| German atrocities against Soviet prisoners of war | |
| Partof: | World War II |
| Location: | Germany and German-occupied Eastern Europe |
| Target: | Captured Soviet troops |
| Date: | 1941–1945 |
| Type: | Starvation, death marches, summary executions, forced labor |
| Fatalities: | 2.8 to 3.3 million |
During World War II, Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) held by Nazi Germany and primarily in the custody of the German Army were starved and subjected to deadly conditions. Of nearly six million who were captured, around three million died during their imprisonment.
In June 1941, Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union and carried out a war of extermination with complete disregard for the laws and customs of war. Among the criminal orders issued before the invasion was the execution of captured Soviet commissars. Although Germany largely upheld its obligations under the Geneva Convention with prisoners of war of other nationalities, military planners decided to breach it with the Soviet prisoners. By the end of 1941, millions of Soviet soldiers had been captured, mostly in large-scale encirclement operations during the German Army's rapid advance. Two-thirds of them died from starvation, exposure, and disease by early 1942—ranking as one of the highest death rates from mass atrocity in history.
Soviet Jews, political commissars, and some officers, communists, intellectuals, Asians, and female combatants were systematically targeted for execution. A larger number of prisoners were shot for being wounded, ill, or unable to keep up with forced marches. Over a million were deported to Germany for forced labor, where they died in large numbers in sight of the local population. Their conditions were worse than civilian forced laborers or prisoners of war from other countries. More than 100,000 were transferred to Nazi concentration camps, where they were treated worse than other prisoners. An estimated 1.4 million Soviet prisoners of war served as auxiliaries to the German military or SS. Collaborators were essential to the German war effort and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.
Deaths among these Soviet prisoners of war have been called "one of the greatest crimes in military history", second in number only to those of civilian Jews but far less studied. Although the Soviet Union announced the death penalty for surrender early in the war, most former prisoners were reintegrated into Soviet society. The majority of defectors and collaborators escaped prosecution. Former prisoners of war were not recognized as veterans, and did not receive any reparations until 2015; they often faced discrimination due to the perception that they were traitors or deserters.
Nazi Germany and its allies, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Italy, invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. The Nazi leadership believed that war with its ideological enemy was inevitable; one reason for the war was the desire to acquire territory, called living space (lebensraum), which Nazis believed was necessary for Germany's long-term survival. War aims included securing natural resources, including agricultural land to feed Germany. To increase the speed of conquest, the Germans planned to feed their army by looting and to terrorize the local inhabitants with preventative killings.
The vast majority of German military manpower and materiel was devoted to the invasion, which was carried out as a war of extermination with complete disregard for the laws and customs of war. Criminal orders issued by the German military's High Command (OKW) directed the army to shoot captured Soviet commissars and suspicious civilian political functionaries. Soviet citizens were categorized according to a racial hierarchy led by Soviet Germans, Balts and Muslims, with Ukrainians in the middle, Russians towards the bottom, and Asians and Jews ranked lowest. Informed by Nazi racial theory and Germany's experience during World War I, this hierarchy heavily influenced the treatment of the prisoners of war. The Nazis believed that the Soviet Union's Slavic population was secretly controlled by an international Jewish conspiracy; by killing communist functionaries and Soviet Jews, they expected that resistance would quickly collapse. The Nazis anticipated that much of the Soviet population (especially in the western areas) would welcome the German invasion, and hoped to exploit tensions between Soviet nationalities in the long run.
World War I led to increased antisemitism based on the belief that German Jews had caused the German defeat, and recognition of the need to secure food supplies to avoid a repeat of the blockade-induced famine in Germany. Planners considered cordoning off the Soviet Union's "deficit areas" (particularly in the north) that required food imports from its "surplus areas", especially in Ukraine. If the surplus food was redirected to the German army or Germany, an estimated 30 million people—mostly Russians—were expected to die. The German Army lacked the resources to cordon off these large areas. Although more than a million Soviet citizens died from smaller-scale blockades of Soviet urban areas (especially besieged Leningrad and Jewish ghettos), they were less effective than expected because of flight and black market activity. Because prisoners of war were held under tighter control than urban or Jewish civilians, they had a higher death rate from starvation.
Before World War II, the treatment of prisoners of war had occupied a central role in the codification of the law of war and detailed guidelines were laid down in the 1907 Hague Convention. Germany was a signatory of the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, and generally adhered to it with prisoners of other nationalities. These laws were covered in the Wehrmacht's military education, and there was no legal ambiguity that could be exploited to justify its actions. Unlike Germany, the Soviet Union was not a signatory of either convention; its offer to abide by the Hague Convention's provisions regarding prisoners of war if the German army did likewise was rejected by Adolf Hitler several weeks after the start of the war. The OKW said that the Geneva Convention did not apply to Soviet prisoners of war, but suggested that it be the basis of planning. Law and morality played (at most) a minor role in this planning, in contrast to the demand for labor and military expediency. On 30 March 1941, Hitler said privately that "we must distance ourselves from the standpoint of soldierly comradeship" and fight a "war of extermination" because Red Army soldiers were "no comrade" of Germans. No one present raised any objection. Although the mass deaths of prisoners in 1941 were controversial within the Wehrmacht, Abwehr officer Helmuth James Graf von Moltke was one of the few high-ranking officials who favored treating Soviet prisoners according to the law.
Anti-Bolshevism, antisemitism, and racism are often cited as the main reasons behind the mass death of prisoners, with the regime's conflicting demands for security, food, and labor. It is disputed if the German command planned to use Soviet prisoners of war as a labor reserve, or if the forced-labor program developed after the Wehrmacht's failure to secure a quick victory. Little planning was made for housing and feeding the millions of soldiers to be captured as part of the rapid encirclement actions that German generals were planning. During the invasion of France in 1940, 1.9 million prisoners of war were housed and fed; historian Alex J. Kay cites this as evidence that supply and logistics cannot explain the mass death of Soviet prisoners of war.
In 1941, three or four Soviet soldiers were captured for each one killed in action; the ratio of prisoners was reduced later in the war, but remained higher than for the German side. By mid-December 1941, 79 percent of prisoners (more than two million) had been captured in thirteen major cauldron battles. Although fewer Soviet soldiers were captured than expected, historian Mark Edele says that opposition to the Soviet government was one factor that led to the mass surrenders in 1941; military factors such as poor leadership, lack of arms and ammunition, and being completely overwhelmed by the German advance, however, were more important. The behavior of Soviet soldiers ranged from fighting to the last bullet to making a conscious choice to defect. Edele estimates that at least hundreds of thousands (possibly more than a million) Soviet soldiers defected during the war, far exceeding defections by other belligerents.
Especially in 1941, the German Army often refused to take prisoners on the Eastern Front and shot Soviet soldiers who tried to surrender. The Waffen-SS shot hundreds of captured Red Army soldiers on multiple occasions, and thousands at least once. The Red Army shot prisoners less commonly than the Wehrmacht did; this contributed to a mutual escalation of violence, although ideology was a more important factor on the German side. Killings before reaching the collection point () are not counted as part of the figures for Soviet prisoner deaths. Red Army soldiers overtaken by the German advance without being captured were ordered to present themselves to the Wehrmacht under the threat of summary execution; such orders were intended to prevent the growth of a Soviet partisan movement. Despite the Supreme Command of Ground Forces (OKH) order, prisoners were often taken under such circumstances; thousands of Red Army soldiers were executed on the spot as "partisans" or "irregulars". Others evaded capture and returned to their families. The number of Soviet soldiers captured fell dramatically after the Battle of Moscow in late 1941.
Infantry divisions took prisoners during encirclement battles, but front-line troops were typically in charge for only a short time before bringing them to a collection point at the division or army level. From there, the prisoners were sent to a transit camp (). Many transit camps were shut down beginning in 1942, with prisoners sent directly from the collection point to a stalag. Some front-line units would strip prisoners of their winter clothing as temperatures dropped late in 1941. Although wounded and sick Red Army soldiers sometimes received medical care, most often they did not.
Before May 1942, when the Commissar Order was rescinded, an estimated 4,000 to 10,000 commissars were shot; such killings are documented for more than 80 percent of front-line German divisions fighting on the Eastern Front. Although the order was mostly accepted, behavior varied from refusal to implement it to extending it to other groups of Soviet captives. These killings did not have the intended effect of decreasing Soviet resistance, and came to be perceived as counterproductive. Contradictory orders were issued for the execution of female combatants in the Soviet army, who defied German gender expectations, but the orders were not always followed.
By the end of 1941, 81 camps had been established on occupied Soviet territory. Permanent camps were established in areas under civilian administration and areas under military administration that were planned to be turned over to civilian administration. Camps in areas under civilian administration were part of the prisoner-of-war department of the OKW's Allgemeines Wehrmachtsamt. In areas under military administration, the OKH and its quartermaster-general were in charge of the camps. The collection points were militarily controlled by the Korücks, and the Army Group Rear Area Commands were responsible for the transit camps. Due to the low priority attached to prisoners of war, each camp commandant had autonomy limited only by the military and economic situation. Although a few tried to ameliorate their conditions, most did not. At the end of 1944, all prisoner-of-war camps were placed under SS chief Heinrich Himmler's authority. Although military authorities from the OKW down also distributed orders to refrain from excessive violence against prisoners of war, historian David Harrisville says that these orders had little effect in practice and their main effect was to bolster a positive self-image in German soldiers.
The use of railcars for transport was often forbidden to prevent the spread of disease. Prisoners were forced to march hundreds of kilometers on foot with no or inadequate food or water. Guards frequently shot anyone who fell behind. Sometimes Soviet prisoners were able to escape due to inadequate supervision. An estimated 20 percent or more died over the winter during transport in open cattle wagons. Additional death marches were ordered as the Red Army regained territory, typically on foot except in western areas. A figure of 200,000 to 250,000 deaths in transit is provided in Russian estimates.
Prisoners were herded into open, fenced-off areas with no buildings or latrines; some camps did not have running water. Kitchen facilities were rudimentary, and many prisoners got nothing to eat. In September 1941, preparations for winter housing began; in November, the building of barracks was rolled out systematically. Some prisoners had to live in the open for the entire winter, in unheated rooms, or in burrows they dug themselves which often collapsed. The poor housing situation, combined with the cold, was a major factor in the mass deaths beginning in October 1941. After 1941, the situation improved; because of the mass deaths, the camps became less overcrowded. The death toll at many prisoner-of-war camps was comparable to that at the largest Nazi concentration camps. One of the largest camps was Dulag 131 in Bobruisk, where an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 Red Army soldiers died. Shooting prisoners was encouraged.
The number of guards was relatively low, contributing to violence against prisoners. The Germans recruited prisoners—mainly Ukrainians, Cossacks, and Caucasians—as camp police and guards. Regulations specified that the camps be surrounded by watchtowers and double barbed wire fences 2.5m (08.2feet) high. Despite draconian penalties, organized resistance groups formed at some camps and attempted mass escapes. Tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war attempted to escape; about half were recaptured, and around 10,000 reached Switzerland. If they did not commit crimes while escaped, the prisoners were usually returned to the prisoner-of-war camps; otherwise, they were turned over to the Gestapo and imprisoned (or executed) in a nearby concentration camp.
Food for prisoners was extracted from the occupied Soviet Union after the occupiers' needs were met. Prisoners usually received less than the official ration due to supply problems. By mid-August 1941, it had become clear that many prisoners would die. The capture of a large number of prisoners after the encirclements of Vyazma and Bryansk caused a sudden breakdown in makeshift logistical arrangements. On 21 October 1941, OKH general quartermaster Eduard Wagner issued an order reducing daily rations for non-working prisoners to 1,487 calories. These non-working prisoners—all but one million of the 2.3 million held at the time—would die, as Wagner acknowledged at a November 1941 meeting. Although prisoners had not received much food from the beginning, death rates skyrocketed during the fall due to increased numbers, the cumulative effects of starvation, epidemics, and falling temperatures. Hundreds died daily at each camp, too many to bury. German policy shifted to prioritize feeding prisoners at the expense of the Soviet civilian population but, in practice, conditions did not significantly improve until June 1942 due to improved logistics and fewer prisoners to feed. Mass deaths were repeated on a smaller scale in the winter of 1942–1943.
Starving prisoners attempted to eat leaves, grass, bark, and worms. Some Soviet prisoners suffered so much from hunger that they made written requests to their guards to be shot. Cannibalism was reported in several camps, despite capital punishment for this offense. Soviet civilians who tried to provide food were often shot. In many camps, those who were in better condition were separated from prisoners deemed to have no chance of survival. Employment could be beneficial in securing additional food and better conditions, although workers often received insufficient food.
On 7 August 1941, the OKW issued an order to release prisoners who were ethnically German, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Caucasian, and Ukrainian. The purpose of the release was largely to ensure that the harvest in German-occupied areas was successful. Red Army women were excluded from this policy. The vast majority of prisoners (ethnic Russians) were not considered for release, and about half of the Ukrainians were. Releases were curtailed due to epidemics and fear that they would join the partisans. Some severely injured prisoners were allowed to be released if they had family living nearby; many probably died of starvation soon afterwards. By January 1942, 280,108 prisoners of war—mostly Ukrainians—had been released, and by the end of the war around a million were. In addition to agriculture, prisoners were released so they could join military or police collaboration. About one-third entered the German Army, and others changed their status from prisoner to guard. As the war progressed, release for agricultural work decreased and military recruitment increased.
The selective killing of prisoners held by the army was enabled by its close cooperation with the SS and Soviet informers, and soldiers often conducted the executions. The killings targeted commissars and Jews, and sometimes communists, intellectuals, Red Army officers, and (in 1941) Asian-appearing prisoners; about 80 percent of Turkic soldiers were killed by early 1942. German counterintelligence identified many individuals as Jews with medical examinations, denunciation by fellow prisoners, or a stereotypically-Jewish appearance.
Beginning in August 1941, additional screening by the Security Police and the SD in the occupied Soviet Union led to the killing of another 38,000 prisoners. With the army's cooperation, Einsatzgruppen units visited the prisoner-of-war camps to carry out mass executions. About 50,000 Jewish Red Army soldiers were killed, but five to 25 percent escaped detection. Soviet Muslims mistaken for Jews were sometimes killed. From 1942, systematic killing increasingly targeted wounded and sick prisoners. Those unable to work were often shot in mass executions or left to die, and sometimes mass executions were conducted without a clear rationale. Invalid soldiers were in particular danger when the front approached.
For the prisoner-of-war camps in Germany, screening was carried out by the Gestapo. Those highlighted for scrutiny were interrogated for about 20 minutes, often with torture; if their responses were unsatisfactory, they were discharged from prisoner-of-war status. Victims were bought to a concentration camp for execution to conceal their fate from the German public. At least 33,000 prisoners were transferred to Nazi concentration camps—Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Flossenbürg, Gross-Rosen, Mauthausen, Gusen, Neuengamme, Sachsenhausen, and Hinzert—and nearly all were executed. These killings dwarfed previous killings in the camp system. The number of executions declined, due to manpower shortages, as the war progressed. After March 1944, around 5,000 escaped Soviet officers and non-commissioned officers were killed at Mauthausen. Including the shooting of wounded soldiers, the death toll from direct executions was probably hundreds of thousands.
Hitler opposed recruiting Soviet collaborators for military and police functions, blaming non-German recruits for defeat in World War I. Nevertheless, military leaders in the east disregarded his instructions and recruited such collaborators since the war began; Himmler recognized in July 1941 that locally-recruited police would be necessary. The motivations of those who joined are not well known, although it is assumed that many joined to survive or improve their living conditions and others had ideological motives. A large proportion of those who survived being taken prisoner in 1941 did so because they collaborated with the Germans. Most had supporting roles such as drivers, cooks, grooms or translators; others were directly engaged in fighting, particularly during anti-partisan warfare.
A minority of captured prisoners of war were reserved by each field army for forced labor in its operational area; these prisoners were not registered. Their treatment varied, with some having living conditions similar to German soldiers and others being treated as badly as they were in the camps. A smaller number joined dedicated military units with German officers, staffed by Soviet ethnic minorities. The first anti-partisan unit was formed from Cossack prisoners of war in July 1941. In 1943, there were 53 battalions raised from prisoners of war and other Soviet citizens: fourteen in the Turkestan Legion, nine in the Armenian Legion, eight each in the Azerbaijani and Georgian Legions, and seven in the North Caucasian and Idel-Ural Legions.
Along with those recruited by the German military, others were recruited by the SS to engage in genocide. The Trawniki men were recruited from prisoner-of-war camps; largely ethnic Ukrainians and Germans, they included Poles, Georgians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Tatars, Latvians, and Lithuanians. They helped suppress the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, worked in the extermination camps that killed millions of Jews in German-occupied Poland, and carried out anti-partisan operations. Collaborators were essential to the German war effort and the Holocaust.
If recaptured by the Red Army, collaborators were often shot. After the German defeat at Stalingrad in early 1943, defections of collaborators back to the Soviet side increased; in response, Hitler ordered all Soviet military collaborators transferred to the Western Front late that year. By D-Day in mid-1944, these soldiers were 10 percent of the French occupying forces. Some aided the resistance; in 1945, parts of the Georgian Legion rebelled. Soviet prisoners of war were forced to work in construction and pioneer forces for the army, air force, and navy. Prisoners of war were admitted into anti-aircraft units after April 1943, where they could be as much as 30 percent of their strength. By the end of the war, 1.4 million prisoners of war (out of a total of 2.4 million) were serving in some kind of auxiliary military unit.
See also: Forced labour under German rule during World War II. Forced labor engaged in by Soviet prisoners of war often violated the 1929 Geneva Convention. For example, the convention forbids work in war industries.
Without the labor of Soviet prisoners of war for military infrastructure in the German rear areas—building roads, bridges, airfields and train depots and converting the Soviet wider-gauge railway to the German standard—the German offensive would soon have failed. In September 1941, Hermann Göring ordered the use of prisoners of war for mine clearing and construction of infrastructure to free up construction battalions. Many prisoners ran away because of poor conditions in the camps (limiting forced-labor assignments), and others died. Particularly deadly assignments included road-building projects (especially in eastern Galicia), fortification-building on the Eastern Front, and mining in the Donets basin (authorized by Hitler in July 1942). About 48,000 were assigned to this task, but most never began their labor assignments and the remainder perished from the conditions or had escaped by March 1943.
In September 1941, Himmler began advocating the transfer of 100,000, then 200,000 Soviet prisoners of war for forced labor in Nazi concentration camps under the control of the SS; the camps previously held 80,000 people. By October, segregated areas designated for prisoners of war had been established at Neuengamme, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Gross-Rosen, Sachsenhausen, Dachau, and Mauthausen by clearing prisoners from existing barracks or building new ones. Most of the incoming prisoners were planned to be imprisoned in two new camps established in German-occupied Poland, Majdanek and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, as part of Himmler's colonization plans.
Despite the intention to exploit their labor, most of the 25,000 or 30,000 who arrived in late 1941 were in poor condition and incapable of work. Kept in worse conditions and provided less food than other prisoners, they had a higher mortality rate; 80 percent were dead by February 1942. The SS killed politically-suspect, sick, and weak prisoners individually, and carried out mass executions in response to infectious-disease outbreaks. Experimental execution techniques were tested on prisoners of war: gas vans at Sachsenhausen and Zyklon B in gas chambers at Auschwitz. So many died at Auschwitz that its crematoria were overloaded; the SS began tattooing prisoner numbers in November 1941 to keep track of which prisoners had died. Contrary to Himmler's assumption, more Soviet prisoners of war did not replace those who died. The number of new captives declined, and Hitler decided at the end of October 1941 to deploy the remaining Soviet prisoners of war in the German war economy.
In addition to those sent for labor in late 1941, others were recaptured after escapes or arrested for offenses such as relationships with German women, insubordination, refusal to work, and suspected resistance activities or sabotage or were expelled from collaborationist military units. Red Army women were often pressured to renounce their prisoner-of-war status to be transferred to civilian forced-labor programs. Some refused, and were sent to concentration camps. About 1,000 were imprisoned at Ravensbrück, and others at Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Mauthausen. Those imprisoned in concentration camps for an infraction lost their prisoner-of-war status, in violation of the Geneva Convention. Officers were over-represented among the more than 100,000 men and an unknown number of women who were transferred to Nazi concentration camps.
The first 200,000 Soviet prisoners of war were deported to Germany in July and August 1941 to fill the labor demands of agriculture and industry. The deportees faced conditions similar to those in the occupied Soviet Union. Hitler halted the transports in mid-August, but changed his mind on 31 October; along with the prisoners of war, a larger number of Soviet civilians were sent. The camps in Germany had an internal police force of non-Russian prisoners who were often violent towards Russians; Soviet Germans often staffed the camp administration, and were interpreters. Both groups received more rations and preferential treatment. Guarding the prisoners was the responsibility of the army's .
Many Nazi leaders wanted to avoid contact between Germans and prisoners of war, limiting work assignments for prisoners. Labor assignments differed in accordance with the local economy. Many worked for private employers in agriculture and industry, and others were rented to local authorities for such tasks as building roads and canals, quarrying, and cutting peat. Employers paid RM0.54 per day per man for agricultural work, and RM0.80 for other work; many also provided prisoners with extra food to achieve productivity. Workers received RM0.20 per day in currency that could be spent at the camp . By early 1942, to combat the fact that many prisoners were too malnourished to work, the leadership increased rations to surviving prisoners. Not all prisoners benefited from higher rations, however, and they remained vulnerable to malnutrition and disease. The number of prisoners working in Germany continued to increase, from 455,000 in September 1942 to 652,000 in May 1944. By the end of the war, at least 1.3 million Soviet prisoners of war had been deported to Germany or its annexed territories. Of these, 400,000 did not survive; most of the deaths occurred in the winter of 1941–1942. Others were deported to other locations, including Norway and the Channel Islands, where many died.
Nazi propaganda portrayed Soviet prisoners of war as murderers, and photographs of cannibalism in prisoner-of-war camps were seen as proof of "Russian subhumanity". Unlike the Holocaust, where killings occurred far from Germany's borders and many Germans claimed ignorance after the war, Soviet prisoners of war were dying en masse in Germany in 1941; historian said that at least 227,000 had died in Germany by mid-1942. According to Security Service reports, many Germans worried about food shortages and wanted Soviet prisoners to be killed or given minimal food for this reason.
As early as July 1941, atrocities against Soviet prisoners of war were integrated into Soviet propaganda. Information about the Commissar Order, described as mandating the killing of all officers or prisoners captured, was disseminated to Red Army soldiers. Accurate information about the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war reached Red Army soldiers by a number of means, and was an effective deterrent against defection.
About 500,000 prisoners had been freed by Allied armies by February 1945, as early as 1941 and with greater frequency from 1943. During its advance, the Red Army found mass graves at former prisoner-of-war camps. In the war's final months, most of the remaining Soviet prisoners were forced on death marches similar to those of concentration-camp prisoners. Many were killed during these marches or died from illness after liberation. They returned to a country which had lost millions of people to the war and had its infrastructure destroyed by German Army scorched-earth tactics. For years afterwards the Soviet population experienced food shortages. Former prisoners of war were among the 451,000 or more Soviet citizens who avoided repatriation and remained in Germany or emigrated to Western countries after the war. The treatment of Soviet prisoners of war was included in the of the International Military Tribunal indictment.
Soviet policy, intended to discourage defection, was that any soldier who fell into enemy hands or was encircled without capture was guilty of high treason and subject to execution, confiscation of property, and reprisal against their family. Issued in August 1941, classified all surrendering commanders and political officers culpable deserters to be summarily executed and their families arrested. Sometimes Red Army soldiers were told that the families of defectors would be shot; although thousands were arrested, it is unknown if any such executions were carried out. As the war continued, Soviet leaders realized that most of their citizens had not voluntarily collaborated. In November 1944, the State Defense Committee decided that freed prisoners of war would be returned to the army; those who served in German military units or the police would be handed over to the NKVD. At the Yalta Conference, the Western Allies agreed to repatriate Soviet citizens regardless of their wishes. The Soviet regime set up filtration camps, hospitals, and recuperation centers for freed prisoners of war, where most stayed for one or two months. These camps were ineffective in separating the minority of voluntary collaborators.
Most defectors and collaborators escaped prosecution. Trawniki men were typically sentenced to 10 to 25 years in a labor camp, and military collaborators often received six-year sentences in special settlements. According to official statistics, "57.8 per cent were sent home, 19.1 per cent were remobilized into the army, 14.5 per cent were transferred to labour battalions of the People's Commissariat for Defence, 6.5 per cent were transferred to the NKVD 'for disposal', and 2.1 per cent were deployed in Soviet military offices abroad". According to another estimate, of 1.5 million returnees by March 1946, 43 percent continued their military service, 22 percent were drafted into labor battalions for two years, 18 percent were sent home, 15 percent were sent to a forced-labor camp, and two percent worked for repatriation commissions. Death sentences were rare. On 7 July 1945, a Supreme Soviet decree pardoned all former prisoners of war who had not collaborated. Another amnesty in 1955 released all remaining collaborators except those sentenced for torture or murder.
Former prisoners of war were not recognized as veterans and were denied veterans' benefits; they often faced discrimination due to the belief that they were traitors or deserters. In 1995, Russia equalized the status of former prisoners of war with that of other veterans. They were excluded from the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future fund and did not receive any formal reparations until 2015, when the German government paid a symbolic amount to the few thousand still alive.
See also: World War II casualties of the Soviet Union. The number of prisoners recorded as captured by Germany in 1941—3.35 million—exceeds the Red Army's reported missing by up to one million. This discrepancy can be partly explained by the Red Army's inability to keep track of losses during a chaotic withdrawal. Additionally, as many as one in eight of the people registered as Soviet prisoners of war had never been members of the Red Army. Some were mobilized, but never reached their units; others belonged to the NKVD, People's Militia, were from uniformed civilian services such as the railway corps and fortification workers, or were otherwise civilians. Viktor Zemskov says that the German figures represent a minimum value, and should be adjusted upwards by 450,000 to account for prisoners who were killed before arriving in a camp. Zemskov estimates around 3.9 million dead out of 6.2 million captured, including 200,000 killed as military collaborators. Other historians, working from the German figure of 5.7 million captured, have reached lower estimates: Christian Streit's 3.3 million, Hartmann's 3 million, and Dieter Pohl's 2.8 to 3 million.
A majority of the deaths, about two million, occurred before January 1942. The death rate of 300,000 to 500,000 each month from October 1941 to January 1942 is one of the highest death rates from mass atrocity in history, equaling the peak killings of Jews between July and October 1942. By this time, more Soviet prisoners of war had died than any other group targeted by the Nazis; only the European Jews would surpass this figure. An additional one million Soviet prisoners of war died after the beginning of 1942—27 percent of the total number of prisoners alive or captured after that date.
Most of the Soviet prisoners of war who died did so in the custody of the German Army. More than two million died in the Soviet Union, about 500,000 in the General Governorate (Poland), 400,000 in Germany, and 13,000 in German-occupied Norway. Deaths of prisoners of war from the Soviet Union greatly exceeded other nationalities; the second highest mortality rate was that of Italian military internees (six to seven percent). Polish prisoners of war were considered racially similar to Soviet prisoners, but their conditions differed greatly and death rate was an order of magnitude lower. More than 28 percent of Soviet prisoners of war died in Finnish captivity and 15 to 30 percent of Axis prisoners died in Soviet custody, despite the Soviet government's attempt to reduce the death rate. Throughout the war, Soviet prisoners of war had a far higher mortality rate than Polish or Soviet civilian forced laborers, whose rate was under 10 percent.
Christian Hartmann calls the treatment of Soviet prisoners "one of the greatest crimes in military history". Thousands of books have been published about the Holocaust, but in 2016 there were no books in English about the fate of Soviet prisoners of war. Few prisoner accounts were published, perpetrators were not tried for their crimes, and little scholarly research has been attempted. Christian Streit's landmark Keine Kameraden was published in 1978, and the Soviet archives became available in 1990. Prisoners who remained in the occupied Soviet Union usually were not registered under their names, so their fates will never be known.
Although the treatment of prisoners of war was remembered by Soviet citizens as one of the worst aspects of the occupation, Soviet commemoration of the war focused on antifascism and those killed in combat. During perestroika in 1987 and 1988, a debate erupted in the Soviet Union about whether the former prisoners of war had been traitors; those arguing in the negative prevailed after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Russian nationalist historiography defended the former prisoners, minimizing incidents of defection and collaboration and emphasizing resistance.
The fate of Soviet prisoners of war was largely ignored in West and East Germany, where resistance activities were a focus. After the war, some Germans made apologetic statements about the 1941 causes of mass death. Some blamed the deaths on the failure of diplomacy between the Soviet Union and Germany after Operation Barbarossa, or on prior starvation of soldiers by the Soviet government. Crimes against prisoners of war were exposed to the German public in the Wehrmacht exhibition around 2000, which challenged the myth of the clean Wehrmacht still prevalent. Memorials and markers have been established at cemeteries and former camps by state or private initiatives. For the 80th anniversary of World War II, several German historical and memorial organizations organized a traveling exhibition.
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