How Soviet prisoners of war lived during the Great Patriotic War (8 photos). Big fish “Who doesn’t want to give up follow me!”

Lieutenant General Mikhail Fedorovich Lukin was captured on October 14, 1941. He spent the entire war in captivity. After his release he was reinstated in the ranks of the Red Army. For his courage and heroism while in German captivity, he was awarded the Orders of Lenin and the Red Banner.

Lieutenant General Muzychenko Ivan Nikolaevich, was captured on August 6, 1941. He spent the entire war in captivity. After his release he was reinstated in the ranks of the Red Army. For his courage and heroism while in German captivity, he was awarded the Orders of Lenin and the Red Banner.

In total, there were 26 such generals, released from captivity, reinstated in the ranks of the Red Army and presented for awards. The “Vlasovites” and other traitors were not sent to “prison”, but tried and, in most cases, executed.

Every serviceman released from captivity was checked. For privates, such a check lasted no more than a month, for junior officers up to two months, for senior officers up to three months. The circumstances of the captivity and behavior in captivity were clarified. Based on the results of such a check, the serviceman was either reinstated in the Army or sent... to “prison.”

“One day in February, I suddenly received a phone call from the head of the Smersh service of our 46th Tank Brigade of the Guard, Captain Ivan Reshnyak, who, like me, was a veteran of the unit who fought in the West and Far East.

- Dmitry, please come to me!

I walk and think: “Why did he need me? Maybe something has to do with the report to study?..”

He greeted me with a smile, shook my hand firmly and immediately got down to business:

- Do you, Dmitry, remember that in 1943, senior lieutenant Sergei Orlov was the commander of a tank platoon in your company?

His question surprised me very much.

- How do you, Ivan, know about this? And why are you interested in this person?

- And he showed up just recently. Lives in Ukraine. Listen to the information that came to the brigade through our channels. They ask you to confirm Orlov’s story...

At the end of 1946, senior lieutenant Orlov came to the local military registration and enlistment office and presented a military identification card, which he managed to keep in German camps, and said the following:

“During the battles near the city of Roslavl, Smolensk region in September 1943, I was the commander of a tank platoon of the first company, commanded by Dmitry Loza, commander of the first battalion of the 233rd tank brigade of the mechanized corps. My English Matilda tank was hit. The crew died, and I myself, seriously wounded, was captured.

I was in several fascist concentration camps. In March of '44, I escaped with a group of seven prisoners of war. We were being followed. Four people died, but three managed to escape. I led the survivors through the front line and stayed to live in Ukraine, while my two fellow prisoners went home. Addresses are available.

Due to the fact that my leg could not bend after a serious injury, I was no longer drafted into the army.”

To the question: “Why was he, an officer, silent for almost two years and did not appear at the military registration and enlistment office to tell all this?” - The senior lieutenant replied: “I felt bad, I didn’t think I would live long. The wound was very bothersome. I no longer have the strength to hide my past. I came to tell the whole truth about myself. You decide my future fate!..”

I listened to Orlov’s confession, and my soul was seething. Speaking about his “troubles,” my former colleague hoped that after many years of bloody war, not a single witness - an officer or sergeant - of the tankers of the “first firing line” remained alive. Could they have survived such a battle with Matilda tanks? And this confidence let him down badly. There are witnesses left. We knew the whole truth of those battles near Roslavl. And how the former platoon commander behaved in them...

– What do you say, Dmitry, to what you heard?

- What an asshole! What a bastard - what a fable he came up with! – I barely squeezed out of myself.

- What's wrong? How did he offend you?

- In this fable, one thing is true: the place and time of the battles, the number of the unit and unit in which he fought then. And I didn’t forget my rank, last name and first name, bitch. Everything else is a complete lie..." ... Well, then the counterintelligence officers began to dig and dug up a lot of interesting things)))

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

You can “find yourself in captivity” (having been wounded, falling into an unconscious state, and having no ammunition for resistance) or “surrender” - raise your hands when you still have something to fight for. Why does an armed man who has sworn allegiance to his homeland stop resisting? Maybe this is human nature? After all, he obeys the instinct of self-preservation, which is based on a feeling of fear.

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

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

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

Affects behavior in battle physical condition, sometimes a person “just can’t do it anymore.” Recently, healthy young men were exhausted by hunger, cold, unhealed wounds, enemy fire without the possibility of shelter... A striking example of this is a message from the encircled 2nd Shock Army of the Volkhov Front (spring 1942): “The swamps have melted, no trenches, no dugouts, we are eating young foliage, birch bark, leather parts of ammunition, small animals... We received 50 g of crackers for 3 weeks... We finished off the last horses... For the last 3 days we haven’t eaten at all... People are extremely exhausted, there is a group mortality from starvation.” War is constant hard labor. Soldiers dig up millions of tons of earth, usually with a small sapper shovel! Positions have moved a little - dig again; there can be no talk of a respite in combat conditions. Does any army know about sleeping on the move? And for us this was a common occurrence on the march.

The US Army has an unusual type of casualty: “combat fatigue.” During the Normandy landings (June 1944), it was 20 percent of total number dropped out of the battle. Overall, in World War II, US losses due to “overwork” amounted to 929,307 people! The Soviet soldier remained in battle formations until he was killed or wounded (there were also changes in units, but only due to large losses or tactical considerations).

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

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

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

In addition, the will of the defenders was influenced by the lack of a reliable rear. Even if Soviet soldiers and commanders held out to the death against all odds, in the rear they already had burning cities that were mercilessly bombed by German planes. The soldiers were worried about the fate of their loved ones. Streams of refugees replenished the sea of ​​prisoners. The atmosphere of panic in the first weeks of the war also played into the hands of the attackers and did not allow them to soberly assess the current situation and make the right decisions to combat the invaders.

In the order people's commissar Defense of the USSR No. 270 dated August 16, 1941, it was emphasized: “Commanders and political workers who tear off their insignia during battle and desert to the rear or surrender to the enemy are considered malicious deserters, whose families are subject to arrest as relatives of deserters who violated the oath and betrayed their homeland. .. Oblige each military man, regardless of his official position, to demand from a superior commander, if part of him is surrounded, to fight to the last opportunity in order to break through to his own, and if such a commander or part of the Red Army soldiers, instead of organizing a rebuff to the enemy, prefer to surrender to him as prisoner - destroy them by all means, both ground and air, and the families of the Red Army soldiers who surrendered are deprived of state benefits and assistance.”

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

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

The attitude towards prisoners in Rus' has long been humane. The “Conciliar Code” of Muscovite Rus' (1649) demanded mercy towards the vanquished: “Sparing an enemy who asks for mercy; not killing the unarmed; not fighting with women; not touching young children. Treat prisoners humanely, be ashamed of barbarism. No less than weapons to defeat the enemy love of humanity. A warrior must crush the enemy’s power, and not defeat the unarmed.” And they did this for centuries.

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

Unfortunately, most of the provisions of the Geneva Conventions “Regarding the Treatment of Prisoners of War” remained only on paper. German captivity is one of the darkest phenomena of the Second World War. The picture of fascist captivity was very difficult; the atrocities did not stop throughout the war. Everyone knows what the “cultured” Germans and Japanese did during the Second World War, conducting experiments on people, mocking them in death camps... This is how K.D. wrote. Vorobyov in his story “This is us, Lord!...”, about what he had to experience in fascist captivity: “Kaunas camp “G” was a quarantine transit point. Therefore, there were no special “improvement” features typical of standard camps. But there were SS men in it, armed with... iron shovels. They were already standing in a row, wearily leaning on their "combat weapons." their blood splashed, the skin cut off by an incorrect oblique blow of a shovel flew in pieces. The camp was filled with the roar of the frenzied murderers, the groans of those being killed, and the heavy stamping of feet in fear of people rushing about.”

Or here’s another: “The food ration given to prisoners was 150 grams of moldy bread made from sawdust and 425 grams of gruel per day... In Siauliai, the largest building is a prison. In the courtyard, in the corridors, in four hundred cells, in the attic - wherever It was possible that there were more than one thousand people sitting there, standing and writhing. The Germans dismantled the water supply. Those who died from typhus and hunger were removed from the first floor and from the courtyard. In the cells and corridors of the other floors, the corpses lay there for months, corroded by countless things. number of lice. In the morning, six machine gunners entered the prison yard. Three vans, filled with the dead and still breathing, were taken out of the prison into the field. Each van dragged fifty prisoners. The place where the half-corpses were dumped in a huge ditch was four miles away from the city. One hundred and fifty people carrying a terrible cargo reached there, eighty to ninety returned. The rest were shot on the way to the cemetery and back.”

And yet, many who were captured tried to escape: in groups, alone, from camps, during transfer. Here are the data from German sources: “As of 09/01/42 (for 14 months of the war): 41,300 Russians escaped from captivity.” Further - more. The Minister of Economics of Hitler's Germany, Speer, reports to the Fuhrer: “The escapes have assumed alarming proportions: every month, out of the total number of those who fled, up to 40,000 people can be found and returned to their places of work.” By 05/01/44 (there is still a year of war ahead), 1 million prisoners of war were killed while trying to escape. Our grandfathers and fathers!

In Germany and the USSR during World War II, the relatives of the missing person were denied support (they did not pay benefits or pensions). A person who surrendered was perceived as an enemy; this was not only the position of the authorities, but also the attitude of society. Hostility, lack of sympathy and social support - former prisoners faced all this on a daily basis. In Japan, suicide was preferred to captivity, otherwise the prisoner's relatives would be persecuted in their homeland.

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

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

Objectively, captivity is always defeat, submission to the will of the enemy. But at the same time, this is also the right of the unarmed. While in captivity, a warrior must count on the protection of his rights from the state that sent him to the front. The state is obliged to adhere to one of the ancient international principles - the return of a prisoner of war to his homeland and his restoration to all the rights of a citizen. In addition, the state that captured the military personnel must comply with the norms of international law.

The following facts are interesting. In 1985, the United States established the medal "For Meritorious Service in Captivity." It is awarded to soldiers who have been captured, including posthumously. And on April 9, 2003, the American president announced a new national holiday - Memorial Day for American Prisoners of War. Addressing the nation on this occasion, he said: "They are national heroes, and their service by our country will not be forgotten." All this confirms in the soldiers the confidence that they will be taken care of. The idea that the homeland does not forget its own in war and does not blame them for anything is firmly rooted in the minds of American soldiers. war “will not be lucky.” In Western countries, people think differently: “The most valuable thing in life is life itself, which is given only once. And you can do anything to preserve it." Expressions such as "die for your homeland," "sacrifice yourself," "honor more valuable than life", "You cannot betray" have long been no longer the measure of a soldier and a man for them.

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 forces. 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
Enrolled 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 German army against the Anglo-American troops and those captured 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 formed a 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 the Soviet military personnel released from captivity passed the test successfully. 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 humaneness of Stalin’s justice.

After the surrender of Germany, the question arose about the transfer of displaced persons directly across the line of contact of 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 led the Allied delegation, struggled, he had to sign a document on May 22, according to which there was to be a mandatory repatriation of all Soviet citizens as “Easterners” (i.e., 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 that was not the case. Despite the signed agreement, the allies applied forced repatriation only to the “Easterners”, 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 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.

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

The numbers speak

Today, the question of the number of Soviet prisoners of war during the Second World War is still debatable. In German historiography, this figure reaches 6 million people, although the German command spoke about 5 million 270 thousand. However, one should take into account the fact that, violating the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the German authorities included among prisoners of war not only soldiers and officers of the Red Army, but also party officials, partisans, underground fighters, as well as the entire male population from 16 to 55 years old, who retreated 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 stated about 4 million. The difficulty of counting is largely due to the fact that Soviet prisoners of war before 1943 have not received registration numbers for years. It is precisely established that from German captivity 1,836,562 people returned. Their further fate is as follows: 1 million were sent for further passage military service, 600 thousand - to work in industry, more than 200 thousand - to the 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 of 50-60 km. per 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, leaves, 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 Lugansk 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.

Soviet prisoners of war were subject to much harsher conditions than soldiers from other countries. Germany cited the formal basis for this as the fact that the Soviet Union did not sign the Hague Convention of 1907 and did not accede to the Geneva Convention of 1929. In reality, the German authorities were implementing a directive from the High Command, according to which communists and commissars were not recognized as soldiers, and no international legal protection was extended to them. Since the beginning of the war, this applied to all prisoners of war of the Red Army. Discrimination against Soviet prisoners of war was evident in everything. For example, unlike other prisoners, they often did not receive winter clothing and were involved exclusively in the most difficult work. Also, the activities of the International Red Cross did not extend to Soviet prisoners. In camps intended exclusively for prisoners of war, conditions were even more horrific. Only a small part of the prisoners were housed in relatively suitable premises, while the majority, due to incredible crowding, could not only lie down, but also stand. And some were completely deprived of a roof over their heads. In the camp for Soviet prisoners of war - “Umanskaya Yama”, prisoners were under open air, where there was no way to hide from the heat, wind or rain. The “Uman pit” essentially turned into a huge mass grave. “The dead lay for a long time next to the living. Nobody paid attention to the corpses anymore, there were so many of them,” the surviving prisoners recalled.

One of the orders of the director of the German concern IG Farbenindastry noted that “increasing the productivity of prisoners of war can be achieved by reducing the rate of food distribution.” This directly related to Soviet prisoners. However, in order to maintain the working capacity of prisoners of war, it was necessary to charge an additional food allowance. For a week it looked like this: 50 gr. cod, 100 gr. artificial honey and up to 3.5 kg. potatoes. However, additional nutrition could only be received for 6 weeks. The usual diet of prisoners of war can be seen in the example of Stalag No. 2 in Hammerstein. Prisoners received 200 grams per day. bread, ersatz coffee and vegetable soup - the nutritional value of the diet did not exceed 1000 calories. In the zone of Army Group Center, the daily bread quota for prisoners of war was even less - 100 grams. For comparison, let’s name the food supply standards for German prisoners of war in the USSR. They received 600 grams per day. bread, 500 gr. potatoes, 93 gr. meat and 80 gr. croup What they fed Soviet prisoners of war had little resemblance to food. Ersatz bread, which in Germany was called “Russian”, had the following composition: 50% rye bran, 20% beets, 20% cellulose, 10% straw. However, the “hot lunch” looked even less edible: in fact, it was a scoop of stinking liquid from poorly washed horse offal, and this “food” was prepared in cauldrons in which asphalt was previously boiled. Idle prisoners of war were deprived of such food, and therefore their chances of survival were reduced to zero.

By the end of 1941, Germany had a colossal need for labor, mainly for military industry, and they decided to fill the deficit primarily at the expense of Soviet prisoners of war. This situation saved many Soviet soldiers and officers from the mass extermination planned by the Nazi authorities. According to the German historian G. Mommsen, “with 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 a “most 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 to concentration camps poisonous substances were tested. 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 the death of many of them, the camp authorities exterminated 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 those who, unable to withstand the inhuman conditions of detention, 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.

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 zone of deployment of six fronts - 4 Ukrainian and 2 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.

In the tragic days of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War for our country, the fate of the soldiers and commanders who were captured by the Nazis was especially difficult. Even on the evening of June 21, 1941, none of them thought that within a few weeks, and for some even days, he would go to the West, but unarmed, in a column under German escort, accompanied by the barking of shepherd dogs. And then some will suffer torment and death, while others will break and serve their enemies.

The topic of captivity of Soviet soldiers in our country was not very publicized for many years and was little studied by historians. Because captivity was considered to be, first of all, a disgrace for the soldier and especially the commander. And also because in total, during the war years, more than 5 million Soviet soldiers and commanders were captured; in number, this is almost the entire pre-war personnel army.

Neither privates nor generals were immune from captivity. Soldiers and commanders fell into enemy hands in different ways...

“If I don’t get up, he’ll finish me off...”

“I woke up to someone painfully poking the barrel of a machine gun into my face, wondering if I was alive,” said Lukyan Kornilin, a senior lieutenant from the 409th Infantry Regiment. I opened my eyes a German in a helmet is standing above me. Somehow I felt that the German was still thinking about finishing me off right away... He gave the command in German, I realized that if I didn’t get up right away, he would finish me off. I got up, but I’m staggering; I can barely stand on my feet. They threw me into a truck and took me to Propoisk. From there they drove in a convoy to Bobruisk.

Before being captured, Lukyan Kornilin had to fight for only a few days. His battalion, retreating, quickly melted away.

Ammunition was almost gone, food became tight. German aviation was pestering me, recalls Lukyan Alekseevich. It happened that the plane, sparing no ammunition, even chased after one fighter who found himself in a field or on the road. During one such raid, I was severely concussed by a bomb explosion. None of their people picked me up; they considered me dead. And somewhere on the third day the Germans found me, apparently combing the area. He escaped from captivity twice, once unsuccessfully: he was sentenced to death, but miraculously remained alive. They beat me for a long time, and it would not be as offensive to suffer from the Germans as from my own traitors. The second time I ran successfully. He reached his own people and fought again, but in a different unit. The war ended in Czechoslovakia...

Lukyan Kornilin did not experience any post-war repressions, except for the inspection by SMERSH. He lived like millions of people and worked.

By the way, according to German data, only from concentration camps in Germany and Western Europe On May 1, 1944, 66,694 Soviet prisoners of war had escaped. It is impossible to determine the exact total number of those who escaped captivity. More than 40 thousand Soviet prisoners of war fought in resistance units in Western Europe.

Over many years of search work, I had the opportunity to meet many Soviet soldiers and officers who were captured and survived.

“Those who couldn’t walk were shot…”

From the memoirs of gunner Foka Petrov:

At 8:00 am on July 15, the battalion commander ordered a retreat. Our retreat was observed by a German plane. The guns were the last to leave, covering the infantry. When we approached Krichev, the battalion commander’s adjutant ordered us to take up defensive positions here. Our crew took a position on the main street, on the right side of the roadway, the second gun was installed on another street, as they were waiting for tanks on the road from Chausy station. After some time, two more horse-drawn guns appeared from another unit, and the battalion commander’s adjutant ordered these units to take up defensive positions. They stood in front of my gun. Several minutes passed, the shelling began, a semi-truck rushed by, and an unfamiliar commander standing on the running board shouted that German tanks were following him. I saw how the shells hit the guns in front, and how the soldiers fell there. Our platoon commander, seeing this, ordered a retreat. He fired the last shell, and they ran down the street, bullets whistling. There were three of us, we ran into the yard, from there through the garden into the ravine. I no longer saw the gun commander and platoon commander; I also don’t know what happened to the second gun.

On the other side of the ravine there was a one-story stone house, so we decided to go there. There were no residents. They climbed into the attic, looked into the basement and looked for something to eat. They found boiled meat in the underground, ate it and began observing. Occasionally, guns fired from somewhere outside the city. Then we saw tanks in the ravine and thought that they were our own; there were some red markings on their turrets. The Germans took a closer look! In a ravine we saw a woman with a cow, went out to her, asked about the situation, she said that the whole city was occupied by tanks. They asked her how to get out of the city, she showed the way along a ravine. We went and met an old man, he showed the direction - through a hemp field. We passed it, looked back at the city, and saw a woman at the barn; she said that motorcyclists had recently passed through here. She showed us a fighter dozing in a ravine. We passed through gardens and in holes in a ravine we met and raised several more fighters. There were seven or eight of us gathered. The sun was setting. An elderly man saw us, came up, and began to treat us with vodka from a quarter. But it was necessary to go further, and, first of all, to pass under the bridge, which was visible in the distance. One of us went on reconnaissance and said that there was a German standing on the bridge. We decided to spend the night in the garden, counting on the advance of our troops. We were lying under a linden tree, a woman came up and asked her about the situation in the city. She said that Krichev was full of German cars, and the bridges had been blown up. German patrols apprehend all the men. She brought us a loaf of bread and divided it equally. We asked the woman to bring us civilian clothes. She brought jackets, trousers, shirts. Early in the morning we went to the other side of the ravine. One of us went to look for something to drink in the ravine, and was stopped by a German with a machine gun. I see both of them rising towards us. We lay down in the grass and crawled, but the German pointed his machine gun at us, shouted, and we had to get up. He led us all through the owner’s yard; she still managed to give us a mug of milk. There were cars and field kitchens in the garden, and several of our soldiers were already sitting there. The German guards ordered us to sit on the grass and threw in pieces of moldy bread.

Then all of us, about twenty of us, were taken to the river. The Germans drove special vehicles with pontoons to the river and forced us to push them into the river. At first we were kept in the yard of a general store, then they moved us to the territory of a cement plant. At the beginning of August we drove to Mogilev. Before the movement began, the Germans announced that there were five thousand of us here.

It took several days to get from Krichev to Mogilev. They stopped for the night near the village or at a place convenient for security. Apparently, the population knew that columns with prisoners were supposed to pass, the women laid vegetables on the road so that we could take them without breaking ranks. The Germans warned us not to take it, they would shoot, but we still grabbed it on the move. Those who lost their legs and could not walk were shot by the Germans. I remember how we were walking through the village, and from the window of the house a woman stuck her hand out with a piece of bread. One prisoner ran out of the column, and the guard shot him in the back with a Mauser. I remember how a German shot one of ours when he sat down on the side of the road to change his shoes. There were escapes, but I personally did not see them. Maybe from other columns. Sometimes, when we were passing through the forest, heavy machine gun fire could be heard.

In Mogilev we were kept near the House of the Red Army, next to the Dnieper. Officers captured in uniform were kept separately. Some junior commanders disguised themselves as privates. After Mogilev Orsha, Novo-Borisov, then Germany. At the beginning of October we were taken to the south of Germany, to the Black Forest. We worked under the mountain, made a tunnel. Here I was severely beaten, but miraculously I survived. In February 1942, swollen, I was sent to the infirmary. In May, after a correctional camp, he was sent to agricultural work, then ended up in Lorraine, in the coal mines. The Americans liberated us on April 14, 1945, and when we left for the Soviet zone of Germany, he was enlisted as a clerk in a mortar regiment. Demobilized in May '46...

Perhaps Foka Petrov was lucky, but captivity had no effect on his post-war life.

“I didn’t have time to shoot myself...”

Even the unit commander could quite easily be captured in certain circumstances.

The commander of the 278th Light Artillery Regiment, Colonel Trofim Smolin, recalls:

In mid-August we found ourselves in deep encirclement; the whole regiment could not get out to our own. I decided that we would go out in groups. I order: disable the equipment, disband the horses, and each commander lead his own unit.

We walked about ten people, soon only four remained. One day in the morning, while we were still sleeping, in the forest, in my sleep I heard machine gun fire very close. Raised his head - Germans! The instructor of the political department of the regiment was lying with me, I forgot his last name, he managed to shoot himself, I look: my fathers, there is a hole in my head and my brain is leaking... I didn’t have time to shoot myself: the machine gunners are already nearby...

During the war, Trofim Smolin went through several death camps. Miraculously, he survived when he was sentenced to death for refusing to serve in the Vlasov army.

After the war, Colonel Smolin was restored to his rank and even received the Order of Lenin for the summer battles of 1941.

By the way, during the war years, 80 Soviet generals and brigade commanders were captured or surrendered. Five of them managed to escape. 23 generals died in captivity, 12 went over to the enemy side. Seven generals who were captured were shot by the verdict of a military tribunal, and 26 were restored to their rights.

“Who doesn’t want to give up? Follow me!”

There were moments in the fate of many front-line soldiers when they had to choose: captivity or death.

Ivan Dzeshkovich, lieutenant, commander of the mortar battery of the 624th Infantry Regiment recalls:

October 41st, leaving the encirclement. Ahead is an ordinary hollow, nothing suspicious. Our reconnaissance was probably ahead. There are stacks on the sides, when suddenly two tanks crawl out of these stacks. I look in the other direction and from there there are two tanks, head on. Maybe there were more coming, but I couldn’t see it. On the tanks, soldiers in our uniforms shout: “We meet you!” But the tanks are German! Then they drove closer, and from the tanks they shouted in broken Russian: “Surrender! You are in a hopeless situation!” We didn’t even have time to think of anything...

From the memoirs of Sormovich Vasily Sviridov, commander of the headquarters battery of the artillery regiment, retired lieutenant colonel:

We then walked at the head of the regiment's column, approximately the size of a battalion. Those who were behind managed to escape, and we found ourselves sandwiched on both sides. We managed to deploy the gun and even knocked out one tank, but there was no way to resist further: the tanks had herded us all into a heap and were about to begin to crush us. It began “Save yourself as best you can!” Some shoot back, others run, but the machine gunners fire in pursuit. I see that the tankers have herded us into a pile and are already starting to form a column and issuing commands in Russian, now it will be my turn. Those who were on horses ran away, and my filly was eaten even earlier. What to do? I shout: “Guys! Anyone who doesn’t want to give up, follow me!” About fifteen people from the column ran after me, the Germans were shooting after me with machine guns. I ran as hard as I could, but before the war I was the champion of the Kyiv Military District in running. In total, seven of us were saved out of fifteen...

From the story of Alexander Shkurin, head of the special department of the 624th Infantry Regiment:

One german tank we knocked them out, but others began to crush the carts with the wounded. I closed my eyes so as not to see this horror... It was pointless to resist the tanks here. I and several fighters on horseback galloped towards the forest. One tank noticed us and began to cut off the path, firing from a machine gun. But, fortunately for us, he didn’t hit, and we went down into the hole. Bullets whistle overhead. I knew that I couldn’t surrender, but I could be seriously wounded. He pulled out secret documents from the tablet and wanted to burn them and shoot himself. Then I see that the tank stopped firing, and I galloped out of the hole towards the forest. The tank started shooting, but I was already far away. The horse was very scared, stumbled, and I fell three times, but the horse immediately stopped, lowered its head, and I took the bridle again. I don’t remember how much time passed, but I found myself at the edge of the forest with one soldier. After a long search through the forest, and there was already snow all around and frost on the trees, we finally found our own from the regiment, the commander, the commissar, and others. There was no end to the joy...

Some, having lost the ability to fight and, most importantly, the will to resist, chose captivity and raised their hands up, others tried to use the slightest chance so that, even at the risk of dying right there, they could go out to their own people to fight further.

Reference: according to the Office of the Commissioner for Repatriation under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, in 1941 more than 2 million Soviet soldiers and commanders were captured (49% of the total number of those captured during the war), in 1942 1 million 339 thousand (33%), in 1943 487 thousand (12%), in 1944 203 thousand (5%), in 1945 40.6 thousand (1%). 1 million 836 thousand people returned home from captivity, of which, as accomplices of the Germans, 234 thousand (every 13th) received time in the Gulag, 180 thousand people emigrated to the West. 250-300 thousand Soviet prisoners of war served in the formations of the German army and police. In total, according to the General Staff of the Soviet Army, 4 million 559 thousand Soviet soldiers and officers were captured and disappeared, according to German data 5 million 270 thousand. According to the USSR Prosecutor General R. Rudenko, a total of 3 million 912,283 Soviet prisoners of war died in fascist captivity.