How to find out about the captives during the Second World War. How Soviet prisoners of war of the Great Patriotic War lived (8 photos). According to the “Commission of A.N. Yakovlev "

In 1941, the Germans took 4 million prisoners, of which 3 perished 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, under the open sky, they were not fed, people ate grass and earthworms. Hunger, thirst, unsanitary conditions, deliberately arranged by the Germans, did 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 POW camp "Drozdy". Consequences of the Minsk-Bialystok boiler: 140 thousand people on 9 hectares in the open air

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

June 1941. District of the town of Raseiniai (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 23-24.06.1941 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, plates at the gate of the camp ...

In the same place. Apparently, the guards still allowed to transfer food by the thorn

August 1941 Uman Yama concentration camp. It is also a stalag (assembly camp) No. 349. It was set up in an open pit of a brick factory in the city of Uman (Ukraine). In the summer of 1941, 50,000 prisoners from the Uman cauldron were kept here. In the open air, like in a paddock

Vasily Mishchenko, a former prisoner of the Pit: “Wounded and shell-shocked, I was taken prisoner. He was among the first in the Uman pit. From above, I clearly saw this pit still empty. No shelter, no food, no water. The sun beats down mercilessly. In the western corner of the semi-basement pit there was a puddle of brownish-green water with fuel oil. We rushed to her, scooped up this muck in caps, rusty cans, just with our palms and drank greedily. I also remember two horses tied to poles. In five minutes nothing was left of these horses. "

Vasily Mishchenko was a lieutenant when he was captured in the Uman cauldron. But it wasn't just soldiers and junior commanders who got 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 smile, but General Kirillov (on the left, in his cap with a torn off star) looks very sad ... This photo session does not bode well

Again Ponedelin and Kirillov. Lunch in captivity

In 1941, both generals were sentenced in absentia to be shot as traitors. Until 1945, they sat in camps in Germany, refused to join Vlasov's army, and were liberated by the Americans. Transferred to the USSR. Where they were shot. In 1956, both were rehabilitated.

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

Vyazemsky cauldron, October 1941 While the generals were learning to fight, endless columns of prisoners marched 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 the pits

About 15,000 people are buried in the ditches of Dulag-184. There is no memorial to them. Moreover, on the site of the concentration camp in Soviet times ... a meat processing plant was built. He still stands there.

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

Stalag 10D (Witzendorf, Germany), autumn 1941 The corpses of deceased Soviet prisoners are thrown from the cart

In the fall of 1941, the deaths of prisoners became widespread. Cold was added to hunger, an epidemic of typhus (it was carried by lice). Cases of cannibalism have appeared.

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

Well, plus to everything - the constant bullying of the camp guards. And not only the Germans. According to the recollections of many prisoners, the real masters in the camp were the so-called. policemen. Those. former prisoners who went into the service of the Germans. They beat prisoners for the slightest offense, took away things, carried out executions. The worst punishment for a policeman was ... demotion to ordinary prisoners. This meant certain death. There was no way back for them - only to curry favor further.

Deblin (Poland), a party of prisoners arrived at Stalag-307. People are in a terrible state. On the right - a camp policeman in Budenovka (former prisoner), standing by the body of a prisoner lying on the platform

Physical punishment. Two policemen in Soviet uniforms: one holds a prisoner, the other beats with a whip or stick. The German in the background laughs. Another prisoner in the background is tied to a fence post (also a type of punishment in prisoner camps)

One of the main tasks of the camp policemen was to identify Jews and political workers. According to the order "On the commissars" of June 6, 1941, these two categories of prisoners were to be destroyed on the spot. Those who were not killed immediately upon taking prisoner were looked for in the camps. For this, regular "selections" were arranged for the search for Jews and communists. It was either a general medical examination with his pants down - the Germans went and looked for the circumcised, or the use of informers among the prisoners themselves.

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

“We brought crackers and coffee to the camp. There is an SS man, next to a dog and a prisoner of war next to him. And when people go for breadcrumbs, he says: "This is a political instructor." They take him out and shoot him right next to him. The traitor is poured coffee and given two crackers... "And this is where." The Jew is taken out - they are shot, and the one again has two crackers. "And this one was an NKVEDist." They take him out and shoot him, and that one again has two biscuits. "

Life in the camp in Jelgava was inexpensively appreciated: 2 crackers. However, as usual in Russia in war time, from somewhere there were people who could not be broken by any executions, and could not be bought for crackers.

The terrible years of World War II went down in history not only with a huge number of victims, but also with a large number of prisoners of war. They were captured individually and in whole armies: someone surrendered in an organized manner, and someone deserted, but there were also quite curious cases.

Italians

The Italians were not Germany's most reliable ally. Cases of Italian soldiers being taken prisoner were recorded everywhere: apparently, the inhabitants of the Apennines understood that the war into which the Duce had drawn them did not meet the interests of Italy.
When on July 25, 1943, Mussolini was arrested, the new Italian government, led by Marshal Badoglio, began secret negotiations with the American command for a truce. The result of Badoglio's negotiations with Eisenhower was the massive surrender of Italians to American captivity.
In this regard, an interesting recollection of the American general Omar Bradley, who describes the elated state of the Italian servicemen upon surrender:

"Soon a festive mood reigned in the Italian camp, the prisoners squatted around the fires and sang to the accompaniment of accordions they had brought with them."

According to Bradley, the Italians' festive mood was associated with the prospect of a "free trip to the States."
An interesting case was told by one of the Soviet veterans, who recalled how in the fall of 1943, near Donetsk, he met a huge peasant cart with hay, and six "skinny, dark-haired men" were harnessed to it in a train. They were driven by a "Ukrainian woman" with a German carbine. It turned out that these were Italian deserters. They "grumbled and cried" so much that the Soviet soldier hardly managed to guess their desire to surrender.

The americans

There is an unusual type of casualty in the US Army called "overwork in combat." This category includes primarily those who were captured. So, during the landing in Normandy in June 1944, the number of "overworked in battle" amounted to about 20% of the total number of those who dropped out of the battle.

In general, according to the results of the Second World War due to "overwork", the losses of the United States amounted to 929,307 people.

More often the Americans were captured by the Japanese army.
Most of all, the command of the US armed forces remembered the operation of the German troops, which went down in history as the "Ardennes Breakthrough". As a result of the Wehrmacht's counteroffensive against the allied forces, which began on December 16, 1944, the front moved 100 km. deep into enemy territory. The American writer Dick Toland, in his book about the operation in the Ardennes, writes that “75 thousand American soldiers at the front on the night of December 16 went to bed as usual. None of the American commanders anticipated a major German offensive that evening. ” The result of the German breakthrough was the capture of about 30 thousand Americans.

Soviet military

There is no exact information about the number of Soviet prisoners of war. According to various sources, their number ranges from 4.5 to 5.5 million people. According to the estimates of the commander of Army Group "Center" von Bock, only by July 8, 1941, 287,704 Soviet servicemen, including divisional and corps commanders, were captured. And according to the results of 1941, the number of Soviet prisoners of war exceeded 3 million 300 thousand people.

They surrendered in the first place because of the inability to provide further resistance - the wounded, sick, lacking food and ammunition, or in the absence of control from the commanders and headquarters.

The bulk of Soviet soldiers and officers fell into German captivity in "cauldrons". So, the result of the largest encirclement battle in the Soviet-German conflict - "Kiev boiler" - was about 600 thousand Soviet prisoners of war.

Soviet soldiers also surrendered individually or in separate formations. The reasons were different, but the main one, as noted by former prisoners of war, is fear for their lives. However, there were ideological motives or simply unwillingness to fight for Soviet power. Perhaps for these reasons, on August 22, 1941, the 436th Infantry Regiment under the command of Major Ivan Kononov went over to the enemy's side with almost its full complement.

Germans

If before the Battle of Stalingrad the capture of the Germans was rather an exception, then in the winter of 1942-43. it acquired a symptomatic character: during the Stalingrad operation, about 100 thousand Wehrmacht servicemen were taken prisoner. The Germans surrendered in whole companies - hungry, sick, frostbitten, or simply exhausted. During the Great Patriotic War Soviet troops captured 2 388 443 German soldiers.
In the last months of the war, the German command, using draconian methods, tried to force the troops to fight, but in vain. The situation on the Western Front was especially unfavorable. There German soldiers knowing that Britain and the United States were observing the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, they surrendered much more readily than in the East.
According to the memoirs of German veterans, the defectors tried to go over to the side of the enemy immediately before the attack. There were also cases of organized captivity. So, in North Africa, German soldiers, left without ammunition, fuel and food, lined up in columns to surrender to the Americans or the British.

Yugoslavs

Not all countries of the Anti-Hitler coalition could give a worthy rebuff to a strong enemy. So, Yugoslavia, which, in addition to Germany, was attacked by the armed forces of Hungary and Italy, could not withstand the onslaught and surrendered on April 12, 1941. Parts of the Yugoslav army, formed from Croats, Bosnians, Slovenes and Macedonians, began to massively disperse to their homes or go over to the side of the enemy. In a matter of days, about 314 thousand soldiers and officers - practically all the armed forces of Yugoslavia - were taken prisoner by the Germans.

Japanese

It should be noted that the defeats that Japan suffered in World War II brought many losses to the enemy. Following the code of samurai honor, even the units besieged and blocked on the islands were in no hurry to surrender and held out to the last. As a result, by the time of the surrender, many Japanese soldiers simply starved to death.

When in the summer of 1944, American troops captured the Japanese-occupied island of Saipan, out of the 30,000-strong Japanese contingent, only a thousand were taken prisoner.

About 24 thousand were killed, another 5 thousand committed suicide. Almost all of the prisoners are the merit of 18-year-old Marine Guy Gabaldon, who was fluent in Japanese and knew the psychology of the Japanese. Gabaldon acted alone: ​​he killed or immobilized sentries near the shelters, and then persuaded those inside to surrender. In the most successful raid, the Marine brought 800 Japanese to the base, for which he received the nickname "Saipan Pied Piper".
An interesting episode of the capture of a Japanese man, disfigured by mosquito bites, is cited by Georgy Zhukov in his book "Memories and Reflections". To the question, “where and who butchered him like that,” the Japanese replied that together with other soldiers in the evening he was planted in the reeds to watch the Russians. At night, they had to resignedly endure the terrible mosquito bites so as not to betray their presence. "And when the Russians shouted something and raised their rifle," he said, "I raised my hands, because I could no longer endure these torments."

French people

The rapid fall of France during the lightning strike in May-June 1940 by the Axis countries still provokes heated discussions among historians. In a little more than a month, about 1.5 million French soldiers and officers were taken prisoner. But if 350 thousand were captured during the fighting, the rest laid down their arms in connection with the order of the Petain government on a truce. So, in short period one of the most efficient armies in Europe ceased to exist.

Transportation of Soviet prisoners of war by the Germans in 1941.

Photo from the German State Archives. Soviet prisoners of war in the camp, August 1942

Soviet prisoners of war during the Great Patriotic War- a category of servicemen of the army of the Soviet Union who were voluntarily or forcibly captured by the Nazi army or the troops of Germany's allies during the Great Patriotic War.

The harsh conditions of detention of Soviet prisoners of war were caused by the ideological rejection of communism by the Fuhrer of the Third Reich Hitler and the desire to expand life space, under which a formal basis was laid - Soviet Union did not recognize the Hague Convention of 1907 and refused to accede to the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, which completed and brought together the provisions of the Hague Rules, which, according to the Fuhrer, allowed Germany, which had previously signed both agreements, not to regulate the conditions of detention of Soviet prisoners of war with these documents. In fact, Soviet Russia recognized the Hague Convention back in 1918 (as an agreement on the Red Cross), and the Geneva Convention, which was never signed by the USSR, regulated the attitude towards prisoners of war, regardless of whether its enemy countries signed it or not.

The number of prisoners of war taken prisoner, for a long time is the subject of discussion, both in Russian (Soviet) and in German historiography. The German command in official data indicates a figure of 5 million 270 thousand people. According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces Russian Federation, the loss of prisoners amounted to 4 million 559 thousand people.

The reasons for the large number of prisoners

Military-strategic reasons: the unexpected attack of the Third Reich on the USSR, the difficult conditions of the war in which the soldiers of the Red Army found themselves (the overwhelming majority of the prisoners were captured in the so-called "big cauldrons"), led to the fact that large groups of units of the Red Army, Having exhausted all the possibilities for resistance and deprived of any support from the command, they were taken prisoner.

The reasons for the shortage of the command staff of the Red Army and the inadequate level of training of the available personnel are the following: the civil war, which led to the mass emigration of the Russian officer corps; removal from the Red Army so-called. "Military experts" in the late 1920s (see: "Spring" case); Stalinist repressions in the Red Army in 1937-38; as well as the expansion of the army in 1939-41, as a result of which 70% of officers and 75% of political workers held positions for less than a year, more than 1 million Red Army soldiers served for less than a year, while the army tripled.

Large-scale repressions against the command of the Red Army were perceived by the potential enemy as weakening it. So, in 1937 German magazine"Verfront" wrote about the repressions in the Red Army:

Socio-political reasons: the repressive policy of the Soviet state (red terror, collectivization, Stalinist repressions) caused significant discontent both among the population of the USSR, especially peasants, and the newly annexed territories (Western Ukraine, the Baltic States), who refused to provide armed resistance on the side of the USSR and who preferred to voluntarily surrender.

Subjective psychological factors: confusion, panic caused by the lack of adequate command and the apparent superiority of the German troops in the first period of the war.

However, it should be borne in mind that the German command, in violation of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, included prisoners of war in addition to the actual personnel of the Red Army:

all employees of party and Soviet bodies;

men, regardless of age, retreating together with the retreating and leaving the encirclement of the troops;

sometimes all men generally between the ages of 16 and 55;

partisans and underground fighters;

hostages taken in areas covered by the partisan movement.

For example, according to the German command, 665 thousand prisoners of war were taken east of Kiev, while by the beginning of the Kiev defensive operation there were 627 thousand personnel in the troops of the South-Western Front, of which more than 150 thousand were operating outside the encirclement, and tens of thousands withdrew from surroundings. In Sevastopol, it was announced about the capture of 100 thousand prisoners of war. The English historian Fuller argued that "the German communiqués about victories cannot be trusted, for they often quoted astronomical figures."

The total number of Soviet prisoners of war in the foreign press is determined in the range of 5.2-5.75 million people. The Defense Ministry commission chaired by M.A.Gareev announced about 4 million [n 1]... 1,836,562 people returned from captivity, of which about 1 million were sent for further military service; 600 thousand - to work in industry as part of workers' battalions; 339 thousand (including 233.4 thousand former military personnel) were sent to the NKVD camps, as having compromised themselves in captivity.

The attitude of the Germans towards prisoners of war

The main reason for the cruel attitude towards Soviet prisoners of war in captivity was the Nazi theory of the racial inferiority of the Slavs, in particular the Russians, who were perceived by the Nazis as "a mass of racially inferior, stupid people."

The racial hatred of the Nazis was aggravated by the ideological rejection of communism. The Fuehrer, at a meeting of the highest command personnel of the Wehrmacht on March 30, 1941, said:

A communist has never been and never will be our comrade. It is about the fight to destroy. If we do not look like that, then, although we will defeat the enemy, in 30 years the communist danger will again arise.<…>Commissioners and persons belonging to the GPU are criminals and should be treated like criminals.
<…>
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.

Immediately after the outbreak of the war, this attitude spread to all Soviet prisoners of war. In particular, Troop Newsletter No. 112, issued in June, states that “ It is necessary to eliminate the red subhumans, together with their Kremlin dictators". All German commanders issued orders in the spirit of "the struggle of the Germans against the Slavs and protection from Jewish Bolshevism." The OKW order of September 8, 1941 read:

Many fighters ended their lives in German captivity. The task of the Germans was to destroy the manpower of the USSR in general and prisoners of war in particular. Unbearable conditions were created for the existence of prisoners. On the way to the camp, they were not fed with anything. They ate cabbage leaves, roots, and rye ears from uncleaned roadside fields that they found along the way. They drank water from road puddles. It was strictly forbidden to stop at the wells or ask the peasants for a drink. So, for five days - from 9 to 13 October 1941 - they drove a column of prisoners to the Dorogobuzh camp. The convoy was accompanied by a vehicle on which four coaxial machine guns were installed. On the way in one of the villages, under the stove of a burnt house, the prisoners saw half-burnt potatoes. About 200 people rushed after her. Four machine guns opened fire directly into the crowd. Several dozen prisoners died. On the way, the prisoners rushed into the fields with un-dug potatoes, and machine guns immediately opened fire.

The question of international conventions

The difficult position of Soviet servicemen in Nazi captivity was explained by the Nazi leadership by the fact that the USSR did not recognize the Hague Convention of 1907 "On the Laws and Customs of War on Land" and did not sign the Geneva Convention of 1929, which determined legal status prisoners of war, although this convention was signed by 47 countries.

In fact, the Hague Convention was signed not by the USSR, but by the Russian Empire, and the Geneva Convention regulated relations with prisoners of war, regardless of whether their countries signed the convention or not.

The provisions of this Convention shall be respected by the High Contracting Parties in all circumstances.
If, in case of war, one of the belligerent parties turns out to be not a party to the convention, nevertheless, the provisions of such remain binding on all belligerents, signatories to the convention.

The main reason why the Soviet Union did not sign the 1929 Geneva Convention as a whole was opposition to the division of prisoners along ethnic lines. The refusal of the USSR to sign the convention allowed the Nazis to use this fact and leave Soviet prisoners without any protection and control from the International Red Cross and other organizations that helped the prisoners of Western countries. At the Nuremberg trials, the Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht Ground Forces F. Halder quoted Hitler as saying: "since the Russians do not recognize the Hague Convention, their prisoners of war should not be treated in accordance with the decisions of the Hague Convention."

Article 193 of the 1926 Criminal Code of the RSFSR provided for "for surrender, not caused by a combat situation - execution with confiscation of property." Article 22 of the "Regulations on Military Crimes" of 1927 stated that surrender, not caused by a combat situation, as well as going over to the side of the enemy, provide for capital punishment (execution) with confiscation of property. Within the meaning of the law, only surrender "not caused by a combat situation" was subject to punishment. In 1926, the named article of the Regulations was commented as: “in certain cases the situation on the battlefield may develop in such a way that resistance is essentially impossible, and the destruction of soldiers is aimless. In these cases, surrender is an act that is permissible and cannot be prosecuted. ”

The practice of absentee condemnation of servicemen behind the front line as traitors to the Motherland expanded. A sufficient basis for such a decision was information obtained by operational means about their allegedly anti-Soviet activities. The verdict was passed without any verification, sometimes only one statement.

German POW camp system

All issues related to the maintenance of foreign prisoners of war in Germany were handled by the Department of POWs of the German Army as part of the General Directorate of the Armed Forces. General Hermann Reinecke was in charge of the administration.

The Prisoners of War Department was headed by:

• Colonel Breuer (1939-1941)
• General Grevenitz (1942-1944)
• General Westhoff (1944)
• SS Obergruppenführer Berger (1944-1945)

In each military district (17 in total), and later in the occupied territories transferred to civilian control, there was a “commander of prisoners of war”. The captured servicemen initially ended up in divisional collection points for prisoners; from there they were transferred to transit camps ("dulags"), where they were sorted: fighters and junior commanders were sent to camps for lower ranks ("shtalags"), and officers - to separate officer camps ("offlags"). From the Stalag, prisoners of war could be transferred to work camps or penal camps.

POW camps were divided into 5 categories:

• collection points (camps)
• transit camps ("Dulag", it. Dulag)
• permanent camps ("Stalag", it. Stalag) and officer camps ("Oflag", it. Oflag from Offizierlager)
• main work camps
• small work camps

Divisional assembly points of prisoners of war

The assembly points were created in close proximity to the front line or in the area of ​​the ongoing operation. Here the final disarmament of the prisoners took place, the first accounting documents were drawn up.

Dulag, Stalag

The next stage in the movement of prisoners was "Dulagi" - transit camps, usually located near railway junctions. After the initial sorting, the prisoners were sent to camps, which, as a rule, were permanently located in the rear, far from hostilities. As a rule, all camps varied in numbers, they usually contained a large number of prisoners.

Before the war, Germany was divided into 17 military districts, each of which was assigned a number in Roman numerals.

• - Konigsberg district (Konigsberg)
• - Stettin district
• III - District of Berlin (Berlin)
• - Dresden district (Dresden)
• - Stuttgart District (Stuttgart)
• VI - Munster
• VII - Munich District (Munchen)
• VIII - District Breslau (Wroclaw)
• IX - District of Kassel
• X - District Hamburg (Hamburg)
• XI - District of Hannover (Hannover)
• XII - Wiesbaden District
• XIII - Nuremberg District (Nurnberg)
• XVII - District Vienna (Wien) (Austria)
• XVIII - District Salzburg (Austria)
• XX - District Danzig (Danzig) (Gdansk, Poland)
• XXI - District Posen (Posen, Poland)

Thus, the number IV in the word "Stalag IV B" meant its belonging to the indicated district, and the index "B" - the number of this stationary camp in the given district. By the way, in the Dresden district there were also under different cities Stalag - and IV with indices A, C, D, E, G and LW5 (especially for prisoners of war air force pilots). There were also camps specially for prisoners of war officers and generals, called Offizierlager (abbreviated Oflag - Oflag) IV A, B, C and D, where their inhabitants were not forced to work. In some places there were camps such as "Dulag" and "Stalag" with the index "KM", intended only for prisoners of war sailors. There were several Heillager camps (Heilag - Haylag, or just the "H" index) for "health improvement in case of illness or injury." In addition to them, there were large infirmaries only for sick or injured prisoners.

The administration of each camp consisted of the following departments:

• 1A- camp management. This department was responsible for guarding the camp, keeping prisoners of war and reporting on camp activities.
• 2A- the use of prisoners of war at work. This department was responsible for keeping records of enterprises' applications for labor, concluding contracts with them, assigning prisoners of war to forced labor and reporting on the use of prisoners.
• 2B- registration of prisoners of war. The staff of the department kept registration of persons arriving at the camp and monitored their movements. The department had a card index of names and numbers assigned to prisoners of war.
• 3A- Abwehr counterintelligence. The department was engaged in recruiting agents among prisoners of war in order to identify Soviet intelligence officers and persons hiding belonging to the political and command staff of the Red Army, Jews, as well as those hostile to the Germans and preparing an escape.
• 3B- the censorship subdivision was checking all the correspondence of the prisoners of war.
• 4A- economic
• 4B- medical unit.

Small work camps

There were a great number of individual local, as a rule, small camps attributed to the Stalags, which bore the name Arbeitskommando- work teams, provided with their own numbers, designated by Arabic numerals. Such camps, if the working and living conditions in them were very difficult, were unofficially called penal camps, and the Germans often exiled "guilty" prisoners of war to them from various other camps, the conditions of stay in which could be considered tolerable.

Small labor camps were subordinate to the main labor camps or directly to the permanent Stalags. Distinguished by name settlement, where they were located, and by the name of the main working camp to which they were assigned. For example, in the village of Wittenheim in Elsace, a Russian prisoner of war camp that existed in 1943 was called "Wittenheim Stalag US". The number of prisoners in small labor camps ranged from several dozen to several hundred people.

Captivity conditions and mortality

Soviet prisoners of war who were captured were initially held either in the front-line zone or in "dulags" located in the operational rear of the German troops. From there they were transferred to stationary prisoner-of-war camps - "shtalagi", and the commanding staff - to officer camps - "offlags".

Front-line camps and "dulags" were located in agricultural buildings, warehouses, but more often in open space - in ravines, quarries, lowlands. An extremely simple method was used to build camps for Soviet prisoners of war: an open space of several hectares was fenced with barbed wire and watchtowers were erected around. And only the high mortality rate of prisoners subsequently forced the Nazis to settle Soviet soldiers and officers in barracks or stables, where, however, the conditions of detention were not much better.

Soviet prisoners of war, 1941

It should be noted that in the first months of the war against the Soviet Union, Soviet prisoners of war were not sent to the territory of the Reich, fearing the spread of communism among the Germans. And only when mass epidemics broke out in the prisoner of war camps, and the German economy felt a lack of labor, Hitler allowed the prisoners to be sent to Germany.

The captured Soviet servicemen were driven on foot or by train from places of capture (mainly Belarus, Ukraine and western Russia) to German camps located in Poland, Germany and other countries.

Beginning in 1943, the German command began to form "workers 'battalions", workers' teams. The exploitation of the former Soviet military personnel and the “eastern workers” (ostarbeiters) hijacked to work in Germany was unlimited: the German authorities widely used work teams for loading and unloading operations in ports and railway stations, for restoration work, in various heavy work at coal and mining industry, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy. The laws governing work on weekdays and Sundays, holidays, night time, etc. did not apply to them. In one of the orders of the director of the IG Farbenindustry concern, it was persistently reminded that “an increase in the labor productivity of prisoners of war can be achieved by reducing the rate of food distribution,<…>as well as punishments carried out by the army authorities. If any of the eastern workers begins to reduce labor productivity, then force and even weapons will be used against him. "

Beyond the daily harassing manual labor, the plight of the prisoners of war was complicated by the extreme scarcity of food. So, by order of the Supreme Command of the Ground Forces dated October 8, 1941, the rate of Soviet prisoners of war for 28 days (as a percentage) compared to the rate of non-Soviet prisoners of war was (when used for heavy work):

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To restore working capacity, each prisoner of war received for 6 weeks: up to 100 grams of artificial honey per week, up to 50 grams of cod per week, up to 3.5 kg of potatoes per week. In this case, supplemental nutrition could only be received for 6 weeks. During the marches, prisoners of war died in the hundreds, both due to hunger and physical exhaustion, and as a result of executions during disobedience or attempts to escape.

Soviet prisoners of war died en masse in German prisoner-of-war camps, especially in the assembly camps in which they were held during the first time after their capture, from exhaustion as a result of poor nutrition; in addition, they were often deliberately destroyed. Striving for the mass destruction of Soviet prisoners of war, the authorities of Nazi Germany doomed the soldiers of the Red Army to extinction from hunger and infectious diseases without giving them any medical attention. So, for example, only on the territory of Poland, according to the data of the Polish authorities, 883 thousand 485 people are buried. Soviet prisoners of war who died in numerous Nazi camps

It was established that the first mass extermination in a concentration camp with the use of toxic substances was the extermination of Soviet prisoners of war; only then this method was applied to exterminate the Jews.

Jewish prisoners of war

Special directives of the German command indicated that the Jews taken prisoner http://readtiger.com/wkp/ru/%D0%95%D0%B2%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B8 "> must be exterminated. Often prisoners of war - Jews were killed on the spot, in other cases they were separated from other prisoners of war and subsequently sent to death camps. Pavel Polyan emphasizes that "the Holocaust as a system of physical extermination of Jews by the Germans chronologically dates back to the systematic murder of Jewish prisoners of war", since such shootings began on June 22, 1941, long before the Wannsee Conference, and two days earlier than the first actions to exterminate the civilian Jewish population.

Almost all Soviet Jewish prisoners of war died, Pavel Polyan calls the figure 94%. The main method of extermination of Jewish prisoners of war was mass executions. According to the author of the book "The Captivity", Dr. Aaron Schneier, the mass death of Jewish prisoners of war in the Red Army was facilitated by the fact that Jews were often handed over to the Germans by their own colleagues. Schneier supports his opinion with numerous facts and evidence.

The use of prisoners of war in the war on the side of Germany

From the number of prisoners of war, units were formed, designed to carry out guard-convoy service in prisoner of war camps. In the fall of 1941, the formation of police teams, "Cossack" companies and squadrons began in the rear of the German army in order to maintain order and carry out guard duty in the occupied territory. In the summer of 1942, the General Staff of the Ground Forces prepared a directive on the organization of ethnic and Cossack field units and subunits. Even earlier, in November 1941, directives were issued regulating the formation of construction battalions and transport supply battalions from among Soviet citizens, including prisoners of war.

As a result, the number of armed combat formations created by the German command from Soviet citizens was approximately 250 thousand for the entire time of the war.

In the overwhelming majority, combat units carried out security, guard and stage-barrage service in the German operational rear, and were also involved in carrying out punitive actions against partisans and civilians.

Taking this into account, the total number of Soviet citizens who served in the police in the German armed forces did not exceed 200-300 thousand people. Judging by the testimony of German servicemen who were involved in the creation and use of these formations, the share of Soviet prisoners of war in them was about 60%, the rest - locals and emigrants .. To quickly achieve success, we began to recruit volunteers from among Russian prisoners of war right in the front line.

After the war

Even during the war, servicemen who had escaped from the encirclement and who crossed the front line from among the civilian population, after filtration, were sent mainly to replenish rear units, in particular labor armies. These armies built military-industrial facilities, in particular the Kuibyshev Aviation Plant, etc.

To check "former Red Army servicemen who were in captivity and surrounded by the enemy", a network of testing and filtration camps was created by the decree of the State Defense Committee of December 27, 1941.

In 1944, the flow of prisoners of war and repatriated returning to the Soviet Union increased sharply. This summer, it was developed and then introduced new system filtering and screening by the state security authorities of all returnees.

In the spring and summer of 1945, a large number of repatriates accumulated at the check-filtration and collection-transfer points in Germany and other European countries, several times exceeding the throughput of these points.

The Soviet and Russian military historian G.F.Krivosheev indicates the following figures based on the NKVD data: of 1,836,562 soldiers who returned home from captivity, 233,400 people were convicted in connection with the charges against http://readtiger.com/wkp/ ru /% D0% 9A% D0% BE% D0% BB% D0% BB% D0% B0% D0% B1% D0% BE% D1% 80% D0% B0% D1% 86% D0% B8% D0% BE % D0% BD% D0% B8% D0% B7% D0% BC "> cooperation with the enemy and served a sentence in the GULAG system.

During the war, servicemen released from captivity in most cases, after a short check, were restored to military service, moreover, enlisted and non-commissioned personnel mainly in ordinary military units, and officers, as a rule, were deprived of their officer ranks, and from them officer assault (penalty) battalions were formed ... In the post-war period, the released officers were sent to the NKVD camps and spare parts of the Red Army Glavupraform for a more thorough check.

After the war, the privates and sergeants released from captivity, who did not serve in the German army or traitorous formations, were divided into two large groups according to age - demobilized and undemobilized age. In 1945, after the dismissal from the army to the reserve of the Red Army men of those ages who were subject to the demobilization order, ordinary and non-commissioned prisoners of war of the corresponding ages were also released to their homes. In accordance with a special decree of the State Defense Committee of August 18, 1945, prisoners of war of ordinary and non-commissioned officers of non-demobilized age were sent to workers' battalions to work in industry and restore objects destroyed during the war. The dispatch to the place of residence of those enlisted in workers' battalions was made dependent on the future demobilization of conscripts of the corresponding ages from the army.

By the directive of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR of July 12, 1946, the workers' battalions were disbanded, and the term “transferred to permanent cadres of industry” was applied to those enrolled in them. They did not have the right to change jobs and return to their homeland even after their peers were demobilized from the army.

Russian estimates

In the 1990s, Russia not only opened access to materials and documents that were previously secret, but also began a dialogue between historians different countries... The result of this dialogue was the holding of a number of major international conferences and the publication of collective works on the history of war captivity. "And forcibly recruited Soviet prisoners, to whose fate historians have not paid attention at all, neither in Huseyn-zade, Mekhti Ganifa oglu.

"Statistical labyrinth". The total number of Soviet prisoners of war and the scale of their mortality

The size of 5.75 million people consisted of 3.35 million captured in 1941 and 2.4 million from January 1, 1942 to February 1, 1945. There is clearly an underestimation of data for 1941, there are not enough 450 thousand prisoners. For as of December 11, 1941, according to a summary of reports from German military units, the number of Soviet prisoners of war was 3.8 million people. Then 450 thousand mysteriously "disappeared" from this number. We are not at all satisfied with possible explanations about the "refinement" of the numbers. The matter is much more serious. 3.8 million is the number of prisoners according to the reports of military units, and 3.35 million is the corresponding camp statistics. It turns out that in 1941 450 thousand prisoners died after being captured before entering the camps.

There is also corresponding evidence on this score. Explaining at the Nuremberg trials (November 20, 1945 - October 1, 1946) the reasons for the mass extinction of Soviet prisoners of war captured near Vyazma in October 1941, the defendant, the former chief of staff of the OKW (OKW - High Command of the German Armed Forces) Colonel General A. Jodl said: “The encircled Russian armies put up fanatical resistance, despite the fact that they had been deprived of any supplies for the last 8-10 days. They literally ate the bark and roots of trees, as they retreated into impenetrable forests, and were captured already in such exhaustion that they were hardly able to move. It was simply impossible to carry them ... There were no places for their accommodation nearby ... It began to rain very soon, and later it became cold. This was the reason why most of the people taken prisoner at Vyazma died. "

This testimony confirms the fact of the mass mortality of prisoners before entering the camps. Therefore, the decrease in the number of Soviet servicemen taken prisoner in 1941 by almost 450 thousand people made by the Germans and, accordingly, of all statistics for the entire war from 6.2 million to 5.75 million was not just a "refinement", but a "write-off" , and in the German camp statistics, the dead prisoners, of course, are not taken into account. An interesting study was carried out by I.A. Dugas and F.Ya. Cheron. They found that at the beginning of 1942, only the total number of Soviet servicemen taken into German captivity in 1941 was "adjusted" downward (from 3.8 million to 3.35 million), and the primary data (reports of military units ) remained unchanged and, when added together, give exactly 3.8 million people.

At the Nuremberg Trials, the Soviet side presented a document from the apparatus of the Reich Minister of the Occupied Eastern Territories A. Rosenberg (it was a certificate addressed to Reich Marshal G. Goering, dated February 1, 1942, but the information in it was given as of January 10, 1942), in which the total number of Soviet prisoners of war was mentioned, and a figure of 3.9 million was called, of which only 1.1 million were available. the number of Soviet prisoners of war who died by mid-January 1942 exceeded the mark of 2 million people - and this is only those who died in the camps, excluding over 400 thousand prisoners of war who died before entering there.

The maximum number of freed and escaped from captivity could be 400 thousand. As a result, by January 10, 1942, a total of 3.9 million Soviet servicemen were taken prisoner, of whom 2.4 million died, and 1.1 million were available. , freed and fled - 400 thousand. Historians know another source - a summary of the reports of the German headquarters - where also, as of January 10, 1942, the total number of Soviet prisoners of war was named at 3.9 million people. Then the values ​​of 3.8 million (as of December 11, 1941) and 3.9 million (as of January 10, 1942) disappear from German statistics, and “revised” 3.35 million for 1941 appear. and under what circumstances, researchers have not yet been able to figure out.

It should be borne in mind that the Nazis, with their ambition and vanity, could not just belittle their own "successes" in capturing enemy troops. They were clearly afraid of something. Perhaps the West German historian K. Streit is right in his suspicion that the nature of the "statistical flaw" lies in the desire to hide the "gross violations" from the International Red Cross, whose representatives from time to time were allowed to examine the situation of prisoners of war.

Russian researcher P.M. Polyan, the author of the monograph “Victims of two dictatorships: Ostarbeiters and prisoners of war in the Third Reich and their repatriation”, twice published (in 1996 and 2002), speaking about the “refinement” of German statistics for 1941 by reducing the total number of Soviet prisoners from 3, 8 to 3.35 million people, expressed an unacceptable, in my opinion, assumption: "It is not entirely clear whether these figures include prisoners of war released." According to the documents, it is known that in the period from July to November 1941, the Germans released almost 318.8 thousand Soviet prisoners. However, the latter are not related to the "excluded from statistics". From the analysis of the abundant statistical material contained in the monographs of Dallin and Streit with a detailed indication of the "loss" ("died", "executed", "released", "fled", etc.) part of were included in the consolidated "revised" German statistics of the total number of Soviet prisoners of war. This means that they (released) in the statistics for 1941 were included in the "revised" 3.35 million, but in the "written off" 450 thousand they were not.

From January 1, 1942 to February 1, 1945, according to German documents, 2.4 million Soviet servicemen were taken prisoner by the Germans. If we add 3.8 million prisoners of 1941 to this, then their total number is not 5.75, but 6.2 million people. This state was before February 1, 1945, and it should be borne in mind that a certain number (probably insignificant) of Soviet soldiers and officers were captured in February-April 1945.

But there was also Finnish and Romanian captivity. Finnish captivity in 1941-1944. there are exact data - 64188 people. There are no statistics of the same nature on the Romanian captivity, and the quite acceptable estimates available in the scientific literature usually vary from 40 to 45 thousand people. Soviet servicemen taken prisoner by the Hungarian, Italian and Slovak troops were handed over to the Germans and recorded in their statistics. Consequently, the total number of Soviet prisoners of war (in total for German, Finnish and Romanian captivity) was about 6.3 million people.

In Russian historiography, the most authoritative source on this issue is considered to be prepared by a team of military historians under the general editorship of G.F. Krivosheev and published in 1993 the statistical collection "The secrecy stamp is removed." This publication was prepared under the auspices of the General Staff and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation with a certain claim to be directive. In it, in the column "Missing, taken prisoner", the figure is 4559 thousand people. There is also an explanation: "In total, 4,059 thousand Soviet servicemen were held captive, and about 500 thousand died in the battles, although according to reports from the fronts, they were recorded as missing." Further we read: "In addition, in the initial period of the war, about 500 thousand conscripts were captured by the enemy, who were called up for mobilization, but were not enlisted in the troops."

We have before us statistics of a completely different scale than the German one. According to the calculations of Krivosheev and his colleagues, no more than 4.2-4.3 million servicemen could be captured at the maximum (taking into account the military units captured by the enemy, called up for mobilization, but not enlisted in the states of military units).

The total number of Soviet prisoners of war turns out to be almost 2 million less than it was indicated in the German reports. Realizing that their calculations sharply differ from the testimony of German sources, the authors of the collection tried to refute the German statistics, arguing that the enemy allegedly "overestimated" the number of prisoners, included there party and Soviet workers who were with the troops, civilians (men), etc. ... I agree that there was such a practice, but the corresponding adjustment does not radically change the situation: German and "Krivosheevskaya" statistics remain of different scales. The calculations given in the book "The secrecy stamp has been removed" significantly distort the real picture. This is also the general opinion of all leading experts involved in the development of this problem. So, Polyan draws attention to the unreliability of these "calculations" and, not without humor and sarcasm, calling them "alternative results", states that "it would be premature to talk about a corrective comparison" with German data. The researcher made it clear that this kind of "calculations" cannot be taken seriously in the scientific historical community.

The determination of the total number of captured servicemen was also carried out by the Commission under the President of the Russian Federation for the rehabilitation of victims of political repression, headed by A.N. Yakovlev ("Commission of A. N. Yakovlev"). According to her, over the entire period of the war, 4.07 million servicemen were taken prisoner. These figures are even more dubious than those cited by the authors of the collection "The secrecy stamp has been removed." In contrast to the enemy, who counted the prisoners by their heads (in the literal sense), the members of the “AN Yakovlev Commission” used some other “methodology” of counting, the essence of which was not disclosed. They ignored the German statistics and "invented" an alternative, in my opinion, deliberately unreliable. In reality, the commission could rely on some data on the missing (for 1941-1943. Clearly incomplete), and then speculatively calculate the captured from them. The commission presented the dynamics of being taken prisoner in the war years, calculated by it (this is not in the book "The secrecy stamp"), which made it possible to compare it with the corresponding dynamics available in German sources (see Table 1).

Table 1. Dynamics of Soviet servicemen getting into German captivity *

Years	According to German sources	According to the “Commission of A.N. Yakovlev "	How much more (+) or less (-)
including:
		almost 2 million

* Compiled by: Dallin A. Deutsche Herrschaft in Russland 1941-1945: Eine Studie uber Besatzungspolitik. Dusseldorf 1958 S. 440; The fate of prisoners of war and deported citizens of the USSR: Materials of the Commission for the rehabilitation of victims of political repression // New and recent history... 1996. No. 2. P. 92.
** In the German data for 1941, there are no "specified" 3.35 million, but the number (3.8 million), which is recorded in the summary of German military units. Accordingly, the total number of Soviet prisoners of war for the entire war is not 5.75, but 6.2 million people.
*** German data for 1945 are only reported until 1 February.

When comparing the data indicated in Table 1, their glaring inadequacy is striking. In the statistics “Commission of A.N. Yakovleva "looks ridiculous, taken" from the ceiling "and excessively underestimated number of those taken prisoner in 1941 (almost 2 million people). This contradicts the testimony of the entire range of available sources. Inaccuracy of data for 1942-1943 manifests itself to a much lesser extent than in 1941. The commission presented a form surprise when calculating those taken prisoner in 1944, counting 56 thousand people more than indicated in German statistics.

To some extent, this inadequacy is explained by the difference in the definition of the concept of “prisoners of war”. The enemy interpreted it much more broadly, not limiting itself to military personnel only. The Germans attributed to prisoners of war the personnel of special formations of various civilian departments (railways, sea and river fleets, defense construction, civil aviation, communications, etc.), unfinished militias, self-defense units of cities and local air defense, fighter squads, militia , as well as part of the partisans and underground workers, party and Soviet workers; part of civilians, men, whom the enemy suspected of being disguised as Red Army soldiers; sick and wounded servicemen in hospitals, which were previously taken into account in the reports of Soviet military units as sanitary losses.

The overwhelming majority of the listed categories of persons are, as a rule, armed people who, together with military personnel, participated in hostilities. I fundamentally disagree with the interpretation of the authors of the book "The secrecy stamp has been removed" that the enemy unlawfully included them in prisoners of war and, due to this, "overestimated" their number. The question is: where was the enemy supposed to include the captured armed enemies? Naturally, prisoners of war. However, despite the impressive list of categories of these "illegally included" (according to Krivosheev), their specific gravity in the composition of prisoners of war was insignificant (hardly more than 5%). Therefore, even taking into account this adjustment, the difference in scale between the German and domestic ("Krivosheevskaya" and "Yakovlevskaya") statistics is by no means eliminated.

The main reason for this discrepancy between statistics lies in something else: in the collection "The secrecy stamp is removed" the actual number of missing persons is underestimated by about 30%. This can be proved using the statistical indicators of this collection. It says that over the years of the war, a total of 21.7 million people left the armed forces for various reasons. This is followed by a detailed listing of the components of this loss with an indication of their number (the mentioned 4.559 million are present there), but the total is not 21.7, but 19.45 million). There is a shortage of 2.25 million people (21.7 million - 19.45 million). The compilers of the collection saw this discrepancy in the statistics and explained the "missing loss" by those expelled from the army and navy for political unreliability (including persons of a number of nationalities whose families were forcibly evicted to the eastern regions of the USSR), as well as "a significant number of unresearched deserters."

“Missing loss” (2 million people) is unambiguously classified as missing. It follows from this that in the column of attrition under the title "Missing, captured" should not be 4559 thousand, but over 6.5 million (4559 thousand + 2 million people). After that, a lot can be explained, and most importantly, German and domestic statistics become one-scale. The vast majority of these more than 6.5 million, of course, were captured, although some of them, of course, went missing for other reasons. Taking into account the aforementioned broad interpretation by the enemy of the concept of "prisoners of war", the total number of Soviet prisoners of war established by me (6.3 million), refuted by domestic statistics, fits well into its framework.

It can be considered established that by February 1942 more than 2.4 million Soviet prisoners of war were no longer alive. Subsequently, the mortality rate decreased markedly - from February 1942 until the end of the war, according to my calculations, about 1.5 million more people died. This was the result of a change in the approach of the German leadership to this problem, which arose not at all from humanistic motives, but from purely pragmatic motives - until February 1942, large masses of Soviet prisoners of war were perceived as unnecessary ballast, which they got rid of, and now they began to look at them as on source of labor. The dynamics of monthly mortality has undergone dramatic changes. If in the first 7-plus months of the war (up to January 1942 inclusive), on average, about 340-350 thousand Soviet prisoners of war died per month, then in the next 39 months (February 1942 - April 1945) - 35-40 thousand.

Let us consider to what extent the results of my research on the mortality rate of Soviet prisoners of war are consistent with the conclusions of the most authoritative specialists in this field. Streit, who personally processed and studied a huge array of German documents, came to the conclusion that 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war died in German captivity, of which about 2 million - until February 1942. At the same time, Streit assumed that some out of almost 0.5 million "excluded from statistics" for 1941, prisoners of war actually died, but did not dare to include them in the general mortality statistics. On the contrary, Dallin was convinced that the "excluded" were mainly those who died during the stages of captivity and transportation to the camps, and believed that the total number of Soviet prisoners of war who died was 3.7 million. As for I.A. Dugas and F.Ya. Cherona, they agreed with Dallin's findings. Thus, in foreign scientific literature, an estimate of the mortality rate of Soviet prisoners of war at 3.7 million people seems to be the most convincing and acceptable. Let me emphasize that exactly this number died in captivity. The 3.9 million people I have identified include all categories of prisoners of war without exception, including the dead collaborators (approximately 200 thousand), in parts of the Wehrmacht, Vlasov's army and other traitorous (military and police) formations.

How does the collective of military historians, headed by G.F. Krivosheev? In the collection "The secrecy stamp is removed" we read: "673 thousand, according to German data, died in Nazi captivity (in fact, German data are completely different. - V.Z.). Of the remaining 1110.3 thousand people, according to our data, more than half are also deceased (perished) in captivity. " Then the figures 673 thousand and 1110.3 thousand add up, and we get an incomprehensible figure of 1783.3 thousand people, which is placed as a final figure in the heading “Did not return from captivity (died, died, emigrated to other countries)”. As a result of these more than strange arithmetic manipulations, the real scale of mortality of Soviet prisoners of war was "reduced" by more than 2 million people. This is a rare example of "statistical alchemy". It is clear that this kind of data cannot be used in scientific, teaching and propaganda work.

In 2001, the second edition of the book "The secrecy stamp has been removed" was published under the title "Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century" (headed by the same Krivosheev). In it, the ridiculous figure of 1783.3 thousand was not directly mentioned, but, unfortunately, it was used by the authors in calculations of a fundamental nature, which makes their results incorrect. It is this deliberately inaccurate figure that makes up the difference between the demographic losses of servicemen (8668.4 thousand) and the combat and non-combat losses of the Soviet armed forces killed and dead (6885.1 thousand). The arithmetic here is simple: 8668.4 thousand - 6885.1 thousand = 1783.3 thousand. You can also perform another arithmetic operation: 6885.1 thousand + 1783.3 thousand = 8668.4 thousand. this "statistical surrogate" also pops up (1783.3 thousand). Let me explain that the other 2 figures (8668.4 thousand and 6885.1 thousand) differ in that the first of them takes into account those who died in captivity, and the second does not. And here it becomes clear that the scale of demographic losses of servicemen during the war (8668.4 thousand), calculated by the "Krivosheevsky" team, is perceived by many researchers as quite reliable, in fact, it is not and needs to be radically revised.

For the sake of fairness, it must be said that not all Russian military historians strictly follow the statistical guidelines of Krivosheev and his colleagues. So, N.P. Dembitsky in his article "The Fate of the Prisoners", published in 2004, made the following conclusion: "There were at least 5 million Soviet prisoners of war in total, of which more than 3 million were killed." This can be taken as a valid point of view that does not go beyond common sense. Another military historian, V.A. Pronko, in the article "The Price of Victory" that was published at the same time, completely ignoring the "Krivosheev's" calculations, completely operated on the most popular statistics in Western historiography: there were 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war in total, of which "either died of hunger and disease. about 3,300,000 people were shot. " From these figures, the number of survivors is completely correctly determined (2.4 million), but the total number of prisoners of war and the scale of their mortality are underestimated by 600 thousand. I repeat that the total number of Soviet prisoners of war was about 6.3 million, of which about 3.9 million perished and died and at least 2.4 million survived. This statistics has already been introduced into scientific circulation. For example, it is she who is indicated in the corresponding volume of the fundamental scientific work "Population of Russia in the XX century: Historical sketches".

It is known that one part of the prisoners of war was kept in camps in the occupied territory of the USSR, the other in Germany and a number of European countries (subject and allied to it). According to Streit's data, up to May 1, 1944, 3.1 million Soviet prisoners of war were in the Reich. These data are certainly reliable. To these should be added at least 200 thousand people taken prisoner in the period from May 1944 to April 1945 and held captive in Finland, Romania and in the territories of other countries. Consequently, of the 6.3 million prisoners of war outside the USSR, at least 3.3 million were found.

With a fairly high degree of reliability, it can be argued that out of the number of prisoners of war held in Germany and other countries, about 1.7 million survived (the total number of repatriates and "defectors"). Since they were outside the USSR, they represented a living demographic loss. Only their mass repatriation could correct this situation. In October 1944, the Office of the Commissioner of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR for Repatriation was formed, headed by Colonel-General F.I. Golikov, who was engaged not only in the return of prisoners of war to their homeland, but also of all the so-called displaced persons. By the middle of 1947, Golikov's department managed to return 1,549,700 Soviet prisoners of war to the USSR from Germany and other countries. For one reason or another, about 150 thousand did not return (this value is estimated, the maximum allowable; it can be adjusted downward).

In the scientific literature, a different number of repatriated prisoners of war is often erroneously named - 1836 thousand. This figure, for example, appears in the collection "The secrecy stamp is removed" under the heading "Returned from captivity at the end of the war (according to the repatriation authorities)." But the fact is that the repatriation authorities included in their statistics 286.3 thousand prisoners of war released from captivity in 1944 - early 1945 during the offensive of the Red Army on Soviet territory, and they were included in the number of surviving prisoners of war in the occupied territory. THE USSR. Repatriated prisoners of war, as of mid-1947, were exactly 1549.7 thousand (1836 thousand - 286.3 thousand).

Since outside the USSR about 1.7 million of the 3.3 million prisoners of war survived, the number of dead and deceased is about 1.6 million (3.3 million - 1.7 million). According to Streit, by May 1, 1944, 1.1 million Soviet prisoners of war had died on the territory of the Reich. We have no reason to doubt the veracity of this information. However, the war continued for another year, and a certain number died during this period. It seems that it will not be a big mistake if we determine the number of Soviet prisoners of war who died on the territory of what was then Germany in the period from May 1944 to May 1945 in the amount of about 200 thousand. On the mortality of Soviet prisoners of war in Finnish captivity in 1941-1944. there is accurate statistics - 19016 people. There are no similar data on the Romanian captivity, presumably about 10 thousand Soviet servicemen died there. Tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war died in other European countries - their burial places have been identified in France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Poland (that part of it that was not part of the Reich), Yugoslavia, Hungary, etc. The number of these burial places is estimated in many hundreds ... The Soviet repatriation authorities in 1952 had information that there were 217 such burial sites in Norway alone. The deceased collaborators from among the former prisoners of war are also included in the general statistics as those who did not live to see the end of the war. In my opinion, the number of Soviet prisoners of war who died outside the USSR as about 1.6 million looks quite reasonable.

Having determined that about 3 million Soviet prisoners of war (6.3 million - 3.3 million) were kept in the occupied territory of the USSR, we will try to calculate the number of survivors. Many tens of thousands managed to escape (I believe there were more than 100 thousand of them). As already noted, from July to November 1941, the Germans released 318.8 thousand people from captivity - the Balts, Germans, Ukrainians, Belarusians. In November 1941, the invaders covered up such "charity" in relation to the Ukrainians and Belarusians, but kept it in relation to the Balts and Germans. In 1942-1944. release from captivity was made only on the obligatory condition of admission to military or police service. For 3 years (from mid-1941 to mid-1944), the total number of those released and escaped from captivity in the occupied territory of the USSR was at least 500 thousand people. However, we cannot include all of them among the survivors, since some of them, of course, died after their release or escape from captivity. Another 286.3 thousand prisoners of war were liberated by the Red Army on Soviet territory in 1944 - early 1945. Taking into account all of the above, the total number of surviving prisoners of war on the territory of the USSR, which was subjected to occupation, is estimated at about 700 thousand people. The number of deaths and deaths is about 2.3 million (3 million - 0.7 million).

Table 2 presents the results of studies to determine the scale of mortality of Soviet prisoners of war (and the number of survivors) both as a whole and separately for those of them who were held in the occupied territory of the USSR, and who were in Germany and other countries.

Table 2. The ratio of the dead and surviving Soviet prisoners of war in 1941-1945. (million people)

Thus, it can be considered established that, taking into account all the available data and factors, the total number of Soviet prisoners of war who died and died in the occupied territory of the USSR is estimated at about 2.3 million people. And here we are faced with another statistical conundrum. At the Nuremberg trials, the Soviet side had information that 3.9 million Soviet prisoners of war were killed and tortured in the occupied territory of the USSR. This implied that their total number (taking into account the unknown number of deaths in Germany and other countries) is much higher.

In Soviet newspapers, this figure until the end of the 1960s. was not named and only in 1969 "surfaced" in one of the issues of the newspaper "Pravda" in an article by the former chief prosecutor from the USSR at the Nuremberg trials, R.A. Rudenko. In the 1970s-1980s. these 3.9 million (and always with the remark: "in the occupied territory of the USSR") sometimes appeared on the pages of individual scientific works, in particular in the 10th volume of "History of the USSR from ancient times to the present day" published in 1973. The encyclopedia "The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945" published in 1985 says: "The German-fascist invaders killed 3.9 million Soviet prisoners of war only in the occupied territory of the USSR."

Naturally, a reasonable question arises about the origin of this mysterious statistics. It turns out that this is the data of the Extraordinary State Commission operating since the end of 1942 for the establishment and investigation of the atrocities of the German fascist invaders and their accomplices (CHGK). She counted over 3.9 million (3932256) killed and tortured prisoners of war on the territory of the USSR, which was subjected to enemy occupation. In the regions of the occupied territory of the USSR, according to the ChGK, this indicator was distributed as follows: RSFSR - 1125605, Ukraine - 1366588, Belarus - 810091, Karelo-Finnish SSR - 3600, Estonia - 64 thousand, Latvia - 330032, Lithuania - 229737 and Moldova - 2603.

It is clear that these data are overestimated and require significant adjustments. You should refrain from labeling them as "falsified", etc., since the statistics of the ChGK were obtained as a result of painstaking search work. This is a historical source that requires serious critical analysis and reflection. The occupied territory of the USSR was covered with a dense network of prisoner of war camps, the mortality rate in which (especially in the winter of 1941/42) was truly monstrous. So, on December 14, 1941, Rosenberg reported to Hitler that in the camps in Ukraine "as a result of exhaustion, up to 2,500 prisoners die every day." There is evidence that many of these camps held not only prisoners of war, but also many civilians. The former head of the Prisoners of War Department of the Danzig Military District, Lieutenant General K. von Osterreich, noted in his testimony that in the camps in Ukraine subordinate to him, up to 20 thousand Soviet citizens were held under arrest in separate barracks along with prisoners of war in separate barracks. areas covered by the partisan movement.

It seems that many of the graves identified by the ChGK commissions in the locations of former POW camps were common mass graves for both prisoners of war and civilians (captured partisans, hostages, partisan families, etc.). It is possible that some of the victims of the Holocaust are buried in them (it is known that the Nazis killed at least 2.8 million Jews in the occupied territory of the USSR). The local commissions of the ChGK, perhaps, attributed to the dead prisoners of war all the remains they counted from the burials in the places of the former prisoner of war camps. However, this alone could not have resulted in such a significant overestimation of the corresponding statistics. In the work of the ChGK commissions, the questioning of witnesses was widely practiced, therefore the subjective factor came into force, and a number of testimonies could be greatly exaggerated.

Actually, these data of the ChGK were the only statistical information about Soviet prisoners of war that our historical science possessed. There was no clarity about their total number, the mortality rate in camps in Germany and other countries, and the number of survivors. Although since the 1960s. we knew that Western historians usually operate with a figure of 5.7 million as the total number of captured Soviet servicemen. It was clear that many hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war died in camps outside the USSR, but hundreds of thousands survived. Our personal ideas at that time (until the end of the 1980s) looked like this: a total of 5.7 million people were captured, of whom 3.9 million died in the occupied territory of the USSR (doubt about this figure meant then “ sedition "), 1 million - died in camps in Germany and other countries and 800 thousand people survived.

Since 1989, when working with documents from previously classified archival funds, as well as studies by foreign authors that have become available, our previous ideas have undergone significant changes. A pleasant surprise was the fact that there were at least 3 times more surviving prisoners of war than previously thought. But the statements about the terrible fate of former prisoners of war in the Soviet Union, contained in the programs of "Voice of America", "BBC" and "Deutsche Welle" during the Cold War, turned out to be grossly exaggerated. In addition, the number of deaths turned out to be 1 million less: not 4.9, but 3.9 million people.

The death of a huge number of Soviet prisoners of war is a monstrous humanitarian crime, second only in scale to the Holocaust (the destruction of 6 million Jews by the Nazis). The results of our research confirmed that the Soviet side at the Nuremberg Trials had, in principle, correct statistical information about the deaths of 3.9 million Soviet prisoners of war.

Zemskov Viktor Nikolaevich, Doctor of Historical Sciences, leading researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Datner S. Crimes of the Nazi Wehrmacht against prisoners of war / Per. from Polish M., 1963; Nazarevich R. Soviet prisoners of war in Poland during World War II and assistance to them from the Polish population // Questions of history. 1989. No. 3; Semiryaga M.I. The fate of Soviet prisoners of war // Questions of history. 1995. No. 4.
Dallin A. Deutsche Herrschaft in Russland 1941-1945: Eine Studie uber Besatzungspolitik. Dusseldorf 1958 S. 440.
Ibid.
Streit K. Not to consider them as soldiers: Wehrmacht and Soviet prisoners of war in 1941-1945 / Per. with him. M, 1979. S. 99; Dugas I.A., Cheron F.Ya. Erased from memory: Soviet prisoners of war between Hitler and Stalin. Paris, 1994.S. 399; Polyan P.M. Victims of two dictatorships: Ostarbeiters and prisoners of war in the Third Reich and their repatriation. M., 1996.S. 65, 71.
Population of Russia in the XX century: Historical sketches. T. 2. 1940-1959. M., 2001.S. 144.
Streit C Op. cit. S. 244.
GA RF, f. 9526, op. 3, d.54, l. 53; d. 55, l. 135.
The classification has been removed ... p. 131.
Streit C. Op. cit. S. 244-245.
Dugas I.A., Cheron F.Ya. Decree. op. P. 59.
GA RF, f. 9526, op. 4а, d. 7, l. 125-126.
Ibid., No. 1, l. 62, 223, 226.
Rudenko R.A. Is not subject to oblivion // Truth. 1969.24 March. P. 4.
History of the USSR from ancient times to the present day. T. 10.M., 1973.S. 390.
The Great Patriotic War. 1941-1945: Encyclopedia. M., 1985.S. 157.
Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War. 1941-1945. M., 1976.S. 369.
Streit C. Op. cit. S. 259.
Nuremberg trials of the main German war criminals. Collection of materials. T. 3.M., 1958.S. 130.

I believe that calling today's Germans "partners", "colleagues", etc., we must never forget about this page of our history and who did all these atrocities with our compatriots.
The exact number of Soviet prisoners of war of the Great Patriotic War is still unknown. 5 to 6 million people. About what the captured Soviet soldiers and officers had to go through in the Nazi camps - in our material.

The numbers speak

Today, 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, in violation of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the German authorities included not only soldiers and officers of the Red Army as prisoners of war, but also party officials, partisans, underground fighters, as well as the entire male population from 16 to 55 years old, retreating along with the 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. years have not received registration numbers. 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 the NKVD camps, as having compromised themselves in captivity.

Early years

Most of the Soviet prisoners of war are in the first two years of the war. In particular, after the unsuccessful Kiev defensive operation in September 1941, about 665 thousand soldiers and officers of the Red Army ended up in German captivity, and after the failure of the Kharkov operation in May 1942, more than 240 thousand Red Army men fell into German troops. First of all, the German authorities carried out filtration: the commissars, communists and Jews were immediately liquidated, and the rest were convoyed to special camps created in haste. Most of them were on the territory of Ukraine - about 180. Only in the notorious camp of Bohunia (Zhytomyr region) there were up to 100 thousand Soviet soldiers. The prisoners had to make grueling marches - 50-60 km each. in a day. The journey was often delayed for a whole week. Food on the march was not provided, so the soldiers were content with pasture: everything went for food - spikelets of wheat, berries, acorns, mushrooms, foliage, bark and even grass. The instruction 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 the road, a "shot of mercy" killed 150 people. As noted by the Ukrainian historian Grigory Golysh, about 1.8 million Soviet prisoners of war died on the territory of Ukraine, which is approximately 45% of the total number of victims among prisoners of war in the USSR.

Soviet prisoners of war were in much harsher conditions than soldiers of other countries. The formal basis for this, Germany called the fact that the Soviet Union did not sign the Hague Convention of 1907 and did not join the Geneva Convention of 1929. In fact, the German authorities followed the directive of the high command, according to which the communists and commissars were not recognized as soldiers, and no international legal protection extended to them. With the beginning of the war, this applied to all prisoners of war of the Red Army. Discrimination against Soviet prisoners of war was manifested 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 exclusively for prisoners of war, conditions were even more dire. Only a small part of the prisoners were housed in relatively adapted rooms, while the majority, due to the 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 - "Uman Yama", the prisoners were in the open air, where there was no way to hide from the heat, wind or rain. The "Uman pit", in fact, turned into a huge mass grave. “The dead lay next to the living for a long time. Nobody paid any attention to the corpses, there were so many of them, ”the surviving prisoners recalled.

In one of the orders of the director of the German concern "IG Farbenindastry" it was noted that "increasing the productivity of prisoners of war can be achieved by reducing the rate of food distribution." This directly related to Soviet prisoners. However, in order to maintain the efficiency of the prisoners of war, it was necessary to charge an additional ration of food. For a week she looked like this: 50 gr. cod, 100 gr. artificial honey and up to 3.5 kg. potatoes. However, supplemental nutrition was only available for 6 weeks. The usual diet of prisoners of war can be seen on the example of Stalag # 2 in Hammerstein. The 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 rate for prisoners of war was even less - 100 grams. For comparison, let us 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 the Soviet prisoners of war were fed with was little like food. Erzats 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 is a scoop of stinky liquid from poorly washed offal from horses, and this "food" was prepared in the cauldrons in which asphalt was previously cooked. Non-working prisoners of war were deprived of such food, and therefore their chances of survival were reduced to zero.

By the end of 1941, a colossal need for labor, mainly in the military industry, was revealed in Germany, and it was decided to fill the deficit primarily at the expense of Soviet prisoners of war. This situation saved many Soviet soldiers and officers from the mass destruction planned by the Nazi authorities. According to the German historian G. Mommsen, "with adequate 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 industries, this figure was less - 70%. Mommsen noted that Soviet prisoners constituted "an essential and lucrative 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, 631,559 Soviet prisoners of war were employed in Germany. Soviet prisoners of war often had to master a new specialty: they became electricians, locksmiths, mechanics, turners, tractor drivers. The wages were piecework and provided for a bonus system. But, isolated from the workers of other countries, Soviet prisoners of war worked 12 hours a day.

Mortality

According to German historians, up to February 1942, up to 6,000 Soviet soldiers and officers were annihilated in POW camps every day. This was often done by gas strangling entire barracks. Only on the territory of Poland, according to local authorities, 883,485 Soviet prisoners of war were buried. It has now been established that the Soviet military was the first on whom toxic substances were tested in concentration camps. Later, this method was widely used to exterminate the Jews. Many Soviet prisoners of war died of 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 during the winter. However, without waiting for the lethal outcome of many of them, the camp authorities gassed them right in the barracks. The mortality rate among the wounded prisoners was great. Medical assistance to Soviet prisoners was extremely rare. Nobody cared about them: they were killed both during the marches and in the camps. The casualties' diet rarely exceeded 1,000 calories a day, let alone the quality of the food. They were doomed to die.

On the side of Germany

Among the Soviet prisoners, there were those who, unable to withstand the inhuman conditions of detention, joined the ranks of the armed combat units of the German army. According to some reports, their number was 250 thousand people during the entire war. First of all, such formations carried guard, guard and stage-barrage service. But there were cases of their use in punitive operations against partisans and civilians.

Return

Those few soldiers who survived the horrors of German captivity faced a difficult test in their homeland. They needed to prove that they were not traitors. By a special directive of Stalin at the end of 1941, special filtration and testing camps were created in which former prisoners of war were placed. In the zone of deployment of six fronts - 4 Ukrainian and 2 Belarusian, more than 100 such camps were created. By July 1944, almost 400 thousand prisoners of war had gone through a "special check" in them. The overwhelming majority of them were transferred to the regional military registration and enlistment offices, about 20 thousand were cadres for the defense industry, 12 thousand were filled with assault battalions, and more than 11 thousand were arrested and convicted.