PoW
WWII SOVIET WAR LOSSES
The Soviet experience of warfare was very different from that of its Allies, Britain and the United States. Large in territory and population, the Soviet Union was poorer than the other two by a wide margin in productivity and income. It was Soviet territory that Hitler wanted for his empire, and the Soviet Union was the only one of the…
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HE WILL SOON LOSE THAT SMILE…
…whether sharing a joke with his comrade or just happy to have survived…so far… The war between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia (1941–1945) was arguably the largest and most brutal theater of land warfare in the twentieth century. Fueled by bitter ideological antagonism, the enormous cruelty at the…
BEST BOOKS – The Third Reichs Eastern Legions and POWS
Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Emigré Theories Catherine Andreyev Review “Her main aim is to synthesize and comment on the political ideas of the Russians and others associated with what she properly calls not simply the ‘Vlasov movement’ but the Russian Liberation Movement….Her book includes a…
Hitler’s Tartar Units
This shield was issued in 1942 and worn by Volga Tartar volunteers. This arm shield shows a white crossed knife and arrow on a blue and green horizontal stripe background. The black border on top has the white inscription “IDEL-URAL.” The word “IDEL” in Tartar means Volga River. The Volga-Tatar…
Soviet prisoners-of-war
“Next to the Jews in Europe,” wrote Alexander Werth, “the biggest single German crime was undoubtedly the extermination by hunger, exposure and in other ways of . . . Russian war prisoners.” Yet the murder of at least 3.3 million Soviet POWs is one of the least-known of modern genocides;…
BARBAROSSA POWS
Yugoslavs, Greeks, and other minor Allies suffered harm commensurate with their ethnic ranking in the perverse Nazi racial view of Europe, and with the degree of resistance offered to Nazi occupation of their home countries. The worst treatment of enemy prisoners, by far, was reserved for enemies of Germany wearing…
KEELHAUL
In February 1945, Major Denis Hills, an officer of the British Eighth Army in Italy, was given command of a POW camp at Taranto containing 8,000 men of the 162 Turkoman Infantry Division, classified as ‘repatriates’. His charges had been conscripted into the Red Army, been captured on the Eastern…