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TIL over 500'000 German prisoners of war died in forced labour camps, after the German surrender, while detained in the Soviet Union. With the latest survivors only being released a decade later.
3,060,000 German military personnel were taken prisoner by the USSR and that 1,094,250 died in captivity (549,360 from 1941 to April 1945; 542,911 from May 1945 to June 1950 and 1,979 from July 1950 to 1955).[4]
I think most people here are aware of the mass genocide and countless atrocities commited by the nazi regime. I just wanted to shine the light on an atrocity (violated human rights, and the original 1864 geneva convention) commited by the soviet union.
My grandfather was one of these Russian POW. He was 15 years old. Conscripted and sent to the front without a choice.
He said, he only survived the camp because he met his uncle there. That’s about all he was willing to talk about it.
In the first war years my greatgrandfather (his father) spent 3 years in prison because he spoke not favorably about the Nazi regime. No trial, no visits, no information. Everything he owned, including his business was expropriated by the Nazis.
He was supposed to be moved to a camp but then was suddenly released without any information and conscripted into the army.
Neither of them had any choice. Mere soldiers, the ones in the trenches, generally didn’t.
People were executed for refusing military service and after that they sent your whole family into a camp for “Sittenhaft” (kin collective punishment).
The SS and SA who were responsible for unbelievable atrocities were only a part of the German military. They were the “elite” units.
So, just like the “orcs” that Western liberals love to dehumanize, approve of war crimes against, and cheer for the brutal drone deaths of as they lose each of their limbs over the course of an hour? The ones I see them cheering for the brutalization of every day?
People were executed for refusing military service and after that they sent your whole family into a camp for “Sittenhaft” (kin collective punishment).
And this is how they force conscripted men willing to die for their principles. You may be willing to die for your principles, but a principled person probably isn’t willing to let their wife and kid slowly starve to death in a Nazi forced labor camp. The Nazis were pure evil.
On another note I just had a thought about the German scientists who fled the Reich pre WW2 due to prosecution and the German scientists who were employed post WW2. Did they ever meet and work on projects together lmao.
"German military personnel" were also known as Nazis.
I see no problem here, sucks to suck, should have thought of the consequences when they took up arms for a nation who was liquidating every Jewish man, woman, and child they could stick on cattle cars and gas to death.
Take the high road? As in let all the Nazis fuck off to Argentina?
7/10 Nazis killed were at the hands of the red army. We have the soviets to thank for ending WWII and curbing German Nazism, plain as. They literally saved the world.
While there is a lot of argument (in both directions) on the culpability of the average german soldier to the Nazis: The way you punish that is through trials. I hear Nuremburg had a few of those.
This was russia abducting enemy combatants and using them as slave labor for a decade. And, like most of stalin’s purges and enslavements, had very little to do with whatever crimes the slaves were accused of.
Lots of Wermacht soldiers did horrible things, and should have gone to trial for them. Lots of other Wermacht soldiers were forced and did not want the role. Maybe they even surrendered at the first chance they got, and this is what happened to them, died in labour camps.
The vast majority of POW captures were in the final year of the war, when it was teenagers and middle aged people who were quickly trained and sent to the front lines, in many places.
It is not an exoneration of the average soldier. A lot did some really heinous shit… like all soldiers in all wars. But a lot were also just there because they were drafted and had no choice. And that is what investigations are for.
People like the black and white of “You wore a uniform, you are pure evil”. And governments ESPECIALLY love that and a lot of media has been funded to specifically reinforce that so it is super easy to Other the other guys (We have always been at war with Eastasia and all that). But when you actually think things through? What is the difference between a conscript terrified in their bunk at night and a civillian who gleefully makes shells and tanks in a factory?
All of which is kind of moot. Because, to reference the great dril: You do not “gotta hand it to them” to ISIS, Nazi German, or Stalin and his cronies in the USSR.
The vast majority of POW captures were in the final year of the war, when it was teenagers and middle aged people who were quickly trained and sent to the front lines, in many places.
High-ranking fascists and Nazis who escaped from Europe via the ratlines after World War II: Ante Pavelić, Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele
:-/
More the opposite. The teenagers and war-wounded were forced to fight until the bitter end, buying time for the senior officers to surrender or flee. The POWs that were captured were bureaucrats and administrators, central to the functioning of the German industrial war machine but never responsible for pulling a trigger on the front lines. The surrendered or went underground en mass only after their children and grandchildren had been fed as cannon fodder into the maw of the encroaching American and Russian armies.
Your quote from wikipedia doesn’t corroborate your claim. Prisoners of war were in large majority soldiers, and not bureaucrats.
Yes, these soldiers fighting on the front did exactly that, they bought time for the Nazi regime. If the soldiers were aware of that, who knows. But the average soldier that became a POW has little to do with the high ranking bureaucrats who escaped through the rat lines.
In fact, while the soviet union, was murdering ordinary soldiers in its labour camps it was already offering amnesty and intelligence agency roles to many former high ranking Nazis.
The army advanced quickly, using most resources to prevent the enemy from reforming a defensive line, and doesnt spend too many resources finding non-armed military personel (bureaucrats).
Armed soldiers however need to be taken quickly or neutralised, as they obviously have the capacity to cause trouble. Only high ranking bureaucrats that can provide secrets or can be used aa bargaining chips are prioritised for capture.
Would love to live in a world which is as black and white as you think it is. Germans “recruited” from countries they conquered en masse. You got an option to serve or have you and your family be killed. Thinking “500 thousand people, all nazis” is plain wrong. Thinking “all of those that died in gulags past WW2 are nazis” is plain wrong. Especially with the war starting in 39’ with the Nazi - Soviet invasion of Poland and the following elimination of anyone who was in any position of opposing the soviets.
Can we take a moment to throw up thoughts and prayers for this brave Victim of Communism in his crusade to eradicate the Soviet menace from his native soil?
Thinking “500 thousand people, all nazis” is plain wrong. Thinking “all of those that died in gulags past WW2 are nazis” is plain wrong.
It should be noted that many of these German POWs were taken from concentration camps full of Soviet POWs in turn. One might think that perhaps, what goes around will come around. But instead, we’re expected to pretend the Waffen-SS and their auxiliaries were these sweet innocent lambs caught in the teeth of a horrible war.
Even setting aside the knee-jerk “Maybe the Nazis were the bad guys” western response, you’ve got kinda squeeze your eyes shut from 1941 to 1945 and pretend the next couple of years was just Soviets being innately cruel for no discernible reason, rather than on a rip-roaring rampage of (kinda justified) revenge.