The procedure for the treatment of prisoners of war at the beginning of World War II was regulated by the Geneva Convention of 1929. Germany signed it, the USSR did not. But our country - a paradox - was much closer to fulfilling all the Geneva provisions! For comparison: 4.5 million Soviet servicemen were taken prisoner in Germany. Of these, up to 1.2 million people died and died in the camps.

Thank you doctor!

According to the norms of June 23, 1941, the prisoners were fed almost like a soldier of the Red Army. They were supposed to eat 600 g of rye bread per day, 90 g of cereals, 10 g of pasta, 40 g of meat, 120 g of fish, etc. Naturally, soon the diet was reduced - there was not enough for their own! In the most complete work on this issue, "Captivity and internment in the Soviet Union" (1995), the Austrian historian Stefan Karner wrote: "Working prisoners of war received 600 g of watery black bread, and the Russian civilian population often did not even have this." We are talking about the winter of 1946-1947, when famine reigned in the USSR. If the norms were exceeded, the prisoners could count on another 300-400 g.

German prisoners of war at a parade in Moscow, 1945. Photo: www.russianlook.com

“Of the medicines the Russians had only camphor, iodine and aspirin, surgical operations were done without anesthesia, nevertheless, all those who returned home praised the“ Russian doctor ”who, in this disastrous situation, did her best,” recalled an eyewitness. The "native" Soviet prisoners from the GULAG did not even have that. The main causes of death of prisoners of war in the USSR were dystrophy and infectious diseases(dysentery, typhoid, tuberculosis). Only 0.2% of those who did not live to be released committed suicide.

Antifa -1945

At the end of 1945, the Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees of the USSR NKVD (GUPVI) owned an empire of 267 camps and 3200 stationary departments. The captured Germans mined peat and coal, restored Donbass and Dneproges, Stalingrad and Sevastopol, built the Moscow metro and BAM, mined gold in Siberia ... From the prisoners, separate workers' battalions from 500 to 1000 people were formed, consisting of three companies. In the barracks - visual agitation: graphics, honor boards, labor competition, participation in which gave privileges.

Another way to improve their situation was cooperation with "Antifa" (that's when this word appeared!) - anti-fascist committees. Austrian Konrad Lorenz, who became a famous scientist after the war (Nobel laureate in the field of physiology and medicine in 1973), was captured near Vitebsk. Having renounced his National Socialist convictions, he was transferred to Camp No. 27 with a good regime in Krasnogorsk. From Russian captivity, Lorenz contrived to bring the manuscript of his first book "The Other Side of the Mirror" about the nature of human aggression. In total, about 100 thousand activists were trained in the camps, who formed the backbone of the Socialist Unified Party of Germany.

The last German prisoner was sent to Germany in the fall of 1955, when the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany came to the USSR on an official visit. Konrad Adenauer... The last foreigners were escorted home with a brass band.

A very difficult topic - I personally find it difficult to imagine the strength of mind, the degree of understanding, the amount of nobility and mercy of Soviet citizens who, after a devastating war that killed millions of people, every day saw those who had just destroyed their relatives working on the streets of their cities. But the fact remains - the prisoners made their contribution to the restoration of cities, although many data about this are still classified

We will not focus too much on the life of the fascists in captivity - we lived, ate (while the country was starving), even received money for their work, and many returned home safely

Let's focus on architecture, although it's simply impossible to include everything in one post. Who knows about their cities - add, tell. Incidentally, among the prisoners. in addition to the Germans, there were a huge number of Romanians, Hungarians, Danes, French, Norwegians, etc. etc. Therefore, let there be captured Germans in particular, or fascists in general.
The first figure of all prisoners of war, the second - how many were released and repatriated, the third - how many died in captivity
Austrians 156 681/145 790/10 891
Belgians 2014/1833/181
Hungarians 513 766/459 011/54 755
Total prisoners of war 3 486 206/2 967 686/518 520
Dutch 4730/4530/200
Danes 456/421/35
Spanish 452/382/70
Italians 48 957 // 21 274/27 683
Total for the Wehrmacht 2 733 739/2 352 671/381 067
Total by allies 752 467/615 014/137 753
Luxembourgers 1653/1560/93
Germans 2 388 443/2 031 743/297 250
Norwegians 101/83/18
Poles 60 277/57 149/3128
other nationalities 3989/1062/2927
Romanians 187 367/132 755/54 612
Finns 2377/1974/403
French 23 136/21 811/1325
Czechs and Slovaks 69 977/65 954/4023
Yugoslavs 21 830/20 354/1476

Photo - restoration of Stalingrad

The captured Germans, following the Molotov covenant, worked on a multitude of construction sites USSR, used in public utilities. German labor discipline became a household name and even gave rise to a kind of meme: "Of course, it was the Germans who built it."

Fact - many believe that almost all low-rise buildings in the 1940s - 1950s were built by the Germans, but this is not the case - there are not so many such buildings, in the total number of rebuilt houses. It is also necessary to dispel another myth that the buildings built by the Germans were built according to the designs of German architects. It is not true. The general plan for the restoration and development of cities was developed by Soviet architects (Shchusev, Simbirtsev, Iofan and others).

According to German sources, approximately 3.15 million Germans were held captive in the Soviet Union, of which approximately 1.1-1.3 million did not survive captivity. Soviet sources call a significantly lower figure - almost a million less. On September 19, 1939, the Office for Prisoners of War and Internees (UPVI) of the NKVD of the USSR was organized. According to them, from June 22, 1941 to May 17, 1945, only 2,389,560 servicemen of German nationality were taken prisoner, including 376 generals and admirals, 69,469 officers and 2,319,715 non-commissioned officers and soldiers. To this number should be added another 14.1 thousand people who were immediately placed (as war criminals) in special camps of the NKVD that are not part of the UPVI / GUPVI system, from 57 to 93.9 thousand (there are different numbers) German prisoners of war, who died even before they got into the UPVI / GUPVI system, and 600 thousand were liberated right at the front, without being transferred to the camps.

About humane attitude

As it is said in the “Cathedral Code” of Moscow Russia (1649): “Spare the enemy who asks for mercy; not to kill unarmed; not to fight with women; do not touch youngsters. To deal with the prisoners with humanity, to be ashamed of barbarism. No less weapons to strike the enemy with philanthropy. A warrior must crush the enemy's power, and not defeat the unarmed. "

Russian people are humane, compassionate and merciful. From the memoirs of the captured fascists “In captivity, we were fed better than the Russians themselves ate. I left a part of my heart in Russia ”.

The daily ration of an ordinary prisoner of war according to the norms of boiler allowance for prisoners of war in the NKVD camps was 600 grams of rye bread, 40 grams of meat, 120 grams of fish, 600 grams of potatoes and vegetables, and other products with a total energy value of 2533 kcal per day.

Captured Germans in Sevastopol

It is impossible to list all the buildings of Sevastopol rebuilt by the Germans - the city was destroyed by 90% and the captured Germans worked everywhere. First of all, just working hands are needed to disassemble common rubble, collapsed reinforcement, destroyed walls of office buildings and production workshops.

Work on clearing debris, which simultaneously went on the territory of enterprises and factories, in residential areas, on city streets, was associated with a great risk of being blown up by mines left by the Germans. Prisoners of war began to be involved in this work.

The POW camp was located in Ushakova gully, from where most of it went to the construction and restoration of the dock facilities of the Sevastopol Marine Plant. They cleared the area from rubble, removed explosive items, equipment assemblies, machine parts, beams, rails and everything that could be used. The Germans were taken by car to construction sites without security and taken back.

There were ten prisoner camps in and around the city. Geographically, they were located:
in Streletskaya (behind the former building of the Mir cinema),
in Balaklava (on the territory of the quarry),
in the village Holland (on the territory of a modern institute),
on the street Budischeva, 32, camp number 2 (the town of the former anti-aircraft school),
on Kulivovo field and Matyushenko,
in Ushakova gully.

Staircase at the cinema "Pobeda"

A block in some places of Sevastopol (many sections were laid much earlier), laid by the Germans

Despite the incoming demobilized soldiers from the Red Army, the number of prisoners of war at the construction sites of our city increased even after the victory in 1945. In relation to civilian workers and military builders, the proportion of prisoners of war was very high.
With high qualifications, such a captive specialist earned good money. Indeed, the Germans were given a salary, and they could shop in shops located on the territory of the camps. During their captivity, the Germans mastered important professions - masons, plasterers, fishermen, hairdressers, etc.

Admiral Makarov, Sevastopol, residential building

Buildings in Simferopol, built by prisoners

Staircase with a cascading fountain in the Nikitsky Botanical Garden

In Crimea, the roads built by the Nazis in 1942 are still functioning properly. When it was not possible to capture Sevastopol on the move, the Wehrmacht leadership became concerned about the unsuitability of the Crimean roads for the rapid transfer of reserves from one sector of the front to another. The profile of unpaved roads was leveled, crushed stone was made, bridges were strengthened. The wooden bridge across the Black River on the Rodnoe - Morozovka road was completely replaced: powerful steel I-beams lay on reinforced concrete supports. This bridge operated until the early 90s, when the local population handed over the beams for scrap metal. However, the bridge supports are still in perfect condition.

Memories of Sverdlovsk in the 1950s.

“At that time Sverdlovsk looked more like a“ big village ”. UPI from the side of st. Lenin was closed by the ruins of one exploded educational building, which blocked the view of the main building of the UPI. Every spring a relay race of the student newspaper ZIK ("For industrial personnel") was held at UPI. The track passed around the institute "

Yekaterinburg Suvorov Military School

Among the buildings of Yekaterinburg, erected by the Nazis - the facing of the building of the Sverdlovsk City Council (square 1905), the construction of a fire-technical school (Pervomayskaya St.), residential buildings on Lenin Avenue (from the Ural Polytechnic Institute to Vostochnaya St.), whole streets and quarters in the regional cities of Nizhny Tagil, Kamensk-Uralsk, Krasnoturinsk, Asbest and many others.

On the territory of the Sverdlovsk region from 1942 to the beginning of 1956 there were 14 camps, in which about one hundred thousand people were accommodated. Approximately 65% ​​of them are German prisoners of war. Almost within the city there were German camps near Lake Shartash and in the city of Nizhne-Isetsk (now Chkalovsky district, Khimmash). The last prisoner of war camp in the region N476 of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR (in the city of Nizhne-Isetsk) was liquidated on February 16, 1956.

Sverdlovsk City Council. It is said that when the scaffolding surrounding the building was removed, people were surprised to see granite crosses on the walls. Whether it was done on purpose, or by accident, no one will tell

The first prisoners of war entered the Sverdlovsk region in 1942, after the battles near Moscow. The first camps arose in the immediate vicinity of the villages of Monetny and Losiny, then a camp appeared in the Asbest region. The prisoners who were in it worked in a quarry.

Fire school

Residential buildings on Lenin street

Camps for German prisoners of war in Tatarstan were located in Kazan and Yelabuga. Prisoners from Elabuga camps were mainly involved in peat extraction and timber harvesting, Kazan prisoners - in the construction of a plant and a residential sector.

Prisoners of war built many objects in Kazan, which today are one of the most recognizable symbols of the city.

These are both unusual "stalinkas" located in the area of ​​Vosstaniya street, and D / K in the village "Derbyshki", and, of course, one of the main attractions of Kazan - the Tatar Opera and Ballet Theater on Svoboda Square.

Kiev

In Kiev, the forces of prisoners built Sotsgorod, in which the people of Kiev still live. Whole blocks on the Syrets are also their job. Detachments of prisoners of war also rebuilt Khreshchatyk, erected the buildings of the Supreme Soviet, the Cabinet of Ministers, and the Central Department Store.

The building of the Supreme Council, Kiev

Captured Germans on the streets of Kiev

Captured Germans build a barrack on Solovki

Kuryanovo, an area in Moscow built by captured Germans

Moscow State University, a building restored by the Germans

From 1945 to 1949, more than one million sick and disabled prisoners of war were returned to their homeland. After the visit to the USSR by German Chancellor Adenauer in 1955, a decree was issued "On the early release and repatriation of German prisoners of war convicted of war crimes." After that, many Germans were able to return to their homes.

Petrozavodsk

At construction sites in Volgograd

Luhansk. Hotel "October"

Residential buildings Perm (buildings of this kind, made by captured Germans, can be found in many cities of the former USSR)

Chelyabinsk, hospital building

Construction of the VolgoDonsky Canal

On average, 50 to 60 Germans worked at each lock. In 1953, after the completion of construction, all of them were exported to Germany.

Opera and ballet theater in Minsk

Sending German prisoners home. They look good, they are well dressed, with suitcases ...

Despite the significant numbers of Germans who died in captivity (356 678 people.), The comparison with German camps does not look in their favor: according to official statistics, more than 56% of prisoners died in German camps, while in Soviet camps - just over 14%.

In 1947, at the Moscow conference of the foreign ministers of the USA, Great Britain and the USSR, it was decided to send German prisoners to their homeland. Repatriation lasted until 1950. The prisoners released did not include those convicted of war crimes. However, 14,000 prisoners of war convicted of war crimes were nevertheless deported to their homeland after a visit to the SSR of German Chancellor Adenauer. In total, about 2,000,000 prisoners of war were sent from the USSR.

By the way, while the material was being searched, it seemed interesting information about the fascists from the highest echelons of power, or especially noted "for merits", who passed the Soviet captivity and returned home safely. But this will be in another topic.

In the photo - Erich Alfred Hartmann (German Erich Alfred Hartmann; April 19, 1922 - September 19, 1993) - a German ace pilot, considered the most effective fighter pilot in the history of aviation, who spent 10 years in prisoner of war camps.

To whom it is interesting - the story of a prisoner of war about his life in captivity

In chapter

What did the captured soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht not undertake in order to escape from the USSR as soon as possible. Posing as Romanians and Austrians. Trying to earn the leniency of the Soviet authorities, they went to work in the police. And thousands of Germans even declared themselves Jews and went to the Middle East to strengthen the army of Israel! It is not surprising to understand these people - the conditions in which they found themselves were not sweet. Of the 3.15 million Germans, a third did not survive the hardships of captivity.

All German prisoners of war who were on the territory of the USSR have not yet been counted. And if in Germany from 1957 to 1959 a government commission was engaged in the study of their history, which eventually released a 15-volume study, then in the Soviet Union (and later in Russia) the topic of captured Wehrmacht soldiers and officers did not seem to interest anyone at all. Historians note that almost the only Soviet study of this kind was the work Die Deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in der UdSSR by Alexander Blank, a former translator of Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus. But the incident is that the "Soviet study" was published ... in Cologne in 1979 on German... And it is considered "Soviet" only for the reason that it was written by Blank during his stay in the USSR.

Uncounted Germans

How many Germans were in Soviet captivity? More than 3 million, as counted in Germany, a little over two million, as Soviet historians assured - how much? For example, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov wrote in a letter to Stalin dated March 12, 1947 that "there are 988,500 German prisoners of war, officers and generals in the Soviet Union." And in a TASS statement dated March 15 of the same year it was said that "890,532 German prisoners of war remain on the territory of the USSR." Where is the truth? The leapfrog in Soviet statistics, however, is easily explainable: from 1941 to 1953, the department that dealt with the affairs of prisoners of war was reformed four times. From the Office for Prisoners of War and Internees, the NKVD in 1945 created the Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees of the NKVD, which in March 1946 was transferred to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1951, the UPVI "fell out" from the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and in 1953 the structure was disbanded, transferring part of its functions to the Prison Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It is clear what happened to the departmental documentation during such administrative perturbations.

according to the GUPVI in September 1945, 600 thousand Germans were “liberated at the front, without being transferred to the camps” - but how were they “released”? Of course, all of them were actually "taken out"

The most trustworthy domestic historians recognize the late statistics of the Prison Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It follows from it that from June 22, 1941 to May 17, 1945, 2,389,560 "servicemen of German nationality" were taken prisoner by Soviet troops (they were counted precisely by nationality, it is not known why). These prisoners of war included 376 generals and admirals, 69,469 officers and 2,319,715 non-commissioned officers and soldiers. There were also 14,100 so-called war criminals - presumably SS men. They were kept separately from the rest, in special camps of the NKVD, which were not part of the UPVI-GUPVI system. To this day, their fate is not known for certain: archival documents are classified. There is evidence that in 1947 about a thousand war criminals were recruited to the Committee of Information under the Council of Ministers of the USSR - a structure that united foreign policy and military intelligence. What they were doing there is a military secret.

The prisoners were shot, but without publicity

The discrepancy in the Soviet and German tsifir is about 750 thousand people. An impressive number, agree. True, according to the GUPVI in September 1945, 600 thousand Germans were “liberated at the front, without transfer to the camps” - but how were they “released”? It is hard to believe that the Soviet command for a great life returned the captured soldiers to the Wehrmacht in hundreds of thousands. Of course, all of them were actually "taken out". But, since the prisoners were not supposed to be shot, the column "released at the front" was added to the Soviet statistical reports. If you carefully study the reports of the first two years of the war, the situation with the secretly executed prisoners becomes obvious. For example, on May 1, 1943, 292 630 Wehrmacht servicemen and their allies were taken prisoner. But, as of the same period, 196,944 people of them were already considered "dead"! This is mortality - out of every three prisoners, only one survived! It seems that endless epidemics were raging in the Soviet camps. However, it is not hard to guess that in fact the prisoners, of course, were shot. In fairness, it should be noted that the Germans also did not stand on ceremony with our prisoners. Of the 6,206,000 Soviet prisoners of war, 3,291,000 were executed.

Captured Soviet soldiers, as you know, the Germans fed the so-called Russian bread - a baked mixture, half of sugar beet peelings, a quarter of cellulose flour and another quarter of chopped leaves or straw. But in Soviet camps, captured fascists were fattened like pigs for slaughter. The soldiers were fed half a loaf of rye bread, half a kilo of boiled potatoes, 100 grams of salted herring and 100 grams of boiled cereals per day. The officers and "emaciated soldiers" were daily relied on dried fruits, chicken eggs and butter... Their daily rations also included canned meat, milk and wheat bread. In the late 40s, non-commissioned officers were equated with soldiers - they were left with an officer's ration, but forced to go to work (officers were not supposed to work). Believe it or not, German soldiers were even allowed to receive parcels and money orders from Germany, and their amounts were not limited by anything. Not life is a fairy tale!

German officers "strengthened" the Israeli army

In November 1949, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Sergei Kruglov, issued a noteworthy circular No. 744: it stated that prisoners of war easily leave places of detention, are treated in civilian hospitals, get a job, including at "secure facilities", and even enter marriages with Soviet citizens. By that time, the armed guards of the camps had been replaced by the so-called self-protection from among the prisoners - their employees, however, were not supposed to have weapons. By 1950, representatives of "self-protection" began to be enrolled in the work of the militia: in this way, at least 15 thousand German prisoners of war were employed. It was rumored that after serving a year in the police, one could ask to go home to Germany.

After the end of the war, about 2 million Germans returned to their homeland. Approximately 150 thousand people remained in the USSR (official statistics of 1950 reported that only 13,546 Germans remained in the Union: later it turned out that only those who were in prisons at that time and pre-trial detention facilities). It is also known that 58 thousand German prisoners of war expressed a desire to leave for Israel. In 1948, not without the help of Soviet military instructors, the army of the Jewish state (IDF) began to form, and its creators - childhood friend of Felix Dzerzhinsky Lev Shkolnik and Israel Galili (Berchenko) - offered the captured Germans freedom in exchange for military experience. Moreover, just like the ethnic Russian officers of the IDF, the Germans had to change their first and last names to Jewish ones. Did the soldiers of the Wehrmacht, heading to the war with the "Jews and commissars", imagine how their campaign would end?

According to the statistics of the Prison Department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, from June 22, 1941 to September 2, 1945, in addition to 2,389,560 Germans, 639,635 Japanese were in Soviet military captivity (and according to the NKVD in 1946 - 1,070,000. And who will you believe?). In addition to them, more than half a million Hungarians, 187,370 Romanians and 156,682 Austrians learned the taste of Soviet camp rations. Among the prisoners of war allied to the Nazis' armies, there were 10,173 Jews, 12,928 Chinese, 3608 Mongols, 1,652 Luxembourgers and even 383 Gypsies.

In total, there were 216 camp administrations and 2454 camp departments in the USSR, in which prisoners of war were accommodated. Also, 166 working battalions of the Red Army and 159 hospitals and recreation sites were created for them.

In the Soviet Union, captured Germans were used in construction work. So, in Moscow, whole micro-districts were erected by their hands, and in many cities the quarters built by prisoners are still in everyday life called German.

Historians are still arguing about how many Nazis, as well as soldiers and officers of the armies who fought on the side of Germany, were captured. Little is known about their life in the Soviet rear.

Orava had the right

According to official data, during the war years, 3,486,000 soldiers of the German Wehrmacht, SS troops, as well as citizens of countries that fought in alliance with the Third Reich fell into the hands of the Red Army soldiers.

Of course, such a crowd had to be placed somewhere. Already in 1941, through the efforts of employees of the Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees (GUPVI) of the NKVD of the USSR, camps began to be created where former soldiers and officers of the German and allied armies of Hitler were kept. There were over 300 such institutions in total. As a rule, they were small and accommodated from 100 to 3-4 thousand people. Some camps existed for a year or more, others only for a few months.

They were located in various corners of the rear territory of the Soviet Union - in the Moscow region, Kazakhstan, Siberia, the Far East, Uzbekistan, Leningrad, Voronezh, Tambov, Gorky, Chelyabinsk regions, Udmurtia, Tatarstan, Armenia, Georgia and other places. As the occupied regions and republics were liberated, prisoner-of-war camps were built in the Ukraine, the Baltic states, Belarus, Moldova, and Crimea.

Former conquerors lived in new conditions for them, in general, tolerantly, if we compare the Soviet prisoner of war camps with similar Nazi ones.

The Germans and their allies received 400 g of bread per day (after 1943, this rate increased to 600-700 g), 100 g of fish, 100 g of cereals, 500 g of vegetables and potatoes, 20 g of sugar, 30 g of salt, as well as a little flour, tea, vegetable oil, vinegar, pepper. Generals, as well as soldiers with dystrophy, had a richer daily ration.

The duration of the working day of the prisoners was 8 hours. According to the circular of the NKVD of the USSR of August 25, 1942, they were entitled to a small monetary allowance. Private and junior commanders were paid 7 rubles a month, officers - 10, colonels - 15, generals - 30 rubles. Prisoners of war who worked at rationed jobs were given additional amounts depending on the output. Those who exceeded the norm were supposed to be 50 rubles a month. The foremen received the same additional money. With excellent work, the amount of their remuneration could grow to 100 rubles. Prisoners of war could keep money in excess of the permitted norms in savings banks. By the way, they had the right to receive money transfers and parcels from their homeland, they could receive 1 letter per month and send an unlimited number of letters.

In addition, soap was given to them free of charge. If the clothes were in a deplorable state, then the prisoners received quilted jackets, wide trousers, warm hats, boots and footcloths for free.

Disarmed soldiers of the armies of the Hitlerite bloc worked in the Soviet rear where there was a shortage of workers. The prisoners could be seen at logging in the taiga, on collective farm fields, at machine tools, at construction sites.

There were also inconveniences. For example, officers and generals were forbidden to have orderlies.

From Stalingrad to Elabuga

In the operational Krasnogorsk camp, important persons were held captive, for example, Field Marshal Paulus. Then he "moved" to Suzdal. Other famous Nazi commanders who were captured at Stalingrad were sent to Krasnogorsk - Generals Schmidt, Pfeiffer, Korfes, Colonel Adam. But the bulk of the German officers captured in the Stalingrad "cauldron", after Krasnogorsk, were sent to Yelabuga, where they were awaited by camp N 97.

The political departments of many prisoner-of-war camps reminded the Soviet citizens who guarded there, worked as communications technicians, electricians, cooks, that the Hague Convention on Prisoners of War must be observed. Therefore, the attitude towards them on the part of Soviet citizens in most cases was more or less correct.

Saboteurs and saboteurs

The bulk of the prisoners of war behaved in a disciplined manner in the camps; labor standards were sometimes overfulfilled.

Although there were no large-scale uprisings, there were emergencies in the form of sabotage, conspiracies, and escapes. In camp N 75, which was located near the village of Ryabovo in Udmurtia, the prisoner of war Menzak avoided work, simulated. At the same time, doctors recognized him as fit for work. Menzak tried to escape, but was detained. He did not want to put up with his position, cut off his left hand, then deliberately delayed the treatment. As a result, he was transferred to a military tribunal. The most inveterate Nazis were sent to a special camp in Vorkuta. The same fate befell Menzak.

Prisoner of war camp N 207, located in the Krasnokamsk region, was one of the last to be disbanded in the Urals. It existed until the end of 1949. There were still prisoners of war in it, whose repatriation was postponed due to the fact that they were suspected of preparing sabotage, atrocities in the occupied territories, ties with the Gestapo, SS, SD, Abwehr and other Nazi organizations. Therefore, in October 1949, commissions were created in the camps of the GUPVI, which identified among the prisoners those who engaged in sabotage, was involved in mass shootings, executions, and torture. One of these commissions also worked in the Krasnokamsk camp. After checking, some of the prisoners were sent home, and the rest were brought to trial by the Military Tribunal.

Fears about convinced Nazis ready to plot sabotage and other crimes were not unfounded. Obersturmführer Hermann Fritz, held in the Berezniki camp No. 366, said during interrogation that on May 7, 1945, a special order had been issued by the SS division "Dead Head": in case of capture, all officers had to "organize sabotage, sabotage, conduct espionage. intelligence work and do as much harm as possible. "

Within the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, in the Zelenodolsk region, camp No. 119 was located. Prisoners of war Romanians were also kept here. In the fall of 1946, an incident occurred in the camp, which became known in Moscow. Former Romanian lieutenant Champaeru publicly hit his fellow countryman several times with a board for signing an appeal to the famous Romanian anti-fascist Petru Groz. Champaeru said that he would crack down on other prisoners of war who signed this document. This case was mentioned in the Directive of the NKVD of the USSR, signed on October 22, 1946, "On the revealed fascist groups opposing anti-fascist work among prisoners of war."

But such sentiments did not receive mass support among the prisoners, the last of whom left the USSR in 1956.

by the way

From 1943 to 1948, 11,403 prisoners of war escaped in the entire system of the GUPVI of the NKVD of the USSR. Of these, 10 thousand 445 people were detained. 3% remained not caught.

During the arrest, 292 people were killed.

During the war years, about 200 generals surrendered to the Red Army. Such well-known Nazi commanders as Field Marshals General Friedrich Paulus and Ludwig Kleist, SS Brigadeführer Fritz Panzinger, Artillery General Helmut Weidling were in Soviet captivity.

Most of the captured German generals were repatriated by mid-1956 and returned to Germany.

In Soviet captivity, in addition to German soldiers and officers, representatives of Hitler's allied armies and SS volunteer units - Austrians, Finns, Hungarians, Italians, Romanians, Slovaks, Croats, Spaniards, Czechs, Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, French, Poles, Dutch , Flemings, Walloons and others.

What happened to the Germans after the war

Title: Buy the book "What happened to the Germans after the war": feed_id: 5296 pattern_id: 2266 book_

The war did not end with a "peace treaty." German prisoners are qualified as "Disarmed Enemy Forces" (OVS) in order to deny the right to humane treatment. For "after the signing of the peace treaty," says the Hague Convention on War on Land, "the prisoners must be sent home as soon as possible." The above-described fraud allowed a German prisoner to be driven into a foreign land as a slave. Theft is usually under conditions incompatible with life. No one is obliged to feed, shelter and save someone who is qualified as an OVS.

There are no impartial eyewitnesses to the treatment of Germans by the American army. From the moment of the German surrender on May 8, 1945, the doormen could no longer shelter a German, and the Red Cross was relieved of the obligation to check the camps.

In the West, half of the German prisoners ended up in the hands of the British, and the other half of the Americans. There are so many prisoners that the former do not take anyone else, and the latter, from April to September 1945, build "rainwiesenlagers" - meadow enclosures fenced with wire. Especially the "Bad Kreuznach" meadow, where the Germans are crowded in the open air, and there are no toilets and roofs. Burrows for sleeping were dug alternately with bare hands, but you still can't lie down.

There are up to 560,000 people in Bad Kreuznach, but there is not enough space, food, shelter, sanitary facilities. They die like flies sick, keep less than 700 calories a day. Officially, there are 1000 graves, but information about the graves is also common.

The British and French were allowed into the occupation zones in the fall of 1945, when most of the camps were closed. In the American occupation zone, scanty aid is allowed only until February 4, 1946. There, the death rate among prisoners remained at 30% per year, according to American medical records, but almost all documentation on Rhineland has been eliminated.

Transportation is not better. The Americans near Munich in a matter of weeks after the war (after July 16, 1945), tank cars started up the tracks blocked by a train with prisoners that had stalled. Hit, accident, death of 96 Germans.

Towards the end of June 1945, the original Remagen, Böhl-Ingelheim, Buderich camps were closed. The main command of the allied forces of the camp proposed to France, who wished for 1¾ million slaves. In July, Zinzig, Andernach, Zirschan, Brezenheim, Dietersheim, Koblenz, Gechzenheim and Diez, who have thousands, donated to France. Still able-bodied there from the English zone, others were released. After September 1945, there are no original camps.

80,000 prisoners are expected from American captivity in allied Germany lands with 1,300,000 French on "rehabiliation works", however, according to the Red Cross, allegedly 200,000 French have already been brought to incapacity for work, generally under-paid - the Americans stop deliveries until France follows the Geneva Convention.

By the winter of 1947, according to the Red Cross, 4,160,000 prisoners remain in labor camps outside Germany: 750,000 in France, 30,000 in Italy, 460,000 in Britain, 48,000 in Belgium, 4,000 in Luxembourg, 1,300 in Holland (below it is said that in the USSR initially 4,000,000-5,000,000, in Yugoslavia 80,000, and Czechoslovakia 45,000) along with the American 140,000 and 100,000 later in France.

In 1945-1948, 700,000-1,000,000 died in American and French camps. The estimates are given above, but modern attempts to count and exhume are suppressed, including by the German authorities. How many died due to the fault of the British, is unknown, but declassified documents show torture, abuse, compulsion to dangerous labor such as mine clearance, transporting explosives - completely contrary to the law.

In total, in 1945-1949, American, British, French tribunals convicted 5025 Germans and German women for war crimes. More than 500 were sentenced to death, most were executed, including 21 women.

In cold blood

Many German soldiers wanted to be captured by American captives, not Soviet ones. Some escaped, including through hijacking American jeeps or under US uniforms, although when caught, such are often executed as spies.

Unofficially, it was customary in the American army to kill small heaps of captured SS men. The most massive such reprisals (recently recognized): surrendered 8th SS Mountain Division for 700 detachments; the surrendered Westphalian Brigade, shot in the back of the head; surrendered 300 from the Dachau administration under a machine gun. Massacre of 48 surrendered on April 15, 1945 in Jungholzhausen is supposed. The witness asserts, “the Americans were driving four people at a time with their hands up, pushing them from behind. They shot from the back of the head. " The corpses were taken out by trucks. In this case, to this day, "the investigation is underway"! There are known examples of lawlessness, others murder.

A mass grave for 200 SS men was found near Nuremberg. It turns out that they were shot at close range or beaten to death with American rifle butts. In the Ebersteten village, 17-ros from the Gotz von Berlinchingen division were shot down when they surrendered to the Americans. 14 from the 116th Armored Division were led through the streets of Butberg on April 8, 1945 to the headquarters of the 95th US Infantry Army, where they were built, they were shot. Three of the wounded escaped.

On April 13, 1945, the US infantry entered the Shpitz village near Colony, gathered residents near the church. 20 air defense shnikov were separated, led three kilometers in a field outside the village, lined up, used a machine gun. Civilians were ordered to be buried. The monument was erected only in 1995.

On January 1, 1945, in Shanon, Belgium, US soldiers killed several dozen unarmed people. Allegedly, they got revenge for Malmedy for a couple of weeks. In the American unit, they ordered "not to take prisoners with SS troops."

According to the writer Martyn Sorge, “the cold-blooded New Year's massacre of 60 German prisoners in Chaignon is caused by the events in Malmedy. The perpetrators are not punished. One feels that the execution was due to the order not to take prisoners. " The official US position is denial.

Described by John Fagø of Company B, 21st Infantry Battalion (11th Division):

“We rested for an hour, and ordered to return through the city, to reunite with the transport on the other side. They made a semblance of columns, and back. Outside the city on a hill, ours picked up German prisoners on both sides of the road. About 25 or 30 boys. We installed machine guns especially for them. We have done what the Japanese and the Germans are accused of now. I didn't understand then. Have killed yourself more Fritzes, so what? Although from the forest who would have seen, and we, too, do not expect mercy. I turned away myself, climbed the hill. "

Another example is when people were poisoned with bread in the camp. Estimates are different, the United States officially declares that the bakery admits that arsenic is Parisian, de 3000 loaves have been poisoned. More than 200 fell ill, 200-700 Germans died. Nobody was brought to justice.

Many German prisoners were young, which helped them survive under the communists. Upon returning home, the family was not found alive, as well as at home in general - even thanks to the defenders of Germany, it is criminal to speak. It is believed that in 1955, the last surviving prisoners were rescued from ten years of Soviet slavery - they walked with an old German song, sounding in many languages ​​in churches all over the world.

This is "Nun danket alle Gott", written by the Lutheran priest of Eilenburg, Saxony, Martin Rinkart, the son of a poor coppersmith. The hymn is originally titled "Tisch-Gebetlein" or Pretextual Prayer. The history of the song is amazing, the events were accompanied by epoch-making.

Imagine the Thirty Years' War, the city walls in Eilenburg being filled with refugees. Surrounded by the Swedes, in the besieged city of gladness and disease. Thousands of deaths in a year. Already only three from officials and a bunch of schoolchildren. Singing fifty a day, the priests die - only Rinkart remained. There is nothing to redeem with, the townspeople are fighting for a bird carcass. Mourning his wife, Rinkart went to the mercy of the enemy.

The Swedish commander was amazed at his courage and canceled the tribute. With starving children, mortgaged property, Rinkart composed a prayer in gratitude that the war was over. Until the end of the 17th century, the song was included in every German spiritual book. Whoever did not put it to music, even Pachelbel, Telemann, Bach, Liszt, Reger. They even performed the Leyden dissenters when they sat on the "Mayflower".

In the 18th century, the Lufen anthem became famous thanks to the Seven Years' War, when on December 5, 1757, the troops of Frederick the Great won the Battle of Lufen. The losses are great on both sides: the Austrians were killed 3,000, 7,000 wounded - the Prussians more than 1,000 killed, more than 6,000 wounded. A lone Prussian soldier sang "Nun danket alle Gott", and the entire Prussian force of 25,000 took up the song. Which is later the anthem of the Russian Mennonites oppressed in the 1920s.

“Thank the Lord in soul and deeds,

that we both in childhood and in the womb of our mother

he gave in excess and to this day gives:

the century will not diminish the bounties of God,

until the Almighty leaves -

our freedom, a stronghold of joy! -

we will never be afraid of need,

by God's grace, trouble will bypass us.

Praise and honor the heavenly master,

Father and Son, which are equal,

that three times our god is here and everywhere

and has always been, and is, and will be. "

(I will note in passing: after the war, many German veterans entered the French Foreign Legion, others were taken from the camps, some had nowhere to go. The French appreciated the courage and discipline highly, after 1945 in the French Foreign Legion of the former Wehrmacht to 70%. They appointed their sergeants, spoke exclusively in German. From 1945-1954 the foreign legion was hosted by the Germans 30,000-35,000. During the First War in Indochina, somewhere 40-50 %% of the military personnel of Southeast Asia were Germans. Among the 7000 soldiers who left Vietnam in 1954 year, Germans about 1600.)

Death camps in America and Britain

Those German prisoners of war who spent 1942-1945 in America were mainly sent to 500 country camps, mainly in the south and southeast, but some ended up in the Great Plains and the Midwest (12,000 in Nebraska alone). Contrary to the Geneva Convention, over 380,000 German prisoners scattered in numerous American camps since 1943, bureaucrats had cerebral sex. They began to instill with threats, force, brainwashing the ideal of "American democracy."

Pentagon behaviorists directed the "re-education", and humanities scientists were dispatched to more than 500 camps to promote the American way of life. The sold-out Germans with their American mentors carefully watched that the literature with the screen praised democratic humanism and vilified German "militaristic heroism."

The uneducated are sent directly to Oklahoma's "Camp Alva" - a maximum security colony for "Nazis of special hardiness." At least 46 people did not come out of there ...

More than 7,000 German prisoners of war were sorted into 12 Utah camps, where hundreds of Germans had been serving since World War I. Douglas between June 1917 and March 1918. Fort Douglas still kept “threatening foreigners” - violators of military law or suspicious.

On May 7, 1945, at the end of Salin's Main Street in Utah, 250 German prisoners await repatriation. 43 tents throughout the camp and observation towers. On July 8, 1945, replacing Private Clarence Betrucci, he pulls out a 30-gauge machine gun and fires it 250 times. Hit 30 tents in 50 seconds. Before the corporal's intervention, 6 killed immediately, 22 wounded (of which 3 died).

Betrucci had long boasted that he would do it, and after that he did not regret it. In Durka for a short time, the military jury found him insane even without a diagnosis, and sent him to a New York hospital. How many were there, it is not known - he died in 1969. His victims were buried in the "Fort Douglas" a cemetery in the uniform of the US troops.

In 1988, the German Air Force erected a monument there. The sculptor - a native of Germany, a resident of Utah Arlo Steinecke already made in honor of 21 ruined German prisoners of the First World War. The German authorities only rededicated the sculpture in honor of the rest of the captives and added the inscription: "also in memory of all the victims of all the despotism of the world." Among the tens of thousands of American prisoners during the Second World War, only 2,222 tried to escape - less than 1%. By 1946, all the captives had been returned to their homes ... if there were any.

Civilian captives

What does the history of the Germans of America mean in comparison with the situation of the American Japanese? Nevertheless, 11,000 civilians, including American-born children, were detained at the end of the war for their German descent alone. Broken lives, broken families, suicides. At least 53 buildings belonging to the army, the navy, and the immigration service have become prisons for the innocent. Home for 3-7 FBI members, sometimes at night. The property has been stolen.

Rapid interrogations at the Hearing Board. Foreigners "potentially dangerous to the safety of the American people" are packed in windowless trains. In the camps, the attitude is on a par with prisoners of war, wear soldier's uniforms.

First, in huts and tents without amenities, and all around one barbed wire, warning signs and machine gunners. Some later in semlags like the Texas "Crystal City" or "Seagoville". From the beginning of 1942 to May 1945, thousands of Germans from Latin America were kidnapped from their homes, taken to dark holds, and then convicted for illegal entry! Until 1948, civilians were interned for no reason.

old world

In the English camps from 1939 to 1943, few people got into the camps. But after the defeat in Africa, the British camps multiplied. Not only Germans - Italians were driven to England, Scotland, Wales. After 1942, by many ships to New York, approximately 25,000 were exiled to two huge camps in Canada. The British did not want their captives and sold them wherever possible, sometimes to the outskirts of the British Empire. But still there are more than 600 camps.

The average prisoner of war was held tolerably well. It was bad for the "hardened Nazis", they were kept separately, rudely, longer, in the Scottish and other wilderness. Cases of torture are known only now. German pilots are interrogated without ceremony, "re-educated".

Razvoenmin's unit, the Joint Service for Solid Interrogation Center (CSDIC), set up a secret prison in Bad Nenndorf after the capture of Northwest Germany in 1945. From all known the most terrible - "London Cage" almost within the boundaries of the capital. The authorities recently admitted that London Cage was a torture center. The Germans, hidden from the "Red Cross", are bat, vigorous, threatened with execution or "unnecessary surgery." Worse only in the once delightful resort of Bad Nenndorf near Hanover. Documentation recently declassified - the terrible suffering of 372 men and 44 women in the 22 months of operation of the torture chamber before closing in July 1947. Not only the party got it, but ordinary citizens. Locals claimed that the screams of prisoners were heard at night.

Remember that concentration camps were not invented by the Germans. This institution was used throughout the planet long before the wars with Germany. Below is a partial list of British concentration camps.

German, Italian, Japanese civilians exiled to the camps "Motuihe" and "Somes Islands", the same for the Germans who lived in New Zealand earlier, during the First World War.

In India, the British imprisoned representatives of hostile peoples (mostly Germans) in both world wars, including German citizens of Britain. During the Second World War, there are at least 11 places of deprivation of liberty. Most got there at the end of 1946. The prisoners sent to Hamburg were transferred to the former camp "Neuengamme" for "denazification".

In 1940, at the request of Britain, German prisoners of war were sent to Canada. Between 1940 and 1944 there were over 40,000 behind barbed wire in Kananaskis Seba, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat, Albert and Kitchener, Bowmanville, Kingston and Gravenhurst, Ontario.

During World War II, 850 German Canadians were accused of sabotage and espionage. Many of those sent to Camp Petawawa have lived in Canada since the migration wave of 1876, when they created the village of Germanicus, Ontario. Land plots were nationalized without any compensation, residents - for a thorn. Foimio Air Force Base near Cormac with Eganville is based on recovered land. Since 1876, not one of the settlers, called "German fascist spies", has never been to Germany. Back in June 1941, 756 German sailors captured in East Asia were sent to Canada.

The British exiled 8,000 to the Isle of Man during World War II, mainly to the Knockaloe and Douglas camps, where they had been held since the First War. There are about 74,000 Germans, Austrians, Italians. In six months, 112 tribunals were convened and listened to by 64,000 foreigners, many were released as "friendly" (mostly non-Germans). In the end, only 2000 were interned. They were brought here by sea. The last captives were released at the end of 1945, although many in 1942. In Britain, they are settled in camps and prisons. In some places they slept in tents on the ground. Men and women separately, no ties with the world, only the lazy did not scold the conditions of detention.

France is not offended by the camps, with conditions of detention often inhuman. Even the Netherlands did not lag behind! Operation Black Tulip is designed to survive from the country of all Germans. On September 10, 1946, German families are driven from Amsterdam at midnight. Collect 50 kilograms of luggage - half an hour. With you no more than 100 guilders. The property was nationalized at the German border of the concentration camp. The biggest one is “Mariönbosch” near Nijmegen. The operation was completed in 1948 after the deportation of 3,691 Germans (15%).

Post-war Belgium in the October 1946 tribunal tried "war criminals" and among them Belgian collaborators. Sent out to showrooms like Breendonk. 4357 were sentenced to death, 111 were executed. Collaborators have been denied the right to vote and more than 322,000 Belgians have suffered.

The Belgians also sued the Balts, who were looking for protection from Germany from the Sovka. More than 25,000 Lithuanians are interned in allied camps, initially British in Germany. In the fall of 1945, many, from 12,000, were transferred to the Zedelgem camp no. 2227 (Belgium). The Balts were also sent to the Swedish ports, and there, along with several hundred German soldiers, to the USSR. Everywhere they served as punching bags, live targets. Discharged from the camps in 1946, when the West ceased to consider them fascists.

They let them out, but where did they go back to? I had to settle in Europe, Australia, Canada, South America, USA. The self-help group "Daugavas Vanagi", which is still abused by quilted jackets, helped.

Likewise Sweden. In June 1945, at the insistence of the United States with England, the authorities signed an agreement with the USSR on the donation of 3,000 German soldiers who had been there since the surrender of Germany. Although not without delays, however, on January 23, 1946, despite the protests of the public and the press, they were given to be eaten.

In addition to the Germans, they gave away many Balts who defended their homeland with German weapons. Lithuanian and other refugees to Sweden are in despair, not wanting to disappear without a trace. But the United States put pressure on, at the beginning of 1946 German newspapers wrote that “most of the refugees from the Baltic countries ended up in Germany only because they sympathized with Nazism. In addition, many refugees are responsible for the crimes, as a result of which other refugees, as well as local ones, suffered badly. " The New York Times likewise inked "sub-Nazis" before American readers. In January 1946, Sweden fed The Soviet Union 146 Baltic and 2364 German soldiers.

Many preferred mass suicide to mockery of quilted jackets. At least 7 prisoners died, but the true figure has been censored.

POW camps in Britain

Grizedale Hall, Hawkshead, Ambleside, Lancashire; Toft Hall, Knutsford Cheshire; Scraptoft, Thurnby, Leicester & Gilling Camp, Richmond N. Yorkshire; (Unknown Camp) Northern Ireland; (Unknown Camp) Northern Ireland & Long Marston Stratford-on-Avon Warwickshire & Doncaster / W. Yorks; Winter Quarters, Ascot, Windsor Berks; Mile House, Owestry, Salop & Sheriffhales, Shinfal, Salop; Kempton Park Race Course, Sunbury on Thames, Middx & Quorn Loughborough, Leicester; Gosford Camp, Markethall, Armagh, Northern Ireland; Island Farm, Bridgend, Glamorgan & Trent Park Camp, Southgate, Middx; Elmfield Camp, Gilford, Portadown, Northern Ireland & Bury, Manchester, Lancashire; Shap Fells Hotel, Shap, Penrith, Wales; Bun Camp, Doonfoot, Ayr, Scotland; Donalsons School, West Coates, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland; Gosford Camp, Aberlady, Longniddry, East Lothian, Scotland; Lodge Moor Camp, Sheffield, Yorkshire & London W2 (GPC), London; Featherstone Park, Haltwhistle, Northumbria; Happendon Camp, Douglas, Lanarkshire, Scotland; Bickham Camp, Yelverton, Tavistock, Devon; Comrie, Perth, Scotland; Pennylands Camp, Cummnock, Ayr Scotland; The Marchent Camp, Devizes, Wiltshire & Sudbury, Derbyshire and Shrewsbury (GPC), Salop; Knutsford (MH) Cheshire; Lodge Farm, Farncombe, Down, Lambourn, Berkshire & Leamington (GPC), Warwickshire; Barton Field Camp, Ely, Cambridgeshire; Ledbury, Herefordshire & Nottingham (GPC); Knighthorpe Camp, Ashby Road, Loughborough, Leicestershire; Royston Heath Camp, Royston, Hertfordshire. Ormskirk (GH) Lancashire & Abergavenny (GPC), South Wales; Carpenters Road, Stratford, East London E15 & Aldershot (GPC) Hanpshire; Ettington Park, Newbold Upon Stour, stratford-Upon-Avon; Wormwood Scrubs, Shepard "s Bush, London, W12; Dancer" s Hill, South Mimms, Barnet, Hertfordshire & Shorncliffe Camp, Folstone (GPC), Kent; Boughton Park, Boughton, Nuneaton, Northhamptonshire; Hartwell Dog Track, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire & Bridgewater (GPC), Somerset; Sudeley Castle, Winchcombe, Cheltenham, Gloucester; Pool Park, Ruthin, Denbighs; Castle Maxstoke, Coleshill, Warwickshire; Somerhill Camp, Tonbridge, Kent; Ganger Camp, Romsey, Hampshire; Exhibition Field Cp. Holsworthy, Devon; Harcourt Hill, North Ilnksey, Berkshire; Goathurst Camp, Bridgewater, Somerset; Trumpington, Cambridgeshire; Kingsfold Camp, Billinghurst, West Sussex; Motcombe Park, Shaftsbury, Dorset; Greenfield Farm, Presteigne, Radnor; Harrington Camp, Farndon Road, Market Harborough, Leicester; Garswood Park, Ashton-in-Markerfield, Wigan Lancashire; Allington, Grantham, Kesteven, Lincolnshire; Nether Headon Camp, Retford, Nottinghamshire; Sandbeds Camp, Brayton, Selby, Yorkshire; Longbridge Camp, Hampton Lovett, Droitwich, Worcester; Shalstone, Buckinghamshire; Dotesdale, Diss, East Suffolk; Merrow Downs Camp, Guildford, Surrey; Belper, Derbyshire & Swanwick, Derbyshire; Wood Walton Lane, Sawtry; Oerdale Camp, Skipton, Yorkshire & Huddersfield, Bradford, Yorkshire; Wynolls Hill, Broadwell, Coleford, Gloucestershire; The MoorCamp, Thankerton, Lanarkshire, Scotland; Balhery Est. Camp, Alyth, Perth, Scotland; Castle Rakine, Denny, Stirling, Scotland; Setley Plain, Brokenhust, Hampshire & Preston (GPC) Lancashire; Calvine, Blair Atholl, Perth, Scotland & Dundee, Angus, Scotland; Sandyhillock Camp, Craigellachie, Banff; Halmuir Farm, Lockerbie, Dumfries, Scotland; Darras Hall, Ponteland, Newcastle Upon Tyne; Henllan Bridge Camp, Henllan, Llandyssul, Cardigan, Wales; Sheriffhales, Shinfal, Salop, Newmarket (GPC) West Suffolk; Ducks Cross Camp, Colmworth, Bedfordshire; Storwood Camp, Melbourne, Yorkshire; Racecourse Camp, Tarporley, Cheshire; Northern Hill Camp, Laurencekirk, Kincardine; Merry Thought Camp, Calthwaite, Penrith, Cumberland; Aunsmuir Camp, Ladybank, Fife, Scotland; High Garret, Braintree, Essex; Moorby, Revesby, Boston, Lindesy, Lincolnshire; Horbling, Sleaford, Kesteven, Lincolnshire; Pingley Farm, Brigg, Lindsey, Lincolnshire; Hempton Green Camp, fakenham, Norfolk, & Aldborough, Norfol; Eden Camp, Old Malton, Malton, Yorkshire; Sheet Camp, Ludlow, Salop; Victoria camp, Brandon Road, Mildenhall, Bury St. Edmunds, West Suffolk; Stanhope Camp, Ashford, Kent & Woodchurch, Ashford, Kent; Byfield Camp, Rugby, Warwickshire; Mortimer, reading, Berkshire; Easton Gray Camp, Malmesbury, wiltshire; Friday Bridge, Wisbach, Cambridgeshire; Post Hill Camp, Farnley, Leeds, Yorkshire; Bampton Road, Tiverton, Devon; Harperley Camp, Fir Tree, Crook, Co. Durham & Oaklands Emergancy Hospital, Bishop Aukland, Co. Durham; Gaulby Road, Billesdon, Leicester; Batford Camp, Harpenden, Staffordshire; Wolseley Road, Rugley, Staffodshire; Birdinbury, Bourton, Rugby, Warwickshire; Little Addington, Kettering, Northamptonsire; shugborough Park, great Haywood (GH) Staffordshire; St. Martins, Owestry, Salop; Glandulas Camp, Newton, Montgomery; Llanddarog, Camarthen; Moota Camp, Cockermouth, Northumbria; Beela River, Milnthorpe, Westmorland; Brewery Road, Wooler, Northumbria & Colinton Camp, Edinburgh (GPC) Midlothian; Stamford, Kesteven, Lincolnshire; Penleigh Camp, Wookey Hole, Wells, Somerset; Thirkleby, Thirsk, Yorks; Brahan Castle, Dingwall, Ross and County; Stuartfield, Mintlaw, Aberdeen; Deer Park Camp, Moneymusk, Aberdeen; Kingendengh Camp, Mauchline Ayr, Scotland & Doonfoot, Ayr; Holm Park Camp, Newton Stewart, Wigtown; Eden Vale Camp, Westbury Wiltshire; White Cross Camp, St. Columb Major Cornwall; Mill Lane, Hatfield Heath, Bishops Stortford, Essex; Waiderslade camp, Chatham, Kent; Mardy, Abergavenny, Wales; Pabo Hall Camp, llandudno Junction, Caernarvon; Sunlaws Camp, Kelso, Roxburgh; Racecourse Camp, Ripon, Yorkshire & Knaresborough Yorkshire; Raynor's Lane, Harrow-on-the-Hill, Middx & Hatch End, Harrow-on-the Hill, Middlesex; Dalmahoy Camp, Kirkwenton, Midlothian, Scotland; Wapley Camp, Yate, Bristol; Newland House, Tooting Bec. Road, Tooting Bec Common, London SW17; Mellands Camp, Gorton, Manchester, Lancashire; Potters Hill, HighGreen, Sheffield, Yorkshire; Meesden, Buntingford, Hertfordshire; Ashford Lodge Camp, Halstead, Essex; West Fen Militia, Ely, Cambridge; Uplands Camp, Diss, Norfolk; Loxley Hall, Utoxeter, Staffordshire; Stanbury House, Spencers Wood, Reading, Berkshire; High Hall, Bishop Burton, Beverly, Yorkshire; Hazeldene Camp, Elburton, Plymouth, Devon; The Rectory Camp, Bassingham, Kesteven, Lincolnshire; Wolviston Hall, Wolviston, Billingham, Durham; Racecourse Camp, Warwick, Warwickshire; Beeson House, St. Neots; Gloucester, Gloucestershire; Carlton Hall, Carlton, Worksop, Nottinghamshire; Ruskin Avenue, Kew, Richmond Surrey; Normanhurst Camp, Battle, East Sussex; Newton Camp, Preston, Lancashire; Boar 's Head, Walgherton, Nantwich, Cheshire; Castlethorpe Hall Camp, Castlethorpe, Brigg, Lindley, Lincolnshire; Pendeford hall, Codsall, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire & Coven, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire & Halfpenny Green, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire; Oldewood Club Road, Shepshed, Loughborough; Fulney Park Camp, Spalding, Lincolnshire; Minister of Works Camp, swanscombe, Dartford, Kent; Hornby Hall Camp, Penrith, Scotland; The Heath Camp, Wellingore, Kesteven Lincolnshire; Bourton Camp, Bourton-on-the -Hill, Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire; Butterwick, Yorkshire; Lydiard Park, Purton, Swindon, Wiltshire; Grangefield, Gloucester (MH) Belfast, Northern Ireland; Naeburn (MH) Yorkshire.

Captured by quilted jackets

On the Eastern Front, the conditions of detention of the Germans, including children, are beyond any inhumanity. Not a single unbroken agreement. Although at the Crimean Conference with America-England they shared "reparations in kind", the German slaves before Stalingrad were not enough. Of the 90,000 Germans taken to Sovok, only 5,000 returned; 40,000 did not move to "Beketovka", where an additional 42,000 died of hunger and disease. Scattered across the Siberian zones, the European part of the USSR, exploited slavishly, beaten, tormented, traumatized, executed. Thousands of prisoners of war were shot on the spot, dumped into mass graves. There is always little food, Neanderthal life. Mortality is screaming.

In the Gulag, 400-800 grams of bread per day, more than half of the prisoners have daily calories of 1200-1300. The most able-bodied supplement is scanty (ironically, according to Morgenthau's plan, a German's daily ration should be 1300 calories, although for hardworking 3100-4000). Those who did not work did not eat. Obviously, the capacity for work was enough for three months, after which the prisoners were only suitable for execution - fortunately, there was enough change.

The recognized "disarmed enemy forces" were not entitled to rights. According to the bulletin "Re-Education" (1945), distributed by the "Special Department of the Ground Forces Service" of the US Army, the transfer of German prisoners to the Soviet genocide is justified:

“Many German prisoners must remain in Russia after the war forcibly, for the needs of the Russians. This is not only legal, but will also prevent the danger of the formation of a national-conscious nucleus. If we do not need German prisoners, it is better to send them to Russia. "

Giant columns of Germans, hundreds of kilometers on foot, to get hungry in Stalingrad, Kiev, Kharkov, Moscow, Minsk and earn to death. Few returned. Deny not repudiate, and the projects of Morgenthau did work in practice. In the New York Post of November 24, 1947, he wrote that "the Morgenthau plan ... became part of the Potsdam agreement, an official program, an instruction ... signed by the United States of America, Great Britain, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."

Documenting the fate of thousands of German soldiers, youths, is often suppressed. In 1941-1952, millions of German prisoners died out in the Gulag. The remaining 10,000 were left in the USSR until 1955, for a decade of slavery. There is no news of 1½ million German soldiers.

The Red Terror spread from Poland to Germany. Many prisoners were shot, dumped into the pits at once; others are tortured, crippled - including the youngest. Those who are caught in Yugoslavia cannot be envied. It was only after 1986 that it became known that out of 194,000 prisoners, 100,000 were tortured to death or starved to death due to unsanitary conditions.

About 93,000 ethnic Germans from Danube settlements in 1939-1941 served in the armies of Hungary, Croatia, Romania, retaining citizenship (10,000 served in the SS-division "Prinz Eugen", which also gave German citizenship). 26,000 of these soldiers died, more than half after the war in the Yugoslav camps. When most of the Prinz Eugen surrendered on May 8, 1945, more than 1,700 were shot in the village near the Croatian-Slovenian border. Others are exploited to death in the zinc mines near Bor, Serbia.

In addition to the Danube, other 70,000 Wehrmacht were killed in Yugoslav captivity by reprisals or labor. Basically, this is group E (150,000 people) surrendered to the British on May 8, 1945 in southern Austria, which was given to be torn apart by the partisans of Yugoslavia.

The rest of the Yugoslav prisoners died both quickly and slowly. Up to 10,000 were killed by "reckoning marches" ("Suhnemarsche") a thousand kilometers from the southern Austrian border to the northern border of Greece. Often bound, barefoot, without food or drink. Some did not reach, the rest were tied together, driven into rivers for execution, drowning.

On November 1, 1944, the Council for the Liberation of Yugoslavia declared the Germans "common terpils" - less than half survived the genocide among German prisoners and citizens of German nationality. Later, in the summer of 1945, more died in mass killings or being thrown into the Dalmatian karst mines alive. In the decade between 1945 and 1955, the communist countries herded 50,000 German prisoners through labor and pestilence.

Thousands of German and Croatian soldiers captured in the last days of the war were executed in cold blood and thrown into mass graves in the west of Croatia. By October 2007, 540 secret mass graves were registered throughout Slovenia - 100,000 bodies. Not much more registered.

Recently excavated in Garmik, 50 kilometers northwest of Zagreb, 4,500 military personnel including 450 officers killed by communist partisans. The bones were found in six different caves - this is the 392 infantry division, established in Croatia by the Germans in August 1943, led by Lieutenant General Hans Mikl. Even in the caves, the remains of those walled up and suffocated with gases; group burials of military and civilians naked, tortured, burnt, beaten, dismembered. Near Lasko, Slovenia, in 2009, "hundreds" of mummified people were found after being shot by the Titovites. According to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Croatia, there may be about 840 mass graves in the country, and in Slovenia - from 600, in Bosnia-Herzegovina - from 90.

"Special" camps

When in the first half of 1945, Western countries released 6,000 German officers, they were again arrested by the Soviets, placed in zone number 2 of Sachsenhausen - to replace the red political prisoners of the Nazis. Later, special camp No. 7 was overcrowded with persons sentenced by Soviet tribunals to 15-year hard labor. Until the end of 1945, there were 12,000-16,000 prisoners, including 2,000 women, who also arrived!

The food is unsuitable, the sanitary conditions are deplorable. Go, what was arrested. In the barracks of the epidemic, sleep on bare boards, and prop your head with a block of wood. Straw mattresses with blankets - only two years later, in 1947. Nothing is allowed, not even singing. The windows are painted over - complete darkness. After the war, 60,000 Germans were in camp No. 7, and 12,000 were buried in common pits. Until 1948, Sovok was not free, and many there even before 1950, someone was exiled to the GULAG or hanged by the GDR-soldiers.

From eleven GDR camps like Muehlberg, Saxonia or Oranienburg, thousands did not come out. In 1945-1950 there were 122671, and 42889 were ill, 756 were executed. In 22000 "Muehlberg" e "7000-9000 were tormented by hunger-epidemics. There are also 15-year-olds in complete isolation, without the right to correspond. Many inmates did not even know why, because there were no ideological ones there. Still hidden camps like" Five Oaks ”in New Brandenburg, where 6500 were killed.

The Soviet masters of Germany in the "special camp No. 5" founded in April 1945 in the southeast of Berlin first placed the party and members of the SS. However, later, German teenagers are kidnapped and imprisoned, who simply “disappear”. Months later, in November 1945, 9395 went there from the Ketschendorf camp. It is believed that during this time, conditions of detention killed more than 5,000 prisoners. In 1952-1953, many mass graves were found, 4,500 bodies were exhumed and reburied in Galba. Another "special camp number 2" was opened in "Buchenwald" e "for 28,000 Germans, of whom the conditions of detention killed 7000. We learned about these camps years after the war.

Camp "Hermann Helfta"

Saxon Eisleben is one of the oldest cities between the Elbe and Harz. Martin Luther died and was born here. The first mention - in 994 AD, received a letter in the XII century. He gained influence in the 15th-16th centuries thanks to copper mining and smelting on the lands of the mighty counts of Mansfeld. Inhabited by miners, the Neustadt region with its church of St. Anne and the Augustinian monastery was founded in glorious times for the city. As an assistant priest, Luther stayed there frequently.

The Gelft Cistercian Mother of God Monastery is located outside Eisleben. It was founded in 1229 under the Mansfell castle, and in 1258 nuns settled there. The center of European spirituality was formed. Gertrude the Great, Mechtilda of Magdeburg, and Mechtilda of Hackeborn were influenced significantly by German mysticism and literature.

In 1945, 24,000 Eisleben residents were hit by artillery and shaving aircraft. Although the city was not badly damaged, the primary and secondary sectors of the economy were destroyed, three firefighters and 14 bombers were killed. Until the end of the war, in April 1945, the wounded were taken from everywhere to the main schools of the city, several restaurants, and the city hospital.

Eisleben surrendered to the Americans without a fight, except for the useless resistance of several youths and old people. Weapons, binoculars, cameras, walkie-talkies were taken away from private individuals; citizens are required to register. Curfew, large-scale purges among officials.

To the north and east of the Hermann Helfta mines a "refugee camp" was set up for prisoners of war, but the "camp" was not a camp. Rather, a somewhat fenced-in clearing without a single building. Sleep on the ground, do not ask for food, water is supplied once a day with pesticide tanks. The bread that was sent did not pass through the fence; it was thrown out to mold in front of the prisoners. Sleep under open skies in hurricanes and rains - but you can drink. Some have nothing to hide behind. Beatings, torture.

No hygiene, the Germans are dying like flies, but no one dares to run - a certain execution. The prisoners arrive, the conditions are getting worse. There is nowhere to lie. Two of them complained - a whole group about the truck and the liberated Buchenwald near Weimar to watch the "exhibitions of atrocities", adapted by the Americans for "re-education". So that later they would console the tortured prisoners with tales about the atrocities of the Nazis. Still dare to protest !?

Until the summer, "Helft" oh "became difficult to manage, so it was disbanded. Some of them were trucks to" Naumburg "on the Hall. In total, 80,000–90,000 people passed through" Helft "(now they are trying to reduce this figure to 22,000). Deaths are considered 2000-3000.

When the territory was presented to quilted jackets, it became a taboo topic. But after the reunification of Germany, the inhuman torment of the prisoners "Helft" was honored with a monument for the money of the veterans-prisoners and the "Folk Society Helfta." Many parts of the camp were divided, populated, nothing reminds of the tragedy.

Some German prisoners returned home only eight or more years later impoverished, homeless, old, gladdening the heart of Henry Morgenthau with their "dog dependence on the owner."