German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union

Approximately three million German prisoners of war were captured by the Soviet Union during World War II, most of them during the great advances of the Red Army in the last year of the war. The POWs were employed as forced labor in the Soviet wartime economy and post-war reconstruction. By 1950 almost all surviving POWs had been released, with the last prisoner returning from the USSR in 1956.[1] According to Soviet records 381,067 German Wehrmacht POWs died in NKVD camps (356,700 German nationals and 24,367 from other nations).[2][3]

The mother of a prisoner thanks Chancellor Konrad Adenauer upon his return from Moscow on September 14, 1955. Adenauer had succeeded in concluding negotiations for the release to Germany, by the end of that year, of 15,000 German civilians and prisoners of war.
Prisoners returning in 1955

German POWs in the USSR

In the first months of Operation Barbarossa, few Germans were captured by Red Army forces. After the Battle of Moscow and the retreat of the German forces the number of prisoners in the Soviet prisoner of war camps rose to 120,000 by early 1942.[4] The German 6th Army surrendered in the Battle of Stalingrad, 91,000 of the survivors became prisoners of war raising the number to 170,000[4] in early 1943. Weakened by disease, starvation and lack of medical care during the encirclement, many died of wounds, disease (particularly typhus spread by body lice), malnutrition and maltreatment in the months following capture at Stalingrad: only approximately 6,000 of them lived to be repatriated after the war.[5] As the desperate economic situation in the Soviet Union eased in 1943, the mortality rate in the POW camps sank drastically. At the same time POWs became an important source of labor for the Soviet economy deprived of manpower. With the formation of the "National Committee for a Free Germany" and the "League of German Officers", pro-communist POWs got more privileges and better rations. As a result of Operation Bagration and the collapse on the southern part of the Eastern front, the number of German POWs nearly doubled in the second half of 1944. In the first months of 1945 the Red Army advanced to the Oder river and on the Balkans. Again the number of POWs rose – to 2,000,000 in April 1945.[4]

German POWs marching through the Ukrainian capital of Kiev under USSR guard.

A total of 2.8 million German Wehrmacht personnel were held as POWs by the Soviet Union at the end of the war, according to Soviet records. A large number of German POWs had been released by the end of 1946,[6] when the Soviet Union held fewer POWs than the United Kingdom and France between them . With the creation of a pro-Soviet German state in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany – the German Democratic Republic – in October 1949, all but 85,000 POWs had been released and repatriated. Most of those still held had been convicted as war criminals and many sentenced to long terms in forced labor camps – usually 25 years. It was not until 1956 that the last of these Kriegsverurteilte ('war convicts') were repatriated, following the intervention of West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in Moscow.[7][8]

According to Richard Overy, Russian sources state that 356,000 out of 2,388,000 POWs died in Soviet captivity.[9] In his revised Russian language edition of Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses, Krivosheev put the number of German military POWs at 2,733,739 and dead at 381,067 (356,700 German nationals and 24,367 from other nations)[10] However, Soviet era sources are disputed by historians in the West, who estimate 3.0 million German POWs were taken by the USSR and up to 1.0 million died in Soviet captivity.[11] Waitman Wade Beorn states that 35.8% of German POWs died in Soviet custody,[12] which is supported by other academic works.[13][14]

According to Edward Peterson, the U.S. chose to hand over several hundred thousand German prisoners to the Soviet Union in May 1945 as a "gesture of friendship".[15] Niall Ferguson maintains that "it is clear that many German units sought to surrender to the Americans in preference to other Allied forces, and particularly the Red Army".[16] Heinz Nawratil maintains that U.S. forces refused to accept the surrender of German troops in Saxony and Bohemia, and instead handed them over to the Soviet Union.[17]

According to a report in the New York Times thousands of prisoners were transferred to Soviet authorities from POW camps in the West, e.g. it is known that 6,000 German officers were sent from the West to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp which at the time was one of the NKVD special camp and from which it is known that they were transferred to POW camps.[18] Soviet Ministry for the Interior documents released in 1990 listed 6,680 inmates in the NKVD special camps in Germany 1945–49 who were transferred to Soviet POW camps.[19]

German estimates
German prisoners-of-war in Moscow at the end of 1944.

The West German government set up a Commission headed by Erich Maschke to investigate the fate of German POWs in the war. In its report of 1974 they found that 3,060,000 German military personnel were taken prisoner by the USSR[20] and that 1,094,250 died in captivity (549,360 from 1941 to April 1945; 542,911 from May 1945 to June 1950 and 1,979 from July 1950 to 1955).[21] According to German historian Rüdiger Overmans ca. 3,000,000 POW were taken by the USSR; he put the "maximum" number of German POW deaths in Soviet hands at 1.0 million.[11] Based on his research, Overmans believes that the deaths of 363,000 POWs in Soviet captivity can be confirmed by the files of Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt), and additionally maintains that "It seems entirely plausible, while not provable, that 700,000 German military personnel listed as missing actually died in Soviet custody".[22][11]

German prisoners of war held by the Soviet Union
Year Quarter Number of German POWs
1941 IV 26,000
1942 I 120,000
II 120,000
III 110,000
IV 100,000
1943 I 170,000
II 160,000
III 190,000
IV 200,000
1944 I 240,000
II 370,000
III 560,000
IV 560,000
1945 I 1,100,000
II 2,000,000
III 1,900,000
IV 1,400,000
1946 IV 1,100,000
1947 IV 840,000
1948 IV 500,000
1949 IV 85,000
1950 IV 29,000

Source of figures: Rüdiger Overmans, Soldaten hinter Stacheldraht. Deutsche Kriegsgefangene des Zweiten Weltkriege. Ullstein., 2000 Page 246

Soviet statistics

According to Russian historian Grigori F. Krivosheev, Soviet NKVD figures list 2,733,739 German "Wehrmacht"(Военнопленные из войск вермахта) POWs taken with 381,067 having died in captivity.[10] The table below lists the Soviet statistics for total number of German prisoners of war reported by the NKVD as of 22 April 1956 (excluding USSR citizens who were serving in Wehrmacht). The Soviets considered ethnic Germans of Eastern Europe conscripted by Germany as nationals of their country of residence before the war, for example the Sudeten Germans were labelled as Czechs.[10] These figures do not include prisoners from Italy, Hungary, Romania, Finland and Japan. The Soviet statistics for POW do not include conscripted civilians for the Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union.

However Austrian historian Stefan Karner maintains that Soviet era documents indicate that 2.6 million prisoners were taken by the Soviets including 400,000 civilians.[23]

Figures for "Wehrmacht" POW according to Soviet NKVD[10]

Nationality Total accounted prisoners of war Released and repatriated Died in captivity
German 2,388,443 2,031,743 356,700
Austrian 156,681 145,790 10,891
Czech and Slovak 69,977 65,954 4,023
French 23,136 21,811 1,325
Yugoslav 21,830 20,354 1,476
Polish 60,277 57,149 3,128
Dutch 4,730 4,530 200
Belgian 2,014 1,833 181
Luxemburger 1,653 1,560 93
Spanish 452 382 70
Danish 456 421 35
Norwegian 101 83 18
others 3,989 1,062 2,927
Total 2,733,739 2,352,671 381,067
% 100% 86.1% 13.9%

See also

References
  1. Rüdiger Overmans, Soldaten hinter Stacheldraht. Deutsche Kriegsgefangene des Zweiten Weltkriege. Ullstein., 2000 Page 277 ISBN 3-549-07121-3
  2. G. I. Krivosheev. Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses. Greenhill 1997 ISBN 1-85367-280-7 Pages 276-278.
  3. In his revised Russian language edition of Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses Krivosheev put the number of German military POW at 2,733,739 and dead at 381,067 G. I. Krivosheev Rossiia i SSSR v voinakh XX veka: Poteri vooruzhennykh sil; statisticheskoe issledovanie OLMA-Press, 2001 ISBN 5-224-01515-4 Table 198
  4. Rüdiger Overmans, Soldaten hinter Stacheldraht. Deutsche Kriegsgefangene des Zweiten Weltkriege. Ullstein., 2000 Page 272 ISBN 3-549-07121-3
  5. The Great Patriotic War: 55 years on The BBC put the number of POW captured at Stalingrad at 91,000 of whom 6,000 survived
  6. Biess, Frank (2009-06-28). Homecomings : returning POWs and the legacies of defeat in postwar Germany. Princeton Univ. Press. p. 45. ISBN 978-0-691-14314-9. OCLC 700526728.
  7. Rüdiger Overmans: Soldaten hinter Stacheldraht. Deutsche Kriegsgefangene des Zweiten Weltkriegs. Ullstein, München 2002, ISBN 3-548-36328-8, p.258
  8. Andreas Hilger: Deutsche Kriegsgefangene in der Sowjetunion 1941-1956. Kriegsgefangenschaft, Lageralltag und Erinnerung. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2000, ISBN 3-88474-857-2, p. 137 (Tabelle 3 and Tabelle 10)
  9. Overy, Richard (1997). Russias War. Penguin. p. 297. ISBN 1575000512. Overy notes on p.364: "I am very grateful to James Bacque for letting me see the official figures supplied to him for his work on his book, Crimes and Mercies (London, 1997). The figures are drawn from a report of the chief of the Prison Department of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs on ‘war prisoners of the former European armies for the period 1941 ‐ 1945’, dated 28 April 1956. On contemporary estimates see D. Dallin and B. Nicolaevsky, Forced Labour in Soviet Russia (London, 1948), pp. 277 ‐ 8. On Japan, S. I. Kuznetsov, ‘The Situation of Japanese Prisoners of War in Soviet Camps’, journal of Slavic Military Studies 8 (1995).
  10. G. I. Krivosheev Rossiia i SSSR v voinakh XX veka: Poteri vooruzhennykh sil; statisticheskoe issledovanie OLMA-Press, 2001 ISBN 5-224-01515-4 Table 198
  11. Rüdiger Overmans, Soldaten hinter Stacheldraht. Deutsche Kriegsgefangene des Zweiten Weltkriege. Ullstein., 2000 Page 246 ISBN 3-549-07121-3
  12. Marching into Darkness, 2014, p.59
  13. Frederick Taylor, Exorcising Hitler: The Occupation and Denazification of Germany, 2011, pp. 184-5
  14. Niall Ferguson, Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat, 2004, p. 122
  15. Edward N. Peterson: The American Occupation of Germany, pp 116, "Some hundreds of thousands who had fled to the Americans to avoid being taken prisoner by the Russians were turned over in May to the Red Army in a gesture of friendship."
  16. Niall Ferguson: Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat War in History, 2004, 11 (2) 148–192 pg. 189
  17. Heinz Nawratil Die deutschen Nachkriegsverluste unter Vertriebenen, Gefangenen und Verschleppter: mit einer Übersicht über die europäischen Nachkriegsverluste. Munich and Berlin, 1988, pp. 36f.
  18. Desmond Butler (December 17, 2001). "Ex-Death Camp Tells Story Of Nazi and Soviet Horrors". New York Times.
  19. Michael Klonovsky ; Jan von Flocken Stalins Lager in Deutschland : 1945 - 1950 ; Dokumentation, Zeugenberichte. ISBN 9783550074882 P. 18
  20. Erich Maschke Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges Bielefeld, E. und W. Gieseking, 1962-1974 Vol 15 p. 207
  21. Erich Maschke, Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges Bielefeld, E. und W. Gieseking, 1962-1974 Vol 15 p. 224
  22. Rüdiger Overmans. Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Oldenbourg 2000. ISBN 3-486-56531-1 Page 286-289
  23. Stefan Karner. 2015. Der "französische Spionagering" in Rostock und die sowjetische Staatssicherheitsakte zu Wilhelm Joachim Gauck. In: Andreas Kötzing ed. Vergleich als Herausforderung. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, p.171.
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