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Post war Germans in Soviet captivity

Discussion in 'Other Weapons' started by skywalker, Sep 7, 2009.

  1. skywalker

    skywalker Member

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    What kind of treatment did the Germans recieve other than the obvious.
    Were Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Germans etc placed in the same camps and if so did these former allies see each other as much. How many Germans that got taken as POWS actually made it back to Germany ?
     
  2. aglooka

    aglooka Member

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    I have numbers on the Stalingrad prisoners (tough i'm not sure how accurate they are)
    Anyway 107.800 were captured of which 6000 ever saw the heimat back.

    Aglooka
     
  3. Totenkopf

    Totenkopf אוּרִיאֵל

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    It is well known that not many Axis prisoners had ever seen their homeland after Soviet captivity.

    I saw I webpage with statistics about this a few weeks ago and I will look for it.
     
  4. marc780

    marc780 Member

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    Well i have read the accounts and i know somebody who's dad was a German POW in Russian captivity, post war.
    The guy who i know was born about 1942. As he got the story told to him, his Dad was a Werhmacht supply enlisted man on the trains shipping supplies in the east. Near the end of the war he got captured by the Russians and shipped east- not sure exactly where. When the war ended the Russians came and told them about it but did not let them go home! The Russians just kept them in the POW camp, not telling them their fate, as if nothing had changed. After a year or so of this, he andv a couple of his buddies stole or made some wire cutters and planned their escape, and one night they cut hole in the wire and high-tailed it west. (Evidently the Russians did not put alot of effort into recapturing them.) They moved only at night and hid during the day, avoiding the local population and being as stealthy as they could lest a local commie arrest them and turn them in. stealing food from farms as they walked west. I dont know how many miles they went but it must have been hundreds. Finally he knew he was home when he knocked on his sister's door in Berlin.
     
  5. Sloniksp

    Sloniksp Ставка

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    This has been discussed in this forum before.

    German prisoners of war in Russian captivity received all which the Russians in German captivity failed to receive themselves.

    Many returning German POW's claimed that they had been treated humanly (for the most part) and even received the same rations which the Soviet guards ate.

    Im sure some here will give more accurate figures, but from what I remember out of more then 2 million German POW's less then 400,000 died in captivity and most of those deaths occurred from work exhaustion; rebuilding what they had destroyed.
     
  6. olegbabich

    olegbabich Member

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    I also saw documents where Germans were used to clear mine fields after the war.
    Many high ranking Party Officials had their Summer Homes (Dachas) constructed by master carpenters from the ranks of prisoners.

    Germans were worked on rebuilding infrastructure, but Stalin was never in short supply of Forced Labor Crews.
     
  7. Mehar

    Mehar Ace

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    The Germans also used Germans to clear/set mines, more specifically the Germans who disobeyed orders.

    Slightly off topic but the French did this as well to Afrika Korp and Italian prisoners of war. This one case I was reading said the French had maps the Germans drew telling them exactly where the mines were but refused to give them to the prisoners because they wanted to punish them. The German prisoners weren't fed properly at all and were only given their fingers to diffuse the mines. It goes without saying that with these conditions many of them died.

    I don't think the Russians were this tough on the German prisoners they had, I've heard things like "the soldiers treated them nicely but the superiors were harsh", not sure how true that is though.
     
  8. Sloniksp

    Sloniksp Ставка

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    Yes, for this reason many returning German POW's expressed their surprise at how well they were treated by the very same "sub-humans" who they systematically starved in German POW camps.
     
  9. Mehar

    Mehar Ace

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    Were the Wehrmacht aware of the conditions in the prison camps? Since a majority of the prisoners taken by the Russians were Heer IIRC. But I do agree, people always say the Russians were tough on the Germans, in comparison to what the French had done (even going as far as not telling the Allies they took prisoners) the Russians were treating them like residents of a 5 star hotel!
     
  10. JagdtigerI

    JagdtigerI Ace

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    General von Küchler is known to have done the same thing at one point....you're always gunna get those few crazies....
     
  11. Sloniksp

    Sloniksp Ставка

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    Not sure I would go so far as to criticize French or British treatment of German POW's. Even though isolated incidents of brutality did exist and occurred in all allied camps (can you blame them?) it was not standard practice. ;) The truth of the matter is that post war Europe had a huge shortage in food. Many German POW's simply could not be fed (this is also a fact of German POW's in Soviet hands). In reality more German POW's died in Russian captivity than in French or British. Then again this is also because Russia had more prisoners and they stayed longer rebuilding what they had destroyed.

    If the treatment of German prisoners is in question, well then the United States wins the gold.
     
  12. Sentinel

    Sentinel Member

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    Prisoners of Stalingrad.

    That's a death rate of 94%. I don't think the Nazis or Soviets were that much different in their treatment of each other's prisoners.
     
  13. JagdtigerI

    JagdtigerI Ace

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    It seems like the only real example cited are the troops of Stalingrad. Do keep in mind these troops had just gone through 6 months of hell. Most if not all were undernourished and exhausted.
     
  14. LRusso216

    LRusso216 Graybeard Staff Member

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    I found this material on one of the US camps.
    German Prisioners
     
  15. Mehar

    Mehar Ace

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    Unless the Germans they are keeping did something wrong, I don't see why you can't blame them. I do recall the food issue which is excusable if the prisoners and guards were eating the same. This was not the case with the French prison camps I was talking about, I found the interview if you would like to read it.

    Hans Klein Recalls His Time in Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps » HistoryNet

    It's 3 pages long so don't forget to turn pages at the bottom.

    I don't know how the British camps were though.
     
  16. Sentinel

    Sentinel Member

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    There are other references.

    So, overall the documented death rate of German POWs was 42%. That's not as high as the Stalingrad rate, but it's still very high.

    Both Hitler and Stalin ran brutal regimes and their war was very bitter. It's no surprise that prisoners were ill-treated on both sides. After all, these tyrants murdered millions of their own people, so they could hardly be expected to treat enemies with kindness.
     
  17. JagdtigerI

    JagdtigerI Ace

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    Right, there hadn't been before ;)
    That is an important stat, do you have comparative rates for different countries?
     
  18. Sentinel

    Sentinel Member

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    Wikipedia (yes, I know) gives a death rate of 57.5% for Soviet prisoners captured by the Nazis. This is higher than the 42% for Nazi prisoners captured by the Soviets. But the ill-treatment of Russians by the Nazis is well-known.

    Further,

    There were of course some Axis prisoners killed or mistreated by the Western allies. However, prisoners taken by the US and UK forces were generally well treated after they were shipped back from the front. The link I gave in my previous post suggests that German POWs in American hands suffered only a 1% death rate.

    I've found all these stats by googling (actually binging) while reading the thread. However, they back up the general impressions I've had: that Soviets and Nazis treated each other's POWs very badly, Japanese treated everyone's POWs very badly, and US/UK were somewhat nicer to prisoners.

    It's fair to say, looking at these stats, that the Japanese treatment of Chinese POWs and the German treatment of Russian POWs were the worst. But the Russian treatment of German POWs was a close third.
     
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  19. brndirt1

    brndirt1 Saddle Tramp

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    I think that sums it up nicely, the Japanese take the cake for brutal POW treatment, no matter which enemy, and the German and Soviet treatments of each other's prisoners are almost "humane" by comparison.

    Only the USSR's record in respect to the Italian POWs seems surprising. Perhaps it was the different climate, or foods, or something, but, at least 54,000 Italian POWs died in captivity, with a staggering mortality rate of 84.5% at the hands of the Soviets. There must be mitigating circumstances here or something.
     
  20. Sloniksp

    Sloniksp Ставка

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    Yes, I would have to agree with this statement. I have however, stumbeled upon other sources which put the German casualty rate in Soviet hands smaller, I will try to find them.
    Perhaps our moderators can assist?

    With that said however, the Russians did not systematically starve their prisoners. As I have stated before, many returning Germans claimed that they were even fed with the same rations which the Soviet guards ate. Most died of work exhaustion.

    Had the Russians treated the Germans with the same chivalry and honor which they themselves had received, none would have ever returned.

    As for the victims of the 6th army, many simply died on the march to the Prison camps. Considering the shape which these soldiers were in, it should be no surprise.
     

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