JoFo wrote:The character of the war in the east was different from the war in the west and that manifested itself in the treatment of prisoners.
That's true but that was Stalin's fault. During the war, the Germans made repeated attempts through neutral countries and the International Committee of the Red Cross to reach mutual agreement on the treatment of prisoners by Germany and the USSR. But Stalin always refused to reach such a mutual agreement on the treatment of POWs. Stalin had even ordered the destruction of the Soviet POWs (because he saw the soldiers who had surrendered as traitors - see Stalin's Order No. 270 below). Moreover a major reason for the terrible fate of the Soviet POWs was the unusual nature of the war on the eastern front, particularly during the first year -- June 1941-June 1942 -- when vastly greater numbers of prisoners fell into German hands than could possibly be accommodated adequately. And the German POWs didn't suffer less in Soviet hands. For instance, out of the nearly 110,000 German prisoners captured in Stalingrad, only about 6,000 (5.5%) ever returned.
Stalin's Order No. 270:
If ... "instead of organizing resistance to the enemy, some Red Army men prefer to surrender, they shall be destroyed by all possible means, both ground-based and from the air, whereas the families of the Red Army men who have been taken prisoner shall be deprived of the state allowance [that is, rations] and relief."
The commanders and political officers ... "who surrender to the enemy shall be considered malicious deserters, whose families are liable to be arrested [just] as the families of deserters who have violated the oath and betrayed their Motherland."
More here:
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v14/Teplyakov.html (Stalin's War Against His Own Troops - The Tragic Fate of Soviet Prisoners of War in German Captivity)
"[Austen Chamberlain] has done western civilization a great service by refuting at least one of the slanders against the Germans
because a civilization which leaves war lies unchallenged in an atmosphere of hatred and does not produce courage in its leaders to refute them
is doomed. "
Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, on the public admission by Britain's Foreign Secretary that the WWI corpse-factory story was false, December 4, 1925
