Where are the captured Russians? Army of the Russian Federation and Donbass. German captivity. tragedy of Soviet prisoners of war Prisoners in the gulag

The war in Donbass has been going on for the third year.

During this time, Ukraine has repeatedly announced a massive - many thousands - participation in hostilities.

However, according to yesterday's information from Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, they are now under investigation, and six are behind bars. The trials were carried out behind the scenes, without the involvement of the media.

At the same time, there are tens, if not hundreds of times more Ukrainians detained for work on the LPNR.

Correspondent.net decided to collect all versions of Russian participation in the ATO.

Ukrainian data

Confirmations of the participation of the Russian military in the hostilities in the Donbass have already been cited by the Ukrainian side several times: from the Pskov paratroopers to the arrests of special forces.

At the same time, data on the number of Russian military personnel who are in the Donbas are constantly different.

In June 2015, President Petro Poroshenko announced that there are 200 thousand Russian military personnel on the territory of Ukraine.

“Today, by order of Putin, there are 200 thousand people in our territory, equipped with an arsenal of tanks and anti-aircraft missile launch systems. One of them shot down a civilian airliner from Malaysia last year, "Corriere della Sera quotes Mr. Poroshenko.

In April 2016, Poroshenko already announced that there are 6,000 regular Russian military personnel and a 40,000-strong army of militants in the combat zone in the Donbas.

According to the Ministry of Defense, the number of Russians fighting for the LPNR is.

Western opinion

The OSCE, the main international organization that monitors the situation in the ATO zone, has never announced the presence of Russian personnel units in Donbass.

Organization Secretary General Lamberto Zannier stated that the presence of regular units of the Russian army in Ukraine.

“There have always been Russian citizens, perhaps arriving there for some reason, entering the region and supporting the separatists. other Russian military units [...] are more difficult to demonstrate, "Zannier said.

But the United States, which does not participate in the Minsk and Normandy formats, have always been more categorical.

"The Russian military and equipment are still in the Donbass. Russia is directly responsible for the implementation of the Minsk agreements," said American diplomat John Tefft.

US Ambassador to the OSCE Daniel Baer announced the continuation of the supply of Russian weapons to the Donbass.

“Russia is showing no signs of an end to its aggression; on the contrary, it increased the intensity of violence, ”he stressed.

Russian response

In April 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that there were no Russian troops in Ukraine.

“When asked whether our troops are in Ukraine or not, I speak bluntly and definitely: there are no Russian troops in Ukraine,” Putin replied.

At his press conference in December 2015, Putin noted that there are no regular Russian troops in Ukraine, "decisive military issues."

"We have never said that there are no people there who are engaged in resolving certain issues in the military sphere, but this does not mean that there are regular Russian troops there, feel the difference," Putin said.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has always denied everything.

“We see that the Ukrainian side is now trying to justify its inability to fulfill what it signed up to by referring to the difficult security situation, to the“ mythical ”presence of Russian troops - which has never been confirmed and proven by anyone. in the media space, as we can be sure of this today, "Lavrov says.

What's up

For unleashing a war against Ukraine, 39 Russian citizens were prosecuted, six of whom have already received prison sentences. This was stated by Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko.

“At the moment, 39 citizens of the Russian Federation have been prosecuted for their participation in unleashing and waging an aggressive war against Ukraine, of which 31 are servicemen of the RF Armed Forces. imprisonment for a term of 11 to 15 years, "- said the prosecutor general.

Also, the Prosecutor General's Office notified 18 persons from among the representatives of the authorities and the leadership of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation of suspicion of committing crimes against the foundations of the national security of Ukraine, including the adviser to the President of the Russian Federation Sergei Glazyev and the head of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation Sergei Shoigu.

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

During the Soviet era, the topic of Soviet prisoners of war was tacitly banned. At the most, it was admitted that a certain number of Soviet soldiers were captured. But there were practically no specific figures, only some of the most vague and obscure general figures were given. And only almost half a century after the end of the Great Patriotic War, we started talking about the scale of the tragedy of Soviet prisoners of war. It was difficult to explain how the victorious Red Army, under the leadership of the CPSU and the brilliant leader of all time, during 1941-1945, managed to lose about 5 million servicemen alone as prisoners. And after all, two-thirds of these people died in German captivity, only a little more than 1.8 million former prisoners of war returned to the USSR. Under the Stalinist regime, these people were "pariahs" of the Great War. They were not stigmatized, but any questionnaire asked whether the respondent was in captivity. Captivity is a tarnished reputation, in the USSR it was easier for a coward to arrange his life than for a former soldier who honestly paid his debt to his country. Some (although not many) who returned from German captivity served in the camps of their "native" Gulag again only because they could not prove their innocence. Under Khrushchev, it became a little easier for them, but the ugly phrase "was in captivity" in all kinds of questionnaires ruined more than one thousand destinies. Finally, during the Brezhnev era, the prisoners were simply shyly silent. The fact of being in German captivity in the biography of a Soviet citizen became an indelible shame for him, entailing suspicions of betrayal and espionage. This explains the scarcity of Russian-language sources on the problem of Soviet prisoners of war.
Soviet prisoners of war are being sanitized

Column of Soviet prisoners of war. Autumn 1941.

Himmler examines the camp for Soviet prisoners of war near Minsk. 1941 year.

In the West, any attempt to tell about Germany's war crimes on the Eastern Front was regarded as a propaganda trick. The lost war against the USSR smoothly spilled over into its "cold" stage against the eastern "evil empire". And if the leadership of the FRG officially recognized the genocide of the Jewish people, and even "repented" for it, then nothing of the kind happened regarding the mass destruction of Soviet prisoners of war and civilians in the occupied territories. Even in modern Germany there is a steady tendency to blame everything on the head of "possessed" Hitler, the Nazi elite and the SS apparatus, as well as to whitewash the "glorious and heroic" Wehrmacht, "ordinary soldiers honestly performing their duty" (I wonder what?). In the memoirs of German soldiers, as soon as the question comes up about crimes, the author immediately declares that ordinary soldiers were all cool guys, and all the abominations were done by the "beasts" of the SS and Sonderkommandos. Although almost without exception all former Soviet soldiers say that the vile attitude towards them began from the very first seconds of captivity, when they were not yet in the hands of the "Nazis" from the SS, but in the noble and friendly embraces of "beautiful guys" from ordinary combat units, " who had nothing to do with the SS. "
Distribution of food in one of the transit camps.


Column of Soviet prisoners. Summer 1941 region of Kharkov.


Prisoners of war at work. Winter 1941/42

Only from the mid-70s of the twentieth century, the attitude towards the conduct of military operations on the territory of the USSR began to slowly change, in particular, German researchers began to study the fate of Soviet prisoners of war in the Reich. The work of Heidelberg University professor Christian Streit played an important role here. "They are not our comrades. Wehrmacht and Soviet prisoners of war in 1941-1945.", which refuted many Westernizing myths regarding the conduct of hostilities in the East. Streit worked on his book for 16 years, and it is to date the most comprehensive study on the fate of Soviet prisoners of war in Nazi Germany.

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

“We must abandon the concept of soldier's comradeship. A communist has never been and never will be a comrade. We are talking about a struggle for destruction. "(Halder F." War Diary ". T.2. M., 1969. S. 430).

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

About the attitude towards the civilian population, Hitler said:

"We are obliged to exterminate the population - this is part of our mission of protecting the German nation. I have the right to exterminate millions of people of an inferior race who multiply like worms."

Soviet prisoners of war from the Vyazemsky cauldron. Autumn 1941


For sanitation before shipment to Germany.

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

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

Finished off Soviet prisoners from the marching column on the streets of Kiev. 1941 year.

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

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


Unknown Soviet prisoner of war 1941.

German documents on the attitude towards Soviet prisoners of war

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

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

“... the Bolshevik soldier lost all right to claim to be treated as an honest soldier in accordance with the Geneva Agreement. Therefore, it is quite consistent with the point of view and dignity of the German armed forces, so that every German soldier would draw a sharp line between himself and the Soviet prisoners of war. The appeal should be cold, although correct. In the strictest way, all sympathy, and even more support should be avoided. The sense of pride and superiority of a German soldier assigned to guard Soviet prisoners of war should at all times be noticeable to those around him. "

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

The mass grave of Soviet prisoners of war uncovered by investigators of the Extraordinary State Commission of the USSR


The drover

In Western historiography, until the mid-70s of the twentieth century, the version was quite widespread that Hitler's "criminal" orders were imposed on the opposition-minded command of the Wehrmacht and were almost never executed "on the ground." This "fairy tale" was born during the Nuremberg trials (defense action). However, an analysis of the situation shows that, for example, the Order on Commissars was carried out in the troops very consistently. The "selection" of the SS Einsatzkommando included not only all servicemen of Jewish nationality and political workers of the Red Army, but in general everyone who could be a "potential enemy". The military elite of the Wehrmacht almost unanimously supported the Fuhrer. Hitler, in his unprecedented frank speech on March 30, 1941, “pressed” not on the racial reasons of the “war of annihilation”, but precisely on the fight against an alien ideology, which was close in spirit to the Wehrmacht military elite. Halder's notes in his diary clearly indicate general support for Hitler's demands, in particular, Halder wrote that "the war in the East is significantly different from the war in the West. In the East, cruelty is justified by the interests of the future!" Immediately after Hitler's keynote speech, the headquarters of the OKH (German OKH - Oberkommando des Heeres High Command of the Ground Forces) and OKW (German OKW - Oberkommando der Wermacht, High Command of the Armed Forces) began to formalize the Fuhrer's program into specific documents. The most controversial and well-known of them: "Directive on the establishment of an occupation regime on the territory of the Soviet Union subject to seizure"- 03/13/1941, "On military jurisdiction in the Barbarossa area and on the special powers of the troops"-13.05.1941, directives "On the behavior of troops in Russia"- May 19, 1941 and "On the Treatment of Political Commissioners", more often referred to as "order of commissars" - 6/6/1941, the order of the High Command of the Wehrmacht on the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war - 8/09/1941. These orders and directives were issued at different times, but their drafts were ready practically in the first week of April 1941 (except for the first and last document).

Unbroken

In almost all transit camps, our prisoners of war were kept under the open sky in a monstrously crowded environment.


German soldiers finish off a Soviet wounded

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

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

Reasons for the mass capture of Soviet servicemen

The unpreparedness of the USSR for a modern highly mobile war (for various reasons), the tragic start of hostilities led to the fact that by mid-July 1941 of the 170 Soviet divisions that were at the beginning of the war in the border military districts 28 were surrounded and did not leave it, 70 formations class divisions were virtually defeated and became ineffective. Huge masses of Soviet troops often rolled back indiscriminately, and German motorized formations, moving at a speed of up to 50 km per day, cut off their escape routes, the Soviet formations that did not have time to withdraw, units and subunits were encircled. Large and small "cauldrons" were formed, in which most of the servicemen were captured.

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

It must be admitted that the defeatism prevailing in the Red Army became the reason for the transition of a certain number of Red Army men and commanders to the side of the enemy from the very first days of the war. Rarely, but it did happen, that whole military units crossed the front line in an organized manner, with their own weapons and led by their commanders. The first precisely dated such incident took place on July 22, 1941, when two battalions went over to the enemy's side. 436th Infantry Regiment of 155th Infantry Division, commanded by Major Kononov. It cannot be denied that this phenomenon persisted even at the final stage of the Great Patriotic War. So, in January 1945, the Germans recorded 988 Soviet defectors, in February - 422, in March - 565. It is difficult to understand what these people hoped for, most likely just private circumstances that forced them to seek salvation for their own lives at the cost of betrayal.

Anyway, in 1941 prisoners accounted for 52.64% of the total losses of the North-Western Front, 61.52% of the losses of the Western, 64.49% of the losses of the South-Western and 60.30% of the losses of the Southern fronts.

The total number of Soviet prisoners of war.
In 1941, according to German data, about 2,561,000 Soviet servicemen were captured in large "boilers". The reports of the German command reported that 300,000 people were taken prisoner in the boilers near Bialystok, Grodno and Minsk, near Uman - 103,000, near Vitebsk, Mogilev, Orsha and Gomel - 450,000, near Smolensk - 180,000, in the Kiev region - 665,000, near Chernigov - 100,000, in the Mariupol area - 100,000, near Bryansk and Vyazma 663,000 people. In 1942, in two more large "boilers" near Kerch (May 1942) - 150,000, near Kharkov (at the same time) - 240,000 people. Here it is immediately necessary to make a reservation that the German data seem to be overestimated because the declared number of prisoners often exceeds the number of armies and fronts that took part in a particular operation. The most striking example of this is the Kiev cauldron. The Germans announced the capture of 665,000 people east of the capital of Ukraine, although the full payroll of the Southwestern Front did not exceed 627,000 by the time the Kiev defensive operation began. Moreover, about 150,000 Red Army men remained outside the encirclement ring, and about 30,000 more managed to get out of the "cauldron".

K. Streit, the most authoritative expert on Soviet prisoners of war in World War II, claims that in 1941 the Wehrmacht captured 2,465,000 soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, including: Army Group North - 84,000, Army Group Center - 1,413,000 and Army Group South - 968,000. And this is only in large "boilers". All in all, according to Streit's estimates, 3.4 million Soviet servicemen were captured by the German armed forces in 1941. This represents approximately 65% ​​of the total number of Soviet prisoners of war captured in the period from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945.

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

Also, there is still no exact data on the total number of Soviet prisoners of war captured by the German armed forces from June 1941 to April 1945. A. Dallin, operating with German data, gives a figure of 5.7 million people, a team of authors under the leadership of Colonel-General G.F. Krivosheeva, in the edition of her monograph from 2010, reports about 5,059 million people (of which about 500 thousand are conscripted for mobilization, but captured by the enemy on their way to military units), K. Streit estimates the number of prisoners from 5.2 to 5 , 7 million

Here it should be borne in mind that the Germans could include such categories of Soviet citizens as prisoners of war: captured partisans, underground workers, personnel of unfinished formations of the people's militia, local air defense, destroyer battalions and militia, as well as railway workers and paramilitary formations of civilian departments. Plus, a certain number of civilians who were taken for forced labor in the Reich or occupied countries, as well as taken hostage, also got here. That is, the Germans tried to "isolate" as much of the male population of the USSR of military age as possible, and did not hide it too much. For example, in the Minsk prisoner of war camp, there were about 100,000 prisoners of war of the Red Army and about 40,000 civilians, which is practically all male population of Minsk. The Germans followed this practice in the future. Here is an excerpt from the order of the command of the 2nd Panzer Army on May 11, 1943:

“When occupying individual settlements, it is necessary to immediately and suddenly capture existing men between the ages of 15 and 65, if they can be counted among those capable of carrying weapons, and send them under guard by rail to the transit camp 142 in Bryansk. , to declare that they will henceforth be considered prisoners of war, and that at the slightest attempt to escape they will be shot. "

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

Prisoners from the Vyazma cauldron.


Execution of Soviet prisoners of war who tried to escape

THE ESCAPE


It is necessary to mention the fact that a certain number of Soviet prisoners of war were released by the Germans from captivity. So, by July 1941, a large number of prisoners of war had accumulated in assembly points and transit camps in the OKH area of ​​responsibility, for the maintenance of which there was no money at all. In this regard, the German command took an unprecedented step - by order of the Quartermaster General of 25.07.41 No. 11/4590, Soviet prisoners of war of a number of nationalities (ethnic Germans, Balts, Ukrainians, and then Belarusians) were released. However, by order of OKB dated 13.11.41 No. 3900, this practice was terminated. In total, 318,770 people were released during this period, of which 292,702 people were in the OKH zone, and 26,068 people were in the OKV zone. Among them are 277,761 Ukrainians. Subsequently, only persons who joined volunteer security and other formations, as well as the police, were released. From January 1942 to May 1, 1944, the Germans released 823,230 Soviet prisoners of war, of which 535,523 people were in the OKH zone, and 287,707 people were in the OKV zone. I want to emphasize that we have no moral right to condemn these people, because in the overwhelming majority of cases it was for a Soviet prisoner of war. the only way to survive. Another thing is that most of the Soviet prisoners of war deliberately refused any cooperation with the enemy, which in those conditions was actually tantamount to suicide.



Finishing off an exhausted prisoner


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

On September 30, 1941, an order was given to the commandants of the camps in the east to start filing cabinets for prisoners of war. But this had to be done after the end of the campaign on the Eastern Front. It was especially emphasized that only information on those prisoners who, "after selection" made by the Einsatzkommandos (Sonderkommandas), "finally remain in the camps or at the appropriate work", should be reported to the central reference department. It directly follows from this that in the documents of the central reference department there is no data on previously killed prisoners of war during redeployment and filtration. Apparently, this is why there are almost no complete documents about Soviet prisoners of war for the Reichskommissariats "Ostland" (Baltic States) and "Ukraine", where in the fall of 1941 a significant number of prisoners were kept.
Mass execution of Soviet prisoners of war, Kharkov region. 1942 year


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

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

The reports of the OKW Prisoners of War Division to the International Committee of the Red Cross covered only the OKW subordinate camps system. Information to the committee about Soviet prisoners of war began to arrive only in February 1942, when it was decided to use their labor in the German war industry.

The system of camps for keeping Soviet prisoners of war.

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

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


In such conditions, our prisoners were transported in the winter of 1941/42. Mortality at the stages of shipment reached 50%

HUNGER

The assembly points were located in close proximity to the front line, here the final disarmament of the prisoners was going on, and primary accounting documents were drawn up. The transit camps were located near major railway junctions. After "sorting" (exactly in quotation marks), the prisoners were usually sent to camps with a permanent location. The shtalags varied in numbers, and at the same time they contained a large number of prisoners of war. For example, in "Stalag-126" (Smolensk) in April 1942 there were 20,000 people, in "Stalag - 350" (near Riga) at the end of 1941 - 40,000 people. Each "Stalag" was a base for a network of main labor camps subordinate to him. The main labor camps had the name of the corresponding stalag with the addition of a letter; they contained several thousand people each. Small labor camps were subordinate to the main labor camps or directly to the Stalags. They were named most often by the name of the settlement in which they were located, and by the name of the main working camp, they housed from several dozen to several hundred prisoners of war.

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

In the front line and in the army's rear, the prisoners were in charge of the appropriate services of the OKH. On the territory of the OKH, only transit camps were usually located, and the headquarters were already in the department of the OKW - that is, within the boundaries of the military districts on the territory of the Reich, the governor-general and the Reichskommissariat. As the German army advanced, the dulags turned into permanent camps (oflags and shtalags).

In OKH, the prisoners were engaged in the service of the quartermaster general of the army. Several local commandant's offices were subordinate to her, in each of which there were several dulags. The camps in the OKW system were subordinate to the management of prisoners of war of the corresponding military district.
Soviet prisoner of war tortured by the Finns

This senior lieutenant had a star carved on his forehead before he died.


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

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"War of extermination in the east. Crimes of the Wehrmacht in the USSR. 1941-1944. Reports" edited by G. Gortsik and K. Shtang. M. "Airo-XX" 2005
V. Vette "The Image of the Enemy: Racist Elements in German Propaganda Against the Soviet Union". M. "Yauza", EKSMO 2005
K. Streit "They are not our comrades. Wehrmacht and Soviet prisoners of war in 1941-1945". M. "Russian Panorama" 2009
"The Great Patriotic War without a stamp of secrecy. The book of losses". A team of authors led by G.F. Krivosheeva M. Veche 2010

German captivity of that time is not the same as captivity in World War II. The camps of the Great War were not stalls for slaves and not the production of death, but forges of Germanophiles and cheap labor.

Prisoner separation politics and conflicts

According to German statistics, 1,420,479 Russian soldiers and 14,050 officers were captured during the war. After arriving from the front, the prisoners of war were divided into companies or barracks, headed by a non-commissioned officer of the company's nationality. The division of prisoners along ethnic lines was also one of the most important elements of the German administration of prisoners - the Ukrainians, Poles, Balts, Georgians were offered the best conditions of detention in combination with propaganda literature. After the war, the prisoners were to become the conductors of the Germanophile and anti-Russian policy at home. Often, prisoners from the national outskirts of the empire, especially Ukrainians and Georgians, resisted this processing themselves, the propaganda literature spreading was collected and hidden, and those who were susceptible to it were beaten. Those who agreed to cooperate with the camp administration were called traitors and they were threatened with reprisals.

Russian prisoners of war in Germany were brought up in the national spirit

Officers (of a rank higher than non-commissioned officers) and soldiers were kept separately - this was also required by international agreements, and so that officers did not organize sabotage, escape or other anti-German actions with the participation of soldiers.

Control in captivity was also established with the help of the prisoners themselves. The non-commissioned officers in the barracks were supposed to cooperate with the camp commandant's office and maintain the established order. If all went well, the officer received a monetary reward. Thanks to all sorts of gifts like tobacco, food, expedited mailing to their homeland, the commandant's office acquired groups of "trusted" prisoners who reported all sorts of information about the Russian army, about the behavior and mood of other prisoners.

Among the prisoners, those who knew the German language were recruited to work as translators and supervisors in the obligatory work in the kitchen, in the field or in craft workshops. NCOs and translators, trying to maintain their privileged position in the service of the Germans, often mistreated their compatriots. Social conflicts between officers and soldiers, characteristic of the Russian army, continued in captivity. One soldier who escaped from captivity said later: “It was good until our elders took over. And then the Germans gave them the right to beat us and flog us with rods, and it became worse with their elders ... When the prisoners began to rule themselves, at that time they started all sorts of thefts and troubles ... We lived among ourselves in quarrels that occurred over food " ...

Swearing and disobedience to non-commissioned officers were the most common violations of camp rules. In captivity, where there was a constant lack of basic necessities, the familiar environment of communication and connection with home, in a nervous atmosphere, an atmosphere of complete solidarity was rarely created.

There were even conflicts between the camps, for example, over the right to be the first to go home in 1918. Not a single camp "wanted to share places with strangers" and overwhelmed German institutions and the Soviet Prisoner of War Bureau in Germany with demands to send them home as soon as possible ...

At the same time, against the background of the revolutionary explosion in Russia and the German policy of disunity among the prisoners, national conflicts also escalated. The Germans recorded cases of bloody fights between captives with a national and imperial spirit, especially after the proclamation of Ukraine's independence. The Russians were angry at the natives of Ukraine who supported independence, wrote to Russian organizations that sent aid to the camps, demanding to stop supporting the now independent Ukrainians.

Military camps: self-government

In the camps of the First World War, it was common practice to allow self-government - the prisoners opened shops in the camps, carried out artistic activities, sought charitable assistance and distributed. Self-government camp committees collected libraries, built small churches, organized lectures, hobby groups up to the most exotic among officers (for example, the society of sunbathers in Neuss). The German commandants reserved the right to punish prisoners in the event of violations of the order, for example, by canceling concerts and performances for a while.

The camp committees themselves determined the punishments for minor offenses. For example, for illegal trade in "doggie" (moonshine) could be sentenced to several days of "scoop", that is, cleaning toilets, and for more serious violations, a prisoner could spend several nights outside the barracks and sleep on the street even in bad weather.

Source: www.berliner-zeitung.de

With the permission of the administration of the camps, prisoners were allowed to work on nearby farms and in workshops, to sell their goods (the Germans were especially in demand for carpentry art with Russian carvings). Part of the proceeds went into the pockets of the workers, part - for the maintenance of the camp. The prisoners had the opportunity to correspond and receive parcels, the opportunity to submit complaints and requests to international and Russian organizations, to negotiate work with German enterprises outside the camp.

Hunger and censorship

Although the Germans did not lead to a mass fatal famine, there was never an abundant food for the prisoners, especially at the end of the war, when Germany was experiencing a severe food crisis. The worst was for those who did not have access to agricultural work. It was also possible to ask for food to be sent from home, but prisoners were not allowed to report hunger and other captivity problems home. The prisoners showed considerable ingenuity in circumventing postal censorship. One prisoner wrote home: "I live here with Yermolai Kormilich Golodukhin, whom you will soon meet, we are inseparable." Not every translator who daily checked dozens and hundreds of letters of varying quality in Russian handwriting could have noticed such a trick. Some censors, especially Russian Germans, still managed to find allegories in the mail. For example, one soldier humorously wrote that he lives "... as on the Vyborg side", another - that he lives "no worse than in our boarding house in the village of Medvedskaya." In this case, it was about mental hospitals or prisons in Russia.

At work. (topwar.ru)

Another prisoner, an officer, made a reference to the Bible in the text of the letter: “2 Cor. 11 - 27 ". Having opened the Scripture in the indicated place, we read the words: "in labor and in exhaustion, often in vigil, in hunger and thirst, often in fasting, in the cold and in nakedness."

Homecoming

The return of prisoners during the outbreak of the Civil War in Russia turned into a lot of problems, especially in 1918, when prisoners marched in huge masses, sometimes tens of thousands of people a day. Their meeting was often poorly prepared, people were transported crowded, they were not provided with sufficient medicine, food and clothing (especially in winter). Many died on the way. According to the memoirs of the writer VB Shklovsky, on some of the cars there were instructions: "If you die, they will be taken to Kursk and there they will be buried in the" burnt forest ", and the coffins [will be taken] back." Mostly those who had food and money in stock from the camps, that is, first of all, those who worked at various German enterprises, arrived more or less safely.

“Finally, I managed to unfasten the belt with the pistol holster, and I handed it to the first Russian who approached. Then I raised my hands again. Without a word, the Russian emptied my pockets: a handkerchief, cigarettes, wallet, gloves - it looks like all this will come in handy for him, "Heinrich von Einsindel, Luftwaffe pilot, Count and great-grandson of Otto von Bismarck (his mother was Countess Bismarck). On August 24, 1942, when his plane was shot down in the skies over Stalingrad, the young Count Einsindel was 20 years old.

“In the steppe, September nights are rather cold, but I was not even allowed to move in order to somehow warm up. As soon as I started to move, the guards raised their rifle butts at me, ”the captive pilot wrote in his memoirs, published many years later.

There were no conditions for keeping prisoners in the active army, at best - dugouts and tents, more often - at night in the open air. Therefore, they tried to send them as quickly as possible to a reception center 20-40 kilometers from the front line, guarded by the NKVD troops, and from there - to assembly points and to front-line transit camps.

What is a reception center for prisoners, where for the first time they were not only interrogated, but also officially issued, sanitized (shaved bald and changed into a Russian uniform without insignia, if any), the Wehrmacht signalman told in his book "Before the gates of life" Helmut Bon, captured at Nevel in 1944: “Until we arrive at the POW camp, the daily ration is about a liter of liquid soup and three hundred grams of stale bread. But on those days when we were chopping wood for the Russian field kitchen, we were given some hot tea for dinner.<...>We chopped firewood in the street in front of the goat pen, in which we, about a dozen prisoners, were kept under lock and key.<...>In this goat pen, a woman in the uniform of a junior lieutenant in the Red Army was in charge of us. "

Archipelago GUPVI

The Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees (UPVI, later - GUPVI, that is, the Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees) existed in the NKVD system even before the start of the Great Patriotic War. In 1941, he was in charge of 8 camps. “To receive prisoners from military units, in accordance with the mobilization plan developed by the GULAG of the NKVD, from the beginning of the war, 30 reception centers for prisoners of war had to be deployed, but in reality, in combat conditions, only 19 points were deployed,” writes in his monograph “Go with the world. On the history of the repatriation of German prisoners of war from the USSR (1945-1958) ”historian Vladimir Vsevolodov.

As the Nazis advanced, the prisoner of war camps had not to open, but to fold and move, in August 1941 there were only three of them - Gryazovetsky in the Vologda region, Suzdal in Vladimir and Starobelsky in Voroshilovgrad (now - Luhansk region of Ukraine). As of January 1, 1942, 8,925 people were held in the six existing GUPVI camps on the territory of the USSR. Most of them were captured during the Battle of Moscow.

Within a year, the number of prisoners increased tenfold. On paper, the movement of "enemy manpower" was carried out as follows: from the army reception center they entered the assembly point, from there in echelons to the front-line reception and transit camps, and from there - to the rear camps. In fact, Vsevolodov writes, out of 282,451 prisoners "recorded" in January-February 1943, only 19 thousand people were taken to stationary camps - the rest were "stuck" in the front. These transit camps were either peasant huts in villages evacuated or destroyed by the Nazis, or simply tents and dugouts.

Heinrich von Einzindel described how the prisoners were transported from one camp to another: “The next day, the first group was sent from the camp: two hundred people, who left in columns of four.<...>... We marched straight across the steppe, accompanied by 30-40 Red Army men armed to the teeth. In a day, they made us cover about 70 kilometers. Then we were given a few hours to rest right on the road, after which we walked another 40 kilometers in about twelve hours. Then we had to wait three days at the station for the arrival of the train. Then we were pushed into each carriage by fifty people. Most of us have already contracted dysentery, and death has begun to reap its harvest. "

In the process of transferring from the active army to the NKVD troops, during their stay in improvised camps and at stages in 1943, most of those taken prisoner died: according to the UPVI, to which Vsevolodov refers, 176 186 people entered the year, left (mostly died) - 157 460 people. By January 1, 1944, more than 95 thousand people were held in the camps of the GUPVI, of which 60 854 were former servicemen of the German army.

By May 1, 1945, more than 140 GUPVI camps with a capacity of more than a million people were operating in the USSR and in the liberated territories in Europe. In 1946, there were already 240 of them - the largest number in the entire history of the existence of the Soviet system of prisoner of war and internment camps.

Bismarck's great-grandson and other anti-fascists

It also happened that the prisoners did not immediately find themselves in the rear camps, but remained near the front line not because of problems with logistics, but for propaganda reasons. Heinrich von Einzindel recalled how the Russian military who had captured him did not hide their delight when they had a descendant of the "Iron Chancellor" in their hands. After a series of interrogations, he was asked to write a leaflet calling for surrender. “I said hello to my parents and my friends. I said that I was being treated correctly. I declared that I believe that Germany will lose this war and that Bismarck's warning regarding a war with Russia has been confirmed again. "

Helmut Bohn, who wrote a similar leaflet, recalled being taken to the front line to read it to the Germans through a loudspeaker: “Finally, the car stops.<...>The mechanic fixes the loudspeaker to the roof of the cab. I fix three texts on the music stand.<...>On a signal, I begin to read: "German soldiers and officers! In a cauldron near Kursk, the victorious Red Army destroyed eleven German divisions. Corporal Helmut Bon speaks here. Put an end to the madness! Surrender one by one and in groups ..." ".

Vsevolodov writes that the leadership of military units and employees of the NKVD since 1943 even released prisoners “to their own” for propaganda purposes. During the battles on the Volga in January and February 1943, 439 people released in this way not only returned, but also brought with them another 1955 prisoners. In January-February 1945, in battles against the garrison in Poznan, Poland, 211 prisoners brought with them 4,350 soldiers and officers who decided to surrender. “According to incomplete data, only in the period from January 1943 to June 1945, the use of this method led to the capture of 91,539 people,” the historian says.

A few months after his capture, the Luftwaffe pilot Ainzindel ended up in a camp in a monastery in the village of Oranki, Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) region. One of the first anti-fascist schools already worked there - a camp unit designed to "re-educate" captured Wehrmacht soldiers who agreed to cooperate with the Soviet authorities. Einsindel recalled Wagner, a German emigrant communist who recruited prisoners: “In the evenings he invited everyone to talk, and those who came were assigned to work in the kitchen or some other encouragement. After the person was treated kindly by such "gifts", Wagner asked him if he would like to join the camp group of anti-fascists. If he refused, then he was immediately deprived of all the privileges presented. "

Since 1944, cadets of anti-fascist schools were entitled to an increased nutritional norm - 700 grams of bread, as captive leaders of production who fulfilled more than 80% of the norm. German historian and researcher of the problem of prisoners of war Stefan Karner in the book “GUPVI Archipelago. Captivity and internment in the Soviet Union "gives such data on the number of anti-fascists among prisoners" in one of the largest soldier camps ": in July 1943 - 4.5%, in December 1943 - 27.6%, in April 1944 - 67.1%, in July 1944 - 96.6% of the total number of prisoners in this camp.

Carner quotes the story of one of the former cadets of such a school, Wilhelm F., about how the educational process proceeded: historical materialism was taught by a professor from the Lenin Higher School in Moscow, and the rest of the subjects (history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, European labor movements and political economy according to Marx's Capital ) - German-speaking communists-emigrants. “Classes consisted of lectures, consultations, seminars.<...>Classes were held from 8.30 am to 2 pm and from 5 pm to 7.30 pm. Since April, they began to issue officers' allowances. After the hardships and starvation in ordinary labor camps, every meal was a real treat.<...>There was also good medical care, sports and cultural events. " The main motivation for joining the ranks of cadets-anti-fascists was the promised prisoners a speedy return to their homeland, they later recalled.

In March 1943, the school moved from the Oran camp to the camp number 27 near Moscow in Krasnogorsk. In the same place, in the factory House of Culture, the founding conference of the "National Committee" Free Germany "- an organization of German political emigrants and prisoners of war, was held. The same great-grandson of Bismarck, Heinrich von Einzindel, who was transferred to Krasnogorsk, became its vice-president.

Here, in the 27th camp, many high-ranking prisoners of war were kept: in particular, the commander of the 6th Army, Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus. He was placed in a separate house called a block house in the territory of zone number 1.

In the summer of 1944, Lieutenant General Vincent Müller, the commander of the 12th Army Corps of Army Group Center, who was captured along with hundreds of thousands of German soldiers and officers during Operation Bagration, became a temporary inhabitant of Camp 27 in Krasnogorsk. Müller is known for the fact that on July 17, 1944, he led a column of 57,000 prisoners of war that marched in Moscow from the hippodrome and the Dynamo stadium along Leningradsky Prospekt and Gorky Street (now Tverskaya), and further along the Garden Ring. This propaganda action carried out by the NKVD and filmed for Soviet newsreels, was named "The Big Waltz".

"Harvesting"

The mass capture of soldiers and officers of the Hitlerite army during Operation Bagration by the troops of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Belorussian fronts was part of another large-scale operation called "harvesting German labor." Here is what Vladimir Vsevolodov writes about her: “The prisoners began to be viewed by the USSR not only as a military trophy, important in wartime, and as a source of labor used to cover the costs of their maintenance, but also as a resource intended for use in the country's economy not only during the war, but most importantly - in the post-war period. For the USSR, prisoners who fell into its power gave them the opportunity to replace their own human losses. "

Based on the data on the dead and missing soldiers and officers of the Red Army in 1941 and 1942 (almost 4 million people), Stalin at the Tehran conference in November 1943 announced the need to find a "substitute element" on the territory of the USSR - 4 million German citizens , enemy prisoners, who for several years after the end of the war will rebuild the destroyed Soviet cities and raise industry. “The first step in this direction was the creation in November 1943 of the Commission under the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs to compensate for the damage inflicted by the USSR by Hitlerite Germany and its allies, headed by the Soviet diplomat I.M. May. The commission was supposed to substantiate the idea put forward by Stalin. "

In 1944, this commission developed a reparation program, which spoke about the use of prisoners' labor for ten years: “This issue has two aspects: on the one hand, reparations should serve the purpose of the early restoration of the damage caused by Germany to the USSR and other countries, on the other hand , reparations, in particular, reparations by labor, that is, the withdrawal from the German national economy of several thousand working units annually, must inevitably have a weakening effect on its economy and its military potential ", - justified the use of German labor in a note addressed to the People's Commissar of affairs to Vyacheslav Molotov.

In practice, this meant the growth of the structures of the NKVD: the UPVI turned into the GUPVI, and by the summer of 1944 this body had appeared on all fronts and in the armies. Various kinds of instructions regulated the procedure for handling prisoners, the timing of their transportation, the requirements for their physical condition, and cases of mass death were investigated.

But by the fall of 1944, it became clear that if only soldiers and officers of the enemy were taken prisoner, then the plan to attract 4 million Germans to forced labor would not be fulfilled. “The new object of economic interest of the Soviet Union was the German civilian population, the Germans were not citizens of the Reich, who lived on the territory of the allied countries of Nazi Germany, occupied by the Red Army. The program of "harvesting" among this category of German civilian population within the framework of the task of "reparation by labor" was launched shortly after the signing of the armistice agreement with Romania on September 12, 1944, ”writes Vsevolodov.

The first filtering of residents of the territories already controlled by the Red Army was carried out in October-November 1944, the work was led by the Deputy People's Commissar of the NKVD Arkady Apollonov: “In the reporting territory, only 551,049 persons of German nationality were identified, of which 240,436 were men and 310,613 were women, of whom of working age only men are 199 679 people ”.

On December 16, 1944, the practice of internment was regulated by the top secret GKO Resolution No. 7161: “To mobilize and intern with the assignment to work in the USSR of all able-bodied Germans aged 17 to 45, women from 18 to 30, who are in the territory liberated by the Red Army Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia ”.

The mobilization order was announced in settlements, having previously cordoned off it (both the NKVD troops and the gendarmerie from among the local residents were used). The mobilized were ordered to “have clothes, bedding, dishes, hygiene items and food for 15 days. All products must be packed in bags or suitcases, suitable for transport, with a total weight of up to 200 kg, ”writes Karner.

As they moved deeper into Germany, the Soviet military took prisoners both the female service personnel of the Wehrmacht (about 20 thousand women), and members of paramilitary organizations (Volkssturm, Hitler Youth, and the like). Also in the Soviet Union there were more than 200 thousand internees from among civilian Germans.

“... In the“ accounting ”of the“ harvest ”plan, there were not only income items, but also the expenditure side. It amounted to 462,475 people, including 318,489 who died during the war, as well as 55,799 prisoners transferred to the formation of national units that participated in the war on the side of the USSR, etc., ”Vsevolodov points out.

After the end of the war, the NKVD troops did not stop operations to capture and send to the Soviet Union both former German army personnel and civilians. Historians note that American troops, beginning on May 4, 1945, gave all prisoners of war the status of "disarmed enemy". The command of the English army did not consider prisoners of war those who surrendered after the surrender of Germany (they were referred to in the documents as "the surrendered enemy"). The USSR (as well as France) declared all German soldiers and officers who fell under its rule prisoners of war.

On June 5, 1945, the "Declaration of the defeat of Germany" was adopted, which legalized all these actions: all the statuses given to former soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht by the commanders-in-chief of the victorious countries were recognized as legitimate.

In total, according to various sources, there were from 3 to 3.8 million prisoners of war and interned Germans in Soviet camps.

Who works, he eats

In the USSR, all these prisoners were taken in more than two hundred camps throughout the country from Khabarovsk to Donbass: prisoners of war from Gorlovsky camp No. 242 built houses in destroyed Stalingrad, in camp No. 236 in Georgia they worked in the oil industry and built roads, in camps No. 195 and No. 286 in Vilnius and Tallinn they built airports and residential buildings, in camp No. 256 in Krasniy Luch (Voroshilovgrad region) they worked in coal mines.

The interned and mobilized Germans worked mainly in the coal mines of Donbass, as well as in the metallurgy, fuel and oil industries. The internees also lived in camps, but the zones were mixed for men and women, only they had to spend the night in different barracks. They worked as part of the so-called workers' battalions - 750, 1000, 1250 and 1500 people each.

Vsevolodov in his book "Shelf life is constant: a short history of the prisoner of war camp and internees UPVI NKVD-Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR No. 27" provides data on what percentage of prisoners working at the enterprises of the Soviet Union accounted for the total number of workers. In March 1947, every fifth worker in the construction of ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy enterprises was captured, in the aviation industry - almost every third, in the construction of power plants - every sixth, in the construction of fuel enterprises and in the production of building materials - every fourth. Many prisoners worked directly at metallurgical enterprises and in coal mines. If the camp was not in the steppe, then almost everyone had a so-called camp trip or a camp in the forest - for logging.

From the memoirs of the former prisoner of war Reinhold Braun: “First, we had to load two cars with wood during a work shift, then the norm was increased to three cars. Later we were forced to work sixteen hours a day - on Sundays and holidays.<...>We returned to camp at nine or ten o'clock in the evening, but often at midnight. There we got watery soup and fell asleep exhausted so that we could go back to the plot the next day at five in the morning. ”

From a conversation with engineer Herman Pesl, quoted in his book by Stefan Karner: “We installed telegraph poles ...<...>They should not sway when the electrician climbs them. We burned them, tarred them and dug them deep into the ground. The Russians also set up telegraph poles. And then they said to us: "Why are you not working? Look there, how many the Russians have put." I then crept in there and looked. They put the pillars, deepening them by 40 cm, put several stones around, poured water on them and that's it, the job is ready. And we dug them in one and a half meters. Then I said to my people: "Gentlemen, from now on we will finish all this. Now we will do like the Russians."

Pesl explained to his team that otherwise they would receive only 50% of the ration and would soon turn into goners: nutritional norms changed over the years, but always depended on production rates. So, for example, in 1944, 500 grams of bread were received by those who produced up to 50% of the norm, 600 grams - those who completed up to 80%, 700 grams - those who completed more than 80%. In 1946, the "Basket of Supplementary Food for Prisoners" included edible herbs: whitewash, plantain, sorrel, mallow, oxalis, nettle, rape, sverbyga, dandelion, cucumber grass (borage) and others.

Mortality in the camps was particularly high in the last years of the war and in the winter of 1945-1946, primarily due to insufficient nutrition. According to the archives of the GUPVI of the NKVD of the USSR, from 1945 to 1956, 580,548 people died in prisoner-of-war camps, of which 356,687 were Germans. Almost 70% of deaths occurred in the winter of 1945-1946.

Vsevolodov cites statistics for Krasnogorsk Camp No. 27 as an example and divides the mortality history into two periods: “The first period covers 3.5 years - from July 1942 to December 1, 1945. The second period is the last four full years of the camp's existence (1946-1949). Of the total number of deaths of 770 people, there are 730 deaths in the first period, and 40 in the second. "

The camp in Krasnogorsk described by the historian was far from the largest in the country: its maximum occupancy was in 1944 - 11 thousand people, in 1946 - just over 4 thousand people. Camp departments were scattered across the Moscow and neighboring regions: in Lytkarino, near Moscow, prisoners worked at a glass factory, in the village of Mordves, Tula Region, they worked on subsidiary plots, worked at factories in Dmitrov, Tushino and in the village of Konakovo, Kalinin Region, logged timber at the Krivandino stations (now, Guchkov - the city of Dedovsk) and Rumyantsevo.

In Krasnogorsk, the prisoners built a school building, the NKVD archives, the city stadium of the Zenit society, houses for the factory workers and a new residential comfortable town with a House of Culture, houses and a pioneer camp for the engineering and technical workers of the Ministry of Geology in the village of Opalikha. They also built houses for employees of various bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and carried out work on the repair and improvement of the Dynamo stadium in Moscow.

The camp had its own carpentry workshop with skilled cabinetmakers from prisoners, from whom they ordered furniture for Soviet sanatoriums and government agencies. The services of the auto repair shop of the camp were used by the auto depot of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (drivers brought trophy cars for service), the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, employees of the Pravda newspaper, and artists from Moscow theaters ordered costumes from the camp studio. The writer Boris Polevoy made himself a suit at the captive tailor.

The historian notes that the building of the archive, which now houses the State Archive of Film and Photo Documents in Krasnogorsk, was not only built by German workers, but also designed by a German architect - Paul Spiegel, who was also in captivity.

Spiegel was one of the qualified specialists who, since 1945, have been identified in the camps of the GUPVI system and registered in a special way, and then recruited to work in their specialty. "According to the NKVD on October 15, 1945, in the UPVI camps there were 581 specialists in special records, physicists, chemists, mechanical engineers, scientists with doctoral degrees, professors and engineers," Vsevolodov points out.

Karner writes that by 1946, 1,600 specialists had already been selected in the camps of the GUPVI: “Among them there were about 570 general mechanical engineers, almost 260 civil engineers and architects, about 220 electrical engineers, over 110 doctors of physical and mathematical sciences and technical sciences. , as well as engineers in 10 other specialties. Among them were prominent scientists and leaders of well-known German companies, such as Christian Manfred, a former technical director of the Argus motorcycle company, certified by the USSR Academy of Sciences as a major specialist in gas turbines and jet engines. "

Special working conditions were created for highly qualified specialists by order of the Council of Ministers of the USSR: many of them were transferred from the camps and provided with housing near the facilities or enterprises where they worked. Everyone was paid a salary - about the same as for Soviet engineers, and half was given out in the currency of the country of which the prisoners were subjects. Such a "free" life continued as long as one or another department needed a specific specialist: could be used in production. "

Prisoners in the Gulag

And Christian Manfred, Paul Spiegel, Heinrich Einsindl, and ordinary prisoners of war who worked in coal mines, on construction sites and logging sites - more than three million people in total - were not convicted of any war crimes. Each prisoner was repeatedly interrogated after being detained, and the NKVD officers also collected testimonies from his subordinates, residents of the Nazi-occupied territories - and if evidence of his involvement in war crimes was found, the prisoner was not waiting for the GUPVI camp, but death or hard labor in the GULAG.

On April 19, 1943, decree No. 39 of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was issued "On measures of punishment for German-fascist villains guilty of murder and torture of the Soviet civilian population and prisoners of the Red Army, for spies, traitors to the homeland from among Soviet citizens and for their accomplices" signed Chairman of the Presidium Mikhail Kalinin. The document provided for the death penalty or up to 20 years of hard labor for the Nazis and their accomplices. The executions were ordered to be carried out "publicly, in front of the people, and the bodies of those who were hanged should be left on the gallows for several days so that everyone would know how they are punished and what retribution will befall anyone who commits violence and reprisals against the civilian population and who betrays their homeland."

From 1943 to 1949, in accordance with Decree No. 39, thousands of sentences were passed in the Soviet Union, including to German citizens. Most of the accused prisoners were sentenced behind closed doors, right in the assembly camps. But there were also open, public trials - they lasted for several days, both spectators and journalists, including foreign ones, were allowed there (for example, in 1943, even correspondents visited the trials in Krasnodar and Kharkiv) BBC and The New York Times). A total of 21 such court hearings took place, 17 of them - against German war criminals.

On December 19, 1943, at the Market Square in Kharkov, they hanged those convicted of torturing prisoners and civilians, as well as the massacres of SS man Hans Ritz, secret police officer Reinhard Retzlaf and Abwehr officer Wilhelm Langheld. On December 20, 1945, on Zadneprovskaya Square in Smolensk, they hanged non-commissioned officer Willie Weiss, who killed 500 prisoners of war, and six more servicemen of the Nazi army, who were found guilty of massacres, rape, and the burning of people alive. On January 5, 1946, the former commandant of Pskov, Heinrich Remlinger, was hanged on Kalinin Square in Leningrad, on whose orders about 8 thousand people were killed, and seven more convicted Nazi criminals. The executions were carried out in public with a large crowd of local residents and filmed for newsreels.

Among the accused who appeared before these courts were those who received long sentences: gendarmerie officers Franz Kandler and Johann Happ, who shot prisoners of war and civilians in Odessa, were each sentenced to 20 years of hard labor; the deputy commander of Bobruisk, Bruno Goetze and Hans Hechtl, who shot 280 people and burned 40 houses, received 20 years of hard labor by a court sentence in Minsk; the same amount - 20 years of hard labor - was received in Kiev by corporal Johann Lauer, who participated in the executions in Ternopil, Vinnitsa, Poltava, Mariupol, Lvov.

Since 1947, the death penalty in the Soviet Union was abolished, and the 25-year exile to hard labor became the capital punishment. Convict camps were in Vorkuta, Kazakhstan, Norilsk, Taishet and in Kolyma. In January 1950, "at the numerous requests of workers" the death penalty was returned on separate charges - by decree "On the application of the death penalty to traitors to the Motherland, spies, demolition saboteurs."

Karner talks in his book about Major General of the SS troops Helmut Becker, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison in Kiev in 1947 and was serving his sentence in Vorkuta. In September 1952, Becker and his comrades in the camp department, while working at a construction site, allegedly discovered an ownerless grenade cartridge case and did not report the find, fearing the wrath of the camp authorities. According to the investigation into the circumstances of Becker's execution, which the author of the book "The GUPVI Archipelago" refers to, it was this careless find that caused the SS general to be accused of sabotaging construction work. A military tribunal sentenced him to death, in February 1952 Becker was shot.

Carner also cites general statistics of convicted prisoners of war: “... in total 37,600 prisoners of war were convicted, of which about 10,700 were convicted in the first years of captivity, and about 26,000 in 1949-1950.<...>... from 1942 to 1953, during the NKVD trials, 263 people were sentenced to death, the rest were sentenced to imprisonment up to 25 years. "

Among those sentenced to 25 years were the head of the Abwehr 3 counterintelligence unit, Lieutenant General Franz Bentivegni, who participated in the preparation of the attack on the Soviet Union; the commander of the "Center" group of forces, Field Marshal Ferdinand Scherner, and many others. And like many others, Bentivegny and Scherner were released back to their homeland in 1955.

Return to Germany

The repatriation of captured Germans from the allied states to Germany began almost immediately after the end of the war. In August 1945, the Directorate of Prisoners of War and Displaced Citizens was established under the Control Council. The members of the Directorate were the heads of the departments of prisoners of war and displaced persons in each zone of German occupation.

In the USSR, the course of repatriation was regulated by decisions of the Government and orders of the NKVD. The first GKO decree was issued back in June 1945, it dealt with the repatriation of 225 thousand "sick and weakened" German and Austrian prisoners of war. In fact, according to this decree, even more prisoners were released from the camps - about 232 thousand, including 195 684 Germans. Two months later, on August 13, 1945, the NKVD issued an order to release more than 700 thousand people, 412 thousand people from this list were Germans.

"Sick and weakened" until 1947 made up the majority of repatriates who were sent to Germany: in this way, the internal affairs bodies, fulfilling international agreements, at the same time got rid of the "manpower" that had become unsuitable for forced labor.

“I could hardly stand on my feet. Had a severe heart attack. Staggering, I entered the room where the medical examination board was located.<...>From the conversation, I realized that I was too young to be allowed to go home - I was 23 years old - and that I should stay in Russia and continue to work, '' recalled Rudolf Honold, who was until March 1948 in a camp in Stalino (now - Ukrainian Donetsk). - And then my doctor helped. She convinced the camp officers, proved to them that because of my bad heart and great weight loss - and I then weighed a little more than 40 kg - I could not be of any use to Russia.<...>After endless negotiations, I heard the cherished word, which my doctor had hardly achieved for me: home. "

According to the instructions in force in the camps, the prisoners were to be removed from work 10 days before being sent to Germany, paid the money they earned, sanitized, vaccinated and returned personal belongings. Soviet rubles were not allowed to be exported, so before being sent, the prisoners bought food that could be exchanged on the way, mainly sweets and tobacco: ), 2355 pieces of cigarettes and 600 grams of tobacco ”.

For the transportation of prisoners, freight cars with bunks were used. In two-axle cars, according to the instructions, 40-45 people were to be loaded, in four-axle Pullman cars - 80-90 people. One echelon had 60-65 cars. These trains were guarded by soldiers of the NKVD escort service - 30-36 people per echelon.

“The next day, when we approached the transport on which we were supposed to go further,” recalled the former prisoner of war Hans Schwarzwalder, “we were amazed at what they saw. An "ancient" passenger train with wooden benches was waiting for us. The locomotive pushed clouds of black smoke into the air. He worked on brown coal. Unable to open windows. Trains were running many hours late on single-track tracks. "

At the stage, the condition of the already not very healthy prisoners deteriorated significantly: this was facilitated not only by the long journey in cramped conditions, but also by the lack of food and even water. The archives of the NKVD have preserved some examples of violations committed during the transportation of repatriates: in August 1948, prisoners of war on a train from a camp in Karaganda did not receive bread for two days; passengers on a train leaving a camp in Georgia in June 1948 were given two buckets of water for 64 carriages; the train from camp no. 199 in the Novosibirsk region did not have a catering unit at all to feed the prisoners; the convoy that accompanied the echelon with prisoners from Volsk in April 1948 was fed at the expense of prisoners; the repatriates who came from the Tambov region in April 1948 were not fed for seven days.

In the course of the trains, the prisoners of war could undergo additional filtering, identifying among them former members of the SS, SA, SD and Gestapo sent for repatriation by mistake. It is known that in Brest from 1946 to 1950, 4450 people were removed from the trains and returned to the camps.

In Germany, captured Germans, as a rule, arrived at the collection camp of the Ministry of Internal Affairs No. 69 in Frankfurt an der Oder and spent two or three more days there. This was the first place where their compatriots could see those who returned, albeit from behind the barbed wire. The sight was depressing: in 1947, 70% of the prisoners who arrived at the camp were sick and left Frankfurt an der Oder on infirmary trains.

Those who could move independently returned to their place of residence - and the further procedure depended on the occupation zone in which it was located. Here is how Hans Schwarzwalder described his transfer to the Americans: “A rosy-cheeked Red Army recruit stood with a bayonet attached to a rifle at a distance from his guardhouse and, before we ran 20 meters along the narrow bridge to the Americans on the other side, examined the repatriates. You're finally free! Indescribable luck! Many threw themselves on the ground and kissed her! We are back at home! [...] "Amis" (Americans) greeted us coldly, emphatically polite. We got scrambled eggs, cocoa and white bread. Again, new checks, there was nothing here without a stamp and signature. In three hours I reached my goal. On my hands I had 80 DM (Deutschmarks, Deutsche Marks - MZ), a certificate of release and a ticket to Munich. Another telegram home: "Everything is over, I will arrive in two days. Greetings from Hof."

Those who turned out to be residents of East Germany had to go through a camp quarantine, and then register with a police station with a certificate of release. The repatriate was also required to undergo a medical examination, register with the employment service, and after that he could receive food ration cards. All movements of former prisoners in East Germany until 1948 were recorded by the SVAG (Soviet Military Administration of Germany), and after that - by the internal affairs bodies of the GDR.

In 1945, according to the GUPVI, 1,009,589 prisoners of war were repatriated from the camps of the USSR, more than 600,000 of them were Germans.

In 1946, more than 146 thousand German prisoners of war and about 21 thousand internees were repatriated.

In 1947, about 200 thousand Germans were repatriated, some of them to Poland, since they were citizens of this country.

In 1948, more than 311 thousand German prisoners of war and internees were repatriated.

In 1949, more than 120 thousand former prisoners of war and about 38 thousand internees of Germans left the USSR.

On May 5, 1950, it was officially announced that the repatriation of German prisoners of war was completed. The TASS news agency said that since 1945, a total of 1,939,063 German prisoners of war have been repatriated. “13,532 convicted German prisoners of war remained in the USSR; 14 people were temporarily detained due to illness. "

Several thousand more people left the USSR in 1951-1953. In 1955, German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer arrived in Moscow on a visit. After the signing of an agreement with the FRG, about 10 thousand more Germans were repatriated. The last batch of former prisoners was handed over to the German authorities on January 16, 1956.

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

The numbers speak

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

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

It is precisely established that 1,836,562 people returned from German captivity. Their further fate is as follows: 1 million were sent for further military service, 600 thousand - to work in industry, more than 200 thousand - to 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 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, Soviet prisoners were not covered by the activities of the International Red Cross.

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.

The diet

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.

Work

By the end of 1941, a colossal need for labor was revealed in Germany, mainly in the military industry, 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.

Resistance

Unlike other prisoners of concentration camps, for example, Jews, there was no single and mass resistance movement among Soviet prisoners of war. Researchers name many reasons explaining this phenomenon: this is the effective work of the security service, and the constant hunger experienced by the Soviet military. An important factor is also noted that Stalin called all Soviet prisoners of war "traitors", and Nazi propaganda did not fail to take advantage of this.

Nevertheless, since 1943, hotbeds of protest among Soviet prisoners of war began to arise more and more often. Thus, in Stalag Zeithain, the Soviet writer Stepan Zlobin became the central figure around which the Resistance was organized. Together with his comrades, he began to publish the newspaper Pravda o Prisoners. Gradually, Zlobin's group grew to 21 people.
A larger-scale Resistance among Soviet prisoners of war, according to historians, began in 1944, when confidence arose in the inevitable death of the Nazi regime. But even then, not everyone wanted to risk their lives, hoping for an early release.

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 a lethal outcome, the camp authorities destroyed many of them with gas 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.

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 - four Ukrainian and two 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.