Was in captivity during the Second World War. big fish

During the years of the Great Patriotic War, about three and a half million soldiers fell into Soviet captivity, who were later tried for various war crimes. This number included both the military of the Wehrmacht and their allies. At the same time, more than two million are Germans. Almost all of them were found guilty and received substantial prison sentences. Among the prisoners there were also "big fish" - high-ranking and far from ordinary representatives of the German military elite.

However, the vast majority of them were kept in quite acceptable conditions and were able to return to their homeland. The Soviet troops and the population treated the defeated invaders quite tolerantly. "RG" tells about the highest-ranking Wehrmacht and SS officers who went through Soviet captivity.

Field Marshal Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Paulus

Paulus was the first of the German senior military officials to be taken prisoner. Together with him, during the Battle of Stalingrad, all members of his headquarters were captured - 44 generals.

On January 30, 1943, the day before the complete collapse of the encircled 6th Army, Paulus was promoted to the rank of Field Marshal. The calculation was simple - not a single top commander in the entire history of Germany surrendered. Thus, the Fuhrer intended to push his newly minted field marshal to continue resistance and, as a result, commit suicide. After reflecting on such a prospect, Paulus decided in his own way and ordered an end to resistance.

Despite all the rumors about the "atrocities" of the Communists in relation to the prisoners, they treated the captured generals with dignity. All were immediately taken to the Moscow region - to the Krasnogorsk operational transit camp of the NKVD. The Chekists intended to win over a high-ranking prisoner to their side. However, Paulus resisted for quite some time. During interrogations, he declared that he would forever remain a National Socialist.

It is believed that Paulus was one of the founders of the National Committee "Free Germany", which immediately launched an active anti-fascist activity. In fact, when the committee was set up in Krasnogorsk, Paulus and his generals were already in the generals' camp at the Spaso-Evfimiev Monastery in Suzdal. He immediately regarded the work of the committee as a "betrayal." He called the generals who agreed to cooperate with the Soviets traitors, whom he "can no longer consider his comrades."

Paulus changed his point of view only in August 1944, when he signed the appeal "To German prisoners of war soldiers, officers and the German people." In it, he called for the elimination of Adolf Hitler and an end to the war. Immediately after that, he joined the anti-fascist Union of German Officers, and then the Free Germany. There he soon became one of the most active propagandists.

Historians are still arguing about the reasons for such a sharp change in position. Most attribute this to the defeats that the Wehrmacht had suffered by that time. Having lost the last hope of Germany's success in the war, the former field marshal and current prisoner of war decided to take the side of the winner. The efforts of the NKVD officers who methodically worked with Satrap (Paulus' pseudonym) should not be dismissed either. By the end of the war, they practically forgot about him - he could no longer help much, the Wehrmacht front was already cracking in the East and West.

After the defeat of Germany, Paulus came in handy again. He became one of the main witnesses for the Soviet prosecution at the Nuremberg trials. Ironically, it was captivity that may have saved him from the gallows. Before his capture, he enjoyed the Fuhrer's great confidence, he was even predicted to replace Alfred Jodl, the chief of staff of the operational leadership of the Wehrmacht High Command. Jodl, as you know, was one of those whom the tribunal sentenced to hang for war crimes.

After the war, Paulus, along with other "Stalingrad" generals, continued to be in captivity. Most of them were released and returned to Germany (only one died in captivity). Paulus, on the other hand, continued to be kept at a dacha in Ilyinsk, near Moscow.

He was only able to return to Germany after Stalin's death in 1953. Then, on the orders of Khrushchev, the former military man was allocated a villa in Dresden, where he died on February 1, 1957. It is significant that, in addition to relatives, only party leaders and generals of the GDR were present at his funeral.

Artillery General Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach

The aristocrat Seydlitz in the army of Paulus commanded a corps. He surrendered on the same day as Paulus, though on a different sector of the front. Unlike his commander, he began to cooperate with counterintelligence almost immediately. It was Seydlitz who became the first chairman of the "Free Germany" and the Union of German Officers. He even offered the Soviet authorities to form units from the Germans to fight the Nazis. True, prisoners were no longer considered as a military force. They were used only for propaganda work.

After the war, Seydlitz remained in Russia. At a dacha near Moscow, he advised the creators of a film about the Battle of Stalingrad and wrote memoirs. Several times he asked for repatriation to the territory of the Soviet zone of occupation of Germany, but each time he was refused.

In 1950 he was arrested and sentenced to 25 years in prison. The former general was kept in solitary confinement.

Seydlitz was released in 1955 after a visit to the USSR by German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. After returning, he led a reclusive life.

Lieutenant General Vinzenz Müller

For some, Muller went down in history as the "German Vlasov." He commanded the 4th German Army, which was completely defeated near Minsk. Müller himself was taken prisoner. From the very first days, as a prisoner of war, he joined the work of the Union of German Officers.

For some special merits, he not only was not convicted, but immediately after the war he returned to Germany. That's not all - he was appointed Deputy Minister of Defense. Thus, he became the only major Wehrmacht commander who retained his rank of lieutenant general in the GDR army.

In 1961, Müller fell from the balcony of his house in the suburbs of Berlin. Some claimed it was suicide.

Grand Admiral Erich Johann Alber Raeder

Until the beginning of 1943, Raeder was one of the most influential military men in Germany. He served as commander of the Kriegsmarine (German navy). After a series of failures at sea, he was removed from his post. He received the position of Chief Inspector of the Fleet, but had no real powers.

Erich Raeder was taken prisoner in May 1945. During interrogations in Moscow, he spoke about all the preparations for the war and gave detailed testimony.

Initially, the USSR intended to try the former grand admiral himself (Reder is one of the few who were not considered at the conference in Yalta, where they discussed the issue of punishing war criminals), but later it was decided that he would participate in the Nuremberg trials. The tribunal sentenced him to life imprisonment. Immediately after the announcement of the verdict, he demanded that the punishment be replaced by execution, but was refused.

He was released from Spandau prison in January 1955. The official reason was the state of health of the prisoner. The illness did not stop him from writing his memoirs. He died in Kiel in November 1960.

SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohncke

The commander of the 1st SS Panzer Division "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler" is one of the few SS generals who were captured by the Soviet troops. The overwhelming number of SS men made their way to the west and surrendered to the Americans or the British. On April 21, 1945, Hitler appointed him commander of a "battle group" for the defense of the Reich Chancellery and the Führerbunker. After the collapse of Germany, he tried with his soldiers to break out of Berlin to the north, but was taken prisoner. By that time, almost his entire group had been destroyed.

After signing the act of surrender, Monke was taken to Moscow. There he was held first in Butyrka, and then in Lefortovo prison. The verdict - 25 years in prison - was heard only in February 1952. He served his term in the legendary pre-trial detention center No. 2 in the city of Vladimir - "Vladimirsky Central".

The former general returned to Germany in October 1955. At home he worked as a sales agent for the sale of trucks and trailers. He died quite recently - in August 2001.

Until the end of his life, he considered himself an ordinary soldier and actively participated in the work of various associations of SS military personnel.

SS-Brigadeführer Helmut Becker

SS man Becker was taken to Soviet captivity by his place of service. In 1944, he was appointed commander of the Totenkopf (Dead Head) division, becoming its last commander. According to the agreement between the USSR and the USA, all servicemen of the division were to be transferred to the Soviet troops.

Before the defeat of Germany, Becker, being sure that only death awaited him in the east, tried to break through to the west. Having led his division through all of Austria, he capitulated only on May 9th. A few days later he ended up in the Poltava prison.

In 1947, he appeared before the military tribunal of the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Kyiv military district and received 25 years in the camps. Apparently, like all other German prisoners of war, he could return to Germany in the mid-50s. However, he became one of the few top military commanders of German Germany who died in the camp.

The cause of Becker's death was not hunger and overwork, which was common in the camps, but a new accusation. In the camp, he was tried for sabotaging construction work. On September 9, 1952, he was sentenced to death. Already on February 28 of the following year he was shot.

Artillery General Helmut Weidling

The commander of the defense and the last commandant of Berlin was captured during the assault on the city. Realizing the futility of resistance, he ordered the cessation of hostilities. He tried in every possible way to cooperate with the Soviet command and personally signed the act of surrender of the Berlin garrison on May 2.

The general's tricks did not help to escape from the court. In Moscow, he was kept in Butyrka and Lefortovo prisons. After that, he was transferred to the Vladimir Central.

The last commandant of Berlin was sentenced in 1952 to 25 years in the camps (the standard sentence for Nazi criminals).

Weidling was no longer able to get out. He died of heart failure on November 17, 1955. He was buried in the prison cemetery in an unmarked grave.

SS-Obergruppenführer Walter Krüger

Since 1944, Walter Krüger led the SS troops in the Baltics. He continued to fight until the very end of the war, but in the end he tried to break into Germany. With fights he reached almost to the very border. However, on May 22, 1945, the Kruger group ran into a Soviet patrol. Almost all Germans died in the battle.

Kruger himself was taken alive - after being wounded, he was unconscious. However, it was not possible to interrogate the general - having come to his senses, he shot himself. As it turned out, he kept a pistol in a secret pocket, which they could not find during the search.

SS Gruppenführer Helmut von Pannwitz

Von Pannwitz is the only German who was tried along with the White Guard generals Shkuro, Krasnov and other collaborators. Such attention is due to all the activities of the cavalryman Pannwitz during the war years. It was he who oversaw the creation of the Cossack troops in the Wehrmacht from the German side. In the Soviet Union, he was also accused of numerous war crimes.

Therefore, when Pannwitz, together with his brigade, surrendered to the British, the USSR demanded his immediate extradition. In principle, the Allies could refuse - as a German, Pannwitz was not subject to trial in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, given the severity of the crimes (there were reports of numerous executions of civilians), the German general was sent to Moscow along with the traitors.

In January 1947, the court sentenced all the defendants (six people were in the dock) to death. A few days later, Pannwitz and other leaders of the anti-Soviet movement were hanged.

Since then, monarchist organizations have regularly raised the issue of rehabilitating the hanged. Time after time, the Supreme Court decides in the negative.

SS-Sturmbannführer Otto Günsche

By his rank (the army counterpart is major), Otto Günsche, of course, did not belong to the army elite of Germany. However, due to his position, he was one of the most knowledgeable people about the life of Germany at the end of the war.

For several years Günsche was Adolf Hitler's personal adjutant. It was he who was instructed to destroy the body of the Fuhrer who committed suicide. This became a fatal event in the life of a young (at the end of the war he was not even 28 years old) officer.

Günsche was captured by the Soviets on May 2, 1945. Almost immediately, he got into the development of SMERSH agents, who found out the fate of the missing Fuhrer. Some of the materials are still classified.

Finally, in 1950, Otto Günsche was sentenced to 25 years in prison. However, in 1955 he was transferred to serve his sentence in the GDR, and a year later he was completely released from prison. Soon he moved to Germany, where he remained until the end of his life. Died in 2003.

The years of the Second World War were marked not only by a huge number of victims, but also by a large number of prisoners of war. They were captured one by one and by whole armies: someone surrendered in an organized manner, and someone deserted, but there were also quite curious cases.

Italians

The Italians were not the most reliable ally of Germany. Cases of Italian soldiers being captured were recorded everywhere: apparently, the inhabitants of the Apennines understood that the war into which the Duce dragged them was not in the interests of Italy.
When Mussolini was arrested on July 25, 1943, the new Italian government, headed by Marshal Badoglio, began secret negotiations with the American command for a truce. The result of Badoglio's negotiations with Eisenhower was the mass surrender of Italians to American captivity.
In this regard, the recollection of the American General Omar Bradley is interesting, who describes the elated state of the Italian military personnel upon surrender:

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

According to Bradley, the festive mood of the Italians was associated with the prospect of "a free trip to the States."

An interesting story was told by one of the Soviet veterans, who recalled how in the autumn of 1943 near Donetsk he met a huge peasant cart with hay, and six “skinny dark-haired men” were harnessed to it. They were driven by a "Ukrainian woman" with a German carbine. It turned out that they were Italian deserters. They “babbled and cried” so much that the Soviet soldier hardly managed to guess their desire to surrender.

Americans

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

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

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

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

They surrendered primarily because of the inability to provide further resistance - the wounded, the sick, who did not have food and ammunition, or in the absence of control from the commanders and headquarters.

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

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

Germans

If before the Battle of Stalingrad the Germans were taken prisoner rather than an exception, then in the winter of 1942-43. it acquired a symptomatic character: during the Stalingrad operation, about 100 thousand Wehrmacht servicemen were captured. The Germans surrendered in whole companies - hungry, sick, frostbitten or simply exhausted. During the Great Patriotic War, Soviet troops captured - 2,388,443 German soldiers.
In the last months of the war, the German command tried to force the troops to fight by draconian methods, but in vain. The situation on the Western Front was especially unfavorable. There, German soldiers, knowing that England and the United States were observing the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, surrendered much more willingly than in the East.

According to the memoirs of German veterans, the defectors tried to go over to the side of the enemy immediately before the attack. There were also cases of organized surrender. So, in North Africa, German soldiers, left without ammunition, fuel and food, lined up in columns to surrender to the Americans or the British.

Yugoslavs

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

Japanese

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

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

A curious episode of the capture of a Japanese man, disfigured by mosquito bites, is cited by Georgy Zhukov in his book “Memories and Reflections”. To the question “where and who butchered him like that,” the Japanese replied that, together with other soldiers, he had been planted in the reeds in the evening to observe the Russians. At night, they had to meekly endure terrible mosquito bites so as not to betray their presence. “And when the Russians shouted something and raised their rifle,” the prisoner said, “I raised my hands, because I could no longer endure these torments.”

French people

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

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

The numbers speak

Today, the question of the number of Soviet prisoners of war during the Second World War is still debatable. In German historiography, this figure reaches 6 million people, although the German command spoke of 5 million 270 thousand. However, one should take into account the fact that, violating the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the German authorities included not only soldiers and officers of the Red Army, but also party officials, partisans, underground workers, as well as the entire male population from 16 to 55 years old, who retreated along with the Soviet troops. According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the loss 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 stated about 4 million. year did not receive registration numbers. It is precisely established that 1,836,562 people returned from German captivity. Their further fate is as follows: 1 million were sent for further military service, 600 thousand - to work in industry, more than 200 thousand - to the NKVD camps, as they compromised themselves in captivity.

Early years

Most Soviet prisoners of war account for the first two years of the war. In particular, after the unsuccessful Kyiv defensive operation in September 1941, about 665 thousand soldiers and officers of the Red Army were captured by the Germans, and after the failure of the Kharkov operation in May 1942, more than 240 thousand Red Army soldiers got to the German troops. First of all, the German authorities conducted a filtration: the commissars, communists and Jews were immediately liquidated, and the rest were transferred to special camps that were hastily created. Most of them were on the territory of Ukraine - about 180. Only in the infamous camp of Bohunia (Zhytomyr region) there were up to 100 thousand Soviet soldiers. The prisoners had to make grueling forced marches - 50-60 km each. in a day. The journey often dragged on 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 the exhausted. During the movement of the 5,000th column of prisoners of war in the Lugansk region, on a 45-kilometer stretch of the road, the guards killed 150 people with a “shot of mercy”. According to 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 the prisoners of war of the USSR.

Soviet prisoners of war were in much harsher conditions than the soldiers of other countries. Germany called the formal basis for this the fact that the Soviet Union did not sign the Hague Convention of 1907 and did not accede to 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 manifested itself in everything. For example, unlike other prisoners, they often did not receive winter clothes and were involved exclusively in the most difficult work. Also, the activities of the International Red Cross did not apply to Soviet prisoners. In the camps, intended exclusively for prisoners of war, the conditions were even more appalling. Only a small part of the prisoners were accommodated in relatively adapted rooms, while the majority, due to the incredible crowding, could not only lie down, but also stand. And someone was completely deprived of a roof over his head. In the camp for Soviet prisoners of war - "Uman Pit" prisoners were in the open air, where there was no way to hide from the heat, wind or rain. The "Uman Pit", in fact, has turned into a huge mass grave. “The dead lay next to the living for a long time. No one paid any attention to the corpses, there were so many of them,” recalled the surviving prisoners.

In one of the orders of the director of the German concern IG Farbenindustry, it was noted that "increasing the productivity of prisoners of war can be achieved by reducing the rate of food distribution." This directly applied to Soviet prisoners. However, in order to maintain the efficiency of prisoners of war, it was necessary to charge an additional food ration. For a week, she looked like this: 50 gr. codfish, 100 gr. artificial honey and up to 3.5 kg. potatoes. However, supplementary nutrition could only be obtained for 6 weeks. The usual diet of prisoners of war can be seen in the example of Stalag No. 2 in Hammerstein. On the day the prisoners received 200 gr. bread, ersatz coffee and vegetable soup - the nutritional value of the diet did not exceed 1000 calories. In the zone of the Army Group "Center" the daily norm of bread for prisoners of war was even less - 100 gr. For comparison, let's name the food supply standards for German prisoners of war in the USSR. On the day they received 600 gr. bread, 500 gr. potatoes, 93 gr. meat and 80 gr. croup. What fed the Soviet prisoners of war was a little like food. Ersatz 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 was a scoop of stinking liquid from poorly washed horse giblets, and this “food” was cooked in boilers that used to cook asphalt. Non-working prisoners of war were also deprived of such food, and therefore their chances of survival were reduced to zero.

By the end of 1941, a colossal need for manpower, mainly in the military industry, was revealed in Germany, and it was decided to make up for the shortage primarily at the expense of Soviet prisoners of war. This situation saved many Soviet soldiers and officers from the mass extermination planned by the Nazi authorities. According to the German historian G. Mommsen, "with proper nutrition" the productivity of Soviet prisoners of war was 80%, and in other cases 100% of the productivity of German workers. In the mining and metallurgical industry, this figure was less - 70%. Mommsen noted that Soviet prisoners constituted "the most important and profitable labor force", even cheaper than concentration camp prisoners. 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, a total of 631,559 prisoners of war of the USSR were employed in Germany. Soviet prisoners of war often had to learn a new specialty: they became electricians, mechanics, mechanics, turners, tractor drivers. Wages were piecework and provided for a bonus system. But, isolated from the workers of other countries, Soviet prisoners of war worked 12 hours a day.

Mortality

According to German historians, up to February 1942, up to 6,000 Soviet soldiers and officers were destroyed daily in prisoner of war camps. Often this was done by gassing 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 were the first to be tested with poisonous substances in concentration camps. Later, this method was widely used to exterminate Jews. Many Soviet prisoners of war died from diseases. In October 1941, in one of the branches of the Mauthausen-Gusen camp complex, where Soviet soldiers were kept, a typhus epidemic broke out, killing about 6,500 people during the winter. However, without waiting for the death of many of them, the camp authorities gassed them right in the barracks. Mortality was high among the wounded prisoners. Medical assistance to Soviet prisoners was extremely rare. Nobody cared about them: they were killed both during the marches and in the camps. The diet of the wounded rarely exceeded 1,000 calories a day, let alone the quality of the food. They were doomed to die.

On the side of Germany

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

Return

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

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

Italians

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

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

Americans

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

Soviet military

Germans

Yugoslavs

Japanese

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

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

French people

Wars is not only the history of battles, diplomacy, victories, defeats, command orders and exploits, it is also the history of prisoners of war. The fate of Soviet prisoners of war during the Second World War is one of the most tragic pages of our past. Soviet prisoners of war were captured on their own land, defending this land, and prisoners of war of the Nazi coalition were captured on foreign land, to which they came as invaders.

In captivity, you can "find yourself" (wounded, fell into an unconscious state, having no ammunition for resistance) or "surrender" - raise your hands when you can still and have something to fight. Why does an armed man who swore allegiance to his homeland stop resisting? Maybe it's human nature? After all, he obeys the instinct of self-preservation, which is based on a sense of fear.

“Of course, at first it was scary in the war. And even very much. What is it like for a young guy to constantly see how shells explode, bombs, mines, comrades die, they are crippled by shrapnel, bullets. But then, I noticed, it was no longer fear, but something else forced to bite into the ground, seek shelter, hide. I would call it a sense of self-preservation. After all, fear paralyzes the will, and a sense of self-preservation makes you look for ways out of seemingly hopeless situations, "- this is how the veteran of the Great Patriotic War, Ivan Petrovich, recalled this feeling Vertelko.

In life, there is partial fear, fear of some phenomenon. But there is also absolute fear, when a person is on the verge of death. And this is the most powerful enemy - it turns off thinking, does not allow a sober perception of reality. A person loses the ability to think critically, analyze the situation, control his behavior. Having suffered a shock, you can break down as a person.

Fear is a mass disease. According to a number of experts, today 9 million Germans suffer from periodic attacks of panic fear, and more than 1 million experience it constantly. And this is in peacetime! This is how the Second World War responds in the psyche of those who were born later. Each has its own resistance to fear: in case of danger, one will fall into a stupor (sharp mental oppression to complete stupor), the other will panic, and the third will calmly look for a way out of this situation. In battle, under enemy fire, everyone is afraid, but they act differently: some fight, while others take even with your bare hands!

Behavior in combat is affected by the physical condition, sometimes a person "simply can't." Recently healthy young men are exhausted by hunger, cold, non-healing wounds, enemy fire without the possibility of hiding ... A vivid example of this is a message from the encircled 2nd shock army of the Volkhov Front (spring 1942): "The swamps have melted, no trenches, no dugouts, we eat young foliage, birch bark, leather parts of ammunition, small animals... 3 weeks received 50 g of crackers... We finished the last horses... The last 3 days did not eat at all... People are extremely emaciated, group mortality from starvation is observed. War is constant hard labor. Soldiers dig up millions of tons of earth, usually with a small sapper shovel! Slightly shifted positions - dig again; a respite in combat conditions is out of the question. Does any army know about sleeping on the go? And with us it was a common occurrence on the march.

There is an outlandish type of casualty in the US Army called "combat overwork". During the landing in Normandy (June 1944), it amounted to 20 percent of the total number of those who dropped out of the battle. In general, in World War II, US losses due to "overwork" amounted to 929,307 people! The Soviet soldier remained in combat formations until he was killed or wounded (there were also changes in units, but only because of heavy losses or tactical considerations).

We had no time for rest throughout the war. The blow of the German military machine could withstand the only force in the world - our army! And our soldiers, exhausted, sleeping on the march, having eaten horses if necessary, overcame a well-equipped, skillful enemy! Not only soldiers, but also generals... For our people, who won the most terrible war in the history of mankind, the freedom and independence of the Motherland turned out to be the most important thing. For her sake, on the fronts and in the rear, people sacrificed themselves. They sacrificed, that's why they won.

According to various estimates, the number of Soviet soldiers in German captivity in 1941-1945. ranged from 4,559,000 to 5,735,000 people. The numbers are really huge, but there are many objective reasons for such a massive captivity of people. The suddenness of the attack played a role in this. In addition, it was massive: on June 22, about 4.6 million people crossed the border with the USSR. The war was started by 152 divisions, 1 brigade and 2 motorized regiments of the Wehrmacht, 16 Finnish divisions and 3 brigades, 4 Hungarian brigades, 13 Romanian divisions and 9 brigades, 3 Italian divisions, 2 Slovak divisions and 1 brigade. Most of them had experience in combat operations, were well equipped and armed - by that time almost the entire industry of Europe was working for Germany.

On the eve of the war, the reports of the Wehrmacht General Staff on the state of the Red Army noted that its weakness also lies in the commanders' fear of responsibility, which was caused by pre-war purges in the troops. Stalin's opinion that it was better for a Red Army soldier to die than to be captured by the enemy was enshrined in Soviet legislation. The "Regulations on military crimes" of 1927 established the equality of the concepts of "surrender" and "voluntary transfer to the side of the enemy", which was punishable by execution with confiscation of property.

In addition, the lack of a reliable rear influenced the will of the defenders. Even if the Soviet fighters and commanders, in spite of everything, held out to the death, they already had burning cities in the rear, which mercilessly bombed German planes. The warriors were worried about the fate of their loved ones. Streams of refugees replenished the sea of captives. The atmosphere of panic in the first weeks of the war also played into the hands of the attackers and did not allow them to soberly assess the situation and make the right decisions to fight the invaders.

In the order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR No. 270 dated August 16, 1941, it was emphasized: "Commanders and political workers who tear off insignia during the battle and desert to the rear or surrender to the enemy, are considered malicious deserters, whose families are subject to arrest as relatives of those who violated the oath and betrayed their homeland of deserters ... To oblige every soldier, regardless of his official position, to demand from a higher commander, if part of him is surrounded, to fight to the last opportunity in order to break through to his own, and if such a commander or part of the Red Army, instead of organizing a rebuff to the enemy, prefer to surrender to him into captivity - to destroy them by all means, both ground and air, and to deprive the families of Red Army soldiers who have surrendered of state benefits and assistance.

With the outbreak of the war, it became clear that the extermination of not only prisoners, but also civilians, was taking on ever more horrifying proportions. Trying to rectify the situation, on June 27, 1941, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov telegraphed the chairman of the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) about the readiness of the Soviet Union to exchange lists of prisoners of war and the possibility of revising the attitude to the Hague Convention "On the Laws and Customs of Land War". We must not forget that it was precisely the refusal of the USSR to join the Geneva Convention that Hitler motivated his calls not to apply the norms of international law to Soviet prisoners of war. A month before the invasion of the Soviet Union, the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW) prepared instructions for the treatment of captured representatives of political power in the Red Army. One of the proposals boiled down to the need to destroy the political commissars in the front camps.

On July 17, 1941, Vyacheslav Molotov, with a special note through the embassy and the Red Cross of Sweden, brought to the attention of Germany and its allies the consent of the USSR to comply with the requirements of the 1907 Hague Convention "On the Laws and Customs of War on Land". The document emphasized that the Soviet government would comply with the requirements of the convention with regard to fascist Germany "only insofar as this convention will be observed by Germany itself." On the same day, the order of the Gestapo was dated, which provided for the destruction of "all Soviet prisoners of war who were or could be dangerous for National Socialism."

The attitude towards prisoners in Russia has long been humane. Mercy to the vanquished was demanded by the "Cathedral Code" of Muscovite Russia (1649): "Spare the enemy asking for mercy; do not kill the unarmed; do not fight with the women; do not touch the youngsters. Treat the captives philanthropicly, be ashamed of barbarism. Defeat the enemy no less than weapons philanthropy. A warrior should crush the enemy's power, and not defeat the unarmed." And so they did for centuries.

After 1945, we had 4 million Germans, Japanese, Hungarians, Austrians, Romanians, Italians, Finns in captivity ... What was the attitude towards them? They were pitied. Of the captured Germans, two-thirds survived, of ours in German camps - a third! “In captivity, we were fed better than the Russians themselves ate. I left a part of my heart in Russia,” testifies one of the German veterans, who survived Soviet captivity and returned to his homeland, Germany. The daily ration of an ordinary prisoner of war according to the boiler allowance for prisoners of war in the NKVD camps was 600 grams of rye bread, 40 grams of meat, 120 grams of fish, 600 grams of potatoes and vegetables, and other products with a total energy value of 2533 kcal per day.

Unfortunately, most of the provisions of the Geneva Conventions "On the Treatment of Prisoners of War" remained only on paper. German captivity is one of the darkest phenomena of the Second World War. The picture of fascist captivity was already very difficult, the atrocities did not stop throughout the war. Everyone knows what the "cultured" Germans and Japanese did during the Second World War, conducting experiments on people, mocking them in death camps ... Here is how K.D. wrote. Vorobyov in his story "This is us, Lord! ...", about what he had to endure in fascist captivity: "Kaunas camp" G "was a quarantine transit point. Therefore, there were no special "improvements" inherent in standard camps. But there were SS men armed with ... iron shovels. They were already standing, lined up in a row, wearily leaning on their "military weapons". The gates of the camp had not yet had time to close behind the exhausted Major Velichko, as the SS men, with an inhuman whooping, crashed into the thick of the prisoners and began to kill Blood splattered, skin cut off by the wrong oblique blow of a shovel flew in small pieces. The camp resounded with the roar of rabid murderers, the groans of those being killed, the heavy stomping of feet in fear of people rushing about.

Or here’s another one: “The ration of food given to prisoners was 150 grams of moldy sawdust bread and 425 grams of gruel per day ... In Siauliai, the largest building is a prison. In the yard, in the corridors, in four hundred cells, in the attic - wherever it was possible, people were sitting, standing, writhing. There were more than one thousand of them. They were not fed. The Germans dismantled the water supply. Those who died of typhus and starvation were removed from the first floor and from the yard. In the cells and corridors of the other floors, the corpses lay for months, corroded by countless number of lice. In the mornings, six submachine gunners entered the prison yard. Three wagons filled with dead and still breathing were taken out of the prison into the field. Each wagon was dragged by fifty prisoners. The place where half-corpses were dumped into a huge ditch was four versts from the city. From one hundred and fifty people carrying a terrible load, one hundred and twenty reached there. Eighty-ninety returned. The rest were shot on the way to the cemetery and back."

And yet, many captured tried to escape: in groups, alone, from the camps, during the transfer. Here are the data from German sources: "On September 1, 1942 (for 14 months of the war): 41,300 Russians fled from captivity." Further more. The Minister of Economy of Hitler's Germany, Speer, reports to the Fuhrer: "Escapes have assumed alarming proportions: monthly, out of the total number of those who have fled, up to 40,000 people can be found and returned to their places of work." By 05/01/44 (another year of war is coming), 1 million prisoners of war were killed while trying to escape. Our grandfathers and fathers!

In Germany and the USSR during the Second World War, relatives of the missing person were denied support (they did not pay benefits, pensions). A person who surrendered was perceived as an enemy, it was not only a position of power, but also the attitude of society. Hostility, lack of sympathy and social support - all these former prisoners faced on a daily basis. In Japan, suicide was preferred to captivity, otherwise relatives of the prisoner were persecuted at home.

In 1944, the flow of prisoners of war and repatriates returning to the Soviet Union increased dramatically. This summer, a new system for filtering and screening all returnees by state security agencies was developed and then introduced. A whole network of special camps was created to test "former Red Army soldiers who were captured and surrounded by the enemy." In 1942, in addition to the previously existing Yuzhsky special camp, 22 more camps were created in the Vologda, Tambov, Ryazan, Kursk, Voronezh and other regions. In practice, these special camps were high-security military prisons, moreover, for prisoners who, in the vast majority, did not commit any crimes.

Prisoners of war released from special camps were reduced to special battalions and sent to remote areas of the country for permanent work at the enterprises of the timber and coal industries. Only on June 29, 1956, the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a resolution "On eliminating the consequences of gross violations of the law in relation to former prisoners of war and their families." Since 1956, all cases of former prisoners of war have been reviewed. The vast majority of them have been rehabilitated.

Objectively, captivity is always defeat, submission to the will of the enemy. But at the same time, it is also the right of the unarmed. While in captivity, a soldier must count on the protection of his rights by the state that sent him to the front. The state is obliged to adhere to one of the ancient international principles - the return of a prisoner of war to his homeland and the restoration of all his rights as a citizen. In addition, on the part of the state that captured the serviceman, the norms of international law must be observed.

The following facts are of interest. In 1985, the USA established the Medal for Distinguished Service in Captivity. It is awarded to soldiers who have been captured, including posthumously. And on April 9, 2003, the American president announced a new public holiday - Memorial Day for American prisoners of war. Addressing the nation on this occasion, he said: "They are national heroes and their service to our country will not be forgotten." All this gives the soldiers confidence that they will be taken care of. The idea is firmly rooted in the minds of American soldiers that the homeland does not forget its own in the war and does not blame them for anything if they are "unlucky" in the war. In Western countries, people think differently: "The most valuable thing in life is life itself, given only once. And you can go to any lengths to save it." Such expressions as "to die for the motherland", "to sacrifice oneself", "honor is dearer than life", "one must not betray" have long ceased to be a measure of a soldier and a man for them.

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