German atrocities committed against Soviet prisoners of war information
Overview of Nazi Germany's maltreatment of Soviet prisoners of war
German atrocities against Soviet prisoners of war
Part of World War II
Distribution of food in a POW camp near Vinnytsia, Ukraine (July 1941)
Location
Germany and German-occupied Eastern Europe
Date
1941–1945
Target
Captured Red Army soldiers
Attack type
Starvation, death marches, executions, forced labor
Deaths
2.8[1] to 3.3 million[2]
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 that were captured, around three million died during their imprisonment.
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 the execution of captured Soviet commissars. Although Germany largely upheld its obligations under the Geneva Convention with prisoners of war of other nationalities, military planners decided to breach it with the Soviet prisoners. By the end of 1941, millions of Soviet soldiers had been captured, mostly in large-scale encirclement operations during the German Army's rapid advance. Two-thirds of them died from starvation, exposure, and disease by early 1942—ranking as one of the highest death rates from mass atrocity in history.
Soviet Jews, political commissars, and sometimes officers, communists, intellectuals, Asians, and female combatants were systematically targeted for execution. A larger number of prisoners were shot for being wounded, ill, or unable to keep up with forced marches. Over a million were deported to Germany for forced labor, where they died in large numbers in 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 as well as to the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.
The deaths among Soviet prisoners of war were numerically exceeded only by the (civilian) Jews and has been called "one of the greatest crimes in military history".[3] Nevertheless, their fate is much less well studied. Although the Soviet Union announced the death penalty for surrender early in the war, most former prisoners were reintegrated into Soviet society. The majority of 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.
^Pohl 2012, p. 240.
^Kay 2021, p. 167.
^Hartmann 2012, p. 568.
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