Who was in captivity during the Second World War? How many Red Army soldiers were captured during the Great Patriotic War?

The exact number of Soviet prisoners of war during the Great Patriotic War is still unknown. Four to six million people. What did captured Soviet soldiers and officers have to go through in 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, violating the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the German authorities included among the prisoners of war not only soldiers and officers of the Red Army, but also party employees, 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 approximately 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 NKVD camps, as having compromised themselves in captivity.

Early years

The largest number of Soviet prisoners of war occurred in 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 Germans, and after the failure of the Kharkov operation in May 1942, more than 240 thousand Red Army soldiers fell into German hands.
First of all, the German authorities carried out filtration: 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 notorious Bohuniya camp (Zhytomyr region) there were up to 100 thousand Soviet soldiers.

The prisoners had to make grueling forced marches - 50-60 km a day. The journey often lasted for a whole week. There was no provision for food on the march, so the soldiers were content with pasture: everything was eaten - ears of wheat, berries, acorns, mushrooms, foliage, bark and even grass.
The instructions 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 route, the guards killed 150 people with a “shot of mercy.”

As Ukrainian historian Grigory Golysh notes, 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 of the USSR.

Job

By the end of 1941, a colossal need for labor was revealed in Germany, mainly in the military industry, and they decided to fill the deficit primarily with 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 appropriate 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 industry this figure was lower – 70%.

Mommsen noted that Soviet prisoners constituted “an important and profitable 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, a total of 631,559 USSR prisoners of war were employed in work in Germany.
Soviet prisoners of war often had to learn a new specialty: they became electricians, mechanics, mechanics, turners, and tractor drivers. Remuneration was piecework and included a bonus system. But, isolated from workers in other countries, Soviet prisoners of war worked 12 hours a day.

Mortality

According to German historians, until February 1942, up to 6,000 Soviet soldiers and officers were killed daily in prisoner of war camps. This was often done by gassing entire barracks. In Poland alone, according to local authorities, 883,485 Soviet prisoners of war are buried.

It has now been established that the Soviet military were the first on whom toxic substances were tested in concentration camps. Later, this method was widely used to exterminate Jews.
Many Soviet prisoners of war died from 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 over the winter. However, without waiting for a fatal outcome, the camp authorities exterminated many of them with gas right in the barracks.

The mortality rate among wounded prisoners was high. Medical care was provided to Soviet prisoners extremely rarely. No one cared about them: they were killed both during the marches and in the camps. The wounded's diet rarely exceeded 1,000 calories per day, let alone the quality of the food. They were doomed to death.

On the side of Germany

Among the Soviet prisoners there were often those who joined the ranks of the armed combat formations of the German army. According to some sources, their number was 250 thousand people during the entire war. First of all, such formations carried out security, guard and stage-barrier service. But there were cases of their use in punitive operations against partisans and civilians.

The head of German military intelligence, Walter Schellenberg, recalled how thousands of Russians were selected in prisoner-of-war camps and, after training, were parachuted deep into Russian territory. Their main task was “transmission of current information, political disintegration of the population and sabotage.”

Return

Those few soldiers who survived the horrors of German captivity faced a difficult test in their homeland. They had to prove that they were not traitors.

By special directive of Stalin at the end of 1941, special filtration and testing camps were created in which former prisoners of war were placed.
More than 100 such camps were created in the deployment zone of six fronts - four Ukrainian and two Belarusian. By July 1944, almost 400 thousand prisoners of war had undergone “special checks”. The vast majority of them were transferred to the district military registration and enlistment offices, about 20 thousand became personnel for the defense industry, 12 thousand joined the assault battalions, and more than 11 thousand were arrested and convicted.

The years of World War II were marked not only by a huge number of casualties, but also by a large number of prisoners of war. They were captured individually and in entire armies: some surrendered in an organized manner, while others deserted, but there were also very funny cases.

Italians

The Italians turned out to be 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 did not meet the interests of Italy.
When Mussolini was arrested on July 25, 1943, the new Italian government led by Marshal Badoglio began secret negotiations with the American command to conclude a truce. The result of Badoglio's negotiations with Eisenhower was the massive surrender of Italians into American captivity.
In this regard, the recollection of the American General Omar Bradley, who describes the elated state of the Italian military personnel when surrendering, is interesting:

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

According to Bradley, the Italians' festive mood was due to 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 fall of 1943, near Donetsk, he encountered 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 these were Italian deserters. They “buttered and cried” so much that the Soviet soldier had difficulty guessing their desire to surrender.

Americans

The US Army has an unusual type of casualty called “battle fatigue.” This category includes primarily those who were captured. Thus, during the landing in Normandy in June 1944, the number of those “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 World War II, due to “overwork,” US losses amounted to 929,307 people.

More often than not, Americans found themselves 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 “Bulge Breakthrough”. As a result of the Wehrmacht counteroffensive against the Allied forces, which began on December 16, 1944, the front moved 100 km. deep into enemy territory. American writer Dick Toland, in a 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, by July 8, 1941 alone, 287,704 Soviet military personnel, including division and corps commanders, were captured. And at the end of 1941, the number of Soviet prisoners of war exceeded 3 million 300 thousand people.

They surrendered primarily due to the inability to provide further resistance - wounded, sick, lacking food and ammunition, or in the absence of control on the part of commanders and headquarters.

The bulk of Soviet soldiers and officers were captured by the Germans in “cauldrons”. Thus, 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 individually or in separate formations. The reasons were different, but the main one, as noted by former prisoners of war, was fear for their lives. However, there were ideological motives or simply a reluctance to fight for Soviet power. Perhaps for these reasons, on August 22, 1941, almost the entire 436th Infantry Regiment, under the command of Major Ivan Kononov, went over to the enemy’s side.

Germans

If before the Battle of Stalingrad, Germans being captured was rather an exception, then in the winter of 1942-43. it acquired a symptomatic character: during the Stalingrad operation, about 100 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers 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 using 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 recollections of German veterans, defectors tried to go over to the enemy’s side immediately before the attack. There were also cases of organized surrender. Thus, 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. Thus, 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. Units of the Yugoslav army, formed from Croats, Bosnians, Slovenes and Macedonians, began to go home en masse or go over to the enemy’s side. In a matter of days, about 314 thousand soldiers and officers were in German captivity - almost the entire 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 surrender, many Japanese soldiers simply died of starvation.

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 prisoners are the merit of 18-year-old Marine Guy Gabaldon, who had an excellent command of the Japanese language 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 “Pied Piper of Saipan.”

Georgy Zhukov cites a curious episode of the captivity of a Japanese man disfigured by mosquito bites in his book “Memories and Reflections.” When asked “where and who butchered him like that,” the Japanese replied that, together with other soldiers, he had been put in the reeds in the evening to observe the Russians. At night they had to endure terrible mosquito bites without complaint, so as not to give away their presence. “And when the Russians shouted something and raised their rifle,” said the prisoner, “I raised my hands, because I could no longer endure this torment.”

French people

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

After the Great Patriotic War, the mass liberation of Soviet prisoners of war and civilians deported for forced labor in Germany and other countries began. According to Headquarters Directive No. 11,086 of May 11, 1945, 100 camps were organized by the People's Commissariat of Defense to receive repatriated Soviet citizens liberated by Allied troops. In addition, 46 collection points operated to receive Soviet citizens liberated by the Red Army.
On May 22, 1945, the State Defense Committee adopted a resolution in which, on the initiative of L.P. Beria, a 10-day period for registration and verification of repatriates was established, after which civilians were to be sent to their place of permanent residence, and military personnel to reserve units. However, due to the massive influx of repatriates, the 10-day period turned out to be unrealistic and was increased to one to two months.
The final results of the verification of Soviet prisoners of war and civilians released after the war are as follows. By March 1, 1946, 4,199,488 Soviet citizens had been repatriated (2,660,013 civilians and 1,539,475 prisoners of war), of which 1,846,802 came from areas of Soviet troops abroad and 2,352,686 received from Anglo-Americans and arrived from other countries .
Results of screening and filtering of repatriates (as of March 1, 1946)

Categories of repatriates / civilians / % / prisoners of war / %
Sent to place of residence / 2,146,126 / 80.68 / 281,780 / 18.31
Drafted into the army / 141,962 / 5.34 / 659,190 / 14.82
Enlisted in NPO work battalions / 263,647 / 9.91 / 344,448 / 22.37
Transferred to the NKVD / 46,740 / 1.76 / 226,127 / 14.69
Located at collection points and used for work at Soviet military units and institutions abroad / 61,538 / 2.31 / 27,930 / 1.81

Thus, of the prisoners of war released after the end of the war, only 14.69% were subjected to repression. As a rule, these were Vlasovites and other accomplices of the occupiers. Thus, according to the instructions available to the heads of the inspection bodies, from among the repatriates the following were subject to arrest and trial:
– management and command staff of the police, “people’s guard”, “people’s militia”, “Russian liberation army”, national legions and other similar organizations;
– ordinary police officers and ordinary members of the listed organizations who took part in punitive expeditions or were active in the performance of duties;
– former soldiers of the Red Army who voluntarily went over to the enemy’s side;
– burgomasters, major fascist officials, employees of the Gestapo and other German punitive and intelligence agencies;
- village elders who were active accomplices of the occupiers.
What was the further fate of these “freedom fighters” who fell into the hands of the NKVD? Most of them were told that they deserved the most severe punishment, but in connection with the victory over Germany, the Soviet government showed leniency towards them, releasing them from criminal liability for treason, and limited themselves to sending them to a special settlement for a period of 6 years.
Such a manifestation of humanism came as a complete surprise to the fascist collaborators. Here is a typical episode. On November 6, 1944, two British ships arrived in Murmansk, carrying 9,907 former Soviet soldiers who fought in the ranks of the German army against the Anglo-American troops and were taken prisoner by them.
According to Article 193 22 of the then Criminal Code of the RSFSR: “Unauthorized abandonment of the battlefield during battle, surrender not caused by the combat situation, or refusal to use weapons during battle, as well as going over to the enemy’s side, entail the highest measure of social protection with confiscation of property." Therefore, many “passengers” expected to be shot immediately at the Murmansk pier. However, official Soviet representatives explained that the Soviet government had forgiven them and that not only would they not be shot, but they would generally be exempt from criminal liability for treason. For more than a year, these people were tested in a special NKVD camp, and then were sent to a 6-year special settlement. In 1952, most of them were released, and no criminal record was listed on their application forms, and the time they worked in the special settlement was counted as their work experience.
Here is a characteristic testimony of the writer and local historian E. G. Nilov, who lives in the Pudozh region of Karelia: “The Vlasovites were brought to our area along with German prisoners of war and were placed in the same camps. Their status was strange - they were neither prisoners of war nor prisoners. But some kind of guilt was attributed to them. In particular, in the documents of one resident of Pudozh, it was written: “Sent to a special settlement for a period of 6 years for serving in the German army from 1943 to 1944 as a private…”. But they lived in their barracks, outside the camp zones, and walked freely, without an escort.”
Total in 1946–1947 148,079 Vlasovites and other accomplices of the occupiers entered the special settlement. As of January 1, 1953, 56,746 Vlasovites remained in the special settlement; 93,446 were released in 1951–1952. upon completion of the term.
As for the accomplices of the occupiers, who stained themselves with specific crimes, they were sent to the Gulag camps, where they made worthy company for Solzhenitsyn.

"Feat" of Major Pugachev
Since Khrushchev’s times, Varlam Shalamov’s story “The Last Battle of Major Pugachev”, which sets out the heartbreaking story of the escape from the Kolyma camp and the heroic death of 12 former officers innocently convicted by Stalin’s executioners, has become firmly established in the folklore of denouncers of Stalinism.
As we have already seen, the bulk of Soviet military personnel released from captivity successfully passed the test. But even those of them who were arrested by the NKVD, for the most part, got off with exile. To get to Kolyma, it was necessary to do something serious, to stain oneself with specific crimes in the service of the Nazis. The prototypes of Shalamov’s “heroes” were no exception to this rule.
Alexander Biryukov spoke about what “Major Pugachev’s feat” actually looked like in the television program “Steps of Victory,” shown on Magadan television on September 5, 1995. It turns out that this fact actually took place. They fled, having first strangled the guard on duty. Several more people were killed in shootouts with the pursuing soldiers. And indeed, out of 12 “heroes”, 10 were former military men: 7 people were Vlasovites who escaped capital punishment only because after the war the death penalty was abolished in the USSR. Two were policemen who voluntarily went into service with the Germans (one of them rose to the rank of chief of the rural police); they escaped execution or the noose for the same reason. And only one - a former naval officer who had two criminal convictions before the war and was sent to a camp for the murder of a policeman under aggravating circumstances. Moreover, 11 out of 12 were related to the camp administration: an orderly, a cook, etc. A characteristic detail: when the gates of the “zone” were wide open, out of 450 prisoners, no one else followed the fugitives.
Another revealing fact. During the chase, 9 bandits were killed, but the three survivors were returned to the camp, from where, years later, but before the end of their sentence, they were released. After which, quite possibly, they told their grandchildren about how innocently they suffered during the years of the “cult of personality.” All that remains is to once again complain about the excessive gentleness and humanity of Stalin’s justice.

After the surrender of Germany, the question arose about the transfer of displaced persons directly across the line of contact between the Allied and Soviet troops. On this occasion, negotiations took place in the German city of Halle in May 1945. No matter how much the American General R.W. Barker, who headed the Allied delegation, fought, he had to sign a document on May 22, according to which there was to be a mandatory repatriation of all Soviet citizens as “Easterns” (that is, those who lived within the borders of the USSR before September 17, 1939 ), and “Westerners” (residents of the Baltic states, Western Ukraine and Western Belarus).
But it was not there. Despite the signed agreement, the allies applied forced repatriation only to the “Eastern”, handing over to the Soviet authorities in the summer of 1945 Vlasovites, Cossack atamans Krasnov and Shkuro, “legionnaires” from the Turkestan, Armenian, Georgian legions and other similar formations. However, not a single Bandera member, not a single soldier of the Ukrainian SS division “Galicia”, not a single Lithuanian, Latvian or Estonian who served in the German army and legions was extradited.
And what, in fact, were the Vlasovites and other “freedom fighters” counting on when seeking refuge with the Western allies of the USSR? As follows from the explanatory notes of the repatriates preserved in the archives, the majority of the Vlasovites, Cossacks, “legionnaires” and other “Easterners” who served the Germans did not at all foresee that the British and Americans would forcibly transfer them to the Soviet authorities. Among them there was a conviction that soon England and the USA would start a war against the USSR and in this war the new masters would need their services.
However, here they miscalculated. At that time, the US and UK still needed an alliance with Stalin. To ensure the USSR's entry into the war against Japan, the British and Americans were ready to sacrifice some of their potential lackeys. Naturally, the least valuable. The “Westerners” – the future “forest brothers” – should have been protected. So they handed over the Vlasovites and Cossacks little by little in order to lull the suspicions of the Soviet Union.
Since the fall of 1945, Western authorities have actually extended the principle of voluntary repatriation to the “easterners.” The forced transfer of Soviet citizens to the Soviet Union, with the exception of those classified as war criminals, ceased. Since March 1946, the former allies finally stopped providing any assistance to the USSR in the repatriation of Soviet citizens.
However, the British and Americans still handed over war criminals, although not all of them, to the Soviet Union. Even after the start of the Cold War.
Let us now return to the episode with the “simple peasants”, about whose tragic fate Solzhenitsyn laments. The passage quoted clearly states that these people remained in the hands of the English for two years. Consequently, they were handed over to the Soviet authorities in the second half of 1946 or in 1947. That is, already during the Cold War, when the former allies did not forcibly extradite anyone except war criminals. This means that official representatives of the USSR presented evidence that these people are war criminals. Moreover, the evidence is irrefutable for British justice - in the documents of the Office of the Commissioner of the USSR Council of Ministers for Repatriation Affairs, it is constantly stated that former allies do not extradite war criminals because, in their opinion, there is insufficient justification for classifying these persons into this category. In this case, the British had no doubts about the “validity”.
Presumably, these citizens took out their “bitter resentment against the Bolsheviks” by participating in punitive operations, shooting partisan families and burning villages. The British authorities had to hand over “ordinary peasants” to the Soviet Union. After all, the English public has not yet had time to explain that the USSR is an “evil empire.” It would be the concealment of persons who participated in the fascist genocide, and not their extradition, that would cause “public anger” in them.

During the Great Patriotic War, about three and a half million soldiers were captured by the Soviets, who were later tried for various war crimes. This number included both the Wehrmacht military and their allies. Moreover, more than two million are Germans. Almost all of them were found guilty and received significant 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. Soviet troops and the population treated the defeated invaders quite tolerantly. "RG" talks about the most senior Wehrmacht and SS officers who were captured by the Soviets.

Field Marshal Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Paulus

Paulus was the first of the German high military ranks to be captured. During the Battle of Stalingrad, all members of his headquarters - 44 generals - were captured along with him.

On January 30, 1943 - the day before the complete collapse of the encircled 6th Army - Paulus was awarded 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 appointed field marshal to continue resistance and, as a result, commit suicide. Having thought about this prospect, Paulus decided in his own way and ordered an end to resistance.

Despite all the rumors about the “atrocities” of the communists towards prisoners, the captured generals were treated with great dignity. Everyone was immediately taken to the Moscow region - to the Krasnogorsk operational transit camp of the NKVD. The security officers intended to win the high-ranking prisoner over to their side. However, Paulus resisted for quite a long 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 of Free Germany, which immediately launched active anti-fascist activities. In fact, when the committee was created in Krasnogorsk, Paulus and his generals were already in the general’s camp in the Spaso-Evfimiev Monastery in Suzdal. He immediately regarded the work of the committee as “betrayal.” He called the generals who agreed to cooperate with the Soviets traitors, whom he “can no longer consider as his comrades.”

Paulus changed his point of view only in August 1944, when he signed an appeal “To prisoners of war German soldiers, officers and the German people.” In it, he called for the removal of Adolf Hitler and an end to the war. Immediately after this, he joined the anti-fascist Union of German Officers, and then 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 for German success in the war, the former field marshal and current prisoner of war decided to side with the winner. One should not dismiss the efforts of the NKVD officers, who methodically worked with “Satrap” (Paulus’s pseudonym). By the end of the war, they practically forgot about him - he couldn’t really help, 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 enormous trust; he was even predicted to replace Alfred Jodl, the chief of staff of the operational leadership of the Wehrmacht High Command. Jodl, as is known, became one of those whom the tribunal sentenced to hang for war crimes.

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

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

General of Artillery Walter von Seydlitz-Kurzbach

The aristocrat Seydlitz commanded the corps in Paulus's army. He surrendered on the same day as Paulus, albeit 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 Free Germany and the Union of German Officers. He even suggested that the Soviet authorities form German units 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 was refused each time.

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

Seydlitz received his freedom in 1955 after the visit of German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to the USSR. After his return, he led a reclusive life.

Lieutenant General Vinzenz Müller

For some, Müller went down in history as the “German Vlasov.” He commanded the 4th German Army, which was completely defeated near Minsk. Müller himself was captured. 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 a suburb of Berlin. Some claimed it was suicide.

Grand Admiral Erich Johann Albert 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 captured in May 1945. During interrogations in Moscow, he spoke about all the preparations for war and gave detailed testimony.

Initially, the USSR intended to try the former grand admiral itself (Raeder is one of the few who was not considered at the conference in Yalta, where the issue of punishing war criminals was discussed), but later a decision was made on his participation in the Nuremberg trials. The tribunal sentenced him to life imprisonment. Immediately after the verdict was announced, he demanded that the sentence be changed to execution, but was refused.

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

SS Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke

The commander of the 1st SS Panzer Division "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler" is one of the few SS generals captured by Soviet troops. The overwhelming number of SS men made their way to the west and surrendered to the Americans or British. On April 21, 1945, Hitler appointed him commander of a “battle group” for the defense of the Reich Chancellery and the Fuhrer’s bunker. After the collapse of Germany, he tried to break out of Berlin to the north with his soldiers, but was captured. By that time, almost his entire group was 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 sentence - 25 years in prison - was heard only in February 1952. He served his sentence in the legendary pre-trial detention center No. 2 of the city of Vladimir - “Vladimir Central”.

The former general returned to Germany in October 1955. At home he worked as a sales agent selling 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 brought into Soviet captivity by his place of service. In 1944, he was appointed commander of the Totenkopf (Death's Head) division, becoming its last commander. According to the agreement between the USSR and the USA, all military personnel of the division were subject to transfer to Soviet troops.

Before the defeat of Germany, Becker, confident that only death awaited him in the east, tried to break through to the west. Having led his division through the whole of Austria, he capitulated only on May 9. Within a few days he found himself in 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 German military commanders to die 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 sabotage of construction work. On September 9, 1952, he was sentenced to death. Already on February 28 of the following year he was shot.

General of Artillery 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 gave the order to cease 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 save him from trial. In Moscow he was kept in Butyrskaya and Lefortovo prisons. After this he was transferred to the Vladimir Central.

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

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

SS-Obergruppenführer Walter Krueger

Since 1944, Walter Kruger led the SS troops in the Baltic states. He continued to fight until the very end of the war, but eventually tried to break into Germany. With fighting I reached almost the very border. However, on May 22, 1945, Kruger’s group attacked a Soviet patrol. Almost all the 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 - when he came to his senses, he shot himself. As it turned out, he kept a pistol in a secret pocket, which could not be found 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. This attention is due to all the activities of the cavalryman Pannwitz during the war. It was he who oversaw the creation of Cossack troops in the Wehrmacht on the German side. He was also accused of numerous war crimes in the Soviet Union.

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. However, given the severity of the crimes (there was evidence of numerous executions of civilians), the German general was sent to Moscow along with the traitors.

In January 1947, the court sentenced all the accused (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 those hanged. Time after time, the Supreme Court makes a negative decision.

SS Sturmbannführer Otto Günsche

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

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

Gunsche was captured by the Soviets on May 2, 1945. Almost immediately he found himself in the development of SMERSH agents, who were trying to find 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 transported 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 for the rest of his life. He died in 2003.

In 1941, the Germans took 4 million prisoners, of which 3 died in the first six months of captivity. This is one of the most heinous crimes of the German Nazis. The prisoners were kept for months in barbed wire pens, in the open air, without food, people ate grass and earthworms. Hunger, thirst, and unsanitary conditions, deliberately created by the Germans, were doing their job. This massacre was against the customs of war, against the economic needs of Germany itself. Pure ideology - the more subhumans die, the better.

Minsk. July 5, 1942 Drozdy prison camp. Consequences of the Minsk-Bialystok cauldron: 140 thousand people on 9 hectares in the open air

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

June 1941. Area of ​​Rasseiniai (Lithuania). The crew of the KV-1 tank was captured. The tankman in the center looks like Budanov... This is the 3rd mechanized corps, they met the war on the border. In a 2-day oncoming tank battle on June 23-24, 1941 in Lithuania, the corps was defeated

Vinnitsa, July 28, 1941. Since the prisoners were hardly fed, the local population tried to help them. Ukrainian women with baskets and plates at the gates of the camp...

Right there. Apparently, the security still allowed the food to be passed on by the thorn.

August 1941 “Umanskaya Yama” concentration camp. It is also known as Stalag (prefabricated camp) No. 349. It was set up in the quarry of a brick factory in the city of Uman (Ukraine). In the summer of 1941, prisoners from the Uman cauldron, 50,000 people, were kept here. In the open air, like in a paddock

Vasily Mishchenko, former prisoner of “Yama”: “Wounded and shell-shocked, I was captured. He was among the first to end up in the Uman pit. From above I clearly saw this pit still empty. No shelter, no food, no water. The sun is beating down mercilessly. In the western corner of the semi-basement quarry there was a puddle of brown-green water with fuel oil. We rushed to it, scooped up this slurry with caps, rusty cans, just with our palms and drank greedily. I also remember two horses tied to posts. Five minutes later there was nothing left of these horses.”

Vasily Mishchenko was with the rank of lieutenant when he was captured in the Uman cauldron. But not only soldiers and junior commanders fell into the cauldrons. And the generals too. In the photo: Generals Ponedelin and Kirillov, they commanded Soviet troops near Uman:

The Germans used this photo in propaganda leaflets. The Germans are smiling, but General Kirillov (on the left, in a cap with a torn star) has a very sad look... This photo session does not bode well

Again Ponedelin and Kirillov. Lunch in captivity

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

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

Vyazemsky cauldron, October 1941. While the generals were learning to fight, endless columns of prisoners walked along the roads

Vyazma, November 1941. The infamous Dulag-184 (transit camp) on Kronstadskaya Street. The mortality rate here reached 200-300 people per day. The dead were simply thrown into pits

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

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

Stalag 10D (Witzendorf, Germany), autumn 1941. The corpses of dead Soviet prisoners are thrown from a cart

In the fall of 1941, the death of prisoners became widespread. Added to the famine was cold and an epidemic of typhus (it was spread by lice). Cases of cannibalism appeared.

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

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

Deblin (Poland), a batch of prisoners arrived at Stalag 307. People are in terrible condition. On the right is a camp policeman in Budenovka (former prisoner), standing next to the body of a prisoner lying on the platform

Physical punishment. Two policemen in Soviet uniform: one is holding a prisoner, the other is beating him with a whip or stick. The German in the background laughs. Another prisoner in the background is standing tied to a fence post (also a form of punishment in prison camps)

One of the main tasks of the camp police was to identify Jews and political workers. According to the order “On Commissars” of June 6, 1941, these two categories of prisoners were subject to destruction on the spot. Those who were not killed immediately upon capture were looked for in the camps. Why were regular “selections” organized to search for Jews and communists? It was either a general medical examination with pants down - the Germans walked around looking for circumcised ones, or the use of informers among the prisoners themselves.

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

“We brought crackers and coffee to the camp. There is an SS man standing, next to a dog and next to him a prisoner of war. And when people go for crackers, he says: “This is a political instructor.” He is taken out and immediately shot nearby. The traitor is poured coffee and given two crackers. “And this is yude.” The Jew is taken out and shot, and again two crackers for him. “And this one was an NKVDist.” They take him out and shoot him, and he gets two crackers again.”

Life in the camp in Jelgava was inexpensive: 2 crackers. However, as usual in Russia during wartime, people appeared from somewhere who could not be broken by any shooting, and could not be bought for crackers.