Was in captivity during the Second World War. Archives of data on WWII prisoners of war

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 employees of party bodies, partisans, underground fighters, as well as the entire male population from 16 to 55 years old, retreating along with the 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 1,836,562 people returned from German captivity. Their further fate is as follows: 1 million were sent for further military service, 600 thousand - to work in industry, more than 200 thousand - to NKVD camps, as having compromised themselves in captivity.

Early years

The largest number of Soviet prisoners of war occurred in the first two years of the war. In particular, after the unsuccessful Kyiv defensive operation in September 1941, about 665 thousand soldiers and officers of the Red Army were captured by Germans, and after the failure of the Kharkov operation in May 1942, more than 240 thousand Red Army soldiers fell into German hands. First of all, the German authorities carried out filtration: commissars, communists and Jews were immediately liquidated, and the rest were transferred to special camps that were hastily created. Most of them were on the territory of Ukraine - about 180. Only in the notorious Bohuniya camp (Zhytomyr region) there were up to 100 thousand Soviet soldiers. The prisoners had to make grueling forced marches of 50-60 km. in a day. The journey often lasted for a whole week. There was no provision for food on the march, so the soldiers were content with pasture: everything was eaten - ears of wheat, berries, acorns, mushrooms, 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 subjected 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, the Uman Pit, prisoners were kept in the 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 applied 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, a colossal need for labor was revealed in Germany, mainly in the military industry, and they decided to fill the deficit primarily with Soviet prisoners of war. This situation saved many Soviet soldiers and officers from the mass extermination planned by the Nazi authorities. According to the German historian G. Mommsen, “with appropriate nutrition” the productivity of Soviet prisoners of war was 80%, and in other cases 100% of the labor productivity of German workers. In the mining and metallurgical industry this figure was lower – 70%. Mommsen noted that Soviet prisoners constituted 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 on whom toxic substances were tested in concentration camps. Later, this method was widely used to exterminate Jews. Many Soviet prisoners of war died from disease. In October 1941, a typhus epidemic broke out in one of the branches of the Mauthausen-Gusen camp complex, where Soviet soldiers were kept, killing about 6,500 people over the winter. However, without waiting for 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 transit camp, the initial registration of prisoners was carried out, who were lined up alphabetically and lists were compiled by surname (Aufnahmelisten). From temporary transit camps, prisoners were transferred as quickly as possible to permanent camps. The officers were sent to officer (Offizierslager, Oflag, oflag) camps. Privates and sergeants were sent to stalags (Mannschaftsstammlager, Stalag, stalag), which were usually large camps with numerous departments. Because There were significantly fewer officer camps; then, if necessary, a small number of captured officers were temporarily placed (separately) in Stalags, where counterintelligence (Abwehr), after interrogation, redirected them either to officer camps or left them in place for subsequent destruction. In the Stalag (prisoner clerk), a personal registration card was created for each prisoner, containing detailed information about the prisoner.

Similar tokens (with rounded edges) in Germany were also issued to civilians detained for forced labor, for whom work records were also kept.
The token (as for Wehrmacht military personnel) consisted of 2 halves. Before burying the deceased, the token was broken into two halves.
One was hung around the neck of the deceased, the other was placed in a personal file indicating the place of burial.

It can be assumed that in the occupied territories personal badges were not issued to Soviet prisoners of war. The Wehrmacht kept detailed records of prisoners, which it transferred to its Help Desk.
These were - Personal Card Form I (Personalkarte I), containing personal data on the prisoner, movements in service, fate in the camp.

Personal card form II (Personalkarte II), containing information about recruitment to work and payment for it,
- Green index card (Gruene Karteikarte), containing information about the transfer of a prisoner to another camp. The card was sent to the Wehrmacht Help Service (Wehrmachtauskunftstelle, WASt). Now the successor to this service is the German Tracing Service in Berlin (Deutsche Dienststelle Berlin, DD (= Deutsche Dienststelle fuer die Benachrichtigung der naechsten Angehoerigen von Gefallenen der ehmaligen deutschen Wehrmacht/ *&*13403_Berlin/ Deutschland_Eichborndamm 179 *&* [email protected]*&* http://www.dd-wast.de)
- A hospital card (Lasarettkarte) was compiled for each prisoner admitted to the hospital. It contained personal data, information about diseases, duration of treatment, cause of death and place of burial. In addition, sick leave certificates were compiled.
- Death certificate and grave card (Sterbefallnachweis u. Grabkarte), which indicated the date, place and cause of death, the name of the cemetery and the burial place there.

Additional information about prisoners in Germany is stored in the archives of German companies at the place of work of the prisoners and in local authorities at the burial place of Soviet citizens. The main part of the files of the Wehrmacht Help Service on Soviet prisoners of war is stored in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation in Podolsk. After the war, many personal cards of prisoners and files of repatriates were in the regional archives of the KGB.

Einsatzgruppen

To clear the near rear of the army group from undesirable elements (politically minded intelligentsia, political workers, communists, intelligence officers, encirclement, Jews, gypsies, asocial elements, etc.), each army group was followed by its own mobile special forces of the security police and SD (Einsatzgruppe , EGr) numbering 600 - 900 people (security police and SD officers, law enforcement police, SS troops, translators, radio operators, etc.). The Einsatzgruppe and its units, the Einsatzkommando (EK), along the route, filtered all prisoner-of-war camps with the participation of army counterintelligence (Abwehr).

The Pushkinsky village itself was located (since 1937) between Pushkinskaya Street (now it is part of Independence Avenue between the Central Department Store and the Botanical Garden) and the Logoisky Trakt (now it is Y. Kolas Street). More detailed information (bacian: Pushkin barracks) about the Pushkin village and Pushkin barracks is available at (www.bacian.livejournal.com). About 10 aerial photographs of Minsk (at that time) are downloaded very slowly from http://rst-paul.livejournal.com

The buildings of the former Pushkin Barracks (photo April 11, 2012) are plastered and painted yellowish. They currently house a military unit, which they plan to move to another location in the coming years. The further fate of the barracks buildings is unknown to the author of these lines. Many believe that they will be demolished and highly profitable housing will be built on this site (where about 10 thousand prisoners died and were buried), although the current Construction Norms and Rules (SNiP) prohibit the construction of housing on the sites of mass graves. Not a single museum has yet been created on the site of former Nazi camps in Belarus, although the active public often discusses the need to create such museums following the example of Germany, Austria and other countries.

House of officers.

In 1937, next to the territory of the military camp, a 3-story officer's dormitory building (Officers' House, DOS) was built (according to a standard design). Now this building is located on the street. Kalinina.

It is very similar to the DOS in Masyukovshchina and other military towns. Presumably, the construction documentation for these buildings (and the buildings of the Military Hospital, the documentation has been preserved) was developed by Voenproekt. Those who served in Germany and the Kaliningrad region believe that the architectural style of DOS buildings is very similar to the style of pre-war buildings in Germany. Now the residential building (formerly DOS) is plastered and painted in light colors. Old-timers of the DOS claim that an underground passage led from the basement of their house behind the preserved closed iron door to the military town, and in the town itself there was a wide network of such underground passages. The prisoner of war camp in the Pushkin Barracks (Puschkin-Kaserne) existed from July 1941 to the spring of 1943.

Initially, the barracks housed the Dulag 126 transit camp with a large infirmary. The first large batch of prisoners of war was delivered to the hastily created camp at Pushkin Barracks in July 1941. That summer, the camp at Pushkin Barracks (and other camps) was severely overcrowded. Construction materials were required for the construction of new buildings. In 1941-42, columns of prisoners were sent on foot from the Pushkin barracks and from the camp in Masyukovshchina to the station for bricks (NARB, 4683-3-918, l. 260-268). When returning to the camp, the prisoners carried a brick in each hand and a brick under their arms. In winter, with this method of delivering bricks, the bodies of dead and frozen prisoners were left lying on the road.

Column of prisoners of war on a march in a field in summer

Soviet prisoners of war while cooking on a fire.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again Ponedelin and Kirillov. Lunch in captivity

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

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

I finally drove a couple of armies (33rd and 39th) into encirclement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Database

www.podvignaroda.ru

www.obd-memorial.ru

www.pamyat-naroda.ru

www.rkka.ru/ihandbook.htm

www.moypolk.ru

www.dokst.ru

www.polk.ru

www.pomnite-nas.ru

www.permgani.ru

Otechestvort.rf, rf-poisk.ru

rf-poisk.ru/page/34

soldat.ru

memento.sebastopol.ua

memory-book.com.ua

soldat.ru - a set of reference books for independently searching for information about the fate of military personnel (including a directory of field postal stations of the Red Army in 1941-1945, a directory of the code names of military units (institutions) in 1939-1943, a directory of the location of Red Army hospitals in 1941-1945 years);

www.rkka.ru - a directory of military abbreviations (as well as charters, manuals, directives, orders and personal documents of wartime).

Libraries

oldgazette.ru – old newspapers (including those from the war period);

www.rkka.ru – description of military operations of the Second World War, post-war analysis of the events of the Second World War, military memoirs.

Military cards

www.rkka.ru – military topographic maps with the combat situation (by war periods and operations).

Search Engine Sites

www.rf-poisk.ru is the official website of the Russian Search Movement.

Partners of the Stars of Victory project

www.mil.ru – Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

www.histrf.ru – Russian Military Historical Society.

www.rgo.ru – Russian Geographical Society.

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Database

www.podvignaroda.ru – a publicly accessible electronic bank of documents on recipients and awards during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945;

www.obd-memorial.ru - a generalized data bank about defenders of the Fatherland, those killed and missing during the Great Patriotic War and the post-war period;

www.pamyat-naroda.ru is a publicly accessible data bank about the fate of participants in the Great Patriotic War. Search for places of primary burials and documents about awards, service, victories and hardships on the battlefields;

www.rkka.ru/ihandbook.htm – awarded the Order of the Red Banner in the period from 1921 to 1931;

www.moypolk.ru - information about participants in the Great Patriotic War, including home front workers - living, dead, dead and missing. Collected and replenished by participants in the all-Russian action “Immortal Regiment”;

www.dokst.ru – information about those killed in captivity in Germany;

www.polk.ru – information about Soviet and Russian soldiers missing in action in the wars of the 20th century (including the pages “The Great Patriotic War” and “Undelivered Awards”);

www.pomnite-nas.ru – photographs and descriptions of military graves;

www.permgani.ru – database on the website of the Perm State Archive of Contemporary History. Includes basic biographical information about former servicemen of the Red Army (natives of the Perm region or called up for military service from the territory of the Kama region), who during the Great Patriotic War were surrounded and (or) captured by the enemy, and after returning to their homeland underwent special state inspection (filtration);

Otechestvort.rf, rf-poisk.ru – electronic version of the book “Names from Soldiers’ Medallions”, volumes 1-6. Contains alphabetical information about those killed during the war whose remains, discovered during search operations, were identified;

rf-poisk.ru/page/34 / – books of memory (by regions of Russia, with direct links and annotations);

soldat.ru – books of memory (for individual regions, types of troops, individual units and formations, about those who died in captivity, those who died in Afghanistan, Chechnya);

memento.sebastopol.ua – Crimean virtual necropolis;

memory-book.com.ua – electronic book of memory of Ukraine;

rgvarchive.ru – Russian State Military Archive (RGVA). The archive stores documents about the military operations of the Red Army units in 1937-1939. near Lake Khasan, on the Khalkhin Gol River, in the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-1940. Here are also documents of the border and internal troops of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD-MVD of the USSR since 1918; documents of the Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs and institutions of its system (GUPVI Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR) for the period 1939-1960; personal documents of Soviet military leaders; documents of foreign origin (trophy). On the archive's website you can also find guides and reference books that make working with it easier.

rgaspi.org – Russian State Archive of Socio-Political Information (RGASPI). The period of the Great Patriotic War in RGASPI is represented by documents of an emergency body of state power - the State Defense Committee (GKO, 1941-1945) and the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief;

The terrible years of World War II went down in history not only for the huge number of victims, but also for the large number of prisoners of war. They were captured individually and in entire armies: some surrendered in an organized manner, while others deserted, but there were also very funny cases.

Italians

The Italians turned out to be not the most reliable ally of Germany. Cases of Italian soldiers being captured were recorded everywhere: apparently, the inhabitants of the Apennines understood that the war into which the Duce dragged them did not meet the interests of Italy.
When Mussolini was arrested on July 25, 1943, the new Italian government led by Marshal Badoglio began secret negotiations with the American command to conclude a truce. The result of Badoglio's negotiations with Eisenhower was the massive surrender of Italians into American captivity.
In this regard, the recollection of the American General Omar Bradley, who describes the elated state of the Italian military personnel when surrendering, is interesting:

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

According to Bradley, the Italians' festive mood was due to the prospect of a "free trip to the States."
An interesting story was told by one of the Soviet veterans, who recalled how in the fall of 1943, near Donetsk, he encountered a huge peasant cart with hay, and six “skinny, dark-haired men” were harnessed to it. They were driven by a “Ukrainian woman” with a German carbine. It turned out that these were Italian deserters. They “buttered and cried” so much that the Soviet soldier had difficulty guessing their desire to surrender.

Americans

The US Army has an unusual type of casualty called “battle fatigue.” This category includes primarily those who were captured. Thus, during the landing in Normandy in June 1944, the number of those “overworked in battle” amounted to about 20% of the total number of those who dropped out of the battle.

In general, according to the results of World War II, due to “overwork,” US losses amounted to 929,307 people.

More often than not, Americans found themselves captured by the Japanese army.
Most of all, the command of the US armed forces remembered the operation of the German troops, which went down in history as the “Bulge Breakthrough”. As a result of the Wehrmacht counteroffensive against the Allied forces, which began on December 16, 1944, the front moved 100 km. deep into enemy territory. American writer Dick Toland, in a book about the operation in the Ardennes, writes that “75 thousand American soldiers at the front on the night of December 16 went to bed as usual. That evening, none of the American commanders expected a major German offensive." The result of the German breakthrough was the capture of about 30 thousand Americans.

Soviet military

There is no exact information about the number of Soviet prisoners of war. According to various sources, their number ranges from 4.5 to 5.5 million people. According to the calculations of the commander of Army Group Center von Bock, by July 8, 1941 alone, 287,704 Soviet military personnel, including division and corps commanders, were captured. And at the end of 1941, the number of Soviet prisoners of war exceeded 3 million 300 thousand people.

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

The bulk of Soviet soldiers and officers were captured by the Germans in “cauldrons”. Thus, the result of the largest encirclement battle in the Soviet-German conflict - the “Kyiv Cauldron” - was about 600 thousand Soviet prisoners of war.

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

Germans

If before the Battle of Stalingrad, Germans being captured was rather an exception, then in the winter of 1942-43. it acquired a symptomatic character: during the Stalingrad operation, about 100 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers were captured. The Germans surrendered in whole companies - hungry, sick, frostbitten or simply exhausted. During the Great Patriotic War, Soviet troops captured 2,388,443 German soldiers.
In the last months of the war, the German command tried to force the troops to fight using draconian methods, but in vain. The situation on the Western Front was especially unfavorable. There, German soldiers, knowing that England and the United States were observing the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, surrendered much more willingly than in the East.
According to the recollections of German veterans, defectors tried to go over to the enemy’s side immediately before the attack. There were also cases of organized surrender. Thus, in North Africa, German soldiers, left without ammunition, fuel and food, lined up in columns to surrender to the Americans or the British.

Yugoslavs

Not all countries of the Anti-Hitler coalition could give a worthy rebuff to a strong enemy. Thus, Yugoslavia, which, in addition to Germany, was attacked by the armed forces of Hungary and Italy, could not withstand the onslaught and capitulated on April 12, 1941. Units of the Yugoslav army, formed from Croats, Bosnians, Slovenes and Macedonians, began to go home en masse or go over to the enemy’s side. In a matter of days, about 314 thousand soldiers and officers were in German captivity - almost the entire armed forces of Yugoslavia.

Japanese

It should be noted that the defeats that Japan suffered in World War II brought many losses to the enemy. Following the code of samurai honor, even the units besieged and blocked on the islands were in no hurry to surrender and held out to the last. As a result, by the time of surrender, many Japanese soldiers simply died of starvation.

When in the summer of 1944, American troops captured the Japanese-occupied island of Saipan, out of a 30,000-strong Japanese contingent, only a thousand were captured.

About 24 thousand were killed, another 5 thousand committed suicide. Almost all the prisoners are the merit of 18-year-old Marine Guy Gabaldon, who had an excellent command of the Japanese language and knew the psychology of the Japanese. Gabaldon acted alone: he killed or immobilized sentries near the shelters, and then persuaded those inside to surrender. In the most successful raid, the Marine brought 800 Japanese to the base, for which he received the nickname “Pied Piper of Saipan.”
Georgy Zhukov cites a curious episode of the captivity of a Japanese man disfigured by mosquito bites in his book “Memories and Reflections.” When asked “where and who butchered him like that,” the Japanese replied that, together with other soldiers, he had been put in the reeds in the evening to observe the Russians. At night they had to endure terrible mosquito bites without complaint, so as not to give away their presence. “And when the Russians shouted something and raised their rifle,” he said, “I raised my hands because I could no longer endure this torment.”

French people

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