German mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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During World War II, Nazi Germany engaged in a policy of deliberate maltreatment of Soviet prisoners of war (POWs), in contrast to their treatment of British and American POWs. This resulted in some 3.3 to 3.5 million deaths.<ref name=deathtoll>Peter Calvocoressi, Guy Wint, Total War — "The total number of prisoners taken by the German armies in the USSR was in the region of 5.7 million. Of these, the astounding number of 3.5 million or more had been lost by the middle of 1944 and the assumption must be that they were either deliberately killed or done to death by criminal negligence. Nearly two million of them died in camps and close on another million disappeared while in military custody either in the USSR or in rear areas; a further quarter of a million disappeared or died in transit between the front and destinations in the rear; another 473,000 died or were killed in military custody in Germany or Poland."
See also
- Prisoner of war
- Soviet repressions against former prisoners of war
- German war crimes
- War crimes of the Wehrmacht
- Myth of the clean Wehrmacht
- Commissar Order
- Rusthof cemetery
- Severity Order
- Operation Zeppelin (espionage plan)