Warning: photographic materials attached to article +18. BUT I STRONGLY ASK YOU TO SEE THESE PHOTOS
The article was written in 2011 for the website The Russian Battlefield. All about the Great Patriotic War
the remaining 6 parts of the article http://www.battlefield.ru/article.html

During the times of the Soviet Union, the topic of Soviet prisoners of war was under an unspoken ban. At most, it was admitted that a certain number of Soviet soldiers were captured. But there were practically no specific figures; only the most vague and incomprehensible general figures were given. And only almost half a century after the end of the Great Patriotic War we started talking about the scale of the tragedy of Soviet prisoners of war. It was difficult to explain how the victorious Red Army under the leadership of the CPSU and the brilliant leader of all time during 1941-1945 managed to lose about 5 million military personnel only as prisoners. And after all, two-thirds of these people died in German captivity; only a little more than 1.8 million former prisoners of war returned to the USSR. Under the Stalinist regime, these people were "pariahs" Great War. They were not stigmatized, but any questionnaire contained a question about whether the person being surveyed was in captivity. Captivity is a tarnished reputation; in the USSR it was easier for a coward to arrange his life than for a former warrior who honestly paid his debt to his country. Some (though not many) returnees from German captivity re-served in the camps of their “native” Gulag only because they could not prove their innocence. Under Khrushchev it became a little easier for them, but the disgusting phrase “was in captivity” in all kinds of questionnaires ruined more than one thousand destinies. Finally, during the Brezhnev era, prisoners were simply bashfully kept silent. The fact of being in German captivity in the biography of a Soviet citizen became an indelible shame for him, attracting suspicions of betrayal and espionage. This explains the paucity of Russian-language sources on the issue of Soviet prisoners of war.
Soviet prisoners of war undergo sanitary treatment

Column of Soviet prisoners of war. Autumn 1941.

Himmler inspects a camp for Soviet prisoners of war near Minsk. 1941

In the West, any attempt to talk about German war crimes on the Eastern Front was regarded as a propaganda technique. The lost war against the USSR smoothly flowed into its “cold” stage against the eastern “evil empire”. And if the leadership of the Federal Republic of Germany officially recognized the genocide of the Jewish people, and even “repented” for it, then nothing similar happened regarding the mass extermination of Soviet prisoners of war and civilians in the occupied territories. Even in modern Germany, there is a strong tendency to blame everything on the head of the “possessed” Hitler, the Nazi elite and the SS apparatus, as well as in every possible way to whitewash the “glorious and heroic” Wehrmacht,” ordinary soldiers who honestly fulfilled their duty" (I wonder which one?). Quite often in the memoirs of German soldiers, as soon as the question comes about crimes, the author immediately declares that the ordinary soldiers were all cool guys, and all the abominations were committed by the "animals" from the SS and the Sonderkommandos. Although almost all former Soviet soldiers say that the vile attitude towards them began from the very first seconds of captivity, when they were not yet in the hands of the “Nazis” from the SS, but in the noble and friendly embrace of the “wonderful guys” from ordinary combat troops units that “had nothing to do with the SS.”
Distribution of food in one of the transit camps.


Column of Soviet prisoners. Summer 1941, Kharkov region.


Prisoners of war at work. Winter 1941/42

Only from the mid-70s of the 20th century did attitudes towards the conduct of military operations on the territory of the USSR begin to slowly change; in particular, German researchers began studying the fate of Soviet prisoners of war in the Reich. The work of Heidelberg University professor Christian Streit played a big role here. "They are not our comrades. The Wehrmacht and Soviet prisoners of war in 1941-1945.", which refuted many Western myths regarding the conduct of military operations in the East. Streit worked on his book for 16 years, and it is currently the most complete study about the fate of Soviet prisoners of war in Nazi Germany.

Ideological guidelines for the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war came from the very top of the Nazi leadership. Long before the start of the campaign in the East, Hitler, at a meeting on March 30, 1941, stated:

"We must abandon the concept of soldier's comradeship. The communist has never been and will never be a comrade. We are talking about a struggle for destruction. If we do not look at it this way, then, although we defeat the enemy, in 30 years the communist danger will arise again... "(Halder F. "War Diary". T.2. M., 1969. P.430).

“Political commissars are the basis of Bolshevism in the Red Army, bearers of an ideology hostile to National Socialism, and cannot be recognized as soldiers. Therefore, after being captured, they must be shot.”

Hitler stated about his attitude towards civilians:

“We are obliged to exterminate the population - this is part of our mission to protect the German nation. I have the right to destroy millions of people of the lower race who multiply like worms.”

Soviet prisoners of war from the Vyazemsky cauldron. Autumn 1941


For sanitary treatment before shipping to Germany.

Prisoners of war in front of the bridge over the San River. June 23, 1941. According to statistics, NONE of these people will survive until the spring of 1942

The ideology of National Socialism, coupled with racial theories, led to inhumane treatment of Soviet prisoners of war. For example, of the 1,547,000 French prisoners of war, only about 40,000 died in German captivity (2.6%), the mortality rate of Soviet prisoners of war according to the most conservative estimates amounted to 55%. For the fall of 1941, the “normal” mortality rate of captured Soviet military personnel was 0.3% per day, that is, about 10% per month! In October-November 1941, the mortality rate of our compatriots in German captivity reached 2% per day, and in some camps up to 4.3% per day. The mortality rate of Soviet military personnel captured during the same period in the camps of the General Government (Poland) was 4000-4600 people per day. By April 15, 1942, of the 361,612 prisoners transferred to Poland in the fall of 1941, only 44,235 people remained alive. 7,559 prisoners escaped, 292,560 died, and another 17,256 were “transferred to the SD” (i.e., shot). Thus, the mortality rate of Soviet prisoners of war in just 6-7 months reached 85.7%!

Finished off Soviet prisoners from a marching column on the streets of Kyiv. 1941

Unfortunately, the size of the article does not allow for any sufficient coverage of this issue. My goal is to familiarize the reader with the numbers. Believe me: THEY ARE TERRIFYING! But we must know about this, we must remember: millions of our compatriots were deliberately and mercilessly destroyed. Finished off, wounded on the battlefield, shot at the stages, starved to death, died from disease and overwork, they were purposefully destroyed by the fathers and grandfathers of those who live in Germany today. Question: what can such “parents” teach their children?

Soviet prisoners of war shot by the Germans during the retreat.


Unknown Soviet prisoner of war 1941.

German documents on attitude towards Soviet prisoners of war

Let's start with the background that is not directly related to the Great Patriotic War: during the 40 months of the First World War, Russian imperial army lost 3,638,271 people captured and missing. Of these, 1,434,477 people were held in German captivity. The mortality rate among Russian prisoners was 5.4%, and was not much higher than the natural mortality rate in Russia at that time. Moreover, the mortality rate among prisoners of other armies in German captivity was 3.5%, which was also a low figure. In those same years, there were 1,961,333 enemy prisoners of war in Russia, the mortality rate among them was 4.6%, which practically corresponded to the natural mortality rate on Russian territory.

Everything changed after 23 years. For example, the rules for the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war prescribed:

"... the Bolshevik soldier has lost all right to claim to be treated as an honest soldier in accordance with the Geneva Agreement. It is therefore entirely consistent with the point of view and the dignity of the German armed forces that every German soldier should draw a sharp line between himself and Soviet prisoners of war. "The treatment must be cold, although correct. All sympathy, much less support, must be avoided in the strictest manner. The sense of pride and superiority of the German soldier assigned to guard Soviet prisoners of war must at all times be noticeable to those around him."

Soviet prisoners of war were practically not fed. Take a closer look at this scene.

A mass grave of Soviet prisoners of war discovered by investigators of the Extraordinary State Commission of the USSR


Driver

In Western historiography, until the mid-70s of the 20th century, there was a quite widespread version that Hitler’s “criminal” orders were imposed on the opposition-minded Wehrmacht command and were almost not carried out “on the ground.” This "fairy tale" was born during the Nuremberg trials (action of the defense). However, an analysis of the situation shows that, for example, the Order on Commissars was implemented in the troops very consistently. The “selection” of the SS Einsatzkommandos included not only all Jewish military personnel and political workers of the Red Army, but in general everyone who could turn out to be a “potential enemy.” The military leadership of the Wehrmacht almost unanimously supported the Fuhrer. Hitler, in his unprecedentedly frank speech on March 30, 1941, “pressed” not on the racial reasons for the “war of annihilation,” but rather on the fight against an alien ideology, which was close in spirit to the military elite of the Wehrmacht. Halder's notes in his diary clearly indicate general support for Hitler's demands; in particular, Halder wrote that “the war in the East is significantly different from the war in the West. In the East, cruelty is justified by the interests of the future!” Immediately after Hitler's keynote speech, the headquarters of the OKH (German: OKH - Oberkommando des Heeres, High Command of the Ground Forces) and OKW (German: OKW - Oberkommando der Wermacht, High Command of the Armed Forces) began to formalize the Fuhrer's program into specific documents. The most odious and famous of them: "Directive on the establishment of an occupation regime on the territory of the Soviet Union subject to seizure"- 03/13/1941, "On military jurisdiction in the Barbarossa region and on the special powers of the troops"-05/13/1941, directives "On the behavior of troops in Russia"- 05/19/1941 and "On the treatment of political commissars", more often referred to as the “order on commissars” - 6/6/1941, order of the Wehrmacht High Command on the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war - 09/8/1941. These orders and directives were issued at different times, but their drafts were ready almost in the first week of April 1941 (except for the first and last document).

Unbroken

In almost all transit camps, our prisoners of war were kept in the open air in conditions of monstrous overcrowding


German soldiers finish off a wounded Soviet man

It cannot be said that there was no opposition to the opinion of Hitler and the high command of the German armed forces on the conduct of the war in the East. For example, on April 8, 1941, Ulrich von Hassel, together with the chief of staff of Admiral Canaris, Colonel Oster, visited Colonel General Ludwig von Beck (who was a consistent opponent of Hitler). Hassel wrote: “It is hair-raising to see what is documented in the orders (!) signed by Halder and given to the troops regarding the actions in Russia and the systematic application of military justice to the civilian population in this caricature that mocks the law. Obeying orders Hitler, Brauchitsch sacrifices the honor of the German army." That's it, no more and no less. But opposition to the decisions of the National Socialist leadership and the Wehrmacht command was passive and, until the very last moment, very sluggish.

I will definitely name the institutions and personally the “heroes” on whose orders genocide was unleashed against the civilian population of the USSR and under whose “sensitive” supervision more than 3 million Soviet prisoners of war were destroyed. This is the leader of the German people A. Hitler, Reichsführer SS Himmler, SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich, Chief of the OKW Field Marshal General Keitel, Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces, Field Marshal General f. Brauchitsch, Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces, Colonel General Halder, headquarters of the operational leadership of the Wehrmacht and its chief artillery general Yodel, head of the legal department of the Wehrmacht Leman, department "L" of the OKW and personally its chief, Major General Warlimont, group 4/Qu (head of department f. Tippelskirch), general for special assignments under the Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces, lieutenant general Muller, Chief of the Army Legal Division Latman, Quartermaster General Major General Wagner, head of the military administrative department of the ground forces f. Altenstadt. And also ALL commanders of army groups, armies, tank groups, corps and even individual divisions of the German armed forces fall into this category (in particular, the famous order of the commander of the 6th Field Army, F. Reichenau, duplicated almost unchanged for all Wehrmacht formations) falls into this category.

Reasons for the mass captivity of Soviet military personnel

The unpreparedness of the USSR for a modern highly maneuverable war (for various reasons), the tragic start of hostilities led to the fact that by mid-July 1941, out of 170 Soviet divisions located in border military districts at the beginning of the war, 28 were surrounded and did not emerge from it, 70 formations class divisions were virtually destroyed and became unfit for combat. Huge masses of Soviet troops often rolled back randomly, and German motorized formations, moving at speeds of up to 50 km per day, cut off their escape routes; the Soviet formations, units and subunits that did not have time to retreat were surrounded. Large and small “cauldrons” were formed, in which most of the military personnel were captured.

Another reason for the mass captivity of Soviet soldiers, especially in the initial period of the war, was their moral and psychological state. The existence of both defeatist sentiments among some of the Red Army soldiers and general anti-Soviet sentiments in certain strata of Soviet society (for example, among the intelligentsia) is no longer a secret.

It must be admitted that the defeatist sentiments that existed in the Red Army caused a number of Red Army soldiers and commanders to go over to the enemy’s side from the very first days of the war. Rarely, it happened that entire military units crossed the front line in an organized manner with their weapons and led by their commanders. The first precisely dated such incident took place on July 22, 1941, when two battalions went over to the enemy side 436th Infantry Regiment of the 155th Infantry Division, under the command of Major Kononov. It cannot be denied that this phenomenon persisted even at the final stage of the Great Patriotic War. Thus, in January 1945, the Germans recorded 988 Soviet defectors, in February - 422, in March - 565. It is difficult to understand what these people were hoping for, most likely just private circumstances that forced them to seek salvation of their own lives at the cost of betrayal.

Be that as it may, in 1941, prisoners accounted for 52.64% of the total losses of the Northwestern Front, 61.52% of the losses of the Western Front, 64.49% of the losses of the Southwestern Front and 60.30% of the losses of the Southern Front.

Total number of Soviet prisoners of war.
In 1941, according to German data, about 2,561,000 Soviet troops were captured in large “cauldrons”. Reports from the German command reported that 300,000 people were captured in cauldrons near Bialystok, Grodno and Minsk, 103,000 near Uman, 450,000 near Vitebsk, Mogilev, Orsha and Gomel, near Smolensk - 180,000, in the Kiev area - 665,000, near Chernigov - 100,000, in the Mariupol area - 100,000, near Bryansk and Vyazma 663,000 people. In 1942, in two more large “cauldrons” near Kerch (May 1942) - 150,000, near Kharkov (at the same time) - 240,000 people. Here we must immediately make a reservation that the German data seems to be overestimated because the stated number of prisoners often exceeds the number of armies and fronts that took part in a particular operation. The most striking example of this is the Kiev cauldron. The Germans announced the capture of 665,000 people east of the capital of Ukraine, although the total payroll At the time of the start of the Kyiv defensive operation, the Southwestern Front did not exceed 627,000 people. Moreover, about 150,000 Red Army soldiers remained outside the encirclement, and about 30,000 more managed to escape from the “cauldron.”

K. Streit, the most authoritative expert on Soviet prisoners of war in the Second World War, claims that in 1941 the Wehrmacht captured 2,465,000 soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, including: Army Group North - 84,000, Army Group "Center" - 1,413,000 and Army Group "South" - 968,000 people. And this is only in large “boilers”. In total, according to Streit, in 1941, the German armed forces captured 3.4 million Soviet troops. This represents approximately 65% ​​of the total number of Soviet prisoners of war captured between June 22, 1941 and May 9, 1945.

In any case, the number of Soviet prisoners of war captured by the Reich's armed forces before the beginning of 1942 cannot be accurately calculated. The fact is that in 1941, submitting reports to higher Wehrmacht headquarters about the number of captured Soviet soldiers was not mandatory. An order on this issue was given by the main command of the ground forces only in January 1942. But there is no doubt that the number of Red Army soldiers captured in 1941 exceeded 2.5 million people.

There is also still no exact data on the total number of Soviet prisoners of war captured by the German armed forces from June 1941 to April 1945. A. Dallin, using German data, gives a figure of 5.7 million people, a team of authors led by Colonel General G.F. Krivosheeva, in the edition of her monograph from 2010, reports about 5.059 million people (of which about 500 thousand were called up for mobilization, but captured by the enemy on the way to military units), K. Streit estimates the number of prisoners from 5.2 to 5 .7 million

Here it must be taken into account that the Germans could classify as prisoners of war such categories of Soviet citizens as: captured partisans, underground fighters, personnel of incomplete militia formations, local air defense, fighter battalions and police, as well as railway workers and paramilitary forces of civil departments. Plus, a number of civilians who were taken for forced labor in the Reich or occupied countries, as well as taken hostage, also came here. That is, the Germans tried to “isolate” as much of the USSR’s male population of military age as possible, without really hiding it. For example, in the Minsk prisoner of war camp there were about 100,000 actually captured Red Army soldiers and about 40,000 civilians, and this is practically the entire male population of Minsk. The Germans followed this practice in the future. Here is an excerpt from the order of the command of the 2nd Tank Army dated May 11, 1943:

“When occupying individual settlements, it is necessary to immediately and suddenly capture existing men aged 15 to 65 years, if they can be considered capable of bearing arms, and send them under guard by rail to transit camp 142 in Bryansk. Captured, capable of bearing arms , to announce that they will henceforth be considered prisoners of war, and that at the slightest attempt to escape they will be shot.”

Taking this into account, the number of Soviet prisoners of war captured by the Germans in 1941-1945. ranges from 5.05 to 5.2 million people, including about 0.5 million people who were not formally military personnel.

Prisoners from the Vyazma cauldron.


Execution of Soviet prisoners of war who tried to escape

THE ESCAPE


It is also necessary to mention the fact that a number of Soviet prisoners of war were released from captivity by the Germans. Thus, by July 1941, a large number of prisoners of war had accumulated in assembly points and transit camps in the OKH area of ​​responsibility, for whose maintenance there were no funds at all. In this regard, the German command took an unprecedented step - by order of the Quartermaster General dated July 25, 1941 No. 11/4590, Soviet prisoners of war of a number of nationalities (ethnic Germans, Balts, Ukrainians, and then Belarusians) were released. However, by order of OKB dated November 13, 1941 No. 3900, this practice was stopped. A total of 318,770 people were released during this period, of which 292,702 people were released in the OKH zone and 26,068 people in the OKV zone. Among them are 277,761 Ukrainians. Subsequently, only persons who joined volunteer security and other formations, as well as the police, were released. From January 1942 to May 1, 1944, the Germans released 823,230 Soviet prisoners of war, of which 535,523 people were in the OKH zone and 287,707 people were in the OKV zone. I want to emphasize that we do not have the moral right to condemn these people, because in the overwhelming majority of cases it was for a Soviet prisoner of war the only way to survive. Another thing is that most of the Soviet prisoners of war deliberately refused any cooperation with the enemy, which in those conditions was actually tantamount to suicide.



Finishing off an exhausted prisoner


Soviet wounded - the first minutes of captivity. Most likely they will be finished off.

On September 30, 1941, an order was given to the commandants of the camps in the east to keep files on prisoners of war. But this had to be done after the end of the campaign on the Eastern Front. It was especially emphasized that the central information department should be provided only with information on those prisoners who, “after selection” by the Einsatzkommandos (Sonderkommandos), “finally remain in the camps or in the corresponding jobs.” It directly follows from this that the documents of the central information department do not contain data on previously destroyed prisoners of war during redeployment and filtration. Apparently, this is why there are almost no complete documents on Soviet prisoners of war in the Reichskommissariats "Ostland" (Baltic) and "Ukraine", where a significant number of prisoners were kept in the fall of 1941.
Mass execution of Soviet prisoners of war in the Kharkov area. 1942


Crimea 1942. A ditch with the bodies of prisoners shot by the Germans.

Paired photo to this one. Soviet prisoners of war are digging their own grave.

The reporting of the OKW Prisoner of War Department to the International Committee of the Red Cross covered only the OKW subordinate camp system. The committee began to receive information about Soviet prisoners of war only in February 1942, when a decision was made to use their labor in the German military industry.

System of camps for holding Soviet prisoners of war.

All matters related to the detention of foreign prisoners of war in the Reich were handled by the Wehrmacht prisoners of war department as part of the general administration of the armed forces, led by General Hermann Reinecke. The department was headed by Colonel Breuer (1939-1941), General Grewenitz (1942-1944), General Westhoff (1944), and SS-Obergruppenführer Berger (1944-1945). In each military district (and later in the occupied territories), transferred under civilian control, there was a “commander of prisoners of war” (commandant for prisoners of war affairs of the corresponding district).

The Germans created a very wide network of camps for holding prisoners of war and “ostarbeiters” (citizens of the USSR forcibly driven into slavery). Prisoner of war camps were divided into five categories:
1. Collection points (camps),
2. Transit camps (Dulag, Dulag),
3. Permanent camps (Stalag, Stalag) and their variety for the command staff of the Red Army (Oflag),
4. Main work camps,
5. Small work camps.
Camp near Petrozavodsk


Our prisoners were transported under such conditions in the winter of 1941/42. Mortality during the transfer stages reached 50%

HUNGER

Collection points were located in close proximity to the front line, where the final disarmament of prisoners took place, and primary accounting documents were compiled. Transit camps were located near major railway junctions. After “sorting” (precisely in quotes), the prisoners were usually sent to camps with a permanent location. The Stalags varied in number and simultaneously housed a large number of prisoners of war. For example, in “Stalag -126” (Smolensk) in April 1942 there were 20,000 people, in “Stalag - 350” (outskirts of Riga) at the end of 1941 - 40,000 people. Each "stalag" was the base for a network of main work camps subordinate to it. The main work camps had the name of the corresponding Stalag with the addition of a letter; they contained several thousand people. Small work camps were subordinate to the main work camps or directly to the stalags. They were most often named after the name of the locality in which they were located and after the name of the main work camp; they housed from several dozen to several hundred prisoners of war.

In total, this German-style system included about 22,000 large and small camps. They simultaneously held more than 2 million Soviet prisoners of war. The camps were located both on the territory of the Reich and on the territory of the occupied countries.

In the front line and in the army rear, the prisoners were managed by the corresponding OKH services. On the territory of the OKH, only transit camps were usually located, and the stalags were already in the OKW department - that is, within the boundaries of the military districts on the territory of the Reich, the General Government and the Reich Commissariats. As the German army advanced, the dulags turned into permanent camps (oflags and stalags).

In the OKH, prisoners were dealt with by the service of the Army Quartermaster General. Several local commandant's offices were subordinate to her, each of which had several dulags. The camps in the OKW system were subordinate to the prisoner of war department of the corresponding military district.
Soviet prisoner of war tortured by the Finns

This senior lieutenant had a star cut out on his forehead before his death.


Sources:
Funds of the Federal Archive of Germany - Military Archive. Freiburg. (Bundesarchivs/Militararchiv (BA/MA)
OKW:
Documents from the Wehrmacht propaganda department RW 4/v. 253;257;298.
Particularly important cases according to the Barbarossa plan of the L IV department of the Wehrmacht operational leadership headquarters RW 4/v. 575; 577; 578.
Documents of GA "North" (OKW/Nord) OKW/32.
Documents from the Wehrmacht Information Bureau RW 6/v. 220;222.
Documents of the Prisoners of War Affairs Department (OKW/AWA/Kgf.) RW 5/v. 242, RW 6/v. 12; 270,271,272,273,274; 276,277,278,279;450,451,452,453. Documents of the Department of Military Economics and Armaments (OKW/WiRuArnt) Wi/IF 5/530;5.624;5.1189;5.1213;5.1767;2717;5.3 064; 5.3190;5.3434;5.3560;5.3561;5.3562.
OKH:
Documents of the Chief of Armaments of the Ground Forces and the Commander of the Reserve Army (OKH/ChHRu u. BdE) H1/441. Documents of the Department of Foreign Armies "East" of the General Staff of the Ground Forces (OKH/GenStdH/Abt. Fremde Heere Ost) P3/304;512;728;729.
Documents of the head of the archive of the ground forces N/40/54.

A. Dallin "German rule in Russia 1941-1945. Analysis of occupation policy." M. From the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1957.
"SS in action." Documents about crimes. M. IIL 1960
S. Datner “Crimes of the Nazi Wehrmacht against prisoners of war in World War II” M. IIL 1963
"Criminal goals - criminal means." Documents on the occupation policy of Nazi Germany on the territory of the USSR. M. "Politizdat" 1968
"Top secret. For command only." Documents and materials. M. "Science" 1967
N. Alekseev "Responsibility of Nazi criminals" M. " International relationships" 1968
N. Muller "The Wehrmacht and the occupation, 1941-1944. On the role of the Wehrmacht and its governing bodies in the implementation of the occupation regime on Soviet territory" M. Military Publishing House 1974
K. Streit "Do not consider them soldiers. The Wehrmacht and Soviet prisoners of war 1941-1945." M. "Progress" 1979
V. Galitsky. "The problem of prisoners of war and the attitude of the Soviet state towards it." "State and Law" No. 4, 1990
M. Semiryaga "The Prison Empire of Nazism and Its Collapse" M. "Legal Literature" 1991
V. Gurkin "On human losses on the Soviet-German front in 1941-1945." NiNI No. 3 1992
"The Nuremberg Trials. Crimes against humanity." Collection of materials in 8 volumes. M. "Legal literature" 1991-1997.
M. Erin "Soviet prisoners of war in Germany during the Second World War" "Questions of History" No. 11-12, 1995
K. Streit "Soviet prisoners of war in Germany/Russia and Germany during the years of war and peace (1941-1995)." M. "Gaia" 1995
P. Polyan "Victims of two dictatorships. Life, work, humiliation and death of Soviet prisoners of war and ostarbeiters in a foreign land and at home." M. "ROSSPEN" 2002
M. Erin "Soviet prisoners of war in Nazi Germany 1941-1945. Research problems." Yaroslavl. YarSU 2005
"War of Extermination in the East. Crimes of the Wehrmacht in the USSR. 1941-1944. Reports" edited by G. Gortsik and K. Stang. M. "Airo-XX" 2005
V. Vette "The Image of the Enemy: Racist Elements in German Propaganda against the Soviet Union." M. "Yauza", EKSMO 2005
K. Streit "They are not our comrades. The Wehrmacht and Soviet prisoners of war in 1941-1945." M. "Russian Panorama" 2009
"The Great Patriotic War without the classification of secrecy. The book of losses." A team of authors led by G.F. Krivosheeva M. Evening 2010

The exact number of Soviet prisoners of war during the Great Patriotic War is still unknown. Four to six million people. What did captured Soviet soldiers and officers have to go through in Nazi camps?

The numbers speak

The question of the number of Soviet prisoners of war during the Second World War is still debatable. In German historiography this figure reaches 6 million people, although the German command spoke of 5 million 270 thousand.
However, one should take into account the fact that, violating the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the German authorities included among the prisoners of war not only soldiers and officers of the Red Army, but also party employees, partisans, underground fighters, as well as the entire male population from 16 to 55 years old, retreating along with Soviet troops.

According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the losses of prisoners in the Second World War amounted to 4 million 559 thousand people, and the commission of the Ministry of Defense chaired by M. A. Gareev announced approximately 4 million.
The difficulty of counting is largely due to the fact that Soviet prisoners of war did not receive registration numbers until 1943.

It is precisely established that 1,836,562 people returned from German captivity. Their further fate is as follows: 1 million were sent for further military service, 600 thousand - to work in industry, more than 200 thousand - to NKVD camps, as having compromised themselves in captivity.

Early years

The largest number of Soviet prisoners of war occurred in the first two years of the war. In particular, after the unsuccessful Kyiv defensive operation in September 1941, about 665 thousand soldiers and officers of the Red Army were captured by Germans, and after the failure of the Kharkov operation in May 1942, more than 240 thousand Red Army soldiers fell into German hands.
First of all, the German authorities carried out filtration: commissars, communists and Jews were immediately liquidated, and the rest were transferred to special camps that were hastily created. Most of them were on the territory of Ukraine - about 180. Only in the notorious Bohuniya camp (Zhytomyr region) there were up to 100 thousand Soviet soldiers.

The prisoners had to make grueling forced marches - 50-60 km a day. The journey often lasted for a whole week. There was no provision for food on the march, so the soldiers were content with pasture: everything was eaten - ears of wheat, berries, acorns, mushrooms, foliage, bark and even grass.
The instructions ordered the guards to destroy all those who were exhausted. During the movement of a 5,000-strong column of prisoners of war in the Luhansk region, along a 45-kilometer stretch of route, the guards killed 150 people with a “shot of mercy.”

As Ukrainian historian Grigory Golysh notes, about 1.8 million Soviet prisoners of war died on the territory of Ukraine, which is approximately 45% of total number casualties among USSR prisoners of war.

Soviet prisoners of war were subjected to much harsher conditions than soldiers from other countries. Germany cited the formal basis for this as the fact that the Soviet Union did not sign the Hague Convention of 1907 and did not accede to the Geneva Convention of 1929.

In reality, the German authorities were implementing a directive from the High Command, according to which communists and commissars were not recognized as soldiers, and no international legal protection was extended to them. Since the beginning of the war, this applied to all prisoners of war of the Red Army.

Discrimination against Soviet prisoners of war was evident in everything. For example, unlike other prisoners, they often did not receive winter clothing and were involved exclusively in the most difficult work. Also, the activities of the International Red Cross did not extend to Soviet prisoners.

In camps intended exclusively for prisoners of war, conditions were even more horrific. Only a small part of the prisoners were housed in relatively suitable premises, while the majority, due to incredible crowding, could not only lie down, but also stand. And some were completely deprived of a roof over their heads.

In the camp for Soviet prisoners of war - “Umanskaya Yama”, prisoners were under open air, where there was no way to hide from the heat, wind or rain. The “Uman pit” essentially turned into a huge mass grave. “The dead lay for a long time next to the living. Nobody paid attention to the corpses anymore, there were so many of them,” the surviving prisoners recalled.

Diet

One of the orders of the director of the German concern IG Farbenindastry noted that “increasing the productivity of prisoners of war can be achieved by reducing the rate of food distribution.” This directly applied to Soviet prisoners.

However, in order to maintain the working capacity of prisoners of war, it was necessary to charge an additional food allowance. For a week it looked like this: 50 gr. cod, 100 gr. artificial honey and up to 3.5 kg. potatoes. However, additional nutrition could only be received for 6 weeks.

The usual diet of prisoners of war can be seen in the example of Stalag No. 2 in Hammerstein. Prisoners received 200 grams per day. bread, ersatz coffee and vegetable soup. The nutritional value of the diet did not exceed 1000 calories. In the zone of Army Group Center, the daily bread quota for prisoners of war was even less - 100 grams.

For comparison, let’s name the food supply standards for German prisoners of war in the USSR. They received 600 grams per day. bread, 500 gr. potatoes, 93 gr. meat and 80 gr. croup
What they fed Soviet prisoners of war bore little resemblance to food. Ersatz bread, which in Germany was called “Russian”, had the following composition: 50% rye bran, 20% beets, 20% cellulose, 10% straw. However, the “hot lunch” looked even less edible: in fact, it was a scoop of stinking liquid from poorly washed horse offal, and this “food” was prepared in cauldrons in which asphalt was previously boiled.
Idle prisoners of war were deprived of such food, and therefore their chances of survival were reduced to zero.

Job

By the end of 1941, a colossal need for labor was revealed in Germany, mainly in the military industry, and they decided to fill the deficit primarily with Soviet prisoners of war. This situation saved many Soviet soldiers and officers from the mass extermination planned by the Nazi authorities.
According to the German historian G. Mommsen, “with appropriate nutrition” the productivity of Soviet prisoners of war was 80%, and in other cases 100% of the labor productivity of German workers. In the mining and metallurgical industry this figure was lower – 70%.

Mommsen noted that Soviet prisoners constituted “an important and profitable labor force,” even cheaper than concentration camp prisoners. The income to the state treasury received as a result of the labor of Soviet workers amounted to hundreds of millions of marks. According to another German historian, W. Herbert, a total of 631,559 USSR prisoners of war were employed in work in Germany.
Soviet prisoners of war often had to learn a new specialty: they became electricians, mechanics, mechanics, turners, and tractor drivers. Remuneration was piecework and included a bonus system. But, isolated from workers in other countries, Soviet prisoners of war worked 12 hours a day.

Resistance

Unlike other prisoners of concentration camps, for example, Jews, there was no unified and massive Resistance movement among Soviet prisoners of war. Researchers cite many reasons to explain this phenomenon: the effective work of the security service and the constant hunger experienced by the Soviet military. It is also noted as an important factor that Stalin called all Soviet prisoners “traitors,” and Nazi propaganda did not fail to take advantage of this.

However, since 1943, pockets of protest among Soviet prisoners of war began to arise more and more often. Thus, in Stalag Zeithain, the central figure around whom the Resistance was organized became Soviet writer Stepan Zlobin. With his comrades, he began publishing the newspaper “The Truth about Prisoners.” Gradually, Zlobin’s group grew to 21 people.
A larger-scale Resistance among Soviet prisoners of war, according to historians, began in 1944, when there was confidence in the inevitable death of the Nazi regime. But even then, not everyone wanted to risk their lives, hoping for a quick release.

Mortality

According to German historians, until February 1942, up to 6,000 Soviet soldiers and officers were killed daily in prisoner of war camps. This was often done by gassing entire barracks. In Poland alone, according to local authorities, 883,485 Soviet prisoners of war are buried.

It has now been established that the Soviet military were the first on whom toxic substances were tested in concentration camps. Later, this method was widely used to exterminate Jews.
Many Soviet prisoners of war died from disease. In October 1941, a typhus epidemic broke out in one of the branches of the Mauthausen-Gusen camp complex, where Soviet soldiers were kept, killing about 6,500 people over the winter. However, without waiting fatal outcome, many of them were exterminated by the camp authorities with gas right in the barracks.
The mortality rate among wounded prisoners was high. Medical care was provided to Soviet prisoners extremely rarely. No one cared about them: they were killed both during the marches and in the camps. The wounded's diet rarely exceeded 1,000 calories per day, let alone the quality of the food. They were doomed to death.

On the side of Germany

Among the Soviet prisoners there were often those who joined the ranks of the armed combat formations of the German army. According to some sources, their number was 250 thousand people during the entire war. First of all, such formations carried out security, guard and stage-barrier service. But there were cases of their use in punitive operations against partisans and civilians.
The head of German military intelligence, Walter Schellenberg, recalled how thousands of Russians were selected in prisoner-of-war camps and, after training, were parachuted deep into Russian territory. Their main task was “transmission of current information, political disintegration of the population and sabotage.”

Return

Those few soldiers who survived the horrors of German captivity faced a difficult test in their homeland. They had to prove that they were not traitors.

By special directive of Stalin at the end of 1941, special filtration and testing camps were created in which former prisoners of war were placed.
More than 100 such camps were created in the deployment zone of six fronts - four Ukrainian and two Belarusian. By July 1944, almost 400 thousand prisoners of war had undergone “special checks”. The vast majority of them were transferred to the district military registration and enlistment offices, about 20 thousand became personnel for the defense industry, 12 thousand joined the assault battalions, and more than 11 thousand were arrested and convicted.

There is no such thing as a war without prisoners. This truth is confirmed by centuries of history. For any warrior, captivity is shame, sorrow and hope. In the 20th century humanity has survived two global wars. During World War II, captivity became the most severe physical, psychological and moral test for millions of Soviet prisoners of war, costing most their lives.

IN national historiography The issues of captivity for a long time were not studied and covered on a wide spectrum. Even based on this, the historiography of the problem of Soviet prisoners of war during the Great Patriotic War can be divided into two main stages.

The first - 1941-1945. characterized by relative closedness. During the war, only individual problems of Soviet prisoners of war were covered on the pages of the press. These include the extremely difficult conditions of their detention, the cruel treatment of them by German soldiers, and the Wehrmacht’s failure to comply with international obligations in accordance with the Hague (1907) and Geneva (1929) conventions. The domestic and foreign press published official statements and notes of the Soviet government addressed to all states with which the USSR had diplomatic relations, and to the leadership of Nazi Germany. However, in these materials we do not find recommendations or demands for the world community or the governments of the anti-Hitler coalition to protect the rights of Soviet prisoners of war. There is no information about what the Soviet military-political leadership did to alleviate the fate of Soviet citizens languishing in fascist dungeons.

IN post-war period, until 1949, they tried not to talk about Soviet prisoners of war on the pages of the press. Only in the early 1950s were studies conducted by Soviet lawyers A.B. Amelina, A.I. Poltoraka, P.S. Romashkin, who examined the categories of international military law from a legal point of view, in particular such concepts as armed forces, combatants, crimes against the laws and customs of war.

The second stage - 1956-2003. began with the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On eliminating the consequences of gross violations of the law in relation to former prisoners of war and members of their families” dated June 29, 1956 and the 20th Congress of the CPSU. At this time, scientific research was carried out by N.M. Lemeshchuk, V.D. Petrov, K.M. Petukhov, A.I. Poltorak, V.F. Romanovsky and others, where the issues of captivity are considered in one form or another. The problem of Soviet prisoners of war is significantly reflected in a number of collections of materials from the Nuremberg trials.

Characteristic of the second stage is the appearance of historical, documentary, artistic works, and monographs. These include the works of N.S. Alekseeva, V.I. Bondartsa, E.A. Brodsky, V.P. Galitsky, S.A. Golubkina, M.P. Devyatova, E.A. Dolmatovsky, I.G. Lupala, G.Ya. Puzerenko, P.S. Romashkina, M.I. Semiryaga and others. In the 1990s, many publications were published on the issue of military cooperation between Soviet citizens, including prisoners of war, and the Nazis. A. Kolesnik, N. Ramanichev, L. Reshin, M. Semiryaga, B. Sokolov, F. Titov and others wrote about this. A number of studies have appeared on the repatriation of former Soviet prisoners of war. These include materials prepared by V.N. Zemskov, P.M. Polyak, A.A. Shevyakov, Yu.N. Arzamaskin and others.

It should be noted that much earlier, foreign historians began to study the problem of Soviet prisoners of war. Among them are E. Andreeva, N. Bettle, A. Werth, D. Gerns, A. Dallin, S. Datner, N. Tolstoy, S. Fröhlich, I. Hoffman, W. Shirer and others.

In general, the problem under consideration is very extensive and awaits detailed research. Deepening knowledge on this issue is the task of restoring historical justice in relation to millions of compatriots who suffered a terrible fate.

With the outbreak of hostilities on the Soviet-German front, huge masses of soldiers and commanders of the Red Army were surrounded for various reasons. After fierce battles, many of them died, small groups returned to their own, some became partisans, but many of them, due to wounds, illness, lack of ammunition, fuel and provisions, were captured by the enemy. Not many surrendered voluntarily. In his study, the German historian K. Streit, citing numerous documents from the headquarters of army groups, provides data on the number of Soviet prisoners of war captured by German troops in 1941-1942. in various areas of combat operations: Bialystok-Minsk - 323 thousand, Uman - 103 thousand, Smolensk-Roslavl - 348 thousand, Gomel - 50 thousand, lake. Ilmen -18 thousand, Velikiye Luki - 30 thousand, Estonia -11 thousand, Demyansk - 35 thousand, Kiev - 665 thousand, Luga-Leningrad - 20 thousand, Melitopol-Berdyansk - 100 thousand, Vyazma-Bryansk - 662 thousand, Kerch - 100 thousand. In total, by November 16, 1941, their number reached 2.5 million people. For six and a half months of the war - from June 22, 1941 to January 10, 1942 - according to a summary of reports from German headquarters, it amounted to 3.9 million, among them 15.2 thousand officers, or 0.4%. At the Nuremberg trial of the main Nazi war criminals, the Soviet side presented a document from the office of A. Rosenberg, which stated this figure - 3.9 million Soviet prisoners of war, of which 1.1 million remained in the camps by the beginning of 1942. Mostly Soviet soldiers were captured in 1941-1942, but it also happened later: according to the Commission under the President of the Russian Federation for the rehabilitation of victims of political repression in 1943 - 487 thousand, in 1944 - 203 thousand, in 1945 - 40.6 thousand people.

Data on the total number of Soviet prisoners of war, their mortality in the front-line zone and camps are contradictory and raise doubts among many researchers about their reliability. For example, on the pages of a number of publications you can find the following information about the number of Red Army soldiers in German captivity: 4.0-4.59 million, 5.2-5.7 million, 6.0-6.2 million. The spread of figures is explained by the lack of a unified approach to the calculation methodology and the use of archival documents.

For the most part, foreign researchers are inclined to the figure of 5.7 million. The basis for them is documents from the headquarters of the German troops. One could agree with them, but there are known facts when the German command classified male civilians (of military age) as prisoners of war.

Official domestic sources give a figure of 4.559 million people, but it does not include partisans, underground fighters, persons belonging to paramilitary formations of the People's Commissariats of Railways, Communications, Sea and River Transport, civil aviation, defense construction departments of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the NKVD of the USSR, personnel of the People's Commissariat militia, fighter squads and self-defense battalions of cities and regions, as well as the wounded who were in hospitals and captured by the enemy. In addition, we must not forget the fact that personnel records in the Red Army in the first years of the war were unsatisfactorily established; information was received by the General Staff extremely irregularly.

Sometimes researchers in their calculations use a certificate from the department for prisoners of war of the Wehrmacht High Command (OKB). This document in itself is interesting, but requires additional clarification and comparison with other sources (see Table 1). In our opinion, information published in the foreign and domestic press on the number of Soviet prisoners of war cannot be fundamentally final and needs further clarification.

The question of the mortality of the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army who were in German captivity remains confusing. Here are just some data: German sources give a figure of 3.3 million dead (58% of all prisoners); The Extraordinary State Commission under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR gives a different figure - 3.9 million people, but this number does not include those who died in Poland - 808 thousand and Germany - 340 thousand and several tens of thousands in other countries, which in total is over 5 million dead Soviet prisoners of war. There is no complete answer to this question in the review volume of the All-Russian Book of Memory, which presents the results of the efforts of many search teams dealing with this issue. For comparison, we note that out of 232 thousand British and American prisoners of war taken by the Germans in 1941-1942, 8348 people (3.5%) died before the end of the war.

A comparison of various documents allows us to conclude that there were at least 5 million Soviet prisoners of war, of whom over 3 million died.

Unfortunately, there is no consensus not only on the number of Soviet prisoners of war in Germany, but also on the number of foreign prisoners of war in the USSR. Thus, the total number of prisoners taken by the Red Army in 1941-1945, according to the report of the Chief of the General Staff, Army General A.I. Antonov to the government of the USSR, amounted to 3777.85 thousand, and taking into account those taken prisoner by surrender (1284 thousand) - 5061.85 thousand. But in the camps of the Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees of the NKVD, only 3486.85 thousand prisoners of war were taken into account, taken at the Western Theater. The deficit - 1575 thousand people - includes those liberated directly at the fronts, according to various sources, from 615.1 to 680 thousand and from 895 to 960 thousand who did not reach the camps - those who died during the evacuation stages (according to other sources, there were 753 thousand .). The statistical study “Classified as Classified...” provides the number of foreign prisoners of war for various periods of the war, and in total for 1941-1945. it amounted to 3,777,290 people (see Table 2).

According to German data, 3.2 million German soldiers, officers and generals were captured by the Soviets, of which 1,185 thousand (37.5%) died in captivity (according to Soviet sources, of the 2,389,560 people captured, more than 450 thousand died, of these, over 93 thousand are in transit camps and almost 357 thousand in camps of the Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees of the NKVD (GUPVI).

The variety of numerical characteristics of both Soviet and German prisoners of war indicates how difficult the problem of captivity is to study.

Numerous archival documents give every reason to believe that the tragedy of Soviet prisoners of war was predetermined long before the invasion of German troops into the territory of the Soviet Union. Attitudes towards them were determined by Nazi ideology, according to which they were “in highest degree dangerous and treacherous and have completely lost the right to be treated as worthy soldiers,” therefore measures against them must be “ruthless.” As the deputy chief of the operational leadership of the Wehrmacht High Command, General W. Warlimont, noted in his testimony after the war, on March 30, 1941, Hitler stated at a meeting of senior German officials that “he will take special measures against political workers and commissars of the Red Army, as if they were unusual prisoners of war. They will need to be transferred to special SS and SD groups that will follow the German army. Russia was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention (1929), and he had received information regarding Russian intentions to treat German prisoners, especially SS and police officers, in a manner that was far from normal. He does not at all expect his officers to understand his instructions; the only thing required of them is unquestioning obedience.” This requirement was developed in special directives, which recommended that political commissars, when captured, be immediately destroyed using weapons. As for all the other Soviet prisoners of war, each of them, according to the deputy chief of German military intelligence and counterintelligence (Abwehr) E. Lockhausen, “should have been considered a Bolshevik, and therefore he was looked at as a non-human.”

At first, captured soldiers and commanders of the Red Army were supposed to be recruited “only for the immediate needs of troops.” But this was contrary to international law, which prohibited their use in work related to military operations. Their food ration was much lower than required for basic survival. There were no instructions regarding the treatment of wounded and sick Soviet military personnel. True, one of the “commandments” (sixth) for German soldiers stipulated that “the Red Cross is inviolable. Enemy wounded must be treated humanely." At the same time, in some companies, a day or two before the invasion of German troops into the territory of the Soviet Union, the commanders gave orders: “wounded Red Army soldiers should not be bandaged, because the German army has no time to bother with the wounded.”

When starting the war against the USSR, the political and military leadership of the Third Reich viewed Soviet prisoners of war not only as people of an “inferior race”, but also as potential enemies of Germany who did not necessarily need to be treated in accordance with the requirements of international humanitarian law. And this decision was elevated to the rank of state policy.

Unlike Germany, foreign prisoners of war were treated differently in the USSR. The decisions taken by the Soviet military-political leadership largely coincided with the requirements of international humanitarian law. Not a single order, directive or verbal order called upon the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army to treat German prisoners of war mercilessly. At the same time, the ferocity of the fighting often caused a response from Soviet soldiers. However, the command suppressed all attempts to reprisal prisoners of war.

On the eve of the war and in the first days of its outbreak, the regime of military captivity in the Soviet Union was regulated primarily by the “Regulations on Prisoners of War”, instructions “On the work of the NKVD points for receiving prisoners of war” and “On the military protection of prisoner of war camps by units of the NKVD escort troops of the USSR”, adopted in 1939 Despite the heavy defeats of the Red Army and the forced retreat, when German prisoners numbered only in the hundreds, the Soviet military-political leadership still found time to address the problem of prisoners of war. On July 1, 1941, the Council of People's Commissars introduced a new “Regulation on Prisoners of War,” which guaranteed their life and safety, normal food and medical care. They retained the right to wear military uniforms, insignia, awards, personal belongings and valuables. The procedure for using prisoners was established. They were subject to regulations on labor protection, working hours and other legislative acts that applied to Soviet citizens performing the same tasks. Criminal and administrative liability of prisoners of war was provided for.

In development of the “Regulations on Prisoners of War,” the Council of People's Commissars, the State Defense Committee, the leadership of the Red Army, the NKVD and other departments during the war adopted hundreds of documents regulating the regime of military captivity. These primarily include the instruction “On the procedure for keeping and recording prisoners of war in NKVD camps” dated August 7, 1941, “Regulations on NKVD distribution camps for prisoners of war” and the temporary “Regulations on NKVD points for receiving prisoners of war” dated June 5 1942 In connection with the massive influx of prisoners of war, an order was issued by the People's Commissar of Defense “On streamlining the work of evacuating prisoners of war from the front” dated January 2, 1943. In addition, Art. 29 “Regulations on military crimes” and the requirements of the Field Manual of the Red Army. They outlined the responsibilities of officials for working with foreign prisoners of war and the responsibility of Soviet military personnel for their mistreatment (punishment - imprisonment without strict isolation for up to three years).

In a statement dated April 27, 1942, the Soviet government, condemning Germany’s cruel policy towards Soviet prisoners of war, assured the world community that it did not intend “even in these circumstances to take retaliatory measures against German prisoners of war.” It should be noted that Special attention The Soviet leadership paid attention to the issues of their nutrition, medical care and everyday life. Thus, according to the telegram of the General Staff of the Red Army dated June 26, 1941 and the instructions of the Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees of the NKVD dated June 29, 1941, the following nutritional standards were established for them: rye bread - 600 g, various cereals - 90 g, meat - 40 g, fish and herring - 120 g, potatoes and vegetables - 600 g, sugar - 20 g per day per person. True, this ration contained only about 2000 calories, which was clearly not enough, especially for people doing physical work. In this regard, the food standards for prisoners of war were revised several times in the direction of increasing rations (resolutions of the Council of NGOs of the USSR dated June 30 and August 6, 1941, November 24, 1942 and the State Defense Committee dated April 5, 1943 and October 14, 1944 .). Beginning in 1943, nutritional standards were provided for generals, officers, those hospitalized, those suffering from dystrophy, and those engaged in heavy physical labor. However, it cannot be denied that due to economic difficulties in the country and the massive influx of prisoners, they did not always receive the established norms.

Often, Soviet soldiers shared this with prisoners; what they had. This is how the former commander of the 21st Army, Colonel General I.M., describes in his book “Serving the Fatherland”. Chistyakov about the attitude of Soviet military personnel towards prisoners of war captured at Stalingrad:

“We had more than twenty thousand prisoners. When we were preparing the operation, we counted on five thousand. We built a camp based on this number and prepared food. And when so many prisoners arrived, in five or six days all the food supplies were eaten. For several days we had to take food from the army reserve. How many times these days have I observed such pictures: our soldier takes out a pouch to light a cigarette and immediately offers it to the prisoner. Or bread. There is half a pound, he will break off half and give it back... The wounded who were captured were immediately given health care. Near Gumrak we occupied territory where there were many German hospitals with wounded German soldiers and officers. I, like other commanders, immediately ordered the necessary amount of medicines and food to be allocated for these hospitals, and our medical personnel to be sent.”

Indeed, in the USSR, considerable attention was paid to the medical and sanitary provision of prisoners. For example, in the “Regulations on Prisoners of War” dated July 1, 1941, it was determined that “prisoners of war are treated in medical and sanitary terms on the same basis as military personnel of the Red Army.” The Field Manual of the Red Army stated that “wounded and sick prisoners of war in need of medical care and hospitalization should be immediately sent by the unit command to the nearest hospital.” More details about the medical and sanitary provision of prisoners of war in the rear were discussed in the NKVD orders of January 2, March 6 and 16, October 6, 1943 and March 22, 1944. All these orders are permeated with care for the wounded and sick prisoners of war. There is evidence that during the period from October 1944 to July 1945 alone, 335,698 prisoners passed through front-line hospitals and were provided with qualified medical care.

At the same time, the situation cannot be idealized. The life of foreign prisoners of war in Soviet camps was far from easy: there were also unfavorable living conditions, hard work, and many continued to be here for a long time after the war. In general, we can conclude that in the conditions in which the country was located, it was impossible to do more than what was done for foreign prisoners of war in the USSR.

table 2
Number of foreign prisoners of war captured by the Red Army on the Soviet-German front from June 22, 1941 to May 8, 1945.

As for the fate of the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army captured by the enemy, it developed differently. A German soldier, without bearing any legal responsibility, could have shot each of them in a state of anger, for the sake of entertainment, and unwillingness to be escorted to the assembly point. Numerous studies confirm that unjustified killings of unarmed, surrendered soldiers took place not only in the first hours and days of the war, but also later. German generals and officers had ambivalent attitudes towards this. Some initiated atrocities, others remained silent, and only a few called for humanity.

The first days, weeks and months of captivity were difficult and, for many servicemen, fatal. They were initially sent to divisional collection points, from where they were sent to “dulags” (transit camps), where they were filtered based on nationality, profession, and degree of loyalty. Then privates and junior commanders were sent to "stalags", and officers to special camps - "oflags". Prisoners of war could be transferred from Stalags and Oflags to concentration and work camps. During the period of the greatest number of prisoners of war, there were about 2,670 prisoner of war camps in the territory of the Reichskommissariats Ostland, Ukraine, the Polish General Government, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Norway, Finland and Romania. Later, work teams from prisoners were scattered throughout almost all of occupied Europe.

The evacuation of Soviet prisoners of war was difficult, especially in the first and last years of the war. Since equipment for evacuating prisoners was rarely used, the main form of movement was on foot in columns. March evacuation was organized along special routes, usually far from populated areas, off-road and in open areas. Their length reached from several tens to several hundred kilometers. Transitions lasted up to 4 weeks. The daily march was sometimes up to 40 km, and the columns contained wounded, sick and exhausted prisoners. These marches were often called “death marches.”

From archival documents, periodicals and eyewitness accounts, it is known that during the evacuation there was arbitrariness, mockery, which turned into atrocity. One of the eyewitnesses of the Crimean tragedy (1942) spoke fully and clearly on this matter: “The ground was watered with blood and strewn with the corpses of those who died and were killed along the route of the columns of prisoners of war.”

Transport of prisoners of war to the rear was carried out by rail on open platforms and in closed freight cars. They, like cattle, were herded into a carriage of 80-100 people (with a capacity of 40-50). The carriages were not equipped with bunks, stoves, drinking water tanks, washbasins or latrines. Along the way, as a rule, they were fed very rarely; more often than not, people remained hungry for 3 to 5 days. In the summer, the prisoners suffocated from the heat and lack of oxygen, and in the winter they froze from the cold. The trains that arrived at the destination station contained dozens and hundreds of dead, and at the station. Bridge (Latvia) in one train, which was followed by 1,500 Soviet prisoners of war, it was discovered that not a single one was alive in its carriages. In a number of cases, the German command used trains with prisoners of war as “human shields” to cover especially important cargo.

Changes in improving the transportation of prisoners of war occurred only after the publication of the OKB order of December 8, 1941 and the “Instructions on the evacuation of newly arriving prisoners of war.” These two documents were largely declarative in nature. However, prisoners began to be saved for use in work.

On final stage During the war, during the evacuation of prisoners of war into the depths of Germany, many of them died due to cruel treatment. According to the Polish historian S. Datner, the total figure of “loss during transportation” is approximately 200-250 thousand Soviet prisoners of war.

Having covered hundreds and sometimes thousands of kilometers, the survivors arrived at permanent prisoner of war camps, where new trials awaited them. Life here largely depended on the actions of the guards. It was mainly carried by Wehrmacht soldiers, although sometimes proven “in practice” volunteers from the peoples of the Soviet Union were involved. In the concentration camps, SS troops were responsible for security. When prisoners of war were used for various jobs outside the camp, as a rule, one guard was allocated for every 10 people. In practice, the guards were guided by regulations, orders, directives (in the form of memos and instructions) of the German command. These documents stated that the Bolshevik soldier had lost the right to be treated as a true soldier; at the slightest sign of disobedience, in case of active and passive resistance, force should be used; when prisoners of war attack guards, crowds gather, if they persist, if they refuse to carry out orders, commands and work to overcome resistance, after using the butt and bayonet to no avail, open fire. Often the guards, not understanding what was happening among the prisoners of war, fired from automatic weapons, threw grenades into the crowd of people, and sometimes, for the sake of entertainment, killed them without reason.

The prisoner of war camps created by the Germans did not comply with established international conventions and norms. In the first year of the war, prisoners were most often located in the field and fenced with wire. Sometimes they were placed in stockyards, warehouses, farms, stadiums, broken down barracks and churches. In cold weather, in some camps they spent the night in holes dug in the ground. And only with the increased need in Germany for labor since 1942, the situation of the survivors improved somewhat, they began to be transferred to unheated barracks with bunks, and the food ration was increased to 2540 calories.

Numerous archival documents and testimonies indicate that hundreds of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war were subjected to the most terrible test - hunger. German Colonel Marshall, who inspected the “dulags” of Army Group Center, admitted in his reports that the prisoners’ diet was abnormal - 150 g of bread and 50 g of dry millet per day per person. This diet had a maximum of 200 to 700 calories, which was less than half the vital requirement. The situation was similar in the camps of other army groups. The famine that broke out in late 1941 and early 1942 in German prisoner-of-war camps forced people to eat grass, dry leaves, tree bark, carrion, and resort to humiliation, betrayal, and even cannibalism.

Particularly difficult conditions developed in the camps of Smolensk, Kaunas, as well as those located in close proximity to Biała Podlaska, Bobruisk, Ivan Gorod, Kielce, Ostrow Mazowiecki and other settlements. In only one camp in Ostrow Mazowiecki in the fall of 1941, the mortality rate of prisoners of war reached up to 1000 people per day. Based on these German documents, from the beginning of the war until the summer of 1942, about 6 thousand Soviet prisoners of war died every day. On December 14, 1941, the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories A. Rosenberg reported to Hitler that in the camps in Ukraine “up to 2,500 prisoners die every day as a result of exhaustion.”

There was no organized medical support for wounded soldiers and commanders of the Red Army captured by German troops. As a rule, assistance was received by those who could be used in the future in Germany. For example, the seriously wounded captured commander of the 19th Army, Lieutenant General M.F. Lukin, in the hope of cooperation with the German authorities, had his right leg amputated above the knee. But not everyone did this. Archival documents and memoirs of former prisoners of war provide numerous facts of wounded soldiers being killed, burned, tortured, stars cut out on their bodies, gassed, drowned in the sea, and grenades thrown at the premises where the unfortunates were located.

Over time, the German authorities created infirmary camps. However, the wounded prisoners of war did not receive proper medical care there. Patients with festering wounds lay for days without dressings on bare, ice-crusted ground, concrete, dirty bunks or straw. Soviet doctors brought in by the Germans helped the martyrs in every possible way. But in most hospitals there were no medicines, dressings, necessary tool. Military doctor 3rd rank A.P. Rosenberg from the medical battalion of the 177th Infantry Division testified that Soviet doctors performed amputations of the limbs of wounded prisoners of war with a chisel, hammer and hacksaw. After such operations, many developed blood poisoning and died. And only in the last years of the war in a number of camps, especially on the territory of the Reich, medical care was provided more efficiently.

An objective assessment of the conditions of detention of Soviet prisoners of war in the first year of the war was given by the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories A. Rosenberg in his letter to the Chief of Staff of the OKB, Field Marshal W. Keitel dated February 28, 1942. Here are some fragments of this letter:

“The fate of Soviet prisoners of war in Germany was a tragedy of enormous proportions. Of the 3.6 million prisoners of war, only a few hundred thousand are currently fully functional. Most of them died from hunger or cold. Thousands died from typhus. It goes without saying that supplying such a mass of prisoners of war with food encounters great difficulties. Nevertheless, with a clear understanding of the goals pursued by German policy, the death of people on the described scale could have been avoided... in many cases, when prisoners of war could not march due to hunger and exhaustion, they were shot in front of the horrified civilian population, and their corpses remained abandoned. In numerous camps, no care was taken at all to build premises for prisoners of war. In the rain and snow they were in the open air. One could hear reasoning: “The more prisoners die, the better for us.”

One would not suspect the Imperial Minister of sympathy for Soviet prisoners of war. But he made an interesting admission.

Captivity is the worst thing that could happen in the life of a military man. Captivity is bondage: wire, restrictions and deprivations. In extremely difficult physical and psychological conditions for humans, even very strong characters. Unfortunately, we know very little about how Soviet prisoners of war behaved under these conditions, since for many years only official assessments of historical events and people’s actions were recognized. From the point of view of state ideology, they were assessed either positively or negatively.

Once captured, people found themselves in unusual situations. Everyday life conditions (hunger, bullying, mass executions, mountains of corpses). And their views and behavior could change. Therefore, there can be no adequate assessment of the behavior of prisoners. It depended on the human psyche, surrounding circumstances, as well as the legal framework that determined the position of the prisoners.

From the stories of people who went through fascist camps, from numerous sources it is known that captivity for many soldiers and commanders turned out to be a terrible ordeal. It should be recognized that not every person could calmly endure hunger, cold, bullying and the death of comrades. After what they saw and experienced, people were subjected to psychological stress. Thus, Academician I.N. Burdenko, who saw the released prisoners, described them as follows:

“The pictures that I saw are beyond all imagination. The joy at the sight of the liberated people was darkened by the numbness on their faces. This circumstance made me think - what’s the matter? Obviously, the suffering experienced equated life and death. I observed these people for three days, bandaged them, evacuated them - the psychological stupor did not change. Something similar was on the faces of the doctors in the first days.”

And it is not surprising that some of the prisoners, unable to withstand the tests, went to certain death, to suicide. For example, as follows from the testimony of the commandant of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, SS Colonel Kaindl, and the commander of the SS security battalion Wegner, who had been in captivity since July 1941, the son of I.V. Stalin's senior lieutenant Yakov Dzhugashvili at the end of 1943 could not bear the psychological stress that had developed around him and threw himself at a high-voltage wire fence, as a result of which he died.

The difficult conditions of camp life, strict isolation from the outside world, and active propaganda work among prisoners of war significantly influenced the suppression of the spirit and dignity of people, causing a feeling of hopelessness. Many, as a result of what they saw and experienced, succumbing to enemy propaganda, human emotions, various promises and threats, broke down and took the path of cooperation with the enemy, thereby saving their lives, but at the same time moving into the category of traitors to the Motherland. These include generals I.A. Blagoveshchensky, A.A. Vlasova, D.E. Zakutny, V.F. Malyshkina, M.B. Salikhova, B.S. Richter, F.I. Trukhin, brigade commissar G.N. Zhilenkova. The ranks of traitors included not only some generals of the Red Army, but also a number of officers and privates. A significant number of prisoners of war adapted to camp life and took a wait-and-see attitude.

At the same time, there were also those in the camp who had strong nerves and enormous willpower. It was around them that like-minded people grouped. They escaped, sabotaged production and committed sabotage, provided assistance to those in need, believed in Victory and the opportunity to survive. Among them are generals Kh.N. Alaverdov, A.S. Zotov, D.M. Karbyshev, P.G. Makarov, I.S. Nikitin, S.Ya. Ogurtsov, M.A. Romanov, N.M. Starostin, S.A. Tkachenko, I.M. Shepetov, officers K.A. Kartsev, N.F. Küng, Ivanov, Shamshiev, V. Bukreev, I. Kondakov, A.N. Pirogov and many others.

Thus, heroism and honesty, cowardice and betrayal were sometimes very close, in the same camp, on the same bunks, and sometimes in the same person.

The defeat of German troops near Moscow, huge losses at the front, and Germany's great need for soldiers and labor pushed its military-political leadership to radically change its attitude towards Soviet prisoners of war. After much hesitation, Hitler allowed their use on the territory of the Reich. From that time on, the food of the prisoners was improved, and they were given bonuses in food and money for conscientious work. Carrying out the instructions of the Fuhrer, the General Commissioner for the Four-Year Plan, Reichsmarschall G. Goering, specified the procedure for treating the Russians and their labor use, and various services by the end of 1941 prepared a number of relevant documents. From this time on, “the fair treatment of prisoners of war and their use as labor” was recognized as a “highest principle.” The process of destroying the “undesirables” was stopped; their lives were extended, but only for a short time. They were sent to work that required great physical strength. After several months of intensive exploitation, many prisoners could not stand it and died from exhaustion. The provision on the elimination of infectious patients and disabled people as unnecessary consumers remained in force.

The use of Soviet prisoners of war in the coal industry, construction, railways, military industry and agriculture. It is reliably known that in Germany they worked in various sectors of the economy: in 1942 - 487 thousand, 1943 - 500 thousand, 1944 -765 thousand, 1945 - 750 thousand. This does not include the dead and deceased. In total, in 1944, 8 million foreigners worked in the German economy, of which 6 million were civilian workers and 2 million prisoners of war from various states, and together with concentration camp prisoners (500 thousand) and prison prisoners (170 thousand) about 9 million people . In total, during the entire period of World War II, about 14 million foreign workers and prisoners of war were deported to the Reich.

The working conditions of Soviet prisoners of war were extremely difficult. Their working hours lasted from 12 to 14 hours a day, often in two shifts and without a lunch break. Many worked in mines and other enterprises located underground, where there was a lack of light, clean air, and high humidity prevailed. Security measures were not followed. Medical support, if there was any, was at a primitive level. All this led to high morbidity and mortality. In the coal industry alone, the losses of Soviet prisoners of war amounted to 5 thousand people per month, or 3.3% of the total number of workers in the Upper Silesian industrial area over 6 months, more than 25% of them died. A similar picture was observed in other sectors of the economy.

By exploiting prisoners of war, German entrepreneurs sought to achieve maximum productivity from them at minimal cost. At first, the prisoners did not receive any payment for their work, but at the end of 1942 they began to receive meager money: for the Soviets - from 0.10 to 0.60, and for foreign ones - from 0.20 to 1.20 German marks and 40 pieces cigarettes a month. In general, it can be noted that without the use of foreign labor and imported raw materials on a large scale, Germany would not have been able to wage war for such a long time.

It is known that from the first months of the war, the German military leadership practiced the use of Soviet prisoners of war not only as labor, but also as part of the military formations of the Wehrmacht, SS and police. According to foreign researchers, there were 1-1.7 million citizens of the USSR, according to domestic estimates - from 0.2 to 1.5 million. However, the method for identifying these figures is not scientifically justified and they are not documented, which raises doubts about their reliability.

Various sources allow us to identify two main forms of Germany’s use of prisoners of war in the Wehrmacht. These included the “hiwis” (“those who want to help”), who, as a rule, were not armed, and the “volunteers” - combat units of the eastern troops. The creation of this kind of military formations from among Soviet prisoners of war was a direct violation of international law. Moreover, it should be noted that if in the first years of the war this was done because of the large losses of the Germans, then later it was carried out for political reasons.

The largest group were the “Khiwis,” whose presence in German units has been noted since the end of July 1941. They were recruited primarily from prisoners of war and defectors of exclusively Slavic origin. Often they included civilians from the occupied territory. Depending on where the troops were located, unarmed prisoners were used on the front line or in the rear as drivers, sleds, orderlies, kitchen help, carriers of weapons and ammunition, in mine clearance, and in the construction of defense lines, roads, bridges and airfields. Another way to say it is that they did any work that German soldiers had to do. The Khiwi also included women who performed medical and economic functions.

The position of the “Khiwis” changed from illegal, when they were hidden from high authorities, to official inclusion in the division or regiment. The head of the second section of the administrative department of the OKH General Staff, Count K. von Staufenberg, played a significant role in resolving the situation of the Hiwis. He was the first to issue an order on the OKH (August 1942), which established uniform standards for food, maintenance and other aspects of the Hiwi service. Colonel Freitag-Loringhofen prepared the “Charter 5000”, according to which all “Hiwis”, after taking the oath, were enrolled in the unit and equated to German soldiers. Subsequently, this charter was extended to volunteer formations.

Huge human losses at the front pushed the German command to use the Hivi on a significant scale. By April 1942 in ground forces There were about 200 thousand of them in the Wehrmacht, in February 1943 - up to 400 thousand. They made up a significant percentage of the staff strength of units, units and formations. Thus, the 134th Infantry Division at the end of 1942 consisted of 50% Hiwis, and in the Reich Panzer Division in the summer of 1943, some companies of 180 people had up to 80% Hiwis. According to the new states, October 1943 in a German infantry division of 12,713 people it was planned to have 2005 Hiwis, i.e. about 16% In the 6th Army of F. Paulus, surrounded in Stalingrad, there were 51,780 Russian auxiliary personnel. In addition to infantry and tank units, Hiwis were used in the navy - 15 thousand and in the Air Force - from 50 to 60 thousand ( as of July 1944), a total of about 700 thousand people

The second large group of volunteers were combat units. Their formation was sanctioned by Hitler, and it began in the winter of 1941/42. Preference was first given to representatives of national minorities of the Soviet Union - Central Asian, Caucasian nationalities, as well as the peoples of the Volga region, the Urals and Crimea who professed Islam. At the beginning of 1942, units of Armenians and Georgians began to form. The center of their formation was Poland and Ukraine, where the largest number of prisoner of war camps were located. The basis was made up of infantry battalions numbering 800-1000 people, including 40 German officers and junior commanders. Battalions were united into legions based on nationality. By relying on prisoners of war of non-Russian nationality, the fascist German leadership thereby sought to incite discord among the peoples of the Soviet Union.

During the entire period of the war, according to the German historian I. Hoffmann, the German army had 90 battalions, of which 26 Turkestan (20.5 thousand people), 15 Azerbaijani (36.6 thousand), 13 Georgian (19 thousand) , 12 Armenian (7 thousand), 9 North Caucasian (15 thousand), 8 battalions of Crimean Tatars (10 thousand), 7 battalions of Volga Tatars and other peoples of the Volga region and the Urals (12.5 thousand people). In 1942, the Kalmyk cavalry corps (5 thousand people) was formed in the zone of operation of Army Group A.

Along with combat units, the Wehrmacht had 11 personnel battalions, which served as the basis for the formation of marching reinforcements, as well as 15 reserve, construction and transport battalions and 202 separate companies (111 Turkestan, 30 Georgian, 22 Armenian, 21 Azerbaijani, 15 Tatar and 3 North Caucasian ) The 162nd (Turkic) Infantry Division was partially staffed by these units. Thus, the total number of military formations from the Turkic and Caucasian nationalities reached about 150 thousand. Most of them were Soviet prisoners of war.

From prisoners and representatives of the local population of Slavic origin, the command of the German troops at the fronts formed Russian national units and formations. Officially, their creation began in the fall of 1941. At first these were Cossack hundreds. Along with the Cossacks, they included prisoners of war - Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. By the end of 1941, each of the nine security divisions located in the east had one Cossack hundred. In 1942 they appeared Cossack regiments- from the local population of Kuban, Don, Terek, and by April 1943, about 20 Cossack regiments (battalions) numbering from 400 to 1000 people, as well as many Cossack hundreds and squadrons, were already operating on the Eastern Front.

In May 1943, 90 Russian battalions operated on the side of the German armed forces. By mid-1944, the Wehrmacht command had at its disposal 200 infantry battalions formed from Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and representatives of other nationalities.

Along with the “Khiwi” and armed volunteers, Soviet prisoners of war, after recruitment in the camps, were enlisted in the Russian People's Liberation Army (RNLA), the Russian National People's Army (RNNA), the 15th Cossack Cavalry Corps of General G. von Pannwitz, the Cossack camp of General T .N. Dumanov, 1st Cossack Corps of General A.V. Skorodumov, Cossack group (brigade) of General A.V. Turkula and from the end of 1944 - to Russian liberation army(ROA) General A.A. Vlasova.

Since January 1943, K. Staufenberg’s department in the OKH created independent control of the “eastern” troops, led by Lieutenant General G. Helmich. He was in charge of volunteer formations of various national compositions, “hiwis”, national battalions, eastern legions, and police units.

Battalions and regiments were formed from local residents of the Baltic states, Belarus, and Ukraine, which were subsequently united into formations. To raise their prestige, they were given SS titles. They included soldiers and commanders of the Red Army who had been in German captivity and were released from it, as well as deserters who remained in the occupied part of the territory of the USSR. By mid-1943, the SS troops included: 14th (1st Ukrainian), 15th (1st Latvian), 19th (2nd Latvian) and 20th (Estonian) divisions. In 1944, the 29th and 30th (1st and 2nd Russian) and 30th Belarusian cavalry divisions were created. In addition to the listed formations, prisoners of war were replenished with special teams, SS detachments, Sonderkommando “Shamil”, Sonderstab “Caucasus”, brigade “North Caucasus”, special unit “Bergman”, Sonderdetachment 203 and others.

Soviet prisoners of war were trained in German reconnaissance, sabotage, and propaganda schools, after which they were sent behind the front line.

On the territory of the Reichskommissariats Ostland (Baltic republics and Belarus) and Ukraine, the German occupation authorities created an extensive network of police forces. According to German sources, by May 1943, in the occupied part of the USSR, there were about 70 thousand Soviet citizens serving in the auxiliary police of the military administration, and about 300 thousand in police teams (gemma, odi, noise). A significant part of the police were former soldiers of the Red Army. It should be noted that police formations were included in border regiments (in the Baltic states), in the Belarusian Self-Defense Corps (BCS), in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), in military units of the Wehrmacht and SS.

The military and police formations created by the German authorities from Soviet prisoners and civilians were constantly changing. The same people served at different times in the police, national formations of the Wehrmacht and the SS. In this regard, the spread of figures for the total number of citizens who collaborated with the German authorities requires a more in-depth study. A number of statements that Soviet citizens, who collaborated with the Germans in one form or another, did so consciously, out of political convictions, are far from historical realities. The main motives that influenced the decision of prisoners of war to serve in German formations were salvation from hunger and atrocities committed by the Germans in the camps, the fear of being shot, and some cherished the hope of escaping to the partisans or crossing the front line at the first opportunity, which often happened. Thus, in the summer of 1943, most of the military personnel of the SS “Druzhina” brigade, led by the commander, former chief of staff of the 229th Infantry Division, Lieutenant Colonel of the Red Army V.V., went over to the side of the partisans. Gil-Rodionov. It is impossible to deny the fact that some prisoners of war, especially defectors, served the Germans out of conviction. Various kinds of volunteers were sent to fight against the Red Army, against the armies of the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition, as well as against partisans and detachments of the European Resistance.

Soviet prisoners of war were widely recruited by the Nazi government not only to perform various works and military service as part of the Wehrmacht, SS troops and police, but also as material for medical experiments. The decision to conduct them on a mass scale, mainly for the needs of the war, was approved at a meeting at the Research Institute of Hygiene of the SS Troops in the second half of 1941. The place for this was special laboratories, located mainly in concentration camps. Thus, at the end of 1941 in Dachau, German doctors used prisoners of war as “guinea pigs” in the interests of the navy and air force. They were subjected to freezing, hypothermia and testing the effect of high altitudes on the human body. In Auschwitz, 500 Soviet prisoners of war were exposed to the Zyklon B gas. New drugs were tested on prisoners of war, the possible life expectancy of a person without water and food was determined, surgical experiments were carried out on bones, nerves and muscle tissues, an ointment was tested for the treatment of phosphorus burns, the effect of phenol injections, acotine-poisoned bullets, mustard gas and phosgene was studied. Skin and internal organ transplants were practiced. Other experiments were also carried out. All prisoners who were subjected to various kinds of medical experiments, as a rule, died or were destroyed as unnecessary witnesses.

Despite the cruelty and violence on the part of the German authorities, most of the prisoners did not want to accept their fate. They united in groups, organizations, and sometimes fought the enemy alone. This did not happen right away. At first, even very brave people could not imagine how you could fight when the enemy was armed, and you had not only weapons, but also strength. “What the hell is the fight here, Mikhail Ivanovich! - said Eremeev, the hero of one of the works dedicated to the struggle of prisoners of war. - All this beautiful words, not more. Everyone here is fighting for themselves, for their lives, that’s all... they hit each other in the face over a potato. We are dying gradually, from day to day, and you say to fight!.. It would be better to immediately perish from a German bullet.” Over time, the prisoners began to understand that saving their lives was in the fight, and only together could they survive.

In the first year of the war, underground groups of prisoners of war operated in camps located on the territory of Ukraine in Vladimir-Volynsk, Bogun, Adabazh, Slavuta, Shepetovka, near Chernigov, Dnepropetrovsk and Kiev. Over time, similar groups formed in camps located in parts of the occupied territory of the Russian Federation, Belarus, the Polish General Government, in the Reich and some European states occupied by Germany.

Resistance reached its greatest scale in concentration camps, where prisoners inevitably faced death; the only question was time. Various sources testify to the heroic resistance of Soviet people in fascist concentration camps Buchenwald, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen, Flessenburg, Auschwitz, Mittelbau, Dora, Neuengamme, Ravensbrück and others, since they ultimately concentrated the most active and politically dangerous prisoners for the Nazis.

There are cases when Soviet underground organizations, with assistance from international anti-fascist committees, covered a significant part of the prisoners with their influence. For example, the Fraternal Cooperation of Prisoners of War (BCW) organization, created in 1942, had its people in all prisoner of war camps and in 20 eastern labor camps located in Bavaria. It consisted of several thousand united and partially armed people. This allowed them to lead organized struggle. However, not everything planned was achieved. The reason for this was the mass arrests and executions carried out by the Gestapo in the fall of 1944.

The “Central Committee of Soviet Prisoners”, formed in France at the end of 1943, had a huge influence on the activation of the resistance of Soviet prisoners of war. a short time members of the Central Committee managed to create underground organizations in more than 20 camps (in the region of Rouen, Nancy, Nord and Pas-de-Calais departments). The Committee ceased its activities only at the end of 1944, when France became free from the Nazis.

It is impossible not to note the activities of the underground organization in the international officer camp “Oflag XIII-D” (near Hammelburg). The general management of the underground work was carried out by the committee. Soviet prisoners of war generals I.S. were active there at various times. Nikitin, Kh.N. Averdov, D.M. Karbyshev, S.A. Tkachenko, G.I. Thor, N.F. Mikhailov, I.I. Melnikov. While in captivity, Soviet generals and officers urged prisoners to remain loyal to their homeland. Thus, speaking at a rally, prisoner of war, commander of the 1st Cavalry Corps, Major General I.S. Nikitin stated: “I, a Soviet general, a communist, a citizen of the Soviet Union, will not betray my Motherland under any circumstances. I am firmly convinced that everyone will follow this example.”

Captured Lieutenant General D.M. The German authorities persuaded Karbyshev to cooperate for quite a long time, but he refused. On the frosty day of February 18, 1945, he was taken to the parade ground of the Mauthausen concentration camp, tied to a post and began to pour cold water until he turned into a block of ice. People like D.M. Karbyshev, I.S. Nikitin, died like heroes, remaining faithful to the military oath. Thousands of Soviet prisoners of war followed them. The price of their action is life.

In total, together with their subordinates, the burden of enemy captivity was shared by 83 Soviet generals, among them 7 army commanders, 2 members of the military council, 4 army chiefs of staff, 5 army artillery chiefs, the chief of army logistics, the commander of the army air force, the head of the army military communications department, 19 commanders corps, 2 deputy corps commanders, 3 corps artillery chiefs, 31 division commanders, deputy division commanders, brigade commanders, head of a school, head of the department of the Military Academy of the General Staff, head of the front operational department, head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, deputy head of the sanitary front department.

Despite the meager food, hard work, mockery and mockery, despite the promises of the German authorities of all sorts of benefits, only about a dozen generals agreed to cooperate with the enemy. Six generals managed to escape from captivity. For preparing escapes and Soviet propaganda among prisoners of war in the camps, 15 people were executed, including Lieutenant General D.M. Karbyshev, Major General I.S. Nikitin, G.I. Thor, Hero of the Soviet Union I.M. Shepetov, 10 died from hunger, disease, beatings and hard physical labor. For the courage and heroism shown at the fronts and in captivity, generals D.M. were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Karbyshev (1946), G.I. Thor (1991) and Hero of the Russian Federation - M.F. Lukin (1999). Everything is posthumous.

The main forms of intra-camp resistance were: escape, sabotage, violation of the regime, struggle for moral survival, unwillingness to cooperate with the enemy, and even rebellion. The resistance activity of prisoners of war was influenced by the successes of the Red Army at the front, the opening of a second front by the Allies in June 1944, the partisan movement and the activities of local underground fighters.

The cherished dream of every prisoner of war was a successful escape. He brought freedom from captivity and a chance to stay alive. According to German data, more than 70 thousand Soviet prisoners of war escaped from the camps located on the territory controlled by the OKB until 1944. Escapes occurred during pedestrian crossings, transportation by rail, from camps and work sites. So, on September 15, 1941, 340 people escaped at the Sherpitets railway station near Torun. In July 1942, 110 people fled from a camp located near the Krupki station in the Minsk region. In June 1943, 15 prisoners escaped captivity from Stalag 352 (Belarus) in two armored cars, of which 13 reached the partisans.

The escape from captivity of senior lieutenant M.P. became widely known. Devyatayeva and 9 people with him. On February 8, 1945, brave souls captured a German Henkel-111 bomber at the airfield and took off on it. They managed to “reach out” to their own and land the plane at the location of the advancing 331st Infantry Division. For this feat MP. Devyatayev was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (1957).

In the event of an unsuccessful escape, prisoners of war, especially officers, were sent to concentration camps or shot. Thus, for attempting to escape, the Heroes of the Soviet Union division commanders, Major General I.M., were shot. Shepetov and Colonel I.D. Zinoviev. And there are thousands of such examples.

Some researchers question the issue of intra-camp resistance of Soviet prisoners of war. Thus, in one certificate prepared by one of the members of the section of former prisoners of war of the Soviet Committee of War Veterans (in the 1950s), the involvement of a number of colleagues in social activities in leading the resistance movement in the Mauthausen concentration camp was disputed. They were accused of “inflating, and sometimes even inventing, facts in order to create the image of a prisoner of war hero and classify themselves as mythical heroes.” However, many facts indicate the fallacy of this statement, although the lack of documents and the death of resistance heroes do not yet allow it to be completely refuted . Only one thing can be said with confidence: the problem of intra-camp resistance is very complex and requires further in-depth study. Just one fact. At E.A. Brodsky, just researching the activities of the organization “Brotherly Cooperation of Prisoners of War” and identifying the heroes of the resistance took about 50 years of painstaking work in domestic and foreign archives.

It is known that several tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers who escaped from enemy captivity crossed the front line, joined partisan detachments, underground organizations, and became fighters of the European Resistance movement (they constituted its most trained and persistent part). With their courage, courage, and discipline, his patriots earned respect not only among their compatriots, but also among the peoples of Europe. In his work, the Italian M. Galleni noted: “The Italian Resistance is undoubtedly proud that in its ranks were these warriors (Soviet - N.D.), who gave everything to the fight, without demanding anything in return.”

In general, it should be noted that the problem of resistance of Soviet prisoners of war has not yet been sufficiently studied, although several dozen books have been devoted to it

Numerous documents and testimony indicate that captured soldiers and commanders of the Red Army suffered not only in conditions of captivity. In their homeland they were unfairly viewed as cowards and traitors. This compounded their tragedy.

It should be noted that according to existing Soviet legislation, only surrender, not caused by a combat situation, was considered a serious military crime and, according to Art. 22 “Additions on military crimes” (Article 193-22 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR), was punishable by capital punishment - execution with confiscation of property. The legislation also provided for criminal liability of adult family members of a serviceman only for direct defection to the side of the enemy, flight abroad (Article 51-1 “b”, 58-1 “c” of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR). Thus, military personnel who were captured due to circumstances beyond their control, in conditions caused by the combat situation, were not subject to prosecution by law. With regard to material support, the issuance of benefits and the provision of benefits to family members of military personnel who were captured, the legislation also did not provide for any restrictions.

However, with the beginning of the war, in accordance with ideological principles, the Soviet political leadership considered the capture of a Red Army soldier as a deliberately committed crime, regardless of the circumstances as a result of which it happened. Thus, in the decree of the State Defense Committee of July 16, 1941 and in the subsequent order of the Supreme Command Headquarters No. 270 of August 16, 1941, it was stated: “Commanders and political workers who tear off their insignia during battle... or part Red Army soldiers [who] instead of organizing a rebuff to the enemy would prefer to surrender - to destroy them by all means... and deprive the families of the Red Army soldiers who surrendered of state benefits and assistance” (the order was signed by Stalin and six other persons). The orders and instructions of the NKVD - NKGB adopted in their development strengthened these requirements to the extreme, especially in relation to family members of military personnel who, for one reason or another, were captured.

During the war, every soldier who emerged from encirclement, escaped from captivity, or was released by the Red Army and allies in the anti-Hitler coalition was indiscriminately subjected to scrutiny, bordering on political distrust. Measures were applied to him that humiliated his personal dignity and prevented further use in the army. Thus, in accordance with the GKO decree of December 27, 1941, the above-mentioned persons were sent through collection points of the People's Commissariat of Defense under escort to special NKVD camps for inspection. The conditions for keeping former prisoners of war in them were the same as for criminals held in forced labor camps. In everyday life and documents they were called “former military personnel” or “special contingent”, although no judicial or administrative decisions were made against these persons. “Former military personnel” were deprived of the rights and benefits due to military ranks, length of service, as well as monetary and clothing allowances. They were forbidden to correspond with family and friends.

While inspections were being carried out, the “special contingent” was involved in heavy forced labor in mines, logging, construction, mines and the metallurgical industry. They were set extremely high production standards and were formally accrued a small salary. For failure to complete the task and for the slightest offenses, they were punished as prisoners of the Gulag.

Along with the exposure of a significant number of people who actually committed crimes, as a result of the use of illegal, provocative investigative methods, many military personnel who honestly fulfilled their duty and did not stain themselves in captivity were unreasonably repressed. Persons who worked in German camps as doctors, orderlies, barracks leaders, cooks, translators, storekeepers, and household services were often condemned as traitors to the Motherland. The families of military personnel, subjectively classified as voluntarily surrendered Germans, were illegally deprived of state benefits and benefits for the entire period of the war, without taking into account the reasons for their captivity.

According to available data, during the period from October 1941 to March 1944, 317,954 former prisoners of war and encirclement passed through special camps. The results of the filtering of these individuals can be judged from the report of Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs V.V. Chernyshev, addressed to L.P. Beria (information as of October 1, 1944):

“In total, 354,592 people, including officers - 50,441 people, passed through the special camps for former Red Army soldiers who escaped encirclement and were freed from captivity. Of this number, 248,416 people were checked and transferred to the Red Army, including: to military units through military registration and enlistment offices - 231,034 people, of which 27,042 were officers; for the formation of assault battalions - 18,382 people, of which 16,163 were officers; in industry - 30,749 people, including officers - 29 people; for the formation of convoy troops - 5924 people; 11,556 people were arrested, of which 2,083 were enemy intelligence and counterintelligence agents, of which 1,284 were officers (for various crimes); went to hospitals, infirmaries and died - 5347 people; are in special camps of the NKVD of the USSR under inspection - 51,601 people. From among the officers remaining in the camps of the NKVD of the USSR, 4 assault battalions of 920 people each were formed in October. every"

Figures show that of the military personnel admitted to the special camps, the overwhelming majority were sent to the Red Army, the NKVD and the defense industry, about 4% were arrested.

As for the individual assault rifle battalions, they were created by order of the People's Commissar of Defense on August 1, 1943. The first five battalions were formed on August 25, 1943, in January 1944 - the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th, by March Three more were in the process of being organized. By December 31, 1944, the 26th separate assault battalion was completed.

Battalion commanders, political deputies, chiefs of staff, and company commanders were appointed from officers in the active army. The rank and file and junior commanding officers were supplemented with middle and senior commanders of the so-called special contingents. The length of stay in the battalions was set as follows: either two months of participation in battles, or until being awarded an order for valor in battle, or until the first wound. After this, with good certification, the “stormtroopers” were sent to the Red Army to the appropriate positions. According to the Commission for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression under the President of the Russian Federation, about 25 thousand Red Army soldiers who emerged from encirclement and were freed from captivity were sent to assault battalions, which was in itself a serious violation of their rights.

However, when prisoner of war camps were liberated by Red Army troops, prisoners were not always sent for inspection. Commander of the 21st Army M.I. Chistyakov in his book “The Earth Smelled of Gunpowder” writes:

“Near Gumrak (near Stalingrad - N.D.) there was a camp for our prisoners of war. I was ordered to dress all our soldiers, former prisoners of war, well, put on shoes, treat them, feed them, give them rest for 10-15 days, and then send them to the rear. I talked with these soldiers and became convinced that the mood of these people was such that they were ready at any moment to fight the Nazis to the death in order to avenge their humiliation and torment, for the death of their comrades... I selected 8 thousand from the former prisoners of war. man, formed eight battalions from them, armed them and sent them to divisions"

And the former prisoners of war honorably fulfilled their duty as defenders of their Fatherland.

In the second half of 1944, fighting took place on the territory of the countries of Eastern Europe. During the offensive operations The Red Army suffered significant losses in people. In accordance with the GKO resolution adopted on November 4, 1944, Soviet military personnel and civilians of military age released from German captivity were sent to reserve units, bypassing special camps. In reserve front-line and army regiments, new reinforcements, after undergoing combat training and partial testing, were sent (almost exclusively - N.D.) to active rifle units. For example, during the fighting on German territory, formations and units of the 1st Ukrainian Front made up for combat losses in people at the expense of Soviet citizens of military age released from German captivity. On March 20, 1945, 40 thousand people were sent to military units. Among the new recruits were Soviet prisoners of war, including junior officers up to and including the captain. And in the formation where the head of the political department was General N.F. Voronov, out of 3,870 recruits, 870 turned out to be former prisoners of war who had previously served in the army. In total, during the war years, more than 1 million people were conscripted for the second time from among those previously missing and in captivity. Having experienced all the horrors of fascist captivity, the reinforcement fighters mercilessly crushed the enemy. Until the end of the war, many of them were awarded orders and medals for the courage and heroism shown in battle.

From the end of 1944 to the mid-1950s, Soviet citizens released from captivity were returned to their homeland. Here are just some data concerning the issues of repatriation of former Soviet prisoners of war and their treatment in their homeland. According to the Office of the Commissioner of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR for Repatriation Affairs, as of October 1945, 2016 480 released Soviet prisoners of war were taken into account, of which: 1,730,181 - in Germany and other countries and 286,299 - on the territory of the Union republics that were under occupation There is information that by mid-1947, 1,836 thousand of them returned to their homeland, including those who entered military and police service with the enemy, the rest remained abroad. Their fates turned out differently. Some were arrested and convicted, others were sent to a 6-year special settlement, and others were enlisted in the working battalions of NGOs. About 300 thousand prisoners of war (data as of August 1, 1946) were released home

After the end of the war, 57 Soviet generals returned to their homeland from captivity. Their fates turned out differently. All of them passed a special check by the NKVD, then some of them were released and sent to the troops or to teach, the majority received government awards and continued to serve in the armed forces. For example, the former commander of the 5th Army, General M.I. Potapov, after being captured at the end of 1945, was reinstated in the Soviet Army, rose to the rank of deputy commander of the Odessa Military District, and in 1961 he was awarded the rank of colonel general. Some generals were under investigation for a long time, after which a number of them were executed in 1950 (including the commander of the 12th Army, Major General P.G. Ponedelin, the commander of the 15th Rifle Corps of the 5th Army, Major General P.F. Privalov and others), several people died in prison before trial (see Table 3).

For a long time, Soviet people returning from German captivity faced infringement of their rights. Locally they were treated as traitors. They were excluded from participating in political life, when entering higher educational institutions they were looked at with caution; they were not considered participants in the war. Even after Stalin's death, little changed in the situation of former prisoners of war. And only in 1956 was an attempt made to change the attitude towards those of them who had not committed any crimes. On April 19, 1956, the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee decided to create a commission chaired by Marshal of the Soviet Union G.K. Zhukov with the task of understanding the situation of the Red Army servicemen who returned from captivity, as well as those who were in the army, and making their proposals to the CPSU Central Committee. On June 4 of the same year, a memo by G.K. Zhukova, E.A. Furtseva, K.P. Gorshenin and others “On the situation of former prisoners of war” was presented to the Central Committee. On June 29, 1956, the Central Committee of the Party and the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a resolution “On eliminating the consequences of gross violations of the law in relation to former prisoners of war and their families,” which condemned the practice of indiscriminate political mistrust, the use of repressive measures, as well as deprivation of benefits and allowances in regarding former Soviet prisoners of war and members of their families. It was proposed to distribute the Decree of the Presidium Supreme Council USSR on the amnesty of September 17, 1955 and on former Soviet prisoners of war convicted of surrender. Since 1957, the cases of former Soviet prisoners of war have been largely reconsidered. Most were rehabilitated. Their military ranks and pensions were restored, and awards were returned. Those who were wounded and escaped from captivity were awarded orders and medals. However, in this resolution many issues were not given an appropriate assessment, and the planned measures largely remained on paper. And only 50 years after the Great Patriotic War, in January 1995, the President of the Russian Federation

B.N. Yeltsin signed the Decree “On the restoration of the legal rights of Russian citizens - former Soviet prisoners of war and civilians repatriated during the Great Patriotic War and the post-war period,” according to which former prisoners of war received the status of participants in the Great Patriotic War. They are fully covered by the federal law “On veterans”, adopted by the State Duma on December 16, 1994.

But how many years it took to restore justice! Many died without receiving rehabilitation. Here's just one example. In the fall of 1941, In Dubosekovo, 28 Panfilov heroes performed a heroic feat in the battle of Moscow. On July 21, 1942, all of them were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously. But, as often happens, it later became known that not all of them died. Three fighters - I. Dobrobabin, D. Timofeev and I. Shchadrin - were captured in an unconscious state, and four seriously wounded - I. Vasilyev, D. Kozhubergenov, I. Natarov and G. Shemyakin - were picked up by our scouts.

I. Shchadrin and D. Timofeev returned from captivity. The most dramatic was the fate of I. Dobrobabin. Having woken up after a shell shock, he tried to get to his own people, but was captured by the Germans and sent to a prisoner of war camp. Along the way, he broke out the window of the carriage and jumped out of the train while it was moving. I reached my native village. Perekop in the Kharkov region. With the arrival of the Red Army, he again found himself on the front line. For his courage he was awarded the Order of Glory, III degree, and several medals. In 1947, he was arrested and put on trial “for aiding the enemy,” who sentenced him to 15 years in prison to be served in camps. This was followed by a decree depriving Dobrobabin of the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. And only on March 26, 1993, the Plenum of the Supreme Court of Ukraine overturned court decisions against I.E. Dobrobabina. The case was dismissed for lack of evidence of a crime. He was rehabilitated, but the title of Hero of the Soviet Union was never restored. This is the fate of only one person.

Numerous facts convince us of how difficult and tragic the fate of millions of Soviet prisoners of war during the Great Patriotic War turned out to be. But there could have been fewer victims and suffering if the attitude towards human life was more humane and fair.

In our country, the problem of prisoners of war remains relevant to this day, since the status of a prisoner of war is not fully determined, many documents are missing regarding the rehabilitation of former prisoners of war, especially those necessary while some of them are still alive.

Scanning and processing: Vadim Plotnikov

Read also on this topic:

IN Soviet literature It was often claimed that the enemy allegedly overestimated the number of prisoners, but a detailed study of German statistics does not confirm this. On the contrary, there were facts of deliberate underestimation of their numbers in order to downplay the scale of the genocide. In December 1941, the OKB and OKH made adjustments to their statistics, reducing the number of Soviet prisoners of war from 3.8 million to 3.35 million. From the total number of Soviet military personnel captured by German troops, commissars and political instructors who were killed shortly after capture were excluded , Jews and many others who were not brought alive to the camps were shot along the way. 3.35 million is that part of the Soviet prisoners of war who were brought alive to the camps during the first six months of the war and registered there, but it was to this figure that German statisticians added those taken prisoner in 1942-1945. and received a total of 5.75 million people. Most researchers use the latter figure as the final figure, but in reality it is overestimated by at least 450 thousand.

Homeland. 1991. No. 6-7. P. 100. (In the works of foreign researchers A. Dallin, K. Streit and others, the same information is given as of May 1, 1944, with the caveat that this information is incomplete.)

To these should be added 100,185 people held in air force prisoner of war camps, making a total of 5,231,057 Soviet prisoners of war.

Freedom was given to those who agreed to be “voluntary assistants” of the Verkhmat, the SS troops, and the police. These were mainly Germans from the Volga region, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Tatars, Armenians, Georgians, and Azerbaijanis.

The countdown began from the moment of registration in the camps. The hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war who died between the time of capture and the time of registration in the camps are not included in these statistics.

Without taking into account captured militias, partisans, fighters of special forces of various civil departments, city self-defense, extermination squads, etc.

The Geneva Convention stipulated that a country that signed it, while at war with a country that did not sign it, is still obliged to comply with this convention.

The secrecy has been removed... P. 391.

Among them are 2,389,560 Germans, 156,682 Austrians, 513,767 Hungarians, 201,800 Romanians, 48,957 Italians, 2,377 Finns; the remaining 464,147 are French, Slovaks, Czechs, Belgians, Spaniards and others who previously served in the Wehrmacht or worked in service and logistics institutions.

August 16, 1943 V.V. Gil ( real name) with 2200 “combatants” joined the partisan brigade named after. Zheleznyak (operating during the war in the Polotsk-Lepel region - Belarus), while they had 10 guns, 23 mortars, 77 machine guns. In one of the battles against the punitive forces, Gil died.

Karbyshev Dmitry Mikhailovich (1880-1945) - military engineer, lieutenant general, author of over 100 scientific works, professor (1938), Doctor of Military Sciences (1941), Hero of the Soviet Union.

The figure of 1836 thousand was made up of 1549.7 thousand prisoners of war repatriated from Germany and other countries, and 286.3 thousand prisoners of war captured from the enemy during the offensive operations of the Red Army on the territory of the USSR in 1944 - early 1945 (including those who were until May 9, 1945 in captivity in the Courland Pocket on the territory of Latvia). These statistics do not include those released and those who escaped from captivity in occupied territory in 1941-1943.

For details about the results of checking and filtering repatriates, as well as about the fate of their individual categories, including prisoners of war, see the essay by V.N. Zemsky “Repatriation of displaced Soviet citizens”, published in this book.

With the exception of former prisoners of war who served in enemy armies, renegade formations, police, etc.

1. Streit K. They are not our comrades: the Wehrmacht and Soviet prisoners of war, 1941-1945. / Per. with him. M., 1991. S. 147-148.

2. Schustereit H. Vabanque: Hitlers Angriff und die Sowietunion 1941. Herford; Bonn, 1988. S. 69.

3.. For more details, see: All-Russian Book of Memory, 1941-1945. Review volume. M., 1995. S. 410-411; The classification has been removed: Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts: Stat. study. M., 1993. P. 4. Shtrash K. Decree. op. S. 3; A book of historical sensations. M., 1993. P. 53; Sokolov B. Russian collaborators // Nezavisimaya Gazeta. 1991. 29 Oct.; Homeland. 1991. No. 6-7. P. 100; Half a century ago: The Great Patriotic War: Figures and facts. M., 1995. P. 99; Polyan P.M. Soviet citizens in the Reich: How many were there? // Socis. 2002. No. 5. P. 95-100.

4.. See: Shtrash K. Decree. op. S. 3; Rudenko N.A. Not subject to oblivion // Pravda. 1969. March 24; Nazarevich R. Soviet prisoners of war in Poland during the Second World War and assistance to them from the Polish population // Questions of history. 1989. No. 3. P. 35; Grishin E. Pages of the Book of Memory // Izvestia. 1989. May 9.

5.. Bohme K.W. Die deutchen Kriegsgefangenen in Sowjetischen Hand. Munchen, 1966 S 151

6.. Central archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. F. 13. Op. 3028. D. 10. L. 3-6.

7.. Galitsky V.P. Maintenance of prisoners of war of the enemy army in the USSR. M., 1990. P. 6; It's him. Prisoners of war of the German army in the Soviet Union. M., 1992. P. 13.

8.. Galitsky V.P. Maintenance of prisoners of war... P. 96.

9. Striet C. Die Behanlung und Ermurdung 1941-1945. Frankfurt a/M., 1992. S.9

10. Galitsky V.P. Hitlerites against Hitler // Military History. magazine 1995. No. 1. P. 20.

11. State Archives of the Russian Federation. F. 7445. Op. 2. D. 125. L. 30 (Hereinafter: GA RF).

12. See: The criminal goals of Nazi Germany in the war against the Soviet Union: Documents and materials. M., 1987. pp. 105-107.

13. GA RF. F. 7445. Op. 2. D. 189. L. 267.

14. Gerns D. Hitler - Wehrmacht in der Sowijetunion: Legenden – Wahrheit -Traditionen - Dokumente. Frankfurt a/M., 1985. S. 37.

15. Datner S. Crimes of the Nazi Wehrmacht against prisoners of war / Transl. from Polish M., 1963. P. 412.

16. Nuremberg trials. M., 1958. T. 3. P. 413.

17. Chistyakov IM. We serve the Fatherland. M., 1985. P. 99-100.

18. Golubkov S.A. In a fascist death camp. Smolensk, 1963. P. 241-242; Kudryashov S. Civilized monsters // Motherland. 2002. No. 6. P. 71-73. See also: GA RF. F. 7445. Op. 1. D. 1668. L. 101; Op. 2. D. 139. L. 97-98; Nuremberg trials. T. 3. P. 68; T. 4. pp. 123-131, 145.

19. GA RF. F. 7445. Op. 115. D. 6. L. 27; F. 7021. Op. 148. D. 43. L. 66.

20. Ibid. F. 7445. Op. 2. D. 103. L. 141-143; F. 7021. Op. 148. D. 43. L. 66; Russell E. The Curse of the Swastika / Trans. from English M., 1954. P. 78.

21. See: Datner Sh. Decree. op. P. 351.

22. GA RF. F. 7021. Op. 115. D. 7. L. 10; F. 7445. Op. 2. D. 128. L. 278; Russian State Military Archive. F. 1/v. Op. 12. D. 7. L. 79-81.

23. GA RF. F. 7021. Op. 150. D. 42. L. 11.

24. Streit K. Decree. op. P. 259.

25. GA RF. F. 7021. Op. 148. D. 48. L. 16-17.

26. Ibid. F. 7445. Op. 2. D. 139. L. 97-98.

27. Ibid. F. 7445. Op. 1. D. 1668. L. 73.

28. Joseph Stalin in the embrace of his family. Berlin; Chicago; Tokyo; M., 1943. P. 96-100; Dranbyan T.S. Who provoked the death of I.V.’s eldest son? Stalin? // Military History magazine 2000. No. 3. P. 78-87.

29. See: International Committee of Historical Sciences: Reports of the Congress. M., 1974. T. 1. P. 229-244; German industry during the war of 1939-1945. /Per with him. M., 1956. P. 65; Müller-Hillebrand B. Ground Army Germany, 1933-1945: In 3 books. / Per. with him. M., 1976. Book. 3. P. 327; Kuchinsky Yu. History of working conditions in Germany / Transl. with him. M., 1949. P. 508.

30. See: The criminal goals of Hitler's Germany in the war against the Soviet Union. P. 231.

31. GA RF. F. 7021. Op. 148. D. 251. L. 32; D. 214. L. 75-76.

32. Dallin A. Deutshe Herrschaft in Rusland, 1941-1945: Eine Studie liber Besatzungpolitik. Diisseldorf, 1981. S. 550-559, 660; Frolich S. General Wlassov: Russen und Deutschen zwischen Hitler und Stalin. Koln, 1978. S. 59, 63; Hoffmann J. Die Geschichte der Wlassow-Armee. Freiburg, 1986. S. 14, 358; Idem. Kaukasien. 1942/43: Das Deutsche Heer und die Orientvolker der Sowjetunion. Freiburg, 1991. S. 46-47; Muller-Hillebrand B. Das Heer. 1933-1945. Frankfurt a/M., 1966. Bd. 3. S. 70, 114, 141; Ready J. The forgotten axis. Germany's partners and foreign volunteers in Word War II. Jefferson; London, 1987. P. 510.

33. The secrecy has been removed... P. 385, 392; Gareev M.A. About the figures old and new // Military History. magazine 1991. No. 4. P. 49; Ramanichev N.M. Whoever is not with us is... // Russian news. 1995. April 11; Vodopyanova Z., Domracheva T., Meshcheryakova G. An opinion was formed that the losses amounted to 20 million people // Source. 1994. No. 5. P. 90.

34.See: Germany's war against the Soviet Union, 1941-1945: Documentary exhibition. Catalog. Berlin, 1992. P. 145.

35. See: Information reports of the VII department of GlavPURKKA for September - December 1943. M., 1944. p. 12

36. See: Muller-Hillebrand B. Or. cit. Bd.3 S.135, 141, 225.

37. Overmans R. Another face of war: The life and death of the 6th Army // Stalingrad: Event. Impact. Symbol. M., 1995. S. 463-465.

38. See: Semiryaga M.I. The fate of Soviet prisoners of war // Questions of history. 1995. No. 4. P. 22.

39. cm.: Hoffmann J. Kaukasien. 1942/43. S. 46, 56.

40. Hoffman J. Die Ostlegionen, 1941-1943. Freiburg, 1976. S. 171-172.

41. cm.: Germany's war against the Soviet Union, 1941-1945. pp. 142, 145; Hoffmann J. Kaukasien. 1942/43. S. 46, 47; Ready J. Op. cit. P. 216.

42.See: GA RF. F. 7445. Op. 2. D. 318. L. 28-29; The Nuremberg trials of the main German war criminals. M., 1959. T. 4. P. 448-449.

43. See: Auschwitz concentration camp - Brzezinka / Transl. from Polish Warsaw, 1961. S. 89-96, 118; BorkinD. Crime and Punishment “I.G. Farben-industry" / Trans. from English M., 1982. P. 179.

44. See: Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation. F. 082. Op. 32. P. 180. D. 14. L. 58-62; Nuremberg trials of the main German criminals. M., 1966. T. 2. P. 410-442; Delarue J. History of the Gestapo / Trans. from fr. Smolensk 1993. P. 372.

45. Lyubovtsev V.M. Fighters don't kneel. M., 1964. P. 26.

46. ​​GA RF. f. 9541. Op. 1. D. 18.

47. Galleni M. Partigiani nella Resistenza italiano. Roma, 1967. P. 9, 234.

48. 1mgosNe S. Op 1ez pottaN yez ё1гаn§егз. R., 1965; The Second World War: In 3 books. M., 1966. Book. 3; Bushueva T.S. Participation of Soviet people in the people's liberation war in Yugoslavia. dis. ...cand. ist. Sci. M., 1974; Semiryaga M.I. Soviet people in the European Resistance. M., 1970; Heroes of the Resistance. M., 1990; Rossy M. Soviet soldiers in the Garibaldian partisan battalions // Military History. magazine 2001. No. 6. P. 57-63.

49. Mezhenko A.V. Prisoners of war returned to duty... // Military History. magazine 1997. No. 5. P. 32.

51. Chistyakov M.I. The ground smelled of gunpowder. M., 1979. P. 52-53.

52. All-Russian Book of Memory, 1941-1945. Review volume. P. 452.

53. Russian archive: Great Patriotic War: Battle of Berlin (Red Army in defeated Germany). M., 1995. T. 15 (4-5). P. 148.

54. See: Arzamaskin Yu.N. Repatriation of Soviet and foreign citizens in 1944-1953: Military-political aspect. M., 1999. P. 113-180; Shevyakov A.A. Secrets of post-war repatriation // Sociological research. 1993. No. 8. P. 9.

55. The secrecy has been removed... P. 131.

56. Nevzorov B.I. Justice must prevail // Veteran. 1999. No. 23.

In 1941, the Germans took 4 million prisoners, of which 3 died in the first six months of captivity. This is one of the most heinous crimes of the German Nazis. The prisoners were kept for months in barbed wire pens, in the open air, without food, people ate grass and earthworms. Hunger, thirst, and unsanitary conditions, deliberately created by the Germans, were doing their job. This massacre was against the customs of war, against the economic needs of Germany itself. Pure ideology - the more subhumans die, the better.

Minsk. July 5, 1942 Drozdy prison camp. Consequences of the Minsk-Bialystok cauldron: 140 thousand people on 9 hectares in the open air

Minsk, August 1941. Himmler came to look at the prisoners of war. A very powerful photo. The look of the prisoner and the views of the SS men on the other side of the thorn...

June 1941. Area of ​​Rasseiniai (Lithuania). The crew of the KV-1 tank was captured. The tankman in the center looks like Budanov... This is the 3rd mechanized corps, they met the war on the border. In a 2-day oncoming tank battle on June 23-24, 1941 in Lithuania, the corps was defeated

Vinnitsa, July 28, 1941. Since the prisoners were hardly fed, the local population tried to help them. Ukrainian women with baskets and plates at the gates of the camp...

Right there. Apparently, the security still allowed the food to be passed on by the thorn.

August 1941 “Umanskaya Yama” concentration camp. It is also known as Stalag (prefabricated camp) No. 349. It was set up in the quarry of a brick factory in the city of Uman (Ukraine). In the summer of 1941, prisoners from the Uman cauldron, 50,000 people, were kept here. In the open air, like in a paddock

Vasily Mishchenko was with the rank of lieutenant when he was captured in the Uman cauldron. But not only soldiers and junior commanders fell into the cauldrons. And the generals too. In the photo: Generals Ponedelin and Kirillov, they commanded Soviet troops near Uman:

The Germans used this photo in propaganda leaflets. The Germans are smiling, but General Kirillov (on the left, in a cap with a torn star) has a very sad look... This photo session does not bode well

Again Ponedelin and Kirillov. Lunch in captivity

It is clear that they were not traitors at all. Forced staged photos are not their fault. The only thing they can be accused of is professional incompetence. They allowed themselves to be surrounded in a cauldron. They are not alone here. Future marshals Konev and Eremenko destroyed two fronts in the Vyazemsky cauldron (October 1941, 700 thousand prisoners), Timoshenko and Bagramyan - the entire Southwestern Front in the Kharkov cauldron (May 1942, 300 thousand prisoners). Zhukov, of course, did not end up in cauldrons with entire fronts, but for example, while commanding the Western Front in the winter of 1941-42. I finally drove a couple of armies (33rd and 39th) into encirclement.

Vyazemsky cauldron, October 1941. While the generals were learning to fight, endless columns of prisoners walked along the roads

Vyazma, November 1941. The infamous Dulag-184 (transit camp) on Kronstadskaya Street. The mortality rate here reached 200-300 people per day. The dead were simply thrown into pits

Relatives of dead prisoners regularly come here and made their own memorial on the fence of the plant

Stalag 10D (Witzendorf, Germany), autumn 1941. The corpses of dead Soviet prisoners are thrown from a cart

In the fall of 1941, the death of prisoners became widespread. Added to the famine was cold and an epidemic of typhus (it was spread by lice). Cases of cannibalism appeared.

November 1941, Stalag 305 in Novo-Ukrainka (Kirovograd region). These four (on the left) ate the corpse of this prisoner (on the right)

Deblin (Poland), a batch of prisoners arrived at Stalag 307. People are in terrible condition. On the right is a camp policeman in Budenovka (former prisoner), standing next to the body of a prisoner lying on the platform

Physical punishment. Two policemen in Soviet uniform: one is holding a prisoner, the other is beating him with a whip or stick. The German in the background laughs. Another prisoner in the background is standing tied to a fence post (also a form of punishment in prison camps)

Alexander Ioselevich, a captured military doctor, describes how selection took place in a camp in Jelgava (Latvia) in July 1941:

“We brought crackers and coffee to the camp. There is an SS man standing, next to a dog and next to him a prisoner of war. And when people go for crackers, he says: “This is a political instructor.” He is taken out and immediately shot nearby. The traitor is poured coffee and given two crackers. “And this is yude.” The Jew is taken out and shot, and again two crackers for him. “And this one was an NKVDist.” They take him out and shoot him, and he gets two crackers again.”

Life in the camp in Jelgava was inexpensive: 2 crackers. However, as usual in Russia during wartime, people appeared from somewhere who could not be broken by any shooting, and could not be bought for crackers.

Database

www.podvignaroda.ru

www.obd-memorial.ru

www.pamyat-naroda.ru

www.rkka.ru/ihandbook.htm

www.moypolk.ru

www.dokst.ru

www.polk.ru

www.pomnite-nas.ru

www.permgani.ru

Otechestvort.rf, rf-poisk.ru

rf-poisk.ru/page/34

soldat.ru

memento.sebastopol.ua

memory-book.com.ua

soldat.ru - a set of reference books for independently searching for information about the fate of military personnel (including a directory of field postal stations of the Red Army in 1941-1945, a directory of the code names of military units (institutions) in 1939-1943, a directory of the location of Red Army hospitals in 1941-1945 years);

www.rkka.ru - a directory of military abbreviations (as well as charters, manuals, directives, orders and personal documents of wartime).

Libraries

oldgazette.ru – old newspapers (including those from the war period);

www.rkka.ru – description of military operations of the Second World War, post-war analysis of the events of the Second World War, military memoirs.

Military cards

www.rkka.ru – military topographic maps with the combat situation (by war periods and operations).

Search Engine Sites

www.rf-poisk.ru is the official website of the Russian Search Movement.

Archives

www.archives.ru – Federal Archive Agency (Rosarkhiv);

www.rusarchives.ru – industry portal “Archives of Russia”;

archive.mil.ru – Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense;

rgvarchive.ru

rgaspi.org

rgavmf.ru – Russian State Archive of the Navy (RGAVMF). The archive stores documents of the Russian Navy (late 17th century - 1940). Naval documentation of the Great Patriotic War and the post-war period is stored in the Central Naval Archive (CVMA) in Gatchina, which is under the jurisdiction of the Russian Ministry of Defense;

victory.rusarchives.ru – a list of federal and regional archives of Russia (with direct links and descriptions of collections of photo and film documents from the period of the Great Patriotic War).

Partners of the Stars of Victory project

www.mil.ru – Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

www.histrf.ru – Russian Military Historical Society.

www.rgo.ru – Russian Geographical Society.

", "Russian Female");" type="button" value="🔊 Listen to the news"/>!}

Database

www.podvignaroda.ru – a publicly accessible electronic bank of documents on recipients and awards during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945;

www.obd-memorial.ru - a generalized data bank about defenders of the Fatherland, those killed and missing during the Great Patriotic War and the post-war period;

www.pamyat-naroda.ru is a publicly accessible data bank about the fate of participants in the Great Patriotic War. Search for places of primary burials and documents about awards, service, victories and hardships on the battlefields;

www.rkka.ru/ihandbook.htm – awarded the Order of the Red Banner in the period from 1921 to 1931;

www.moypolk.ru - information about participants in the Great Patriotic War, including home front workers - living, dead, dead and missing. Collected and replenished by participants in the all-Russian action “Immortal Regiment”;

www.dokst.ru – information about those killed in captivity in Germany;

www.polk.ru – information about Soviet and Russian soldiers, missing in action in the wars of the 20th century (including the pages “The Great Patriotic War” and “Undelivered Awards”);

www.pomnite-nas.ru – photographs and descriptions of military graves;

www.permgani.ru – database on the website of the Perm State Archive modern history. Includes basic biographical information about former soldiers of the Red Army (natives of the Perm region or called up to military service from the territory of the Kama region), who during the Great Patriotic War were surrounded and (or) captured by the enemy, and after returning to their homeland they underwent a special state check (filtration);

Otechestvort.rf, rf-poisk.ru – electronic version of the book “Names from Soldiers’ Medallions”, volumes 1-6. Contains alphabetical information about those killed during the war whose remains, discovered during search operations, were identified;

rf-poisk.ru/page/34 / – books of memory (by regions of Russia, with direct links and annotations);

soldat.ru – books of memory (for individual regions, types of troops, individual units and formations, about those who died in captivity, those who died in Afghanistan, Chechnya);

memento.sebastopol.ua – Crimean virtual necropolis;

memory-book.com.ua – electronic book of memory of Ukraine;

soldat.ru - a set of reference books for independently searching for information about the fate of military personnel (including a directory of field postal stations of the Red Army in 1941-1945, a directory of the code names of military units (institutions) in 1939-1943, a directory of the location of Red Army hospitals in 1941-1945 years);

rgvarchive.ru – Russian State Military Archive (RGVA). The archive stores documents about the military operations of the Red Army units in 1937-1939. near Lake Khasan, on the Khalkhin Gol River, in the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-1940. Here are also documents of the border and internal troops of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD-MVD of the USSR since 1918; documents of the Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs and institutions of its system (GUPVI Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR) for the period 1939-1960; personal documents of Soviet military leaders; documents of foreign origin (trophy). On the archive's website you can also find guides and reference books that make working with it easier.

rgaspi.org – Russian State Archive of Socio-Political Information (RGASPI). The period of the Great Patriotic War in RGASPI is represented by documents of the emergency government body - State Committee defense (GKO, 1941-1945) and the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief;