-11825-9.
- Westermann, Edward (2023). "The Hell of the Soviet Prisoner of War Camps" (PDF). Bulletin of the German Historical Institute. 72 (Fall 2023): 91–98. ISSN 1048-9134. Archived (PDF) from the original on 18 July 2024.
- Zemskov, Viktor (2013). "K voprosu ob obshchey chislennosti sovetskikh voyennoplennykh i masshtabakh ikh smertnosti (1941–1945 gg.)" К вопросу об общей численности советских военнопленных и масштабах их смертности (1941–1945 гг.) [On the issue of the total number of Soviet prisoners of war and the scale of their mortality (1941–1945)]. Russian History (in Russian). 93 (47): 103–112. ISSN 0869-5687. Archived from the original on 26 March 2024.
Further reading
- Keller, Rolf [in German] (2011). Sowjetische Kriegsgefangene im Deutschen Reich 1941/42: Behandlung und Arbeitseinsatz zwischen Vernichtungspolitik und Kriegswirtschaftlichen Zwängen [Soviet prisoners of war in Nazi Germany 1941–1942: treatment and work deployment between extermination policy and the war economy's constraints]. Wallstein. ISBN 978-3-8353-0989-0.
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During World War II Soviet prisoners of war POWs held by Nazi Germany and primarily in the custody of the German Army were starved and subjected to deadly conditions Of nearly six million who were captured around three million died during their imprisonment German atrocities committed against Soviet prisoners of warPart of World War IIDistribution of food in a POW camp near Vinnytsia Ukraine in July 1941LocationGermany and German occupied Eastern EuropeDate1941 1945TargetCaptured Soviet troopsAttack typeStarvation death marches summary executions forced laborDeaths2 8 to 3 3 millionPerpetratorsNazi Germany In June 1941 Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union and carried out a war of extermination with complete disregard for the laws and customs of war Among the criminal orders issued before the invasion was for the execution of captured Soviet commissars and disregard for Germany s legal obligations under the 1929 Geneva Convention By the end of 1941 over 3 million Soviet soldiers had been captured mostly in large scale encirclement operations during the German Army s rapid advance Two thirds of them had died from starvation exposure and disease by early 1942 This is one of the highest sustained death rates for any mass atrocity in history Soviet Jews political commissars and some officers communists intellectuals Asians and female combatants were systematically targeted for execution More prisoners were shot because they were wounded ill or unable to keep up with forced marches Over a million were deported to Germany for forced labor where many died within sight of the local population Their conditions were worse than civilian forced laborers or prisoners of war from other countries More than 100 000 were transferred to Nazi concentration camps where they were treated worse than other prisoners An estimated 1 4 million Soviet prisoners of war served as auxiliaries to the German military or SS collaborators were essential to the German war effort and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe Deaths among these Soviet prisoners of war have been called one of the greatest crimes in military history second in number only to those of civilian Jews but far less studied Although the Soviet Union announced the death penalty for surrender early in the war most former prisoners were reintegrated into Soviet society Most defectors and collaborators escaped prosecution Former prisoners of war were not recognized as veterans and did not receive any reparations until 2015 they often faced discrimination due to the perception that they were traitors or deserters BackgroundGerman advances through 5 December 1941 with large groups of encircled Red Army soldiers in red Nazi Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 The Nazi leadership believed that war with its ideological enemy was inevitable due to the Nazi dogma that conquering territory to the east called living space Lebensraum was essential to Germany s long term survival and the reality that the Soviet Union s natural resources were necessary to continue the German war effort The vast majority of German military manpower and materiel was devoted to the invasion which was carried out as a war of extermination with complete disregard for the laws and customs of war Due to supply shortages and inadequate transport infrastructure the German invaders planned to feed their army by looting although in practice they remained dependent on shipments from Germany and to forestall resistance by terrorizing the local inhabitants with preventative killings The Nazis believed that the Jews had caused the German defeat and the Soviet Union s Slavic population was secretly controlled by an international Jewish conspiracy by killing communist functionaries and Soviet Jews they expected that resistance would quickly collapse The Nazis anticipated that much of the Soviet population especially in the western areas would welcome the German invasion and hoped to exploit tensions between Soviet nationalities in the long run Soviet citizens were categorized according to a racial hierarchy Soviet Germans and Balts at the top Ukrainians and Russians in the middle Asians and Jews lowest Informed by Nazi racial theory and Germany s experience during World War I this hierarchy heavily influenced the treatment of prisoners of war Another lesson from World War I was the importance of securing food supplies to avoid a repeat of the blockade induced famine in Germany Planners considered cordoning off the Soviet Union s deficit areas particularly in the north that required food imports from its surplus areas especially in Ukraine to redirect this food to Germany or the German army If the food supply was cut off as planned an estimated 30 million people mostly Russians were expected to die In reality the army lacked the resources to cordon off these large areas More than a million Soviet civilians died from smaller scale blockades of Soviet urban areas especially besieged Leningrad and Jewish ghettos that were less effective than expected because of flight and black market activity As prisoners of war were held under tighter control than urban or Jewish civilians they had a higher death rate from starvation Planning and legal basisBefore World War II the treatment of prisoners of war had occupied a central role in the codification of the law of war and detailed guidelines were laid down in the 1907 Hague Convention Germany was a signatory of the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War and generally adhered to it with non Soviet prisoners These laws were covered in Germany s military education and there was no legal ambiguity that could be exploited to justify its actions Unlike Germany the Soviet Union was not a signatory of either convention its offer to abide by the Hague Convention s provisions regarding prisoners of war if the German army did likewise was rejected by Adolf Hitler several weeks after the start of the war The OKW said that the Geneva Convention did not apply to Soviet prisoners of war but suggested that it be the basis of planning Law and morality played at best a minor role in this planning in contrast to the demand for labor and military expediency privately that we must distance ourselves from the standpoint of soldierly comradeship and fight a war of extermination because Red Army soldiers were no comrade of Germans No one present raised any objection 28 Although the mass deaths of prisoners in 1941 were controversial within the military Abwehr officer Helmuth James Graf von Moltke was one of the few who favored treating Soviet prisoners according to the law Anti Bolshevism antisemitism and racism are often cited as the main reasons behind the mass death of prisoners along with the regime s conflicting demands for security food and labor There is still disagreement between historians to what extent the mass deaths of prisoners in 1941 can be attributed to ideological reasons as part of the planned racial restructuring of Germany s empire versus a logistical failure that interrupted German planners intent to use the prisoners as a labor reserve More than three million Soviet soldiers were captured by the end of 1941 Though this was fewer than expected by the German military little planning had been done for housing and feeding the prisoners During the invasion of France in 1940 1 9 million prisoners of war were housed and fed historian Alex J Kay cites this as evidence that supply and logistics cannot explain the mass death of Soviet prisoners of war Historians like Alexander B Rossino and Bob Moore also suggested that German disregard for the Geneva Convention and resulting atrocities against POWs developed incrementally from the Polish campaign of 1939 reaching their apogeum in the USSR a few years later CaptureSoviet prisoners of war by year of capture Red Army soldiers surrendering 1942 Red Army soldiers captured between Lutsk and Volodymyr Volynskyi June 1941 By mid December 1941 79 percent of prisoners captured to date more than two million had been apprehended during thirteen major battles battles where large Soviet forces were surrounded three or four Soviet soldiers were captured for each one killed The number of Soviet soldiers captured fell dramatically after the Battle of Moscow in late 1941 The ratio of prisoners to killed also fell but remained higher than the German side Military factors such as poor leadership lack of arms and ammunition and being overwhelmed by the German advance were the most important factors causing the mass surrender of Red Army soldiers Opposition to the Soviet government was another important factor in surrenders and defections which far exceeded the defection rate of other belligerents Historian Mark Edele estimates that at least hundreds of thousands possibly more than a million Soviet soldiers defected during the war Soviet soldiers were usually captured in encirclements by Axis front line troops who took them to a collection point From there the prisoners were sent to transit camps When many of the transit camps were shut down beginning in 1942 prisoners were sent directly from the collection point to a permanent camp Sometimes the prisoners were stripped of their winter clothing by their captors for their own use as temperatures dropped late in 1941 Wounded and sick Red Army soldiers usually received no medical care Summary executions Especially in 1941 German soldiers often refused to take prisoners on the Eastern Front and shot Soviet soldiers who tried to surrender sometimes in large groups of hundreds or thousands The German military did not record deaths that occurred prior to prisoners arriving at the collection points These murders were not ordered by the high command and some military commanders recognized their harmfulness to German interests Nevertheless efforts to discourage such killing had mixed results at best and no de verdicts against the perpetrators are known Although the Red Army shot enemy prisoners less commonly than the German Army did the shooting of prisoners by both armies contributed to a mutual escalation of violence Thousands or tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers were executed on the spot as partisans To prevent the growth of a partisan movement Red Army soldiers overtaken by the German advance without being captured were ordered by the Supreme Command of Ground Forces OKH to present themselves to the German authorities under the threat of summary execution Despite the order few soldiers turned themselves in some evaded capture and returned to their families Before the beginning of the war the OKW ordered the execution of captured Soviet commissars and suspicious civilian political functionaries More than 80 percent of front line German divisions fighting on the Eastern Front carried out this illegal order shooting an estimated 4 000 to 10 000 commissars These killings did not reduce Soviet resistance and came to be perceived as counterproductive the order was rescinded in May 1942 Although female combatants in the Soviet army defied German gender expectations the OKH ordered them to be treated as prisoners of war they could be shot on sight and few survived to reach prisoner of war camps in Germany Prisoner of war campsAn improvised camp for Soviet prisoners of war August 1942 By the end of 1941 81 camps had been established on occupied Soviet territory 28 Permanent camps were established in areas under civilian administration and areas under military administration that were planned to be turned over to civilian administration Due to the low priority attached to prisoners of war each camp commandant had autonomy limited only by the military and economic situation Although a few tried to ameliorate their conditions most did not At the end of 1944 all prisoner of war camps were placed under SS chief Heinrich Himmler s authority Although military authorities from the OKW down also distributed orders to refrain from excessive violence against prisoners of war historian David Harrisville says that these orders had little effect in practice and their main effect was to bolster a positive self image in German soldiers Death marches Soviet POWs transported on an open wagon train September 1941 Prisoners were often forced to march hundreds of kilometers on foot with no or inadequate food or water Guards frequently shot anyone who fell behind and the quantity of corpses left behind created a health hazard Sometimes Soviet prisoners were able to escape due to inadequate supervision The use of railcars for transport was often forbidden to prevent the spread of disease though open cattle wagons were used after October 1941 which resulted in the death of some 20 percent of passengers due to cold weather A figure of 200 000 to 250 000 deaths in transit is provided in Russian estimates Housing conditions Soviet prisoners of war captured near Bialystok June or July 1941 Poor housing and the cold were major factors in the mass deaths Prisoners were herded into open fenced off areas with no buildings or latrines some camps did not have running water Kitchen facilities were rudimentary and many prisoners got nothing to eat Some prisoners had to live in the open for the entire winter or in unheated rooms or in burrows they dug themselves which often collapsed In September 1941 the Germans started preparations for winter housing the building of barracks was rolled out systematically in November These preparations were inadequate The situation improved because the mass deaths made the camps less overcrowded The death toll at many prisoner of war camps was comparable to the largest Nazi concentration camps One of the largest camps was in Bobruisk where an estimated 30 000 to 40 000 Red Army soldiers died There were relatively few guards and the liberal use of firearms was encouraged by military superiors such as Hermann Reinecke Both of these factors contributed to brutality The Germans recruited prisoners mainly Ukrainians Cossacks and Caucasians as camp police and guards Regulations specified that the camps be surrounded by watchtowers and double barbed wire fences 2 5 meters 8 ft 2 in high Despite draconian penalties organized resistance groups formed at some camps and attempted mass escapes Tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war attempted to escape about half were recaptured and around 10 000 reached Switzerland If they did not commit crimes after their escape recaptured prisoners were usually returned to the prisoner of war camps otherwise they were turned over to the Gestapo and imprisoned or executed in a nearby concentration camp Hunger and mass deaths At the camps in Smolensk the headquarters of Army Group Center pictured in August 1941 300 to 600 prisoners died each day in late 1941 and early 1942 Food for prisoners was extracted from the occupied Soviet Union after the occupiers needs were met Prisoners usually received less than the official ration due to supply problems By mid August 1941 it had become clear that many prisoners would die The capture of nearly a million and a half million prisoners during the encirclements of Kiev Vyazma and Bryansk in September and October caused a sudden breakdown in makeshift logistical arrangements On 21 October 1941 OKH general quartermaster Eduard Wagner issued an order reducing daily rations for non working prisoners to 1 487 calories a starvation amount that was rarely delivered Working prisoners were also often put on starvation diets due to a lack of supplies Non working prisoners all but one million of the 2 3 million held at the time would die as Wagner acknowledged at a November 1941 meeting Following setbacks in the military campaign Hitler ordered on 31 October that labor deployment in Germany for surviving prisoners be prioritized After this order was issued death rates reached their apex the need for prisoner labor could not overcome the other priorities for food distribution The number of prisoners working declined as those deemed unfit for work or quarantined due to epidemics continued to increase Although prisoners had not received much food from the beginning death rates skyrocketed during the fall due to increased numbers the cumulative effects of starvation epidemics and falling temperatures Hundreds died daily at each camp too many to bury German policy shifted to prioritize feeding prisoners at the expense of the Soviet civilian population but in practice conditions did not significantly improve until June 1942 due to improved logistics and fewer prisoners to feed Mass deaths were repeated on a smaller scale in the winter of 1942 1943 Starving prisoners attempted to eat leaves grass bark and worms Some Soviet prisoners suffered so much from hunger that they made written requests to their guards to be shot Cannibalism was reported in several camps despite capital punishment for this offense Soviet civilians who tried to provide food were often shot In many camps those who were in better condition were separated from prisoners deemed to have no chance of survival Employment could be beneficial in securing additional food and better conditions although workers often received insufficient food and death rates exceeded 50 percent on some labor deployments Release On 7 August 1941 the OKW issued an order to release prisoners who were ethnically German Latvian Lithuanian Estonian Caucasian and Ukrainian The purpose of the release was largely to ensure that the harvest in German occupied areas was successful Red Army women were excluded from this policy Ethnic Russians the vast majority of prisoners were not considered for release and about half of the Ukrainians were freed Releases were curtailed due to epidemics and fear that they would join the partisans Some severely injured prisoners with family living nearby were released many probably died of starvation soon afterwards By January 1942 280 108 prisoners of war mostly Ukrainians had been released and the total number released was around a million by the end of the war In addition to agriculture prisoners were released so that they could join military or police collaboration About one third entered the German Army and others changed their status from prisoner to guard As the war progressed release for agricultural work decreased and military recruitment increased Selective killings Soviet prisoners of war were shot at the Flossenburg concentration camp crematorium with silencers after local residents complained about gunfire The selective killing of prisoners held by the army was enabled by its close cooperation with the SS and Soviet informers and soldiers often conducted the executions The killings targeted commissars and Jews and sometimes communists intellectuals Red Army officers and in 1941 Asian appearing prisoners about 80 percent of Turkic prisoners were killed by early 1942 German counterintelligence identified many individuals as Jews with medical examinations denunciation by fellow prisoners or a stereotypically Jewish appearance Beginning in August 1941 additional screening by the Security Police and the SS Security Service in the occupied Soviet Union led to the killing of another 38 000 prisoners With the army s cooperation Einsatzgruppen units visited the prisoner of war camps to carry out mass executions About 50 000 Jewish Red Army soldiers were killed but 5 to 25 percent escaped detection Soviet Muslims mistaken for Jews were sometimes killed From 1942 systematic killing increasingly targeted wounded and sick prisoners Those unable to work were often shot in mass executions or left to die disabled soldiers were in particular danger when the front approached Sometimes mass executions were conducted without a clear rationale For the prisoner of war camps in Germany screening was carried out by the Gestapo Those highlighted for scrutiny were interrogated for about 20 minutes often with torture If their responses were unsatisfactory they were stripped of prisoner of war status and brought to a concentration camp for execution to conceal their fate from the German public At least 33 000 prisoners were transferred to Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz Buchenwald Dachau Flossenburg Gross Rosen Mauthausen Gusen Neuengamme Sachsenhausen and Hinzert These killings dwarfed previous killings in the camp system As the war progressed increasing manpower shortages motivated the curtailment of executions After March 1944 all Soviet officers and non commissioned officers implicated in escape attempts were executed These resulted in 5000 executions including 500 officers who took part in an attempted mass escape from Mauthausen The death toll from direct executions including the shooting of wounded soldiers was probably hundreds of thousands Torture and mutilation In numerous documented instances captured Soviet soldiers were subjected to torture and mutilation including being branded with red hot irons having body parts such as eyes ears hands fingers and tongues cut out having their stomachs ripped open being torn apart after being tied to tanks and being burned or buried alive Auxiliaries in German serviceAn Armenian Legion soldier in 1943 Hitler opposed recruiting Soviet collaborators for military and police functions blaming non German recruits for defeat in World War I Nevertheless military leaders in the east disregarded his instructions and recruited such collaborators from the outset of the war Himmler recognized in July 1941 that locally recruited police would be necessary The motivations of those who joined are not well known although it is assumed that many joined to survive or improve their living conditions and others had ideological motives A large proportion of those who survived being taken prisoner in 1941 did so because they collaborated with the Germans Most had supporting roles such as drivers cooks grooms or translators others were directly engaged in fighting particularly during anti partisan warfare A minority of captured prisoners of war were reserved by each field army for forced labor in its operational area these prisoners were not registered Their treatment varied with some having living conditions similar to German soldiers and others being treated as badly as they were in the camps A smaller number joined dedicated military units with German officers staffed by Soviet ethnic minorities The first anti partisan unit formed from Soviet prisoners of war was a Cossack unit which operated from July 1941 In 1943 there were 53 battalions raised from prisoners of war and other Soviet citizens fourteen in the Turkestan Legion nine in the Armenian Legion eight each in the Azerbaijani and Georgian Legions and seven in the North Caucasian and Idel Ural Legions Members of the Azerbaijani Field Battalion 111 who were involved in the Wola massacre and other war crimes during the August 1944 Warsaw Uprising Along with those recruited by the German military others were recruited by the SS to engage in genocide The Trawniki men were recruited from prisoner of war camps largely ethnic Ukrainians and Germans they included Poles Georgians Armenians Azerbaijanis Tatars Latvians and Lithuanians They helped suppress the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising worked in the extermination camps that killed millions of Jews in German occupied Poland and carried out anti partisan operations Collaborators were essential to the German war effort and the Holocaust If recaptured by the Red Army collaborators were often shot After the German defeat at Stalingrad in early 1943 defections of collaborators back to the Soviet side increased in response Hitler ordered all Soviet military collaborators transferred to the Western Front late that year By D Day in mid 1944 these soldiers were 10 percent of the German forces occupying France Some aided the resistance in 1945 parts of the Georgian Legion rebelled Soviet prisoners of war were forced to work in construction and pioneer forces for the army air force and navy Prisoners of war were admitted into anti aircraft units after April 1943 where they could be as much as 30 percent of their strength By the end of the war 1 4 million prisoners of war out of a total of 2 4 million were serving in some kind of auxiliary military unit Forced laborForced labor engaged in by Soviet prisoners of war often violated the 1929 Geneva Convention For example the convention forbids work in war industries In the Soviet Union Soviet POWs at work in Minsk Belarus July 1941 Without the labor of Soviet prisoners of war for military infrastructure in the German rear areas building roads bridges airfields and train depots and converting the Soviet wider gauge railway to the German standard the German offensive would soon have failed In September 1941 Hermann Goring ordered the use of prisoners of war for mine clearing and construction of infrastructure to free up construction battalions Many prisoners ran away because of poor conditions in the camps limiting forced labor assignments Others died particularly deadly assignments included road building projects especially in eastern Galicia fortification building on the Eastern Front and mining in the Donets basin authorized by Hitler in July 1942 About 48 000 were assigned to this task but most never began their labor assignments and the remainder perished from the conditions or had escaped by March 1943 Transfer to Nazi concentration camps Naked Soviet prisoners of war in Mauthausen concentration camp to which at least 15 000 were deported In September 1941 Himmler began advocating for the transfer of 100 000 then 200 000 Soviet prisoners of war for forced labor in Nazi concentration camps under the control of the SS the camps previously held 80 000 people By October segregated areas designated for prisoners of war had been established at Neuengamme Buchenwald Flossenburg Gross Rosen Sachsenhausen Dachau and Mauthausen by clearing prisoners from existing barracks or building new ones Most of the incoming prisoners were planned to be imprisoned in two new camps established in German occupied Poland Majdanek and Auschwitz II Birkenau as part of Himmler s colonization plans Despite the intention to exploit their labor most of the 25 000 or 30 000 who arrived in late 1941 were in poor condition and incapable of work Kept in worse conditions and provided less food than other prisoners they had a higher mortality rate 80 percent were dead by February 1942 The SS killed politically suspect sick and weak prisoners individually and carried out mass executions in response to infectious disease outbreaks Experimental execution techniques were tested on prisoners of war gas vans at Sachsenhausen and Zyklon B in gas chambers at Auschwitz So many died at Auschwitz that its crematoria were overloaded the SS began tattooing prisoner numbers in November 1941 to keep track of which prisoners had died Contrary to Himmler s assumption more Soviet prisoners of war did not replace those who died As the capture of Red Army soldiers dropped off Hitler decided at the end of October 1941 to deploy the remaining prisoners in the German war economy In addition to those sent for labor in late 1941 others were recaptured after escapes or arrested for offenses such as relationships with German women insubordination refusal to work and suspected resistance activities or sabotage or were expelled from collaborationist military units Red Army women were often pressured to renounce their prisoner of war status to be transferred to civilian forced labor programs Some refused and were sent to concentration camps About 1 000 were imprisoned at Ravensbruck and others at Auschwitz Majdanek and Mauthausen Those imprisoned in concentration camps for an infraction lost their prisoner of war status in violation of the Geneva Convention Officers were over represented among the more than 100 000 men and an unknown number of women who were transferred to Nazi concentration camps Deportation elsewhere Soviet prisoner of war barracks in Saltdal Municipality Norway after liberation In July and August 1941 200 000 Soviet prisoners of war were deported to Germany to fill the labor demands of agriculture and industry The deportees faced conditions similar to those in the occupied Soviet Union Hitler halted the transports in mid August but changed his mind on 31 October along with the prisoners of war a larger number of Soviet civilians were sent The camps in Germany had an internal police force of non Russian prisoners who were often violent towards Russians Soviet Germans often staffed the camp administration and were interpreters Both groups received more rations and preferential treatment Guarding the prisoners was the responsibility of the army s de Many Nazi leaders wanted to avoid contact between Germans and prisoners of war limiting work assignments for prisoners Labor assignments differed in accordance with the local economy Many worked for private employers in agriculture and industry and others were rented to local authorities for such tasks as building roads and canals quarrying and cutting peat Employers paid RM0 54 per day per man for agricultural work and RM0 80 for other work many also provided prisoners with extra food to achieve productivity Workers received RM0 20 per day in de By early 1942 to combat the fact that many prisoners were too malnourished to work some surviving prisoners were granted increased rations although significant improvement was politically impossible because supply shortages necessitated a reduction in rations to German citizens Prisoners remained vulnerable to malnutrition and disease The number of prisoners working in Germany continued to increase from 455 000 in September 1942 to 652 000 in May 1944 By the end of the war at least 1 3 million Soviet prisoners of war had been deported to Germany or its annexed territories Of these 400 000 did not survive most of the deaths occurred in the winter of 1941 1942 Others were deported to other locations including Norway and the Channel Islands Public perceptionSS head Heinrich Himmler inspects a prison camp in Minsk 15 August 1941 According to Security Service reports many Germans worried about food shortages and wanted Soviet prisoners to be killed or given minimal food for this reason Nazi propaganda portrayed Soviet prisoners of war as murderers and photographs of cannibalism in prisoner of war camps were seen as proof of Russian subhumanity Although many Germans claimed ignorance of the Holocaust after the war many Germans were aware of the large number of Soviet prisoners of war who died before most German Jews had been deported Soviet propaganda began integrating the atrocities against Soviet prisoners of war as early as July 1941 Information about the Commissar Order described as mandating the killing of all officers or prisoners captured was disseminated to Red Army soldiers Accurate information about the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war reached Red Army soldiers by various means such as escapees and other eyewitnesses and was an effective deterrent against defection although many disbelieved the official propaganda End of the warOn 8 April 1945 more than 200 Soviet prisoners of war were forced to dig their own graves and murdered in Liberated Soviet prisoners at the Hemer labor camp About 500 000 prisoners had been freed by the Red Army by February 1945 During its advance the Red Army found mass graves at former prisoner of war camps In the war s final months most of the remaining Soviet prisoners were forced on death marches similar to those of concentration camp prisoners Many were killed during these marches or died from illness after liberation They returned to a country which had lost millions of people to the war and had its infrastructure destroyed by German Army scorched earth tactics For years afterwards the Soviet population experienced food shortages Former prisoners of war were among the 451 000 or more Soviet citizens who avoided repatriation and remained in Germany or emigrated to Western countries after the war Due to its clear cut criminality the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war was mentioned in the International Military Tribunal s indictment Soviet policy intended to discourage defection held that any soldier who fell into enemy hands was a traitor Issued in August 1941 Order No 270 classified surrendering commanders and political officers deserters to be summarily executed and their families arrested Sometimes Red Army soldiers were told that the families of defectors would be shot although thousands were arrested it is unknown if any such executions were carried out As the war continued Soviet leaders realized that most of their citizens had not voluntarily collaborated In November 1944 the State Defense Committee decided that freed prisoners of war would be returned to the army those who served in German military units or the police would be handed over to the NKVD At the Yalta Conference the Western Allies agreed to repatriate Soviet citizens regardless of their wishes In an attempt to separate the minority of voluntary collaborators freed prisoners of war were sent to filtration camps hospitals and recuperation centers where most stayed for one or two months This process was not effective in separating the minority of voluntary collaborators and most defectors and collaborators escaped prosecution Trawniki men were typically sentenced to 10 to 25 years in a labor camp and military collaborators often received six year sentences in special settlements According to official statistics 57 8 percent returned home 19 1 percent were remobilized 14 5 percent were enlisted in the labor battalions of the and 6 5 percent were transferred to the NKVD According to another estimate of 1 5 million returnees by March 1946 43 percent continued their military service 22 percent were drafted into labor battalions for two years 18 percent were sent home 15 percent were sent to a forced labor camp and two percent worked for repatriation commissions Death sentences were rare On 7 July 1945 a Supreme Soviet decree pardoned all former prisoners of war who had not collaborated Another amnesty in 1955 released all remaining collaborators except those sentenced for torture or murder Former prisoners of war were not recognized as veterans and were denied veterans benefits they often faced discrimination due to the belief that they were traitors or deserters In 1995 Russia equalized the status of former prisoners of war with that of other veterans After the fall of the Eastern Bloc the German government set up the Foundation Remembrance Responsibility and Future to distribute further reparations from which Soviet prisoners of war were not eligible to make claims 134 139 They did not receive any reparations until 2015 when the German government paid a symbolic amount of 2 500 euros to the few thousand still alive Death tollMass grave of Soviet soldiers at the transit camp in Deblin Fortress German occupied Poland The German Army recorded 3 35 million Soviet prisoners captured in 1941 which exceeds the Red Army s reported missing by up to one million This discrepancy can be partly explained by the Red Army s inability to keep track of losses during a chaotic withdrawal Additionally as many as one in eight of the people registered as Soviet prisoners of war had never been members of the Red Army Some were mobilized but never reached their units others belonged to the NKVD or People s Militia were from uniformed civilian services such as the railway corps and fortification workers or were otherwise civilians Historian Viktor Zemskov says that the German figures represent a minimum value and should be adjusted upwards by 450 000 to account for prisoners who were killed before arriving in a camp Zemskov estimates around 3 9 million dead out of 6 2 million captured including 200 000 killed as military collaborators Other historians working from the German figure of 5 7 million captured have reached lower estimates s 3 3 million Christian Hartmann s 3 million and Dieter Pohl s 2 8 to 3 million A majority of the deaths about two million occurred before January 1942 The death rate of 300 000 to 500 000 each month from October 1941 to January 1942 is one of the highest death rates from mass atrocity in history equaling the peak killings of Jews between July and October 1942 By this time more Soviet prisoners of war had died than members of any other group targeted by the Nazis only the European Jews would surpass this figure An additional one million Soviet prisoners of war died after the beginning of 1942 27 percent of the total number of prisoners alive or captured after that date Most of the Soviet prisoners of war who died did so in the custody of the German Army More than two million died in the Soviet Union about 500 000 in the General Governorate Poland 400 000 in Germany and 13 000 in German occupied Norway More than 28 percent of Soviet prisoners of war died in Finnish captivity and 15 to 30 percent of Axis prisoners died in Soviet custody despite the Soviet government s attempt to reduce the death rate Throughout the war Soviet prisoners of war had a far higher mortality rate than Polish or Soviet civilian forced laborers whose rate was under 10 percent While the Germans committed atrocities against other Allied POWs the total number of the deaths of prisoners of war from the Soviet Union greatly exceeded deaths of prisoners from other nationalities With regards to the mortality rate it is estimated at forty three to as high as sixty three percent The second highest mortality rate of prisoners in German captivity was that of Italian military internees six to seven percent while in the entire war another high mortality rate was that of twenty seven percent The death rate of German soldiers held by Soviet Union has also been high it has been estimated at 15 by Mark Edele and at 35 8 by Niall Ferguson 375 Legacy and historiographyMonument to Soviet prisoners of war in Salaspils Latvia Hartmann calls the treatment of Soviet prisoners one of the greatest crimes in military history Thousands of books have been published about the Holocaust but in 2016 there were no books in English about the fate of Soviet prisoners of war The issue was also mostly ignored by Soviet historiography until the last years of the USSR Few prisoner accounts were published perpetrators were not tried for their crimes and little scholarly research has been attempted The German historian Christian Streit published the first major study of their fate in 1978 and the Soviet archives became available in 1990 Prisoners who remained in the occupied Soviet Union usually were not registered under their names so their fates will never be known Although the treatment of prisoners of war was remembered by Soviet citizens as one of the worst aspects of the occupation Soviet commemoration of the war focused on antifascism and those killed in combat Contemporary Soviet leaders including Stalin considered Soviet soldiers who surrendered to be traitors and Simon MacKenzie noted that some of those who survived German captivity to 1945 were promptly sent to the Gulag Bob Moore likewise noted that the Soviet survivors were victimized and ostracized on their return their sufferings and mortality forgotten tens of thousands judged as collaborators were executed During perestroika in 1987 and 1988 a debate erupted in the Soviet Union about whether the former prisoners of war had been traitors those arguing in the negative prevailed after the breakup of the Soviet Union Russian nationalist historiography defended the former prisoners minimizing incidents of defection and collaboration and emphasizing resistance The fate of Soviet prisoners of war was largely ignored in West and East Germany where resistance activities were a focus After the war there were some German attempts to deflect the blame for the 1941 mass deaths Some blamed the deaths on the failure of diplomacy between the Soviet Union and Germany after the invasion or on prior starvation of soldiers by the Soviet government Crimes against prisoners of war were exposed to the German public in the Wehrmacht exhibition around 2000 which challenged the still popular myth that the German military was not responsible for Nazi crimes Memorials and markers have been established at cemeteries and former camps by state or private initiatives For the 80th anniversary of World War II several German historical and memorial organizations organized a traveling exhibition NotesApproximately 13 cents in contemporary United States dollars or USD 3 today Approximately 20 cents in contemporary United States dollars or USD 4 today Approximately 5 cents in contemporary United States dollars or USD 1 today See alsoPrisoners of war in World War IIReferencesPohl 2012 p 240 Kay 2021 p 167 Hartmann 2012 p 568 Gerlach 2016 p 67 Bartov 2023 p 201 Quinkert 2021 p 173 Quinkert 2021 pp 174 175 Quinkert 2021 pp 175 176 Beorn 2018 pp 121 122 Bartov 2023 pp 201 202 Tooze 2008 pp 479 480 483 Gerlach 2016 p 68 Quinkert 2021 p 174 Quinkert 2021 p 181 Quinkert 2021 pp 181 182 Hartmann 2012 p 614 Quinkert 2021 pp 176 177 Quinkert 2021 p 190 Kay 2021 pp 167 168 Gerlach 2016 pp 221 222 Kay 2021 p 142 Quinkert 2021 p 190Kay 2021 p 146Gerlach 2016 p 226Tooze 2008 pp 481 482 Hartmann 2012 p 569 Blank amp Quinkert 2021 p 18 Gerlach 2016 p 235 Moore 2022 pp 212 213 Hartmann 2012 pp 571 572 Hartmann 2013 Prisoners of War Blank amp Quinkert 2021 p 15 Pohl 2012 p 242 Quinkert 2021 pp 172 183 Westermann 2023 pp 95 96 Quinkert 2021 pp 172 188 190 Hartmann 2012 pp 630 631 Edele 2017 p 23 Kay 2021 pp 148 153 Moore 2022 pp 240 241 Quinkert 2021 p 184 Pohl 2012 p 207 Kay 2021 pp 248 253 Moore 2022 pp 27 28 Rossino Alexander B 2003 Hitler Strikes Poland Blitzkrieg Ideology and Atrocity University Press of Kansas pp 179 185 ISBN 978 0 7006 1234 5 Edele 2017 p 35 Moore 2022 p 215 Edele 2017 pp 34 35 Pohl 2012 p 220 Edele 2017 pp 165 166 Edele 2017 p 4 Edele 2017 p 36 Edele 2017 p 31 Hartmann 2012 p 575 Pohl 2012 p 211 Overmans 2022 p 24 Hartmann 2012 p 520 Hartmann 2012 pp 527 528 Blank amp Quinkert 2021 p 27 Gerlach 2016 p 225 Pohl 2012 p 203 Moore 2022 p 204 Pohl 2012 p 202 Quinkert 2021 p 187 Edele 2017 p 52 Edele 2017 pp 50 51 Edele 2016 pp 346 347 Pohl 2012 p 206 Quinkert 2021 p 188 Hartmann 2012 p 579 Hartmann 2012 pp 522 523 578 579 Hartmann 2012 p 581 Kay 2021 p 159 Quinkert 2021 pp 180 181 Kay 2021 pp 159 160 Quinkert 2021 pp 190 192 Hartmann 2012 p 512 Hartmann 2012 pp 524 525 Pohl 2012 p 205 Kay 2021 pp 163 164 Moore 2022 pp 218 219 Hartmann 2012 pp 583 584 Pohl 2012 pp 227 228 Harrisville 2021 pp 38 40 Moore 2022 p 222 Pohl 2012 p 210 Pohl 2012 p 212 Moore 2022 p 220 Hartmann 2012 pp 584 585 Pohl 2012 p 221 Pohl 2012 p 224 Hartmann 2012 p 583 Hartmann 2012 p 582 Moore 2022 pp 255 256 Kozlova 2021 p 221 Hertner 2023 p 409 Pohl 2012 p 222 Hartmann 2012 p 588 Gerlach 2016 pp 225 226 Moore 2022 p 219 Hartmann 2012 p 590 Pohl 2012 pp 218 219 Pohl 2012 p 218 Hartmann 2012 pp 332 589 Quinkert 2021 p 191 Keller 2021 p 198 Gerlach 2016 p 226 Moore 2022 p 224 Keller 2021 p 199 Gerlach 2016 p 227 Hartmann 2012 p 591 Pohl 2012 pp 219 220 Hartmann 2012 p 592 Pohl 2012 p 229 Blank amp Quinkert 2021 p 37 Kay 2021 p 149 Blank amp Quinkert 2021 p 35 Pohl 2012 p 213 Edele 2017 p 121 Moore 2022 p 223 Pohl 2012 p 216 Pohl 2012 p 236 Cohen 2013 pp 107 108 Edele 2017 pp 121 122 Pohl 2012 pp 213 216 Kozlova 2021 pp 206 207 Pohl 2012 p 237 Moore 2022 p 226 Kozlova 2021 p 207 Gerlach 2016 p 231 Kozlova 2021 p 206 Pohl 2012 p 231 Pohl 2012 p 234 Kay 2021 p 163 Kay 2021 p 161 Gerlach 2016 p 232 Pohl 2012 pp 235 236 Blank amp Quinkert 2021 p 43 Pohl 2012 p 235 Kay 2021 p 164 Quinkert 2021 p 192 Moore 2022 pp 243 244 Kay 2021 p 166 Otto amp Keller 2019 p 13 Kozlova 2021 p 210 Moore 2022 p 253 Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol 7 fifty eighth day 347 348 354 355 382 Edele 2017 pp 125 126 Edele 2017 p 126 Moore 2022 p 260 Edele 2017 p 125 Moore 2022 p 227 Hartmann 2012 pp 575 576 Overmans 2022 p 7 Hartmann 2012 pp 577 578 Moore 2022 pp 260 261 263 Moore 2022 p 261 Edele 2017 pp 133 134 Edele 2017 pp 134 135 Edele 2017 p 137 Edele 2017 p 131 Moore 2022 p 263 Overmans 2022 pp 11 13 15 Moore 2022 p 245 Moore 2022 p 242 Hartmann 2012 p 616 Hartmann 2012 pp 616 617 Gerlach 2016 p 202 Gerlach 2016 p 212 Pohl 2012 pp 213 214 Wachsmann 2015 p 278 Wachsmann 2015 p 280 Wachsmann 2015 pp 278 279 Moore 2022 p 229 Otto amp Keller 2019 p 12 Gerlach 2016 p 230 Moore 2022 p 230 Wachsmann 2015 p 282 Wachsmann 2015 p 283 Gerlach 2016 p 223 Wachsmann 2015 p 269 Wachsmann 2015 p 284 Wachsmann 2015 p 285 Moore 2022 pp 230 231 Kozlova 2021 p 222 Kozlova 2021 pp 221 222 Kozlova 2021 p 219 Pohl 2012 p 232 Kay 2021 p 165 Keller 2021 p 204 Moore 2022 p 231 Pohl 2012 p 214 Moore 2022 pp 231 233 Gerlach 2016 p 228 Moore 2022 p 248 Moore 2022 p 232 Moore 2022 pp 244 245 Foreign Claims Settlement Commission 1968 p 655 Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis 2019 Moore 2022 p 249 Tooze 2008 p 542 Moore 2022 p 246 Moore 2022 p 243 Pohl 2012 p 215 Moore 2022 p 254 Gerlach 2016 pp 180 234 Moore 2022 p 221 Gerlach 2016 p 233 Edele 2016 p 368 Edele 2017 pp 51 52 54 Edele 2017 p 55 Blank amp Quinkert 2021 p 73 Blank amp Quinkert 2021 p 75 Pohl 2012 p 201 Blank amp Quinkert 2021 p 71 Blank amp Quinkert 2021 pp 71 75 Blank amp Quinkert 2021 pp 77 80 Edele 2017 p 144 Edele 2017 p 41 Moore 2022 pp 381 382 Edele 2017 pp 42 43 Edele 2017 p 140 Blank amp Quinkert 2021 p 85 Moore 2022 p 388 Moore 2022 pp 384 385 Edele 2017 p 141 Edele 2017 p 143 Moore 2022 p 394 Blank amp Quinkert 2021 p 79 Latyschew 2021 p 252 Meier amp Winkel 2021 p 230 Polian Pavel 2005 The Internment of Returning Soviet Prisoners of War after 1945 In Moore Bob Hately Broad Barbara International Committee for the History of the Second World War eds Prisoners of war prisoners of peace captivity homecoming and memory in World War II Oxford New York Berg ISBN 978 1 84520 724 3 Blank amp Quinkert 2021 pp 87 89 Entschadigung Compensation An Unrecht Erinnern Remembering injustice in German Archived from the original on 12 April 2024 Retrieved 5 September 2024 Moore 2022 p 214 Zemskov 2013 p 103 Zemskov 2013 p 104 Zemskov 2013 p 107 Gerlach 2016 pp 229 230 Hartmann 2012 p 789 Kay 2021 p 154 Gerlach 2016 pp 226 227 Quinkert 2021 p 172 Gerlach 2016 p 72 Kay 2021 p 153 Gerlach 2016 p 5 Kay 2021 p 294 Gerlach 2016 pp 72 125 Blank amp Quinkert 2021 p 121 Gerlach 2016 pp 236 400 Gerlach 2016 p 237 Edele 2016 p 375 Scheck Raffael July 2021 The treatment of western prisoners of war in Nazi Germany Rethinking reciprocity and asymmetry War in History 28 3 635 655 doi 10 1177 0968344520913577 ISSN 0968 3445 Gerlach 2016 pp 235 236 Edele 2016 p 376 Ferguson Niall 2004 Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat War in History 11 2 148 92 doi 10 1191 0968344504wh291oa S2CID 159610355 Moore 2022 pp 7 8 Gerlach 2016 p 224 Blank amp Quinkert 2021 p 87 MacKenzie S P September 1994 The Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War II The Journal of Modern History 66 3 487 520 doi 10 1086 244883 ISSN 0022 2801 Moore 2022 pp 7 8 15 Edele 2017 p 160 Edele 2017 pp 161 162 Moore 2022 pp 237 238 Meier amp Winkel 2021 pp 229 230 Otto amp Keller 2019 p 17 Blank amp Quinkert 2021 p 125 Blank amp Quinkert 2021 p 4 Works citedBartov Omer 2023 The Holocaust In Gellately Robert ed The Oxford History of the Third Reich Oxford University Press pp 190 216 doi 10 1093 oso 9780192886835 003 0008 ISBN 978 0 19 288683 5 Beorn Waitman Wade 2018 The Holocaust in Eastern Europe At the Epicenter of the Final Solution Bloomsbury Academic ISBN 978 1 4742 3219 7 Blank Margot Quinkert Babette 2021 Dimensionen eines Verbrechens Sowjetische Kriegsgefangene im Zweiten Weltkrieg Dimensions of a Crime Soviet Prisoners of War in World War II in German and English Metropol Verlag ISBN 978 3 86331 582 5 Quinkert Babette Captured Red Army soldiers in the context of the criminal conduct of the war against the Soviet Union In Blank amp Quinkert 2021 pp 172 193 Keller Rolf A necessary evil use of Soviet prisoners of war as labourers in the German Reich 1941 1945 In Blank amp Quinkert 2021 pp 194 205 Kozlova Daria Soviet prisoners of war in the concentration camps In Blank amp Quinkert 2021 pp 206 223 Meier Esther Winkel Heike Unpleasant memories Soviet prisoners of war in collective memory in Germany and the Soviet Union Russia In Blank amp Quinkert 2021 pp 224 239 Latyschew Artem History of oblivion recognition and study of former prisoners of war in the USSR and Russia In Blank amp Quinkert 2021 pp 240 257 Cohen Laurie R 2013 Smolensk Under the Nazis Everyday Life in Occupied Russia Boydell amp Brewer ISBN 978 1 58046 469 7 Consumer Price Index 1800 Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Archived from the original on 29 August 2024 Retrieved 29 November 2019 Edele Mark 2016 Take No Prisoners The Red Army and German POWs 1941 1943 The Journal of Modern History 88 2 342 379 doi 10 1086 686155 hdl 11343 238858 JSTOR 26547940 Edele Mark 2017 Stalin s Defectors How Red Army Soldiers became Hitler s Collaborators 1941 1945 Vol 1 Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 oso 9780198798156 001 0001 ISBN 978 0 19 251914 6 Foreign Claims Settlement Commission 1968 Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the United States Decisions and Annotations U S Government Printing Office OCLC 1041397012 Gerlach Christian 2016 The Extermination of the European Jews Cambridge University Press doi 10 1017 CBO9781139034180 ISBN 978 0 521 70689 6 Harrisville David A 2021 The Virtuous Wehrmacht Crafting the Myth of the German Soldier on the Eastern Front 1941 1944 Cornell University Press doi 10 7591 cornell 9781501760044 001 0001 ISBN 978 1 5017 6005 1 JSTOR 10 7591 j ctv1ffpcrj Hartmann Christian 2012 Wehrmacht im Ostkrieg Front und militarisches Hinterland 1941 42 Wehrmacht on the eastern front front and rear areas 1941 42 in German Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag ISBN 978 3 486 70226 2 Hartmann Christian 2013 Operation Barbarossa Nazi Germany s War in the East 1941 1945 Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 966078 0 Hertner Christoph 2023 Kriegsgefangenschaft und Internierung Das Schicksal sowjetischer Militarpersonen in deutschen schweizerischen osterreichischen und sowjetischen Quellen 1941 1946 Workshop der Forschungsstelle Diplomatische Dokumente der Schweiz der Professur fur Neueste Allgemeine und Osteuropaische Geschichte der Universitat Bern und des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Moskau in Bern 24 Marz 2023 War captivity and internment the fate of Soviet military personnel in German Swiss Austrian and Soviet sources 1941 1946 workshop of the Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland the Professorship for Modern General and East European History at the University of Bern and the German Historical Institute Moscow Bern 24 March 2023 Militargeschichtliche Zeitschrift 82 2 405 413 doi 10 1515 mgzs 2023 0063 Kay Alex J 2006 Exploitation Resettlement Mass Murder Political and Economic Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union 1940 1941 Vol 10 Berghahn Books doi 10 3167 9781845451868 ISBN 978 1 84545 186 8 JSTOR j ctt9qd88d Kay Alex J 2021 Empire of Destruction A History of Nazi Mass Killing Yale University Press doi 10 2307 j ctv1z9n1qs ISBN 978 0 300 26253 7 JSTOR j ctv1z9n1qs Moore Bob 2022 Prisoners of War Europe 1939 1956 Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 oso 9780198840398 001 0001 ISBN 978 0 19 257680 4 Overmans Rudiger 2022 Wehrmacht Prisoner of War Camps Introduction The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933 1945 Volume IV Camps and Other Detention Facilities Under the German Armed Forces Indiana University Press pp 1 37 doi 10 2307 j ctv22fqbjk 8 ISBN 978 0 253 06091 4 JSTOR j ctv22fqbjk 8 Otto Reinhard Keller Rolf 2019 Sowjetische Kriegsgefangene im System der Konzentrationslager Soviet prisoners of war in the concentration camp system PDF in German New Academic Press ISBN 978 3 7003 2170 5 Archived PDF from the original on 24 February 2024 Pohl Dieter 2012 Die Herrschaft der Wehrmacht Deutsche Militarbesatzung und einheimische Bevolkerung in der Sowjetunion 1941 1944 The rule of the Wehrmacht German military occupation and the local population in the Soviet Union 1941 1944 in German Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag ISBN 978 3 486 70739 7 Tooze Adam 2008 The Wages of Destruction The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy Penguin Publishing Group ISBN 978 1 101 56495 0 Wachsmann Nikolaus 2015 KL A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps Macmillan ISBN 978 0 374 11825 9 Westermann Edward 2023 The Hell of the Soviet Prisoner of War Camps PDF Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 72 Fall 2023 91 98 ISSN 1048 9134 Archived PDF from the original on 18 July 2024 Zemskov Viktor 2013 K voprosu ob obshchey chislennosti sovetskikh voyennoplennykh i masshtabakh ikh smertnosti 1941 1945 gg K voprosu ob obshej chislennosti sovetskih voennoplennyh i masshtabah ih smertnosti 1941 1945 gg On the issue of the total number of Soviet prisoners of war and the scale of their mortality 1941 1945 Russian History in Russian 93 47 103 112 ISSN 0869 5687 Archived from the original on 26 March 2024 Further readingKeller Rolf in German 2011 Sowjetische Kriegsgefangene im Deutschen Reich 1941 42 Behandlung und Arbeitseinsatz zwischen Vernichtungspolitik und Kriegswirtschaftlichen Zwangen Soviet prisoners of war in Nazi Germany 1941 1942 treatment and work deployment between extermination policy and the war economy s constraints Wallstein ISBN 978 3 8353 0989 0