During the years of the Great Patriotic War, about three and a half million Germans and their allies were captured by the Soviet Union. Considering everything they had done, these people did not expect a warm welcome. But the conditions of their detention were still incomparably better than in the Nazi concentration camps.
The living Dead
It is hardly possible to name the exact number of the Germans who were in Soviet captivity. The number 3486000 occurs most frequently. Of this number, more than 750,000 were not German subjects, but were captured with weapons in their hands. But here the accomplices of the Nazis are not taken into account: Bandera, Vlasov and others. Also not included in the calculations are civilians who are not included in the staffing table of military units.
However, there are significant discrepancies in the calculations. At first, the rear services of the Red Army were poorly registered. Before the Battle of Stalingrad, just over 10,000 enemy soldiers and officers were officially taken prisoner. Of course, this simply could not be: the Germans and their satellites gradually surrendered from the very beginning of the war, and, for example, near Yelnya or near Moscow - en masse.
Apparently, in 1941 and 1942, not all prisoners fell under the jurisdiction of the specially created Main Directorate for Prisoners and Internals (GUPVI) of the NKVD. There are known cases of mass executions of prisoners in the first year and a half of the war. Knowing about the atrocities of the fascists, they did not particularly stand on ceremony with them.
In general, the Nazis had no reason to expect anything else: the Nazis generally arranged hellish conditions for Soviet prisoners of war. His own soldiers and officers who surrendered, Hitler ordered to be considered dead, but without assigning a pension to their families. For him, they were cowards and traitors.
However, the Soviet leadership, although it did not sign the Geneva Convention before the war, did not treat the prisoners so cruelly. The food standards for them were set at the level of the Gulag prisoners, and only in besieged Leningrad they were lower. But even there a captured soldier or an officer of the Wehrmacht could count on the same ration as the dependents of a besieged city.
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The farther the war rolled back to the west, the more Soviet troops took prisoners. Already in 1943, this became a real problem. Special camps began to be created under the wing of the GUPVI. As a rule, they were small, for five to six thousand prisoners. The officers were initially kept together with the lower ranks; the allies were not separated from the Germans. More than three hundred such camps were created throughout the country, and they quickly appeared in the territories liberated from the occupiers.
Lousy march
For the first time, Soviet troops encountered a real barrage of captured Nazis at Stalingrad at the beginning of 1943. After the surrender of Field Marshal Paulus, about one hundred thousand soldiers and officers of the enemy surrendered at once. They were in a terrible state. Frostbite, typhus, wounds, dystrophy affected this horde one hundred percent. Besides, they were all lice.
The nearest camp, at least somehow equipped to receive such a mass of prisoners, was deployed about five hours away. But this is if we take into account the combat-ready units, and the Germans could hardly keep their feet. Of course, there was no transport for them: the Red Army was not yet so well equipped to allocate vehicles for the captured Nazis. It was freezing outside minus 20.
The Soviet military authorities treated the prisoners from the 6th Army as humanely as they could. The most seriously wounded and sick were sent to hospitals. Absolutely everyone was provided with food, often hot. The officers and generals were generally treated with all the attention, nevertheless, such ranks in captivity still remained a rarity.
The bulk of the Germans had to move on foot, in frost and blizzard. Later, the few Germans who survived on the way called this passage "March of the Dead", or "Lousy March". Almost 90 percent of its participants died on the road. The first sign that a person was about to fall dead were lice that left the folds of the doomed's uniform and literally fell on the snow.
By the way, Soviet soldiers did not finish off the prisoners who lost their strength. So, for example, the former corporal from the 76th Infantry Division Klaus Ehrhoff was simply left on the road. He was picked up by a miracle of local residents, went out and handed over to the authorities. Then he was sent to a prisoner of war camp. So, in fact, he survived, being one of the lucky few. As of November 1942, the 6th Army numbered 335,000. In February 1943, more than ninety thousand soldiers and officers surrendered. Less than six thousand survived after imprisonment. The overwhelming majority died during the first transition.
Time to collect stones
Since 1943, the Soviet army has been mainly advancing, and the number of prisoners has steadily increased. Accordingly, the number of GUPVI camps also grew. They were divided into four categories: in addition to the front-line reception and transfer, there were officers, operational and rear. By the beginning of 1944, there were only five officer camps.
The largest of them were Yelabuga, Oransky (near Nizhny Novgorod) and Suzdal. And in the Krasnogorsk camp, for example, Paulus and other famous military leaders who were captured at Stalingrad were placed: Generals Schmidt, Pfeiffer, Korfes, Daniels, Colonel of the Abwehr Adam von Trott. For the Nazis, figuratively speaking, the time has come to collect stones.
Back in August 1942, allowances for German prisoners and their allies were approved. They received 400 grams of bread per day (after 1943 the rate increased to 600-700 grams), 100 grams of fish, 100 grams of cereals, 500 grams of vegetables and potatoes, 20 grams of sugar, 30 grams of salt, as well as a little flour, tea, vegetable oil, vinegar, pepper. The generals, as well as soldiers with dystrophy, had a richer daily ration.
I must say that it was far from always possible to fulfill the standard, but the Germans are unlikely to have the right to make claims - the conditions in the Nazi prisoner of war camps were much worse. In the USSR, the most difficult moment until the end of the war was the transfer from front-line receivers to the rear. There was not enough transport, and the railroad cars were not equipped with stoves. In the summer, on the march, they died from the heat, in the winter - from the cold.
But those who got into the GUPVI system, one might say, were lucky. Since the end of the war, they began to be used in work to restore the national economy. The prisoners' working day was eight hours. According to the NKVD circular of August 25, 1942, they were entitled to a small allowance.
Private and junior commanders were paid seven rubles a month, officers - ten, colonels - fifteen, generals - thirty rubles. Prisoners of war who worked at standardized jobs were given additional amounts depending on the output. "Drummers" were entitled to fifty rubles a month.
The brigade leaders also received additional money. With an excellent mark from the administration, the amount of their remuneration could have grown to one hundred rubles. POWs could keep money in excess of the permitted norms in savings banks. By the way, since May 1945, they had the right to receive money transfers and parcels from their homeland, they could receive one letter per month and send an unlimited number of letters.
However, these norms were often not followed. But it is hardly worth blaming the Soviet authorities for this: after all, no one called the Nazis to our land. And all the same, the captured Germans received almost as much as the Soviet people who were starving after the war. Private Herbert Bamberg, who was in captivity near Ulyanovsk, wrote in his memoirs: “The prisoners were fed only once a day with a liter of soup, a ladle of millet porridge and a quarter of bread. I agree that the local population of Ulyanovsk, most likely, was also starving."
Protect the lives of the Germans …
In different camps, the fate of the captured Nazis evolved in different ways. Somewhere the greatest inconvenience for the German officers was the absence of orderlies, and somewhere they were sent to uranium mines or to hot shops. There is a known case when one officer chopped off his hand in order not to work. Often, the Germans in captivity met with hostility from their former allies. Romanians and Hungarians, for example, taking advantage of the more loyal attitude of the camp administration, seized posts in the kitchen and mercilessly cut the rations of former Reich soldiers.
The local population and guards treated them much better. Sometimes they gave food and clothes. Some bought from the prisoners handicrafts made from scrap materials, such as chess, lighters, cigarette cases. Gradually, the Soviet command began to strictly follow Stalin's instructions "to protect the lives of the Germans."
Many Germans tried to pass themselves off as Austrians, Czechs or Hungarians. Then they could count on lighter jobs, an increase in rations, or avoiding punishment for atrocities during the war.
After the surrender of Germany, the USSR was in no hurry to return the Germans home. Stalin at one time did not sign the Geneva Convention, which contained, in addition to the requirements to treat prisoners of war humanely, a provision obliging them to repatriate them as soon as possible after the end of hostilities. Now he decided to seize the moment.
Firstly, the captured Germans from January 1945 to 1950 completed work for 50 billion rubles at the then exchange rate. Secondly, they were all sifted through a fine sieve by the state security and intelligence agencies. SS men, Gestapo men, and persons involved in war crimes were subject to tribunal. As a result, there were more than 12 thousand of them. Long sentences awaited them, and the most inveterate - the death penalty.
Repatriation began in 1946. At first, Austrians, Romanians, Hungarians, Finns, Italians were sent home. First of all, they got the opportunity to leave sick and unfit for work, as well as those who joined the anti-fascist committees. The officers and specialists were kept as long as possible, the latter were released at the end of 1949 - early 1950. In 1956, the time came for those who served their sentences in the camps for war crimes, and the last generals.
In total, almost 520,000 (or 15 percent) of the enemy soldiers and officers who were transferred to the GUPVI system died in Soviet captivity. To understand how humanely the captured Nazis were treated in the USSR, suffice it to say that almost 50 percent of Soviet servicemen died in Nazi captivity.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №17, Boris Sharov