The topic of German prisoners of war was considered delicate for a very long time and was shrouded in obscurity for ideological reasons. Most of all, German historians have been and are engaged in it. In Germany, the so-called "Series of Prisoner of War Tales" ("Reihe Kriegsgefangenenberichte") is published, published by unofficial persons at their own expense. A joint analysis of domestic and foreign archival documents carried out over the past decades makes it possible to shed light on many events of those years.
GUPVI (Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR) never kept a personal record of prisoners of war. At army posts and camps, counting the number of people was done very poorly, and the movement of prisoners from camp to camp made the task difficult. It is known that at the beginning of 1942 the number of German prisoners of war was only about 9,000 people. For the first time, a huge number of Germans (more than 100,000 soldiers and officers) were captured at the end of the Battle of Stalingrad. Remembering the atrocities of the Nazis, they did not stand on ceremony with them. A huge crowd of naked, sick and emaciated people made winter crossings of several tens of kilometers a day, slept in the open air and ate almost nothing. All this led to the fact that no more than 6,000 people remained alive at the time of the end of the war. In total, according to domestic official statistics, 2,389,560 German soldiers were taken prisoner, of which 356,678 people died. But according to other (German) sources, at least three million Germans turned out to be in Soviet captivity, of which one million prisoners died.
A column of German prisoners of war on the march somewhere on the Eastern Front
The Soviet Union was divided into 15 economic regions. In twelve of them, hundreds of prisoner-of-war camps were created on the principle of the Gulag. During the war, their situation was especially difficult. There were interruptions in the food supply, medical care remained at a low level due to a lack of qualified doctors. Household arrangements in the camps were extremely unsatisfactory. The prisoners were housed in unfinished buildings. Cold, tightness and dirt were commonplace. The mortality rate reached 70%. It was only in the post-war years that these figures were reduced. In the norms established by the order of the NKVD of the USSR, for each prisoner of war, 100 grams of fish, 25 grams of meat and 700 grams of bread were supposed. In practice, they are rarely followed. A lot of crimes of the security service were noted, ranging from theft of food to non-issuance of water.
Herbert Bamberg, a German soldier who was a prisoner near Ulyanovsk, wrote in his memoirs: “In that camp, prisoners were fed only once a day with a liter of soup, a ladle of millet porridge and a quarter of bread. I agree that the local population of Ulyanovsk, most likely, was also starving.”
Often, if the required type of product was not available, then it was replaced with bread. For example, 50 grams of meat was equal to 150 grams of bread, 120 grams of cereal - 200 grams of bread.
Each nationality, in accordance with traditions, has its own creative hobbies. In order to survive, the Germans organized theater circles, choirs, and literary groups. In the camps, it was allowed to read newspapers and play non-gambling games. Many prisoners made chess, cigarette cases, caskets, toys and various furniture.
During the war years, despite the twelve-hour working day, the labor of German prisoners of war did not play a big role in the national economy of the USSR due to poor organization of labor. In the postwar years, the Germans were involved in the restoration of factories, railways, dams and ports destroyed during the war. They restored old and built new houses in many cities of our Motherland. For example, with their help, the main building of Moscow State University in Moscow was built. In Yekaterinburg, entire districts were built by the hands of prisoners of war. In addition, they were used in the construction of roads in hard-to-reach places, in the extraction of coal, iron ore, and uranium. Particular attention was paid to highly qualified specialists in various fields of knowledge, doctors of sciences, engineers. As a result of their activities, many important rationalization proposals were introduced.
Despite the fact that Stalin did not recognize the Geneva Convention for the Treatment of Prisoners of War of 1864, there was an order in the USSR to save the lives of German soldiers. There is no doubt that they were treated much more humanely than the Soviet people who ended up in Germany.
Captivity for Wehrmacht soldiers brought a strong disappointment in Nazi ideals, crushed the old positions in life, brought uncertainty about the future. Along with the drop in living standards, this turned out to be a strong test of personal human qualities. It was not the strongest in body and spirit that survived, but those who learned to walk over the corpses of others.
Heinrich Eichenberg wrote: “In general, the problem of the stomach was above all else, soul and body were sold for a bowl of soup or a piece of bread. Hunger corrupted people, corrupted them and turned them into beasts. Stealing food from their own comrades has become commonplace.
Any non-official relationship between Soviet people and prisoners was regarded as a betrayal. Soviet propaganda for a long time and stubbornly exposed all Germans as beasts in human form, developing an extremely hostile attitude towards them.
A column of German prisoners of war is being led through the streets of Kyiv. Throughout the journey, the column is being watched by residents of the city and servicemen free from service (on the right)
According to the memoirs of one prisoner of war: “During a working order in one village, one elderly woman did not believe me that I was a German. She told me: “What kind of Germans are you? You don't have horns!"
Along with the soldiers and officers of the German army, there were also representatives of the army elite of the Third Reich - German generals. The first 32 generals, led by the commander of the sixth army, Friedrich Paulus, were captured in the winter of 1942-1943 straight from Stalingrad. In total, 376 German generals were in Soviet captivity, of which 277 returned to their homeland, and 99 died (of which 18 generals were hanged as war criminals). There were no attempts to escape among the generals.
In 1943-1944, the GUPVI, together with the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army, carried out hard work to create anti-fascist organizations among prisoners of war. In June 1943, the Free Germany National Committee was formed. 38 people were included in its first composition. The absence of senior officers and generals caused many German prisoners of war to doubt the prestige and importance of the organization. Soon, the desire to join the SNO was announced by Major General Martin Lattmann (commander of the 389th Infantry Division), Major General Otto Korfes (commander of the 295th Infantry Division) and Lieutenant General Alexander von Daniels (commander of the 376th Infantry Division).
17 generals, led by Paulus, wrote back to them: “They want to make an appeal to the German people and to the German army, demanding the removal of the German leadership and the Nazi government. What the officers and generals who belong to the Soyuz are doing is treason. We deeply regret that they have taken this path. We no longer consider them our comrades, and we resolutely refuse them.
The instigator of the statement, Paulus, was placed in a special dacha in Dubrovo near Moscow, where he underwent psychological treatment. Hoping that Paulus would choose a heroic death in captivity, Hitler promoted him to field marshal, and on February 3, 1943 symbolically buried him as "who died a heroic death along with the heroic soldiers of the Sixth Army." Moscow, however, did not abandon attempts to involve Paulus in anti-fascist work. The "processing" of the general was carried out according to a special program developed by Kruglov and approved by Beria. A year later, Paulus openly announced the transition to the anti-Hitler coalition. The main role in this was played by the victories of our army on the fronts and the “conspiracy of the generals” on July 20, 1944, when the Fuhrer, by a lucky chance, escaped death.
On August 8, 1944, when Field Marshal von Witzleben, a friend of Paulus, was hanged in Berlin, he openly declared on Freies Deutschland radio: “Recent events have made the continuation of the war for Germany tantamount to a senseless sacrifice. For Germany, the war is lost. Germany must renounce Adolf Hitler and establish a new state power that will end the war and create conditions for our people for further life and the establishment of peaceful, even friendly
relations with our current adversaries.
Subsequently, Paulus wrote: "It became clear to me: Hitler not only could not win the war, but should not win it, which would be in the interests of mankind and in the interests of the German people."
The return of German prisoners of war from Soviet captivity. The Germans arrived at the Friedland border transit camp
The field marshal's speech received the broadest response. The Paulus family was offered to renounce him, publicly condemn this act and change their surname. When they flatly refused to comply with the requirements, the son Alexander Paulus was imprisoned in the fortress-prison Kustrin, and his wife Helena Constance Paulus was imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp. On August 14, 1944, Paulus officially joined the SNO and began active anti-Nazi activities. Despite requests to return him to his homeland, he ended up in the GDR only at the end of 1953.
From 1945 to 1949, more than one million sick and disabled prisoners of war were returned to their homeland. At the end of the forties, they stopped releasing captured Germans, and many were also given 25 years in the camps, declaring them war criminals. Before the allies, the government of the USSR explained this by the need to further restore the destroyed country. After a visit to our country by German Chancellor Adenauer in 1955, a Decree “On the early release and repatriation of German prisoners of war convicted of war crimes” was issued. After that, many Germans were able to return to their homes.
The order of treatment of prisoners of war at the time of the beginning of World War II was regulated by the Geneva Convention of 1929. Germany signed it, the USSR did not. But our country - a paradox - was much closer to fulfilling all the Geneva provisions! For comparison: 4.5 million Soviet troops were captured by the Germans. Of these, up to 1.2 million people died or perished in the camps.
Thanks doctor!
According to the norms of June 23, 1941, prisoners were fed almost like soldiers of the Red Army. On the day they were supposed to have 600 g of rye bread, 90 g of cereals, 10 g of pasta, 40 g of meat, 120 g of fish, etc. Naturally, they soon reduced the ration - they didn’t have enough! In his most comprehensive work on the subject, Captivity and Internment in the Soviet Union (1995), the Austrian historian Stefan Karner wrote: "Working prisoners of war received 600 g of watery black bread, and the Russian civilian population often did not even have that." We are talking about the winter of 1946-1947, when famine reigned in the USSR. If the norms were overfulfilled, the prisoners could count on another 300-400 g.
German prisoners of war at the parade in Moscow, 1945. Photo: www.russianlook.com
“Of the medicines, the Russians had only camphor, iodine and aspirin, surgical operations were performed without anesthesia, nevertheless, all those who returned home praised the “Russian doctor”, who did everything possible in this adversity,” recalled an eyewitness. The "native" Soviet prisoners from the Gulag did not have even that. The main causes of death of prisoners of war in the USSR were dystrophy and infectious diseases (dysentery, typhoid, tuberculosis). Only 0.2% of those who did not live to see liberation committed suicide.
"Antifa" -1945
The fate of the prisoners of war evolved in different ways. Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus cooperated with the authorities and was allowed to go home in 1953. He died at the age of 66. And the ace fighter Erich Hartmann (pictured) remained a convinced Nazi. In 1950, he led a riot in the camp of the city of Shakhty, Rostov Region, was sentenced to 25 years, but was soon released. He returned home as one of the last Germans in the autumn of 1955, and managed to serve in the West German Air Force. Hartmann died in 1993 at the age of 71.
At the end of 1945, the Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees of the NKVD of the USSR (GUPVI) owned an empire of 267 camps and 3,200 stationary departments. Captured Germans mined peat and coal, restored Donbass and Dneproges, Stalingrad and Sevastopol, built the Moscow metro and BAM, mined gold in Siberia ... The camps in which the Germans were kept were not much different from the camps "for their own." From the prisoners, separate working battalions were formed from 500 to 1000 people, consisting of three companies. In the barracks - visual propaganda: graphs, honor boards, labor competition, participation in which gave privileges.
Another way to improve their position was to cooperate with Antifa (that's when the word appeared!) - anti-fascist committees. Austrian Konrad Lorenz, who became a famous scientist after the war (Nobel laureate in physiology and medicine in 1973), was captured near Vitebsk. Having renounced his National Socialist beliefs, he was transferred to camp No. 27 with a good regime in Krasnogorsk. From Russian captivity, Lorentz managed to bring back the manuscript of his first book, The Other Side of the Mirror, about the nature of human aggressiveness. In total, about 100 thousand activists were trained in the camps, who formed the backbone of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.
The last German prisoner was sent to Germany in the autumn of 1955, when the German Chancellor paid an official visit to the USSR Konrad Adenauer. The last foreigners were escorted home with a brass band.
The ability to forgive is characteristic of Russians. But all the same, how striking this property of the soul is - especially when you hear about it from the lips of yesterday's enemy ...
Letters from former German prisoners of war.
I belong to the generation that experienced the Second World War. In July 1943, I became a Wehrmacht soldier, but due to a long training period, I ended up on the German-Soviet front only in January 1945, which by that time was passing through the territory of East Prussia. Then the German troops no longer had any chance in confronting the Soviet army. On March 26, 1945, I was captured by the Soviets. I was in camps in Kohla-Järve in Estonia, in Vinogradov near Moscow, worked at a coal mine in Stalinogorsk (today Novomoskovsk).
We have always been treated like people. We had the opportunity to spend free time, we were provided with medical care. On November 2, 1949, after 4.5 years of captivity, I was released, I was released as a physically and spiritually healthy person. I know that, unlike my experience in Soviet captivity, Soviet prisoners of war in Germany lived in a completely different way. Hitler treated most of the Soviet prisoners of war extremely cruelly. For a cultured nation, as the Germans are always imagined, with so many famous poets, composers and scientists, such treatment was a shame and an inhuman act. After returning home, many former Soviet prisoners of war waited for compensation from Germany, but never did. This is especially outrageous! I hope that with my modest donation I will make a small contribution to alleviate this moral trauma.
Hans Moeser
Fifty years ago, on April 21, 1945, during the fierce battles for Berlin, I was captured by the Soviets. This date and the circumstances accompanying it were of great importance for my subsequent life. Today, after half a century, I look back, now as a historian: the subject of this look into the past is myself.
By the day of my captivity, I had just celebrated my seventeenth birthday. Through the Labor Front, we were drafted into the Wehrmacht and assigned to the 12th Army, the so-called "Army of Ghosts." After the Soviet Army launched “Operation Berlin” on April 16, 1945, we were literally thrown to the front.
The capture was a great shock for me and my young comrades, because we were completely unprepared for such a situation. And we didn’t know anything about Russia and Russians at all. This shock was also so severe because, only when we were behind the Soviet front line, we realized the full severity of the losses that our group had suffered. Of the hundred people who entered the battle in the morning, more than half died before noon. These experiences are among the hardest memories of my life.
This was followed by the formation of echelons with prisoners of war, who took us - with numerous intermediate stations - deep into the Soviet Union, to the Volga. The country needed German prisoners of war as a labor force, because factories that had been inactive during the war needed to resume work. In Saratov, a beautiful city on the high bank of the Volga, the sawmill was back in operation, and in the "cement city" Volsk, also located on the high bank of the river, I spent more than a year.
Our labor camp belonged to the Bolshevik cement factory. Working at the factory was unusually hard for me, an untrained eighteen-year-old high school student. The German "cameras" did not always help. People just needed to survive, to live to be sent home. In this endeavor, the German prisoners developed their own, often cruel, laws in the camp.
In February 1947, I had an accident in a quarry, after which I could no longer work. Six months later, I returned home to Germany as an invalid.
This is just the outer side of the matter. During the stay in Saratov and then in Volsk, the conditions were very difficult. These conditions are often described in publications about German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union: hunger and work. For me, the climate factor also played a big role. In the summer, which is unusually hot on the Volga, I had to shovel red-hot slag from under the furnaces at the cement plant; in winter, when it is extremely cold there, I worked in the quarry on the night shift.
Before summing up the results of my stay in the Soviet camp, I would like to describe here some more of my experience in captivity. And there were many impressions. I will cite just a few of them.
The first is nature, the majestic Volga, along which we marched every day from the camp to the factory. Impressions from this huge river, the mother of Russian rivers, are difficult to describe. One summer, when the river rolled its waters wide after the spring flood, our Russian guards allowed us to jump into the river to wash away the cement dust. Of course, the "guards" acted against the rules in this; but they were also human, we exchanged cigarettes, and they were a little older than me.
In October, winter storms began, and by the middle of the month the river was covered with ice. Roads were laid along the frozen river, even trucks could move from one bank to another. And then, in mid-April, after half a year of ice captivity, the Volga flowed freely again: the ice broke with a terrible roar, and the river returned to its old course. Our Russian guards were overjoyed: "The river is flowing again!" A new season of the year has begun.
The second part of the memories is the relationship with the Soviet people. I have already described how human our overseers were. I can give other examples of compassion: for example, one nurse who stood at the gates of the camp every morning in a bitter cold. Whoever did not have enough clothes, the guards allowed him to stay in the camp in the winter, despite the protests of the camp authorities. Or a Jewish doctor in a hospital who saved the life of more than one German, even though they came as enemies. And finally, an elderly woman who, during a lunch break, at the railway station in Volsk, shyly served us pickles from her bucket. For us it was a real feast. Later, before leaving, she came and crossed herself in front of each of us. Mother Russia, which I met in the era of late Stalinism, in 1946, on the Volga.
When today, fifty years after my captivity, I try to take stock, I find that being in captivity turned my whole life in a completely different direction and determined my professional path.
What I experienced in my youth in Russia did not let me go even after returning to Germany. I had a choice - to erase my stolen youth from memory and never think about the Soviet Union again, or to analyze everything I had experienced and thus bring some kind of biographical balance. I chose the second, immeasurably more difficult path, not least under the influence of the supervisor of my doctoral work, Paul Johansen.
As I said at the beginning, it is on this difficult path that I look back today. I reflect on what has been achieved and state the following: for decades in my lectures I have tried to convey to students my critically rethought experience, while receiving a lively response. I could assist my closest students in their doctoral work and examinations more efficiently. And, finally, I established long-term contacts with my Russian colleagues, primarily in St. Petersburg, which eventually grew into a strong friendship.
Klaus Mayer
On May 8, 1945, the remnants of the German 18th Army capitulated in the Kurland pocket in Latvia. It was a long awaited day. Our small 100-watt transmitter was designed to negotiate terms of surrender with the Red Army. All weapons, equipment, vehicles, radio cars, and joy stations themselves were, according to Prussian accuracy, collected in one place, on a site surrounded by pine trees. For two days nothing happened. Then Soviet officers appeared and escorted us to two-story buildings. We spent the night cramped on straw mattresses. In the early morning of May 11, we were lined up in hundreds, count as the old division into companies. The foot march into captivity began.
One Red Army soldier in front, one behind. So we walked in the direction of Riga to the huge collection camp prepared by the Red Army. Here the officers were separated from ordinary soldiers. The guards searched the things they had taken with them. We were allowed to leave some underwear, socks, a blanket, crockery and cutlery. Nothing else.
From Riga we walked in endless daytime marches to the east, to the former Soviet-Latvian border in the direction of Dunaburg. After each march, we arrived at the next camp. The ritual was repeated: a search of all personal belongings, the distribution of food and a night's sleep. Upon arrival in Dunaburg, we were loaded onto freight wagons. The food was good: bread and American Corned Beef. We drove to the southeast. Those who thought we were going home were greatly surprised. Many days later we arrived at the Baltic Station in Moscow. Standing on trucks, we drove through the city. It's already dark. Did any of us manage to make any notes.
In the distance from the city, next to a village of three-story wooden houses, was a large prefabricated camp, so large that its outskirts were lost behind the horizon. Tents and prisoners... A week passed with good summer weather, Russian bread and American canned food. After one of the morning roll calls, between 150 and 200 prisoners were separated from the rest. We got on trucks. None of us knew where we were going. The path lay to the northwest. We drove the last kilometers through a birch forest along a dam. After about a two hour drive (or longer?), we were at our destination.
The forest camp consisted of three or four wooden barracks located partly at ground level. The door was low, a few steps down. Behind the last barracks, in which the German camp commandant from East Prussia lived, were the tailors' and shoemakers' quarters, the doctor's office, and a separate barracks for the sick. The entire area, barely larger than a football field, was surrounded by barbed wire. A somewhat more comfortable wooden barrack was intended for protection. On the territory there was also a sentry box and a small kitchen. This place was to be our new home for the next months, maybe years. It didn't feel like a quick homecoming.
In the barracks along the central aisle, wooden two-story bunks stretched in two rows. At the end of the complicated registration procedure (we did not have our soldier's books with us), we placed mattresses stuffed with straw on the bunk beds. Those located on the upper tier could be lucky. He was able to look outside through a glass window about 25 x 25 centimeters in size.
We got up at exactly 6 o'clock. After that, everyone ran to the washstands. At a height of about 1.70 meters, a tin drain began, looking at a wooden support. The water descended to about the level of the abdomen. In those months when there was no frost, the upper reservoir was filled with water. To wash it was necessary to turn a simple valve, after which water poured or dripped on the head and upper body. After this procedure, the roll call on the parade ground was repeated daily. Exactly at 7 o'clock we walked to the logging site in the endless birch forests surrounding the camp. I can't remember ever having to fell any other tree besides a birch.
Our "bosses", civil civilian guards, were waiting for us on the spot. They distributed tools: saws and axes. Groups of three people were created: two prisoners cut down a tree, and the third collects foliage and unnecessary branches in one heap, and then burns it. Especially in wet weather, it was an art. Of course every POW had a lighter. Along with the spoon, this is probably the most important item in captivity. But with the help of such a simple object, consisting of a flint, a wick and a piece of iron, it was possible to set fire to a rain-soaked tree, often only after many hours of effort. Burning wood waste was a daily norm. The norm itself consisted of two meters of felled wood, stacked in piles. Each piece of wood had to be two meters long and at least 10 centimeters in diameter. With such primitive tools as blunt saws and axes, which often consisted of only a few ordinary pieces of iron welded together, it was hardly possible to fulfill such a norm.
After the work was done, the stacks of wood were picked up by the “chiefs” and loaded onto open trucks. At lunchtime, work was interrupted for half an hour. We were given watery cabbage soup. Those who managed to meet the norm (due to hard work and insufficient nutrition, only a few managed to do this) received in the evening, in addition to their usual diet, which consisted of 200 grams of moist bread, but good in taste, a tablespoon of sugar and a press of tobacco, and also porridge directly on the lid of the pot. One thing "reassured": the food of our guards was a little better.
Winter 1945/46 was very heavy. We stuffed cotton balls into our clothes and boots. We felled trees and stacked them in staples until the temperature dropped below 20 degrees Celsius. If it got colder, all the prisoners remained in the camp.
Once or twice a month we were awakened at night. We got up from our straw mattresses and drove the truck to the station, which was about 10 kilometers away. We saw huge mountains of forest. These were the trees we felled. The tree was to be loaded into closed freight wagons and sent to Tushino near Moscow. The mountains of the forest inspired us with a state of depression and horror. We had to set these mountains in motion. This was our job. How much longer can we hold on? How long will this last? These hours of the night seemed endless to us. When day came, the wagons were fully loaded. The work was tedious. Two people carried on their shoulders a two-meter tree trunk to the car, and then simply pushed it without a lift into the open doors of the car. Two especially strong prisoners of war piled wood inside the car in staples. The car was filling up. It was the next car's turn. We were illuminated by a spotlight on a high pole. It was some kind of surreal picture: shadows from tree trunks and swarming prisoners of war, like some fantastic wingless creatures. When the first rays of the sun fell on the ground, we walked back to the camp. This whole day was already a day off for us.
One of the January nights of 1946 especially stuck in my memory. The frost was so strong that after work the truck engines would not start. We had to walk on ice 10 or 12 kilometers to the camp. The full moon illuminated us. A group of 50-60 prisoners stumbled along. People became more and more distant from each other. I could no longer make out the one in front. I thought this was the end. To this day, I don't know how I managed to get to the camp.
felling. Day after day. Endless winter. More and more prisoners felt morally depressed. Salvation was to sign up for a "business trip". This is how we called work in nearby collective farms and state farms. With a hoe and a shovel, we dug out potatoes or beets from the frozen ground. There was not much to collect. But all the same, the collected food was put into a saucepan and heated. Melted snow was used instead of water. Our guard ate what was cooked with us. Nothing was thrown away. Cleanings were collected, secretly from the controllers at the entrance to the camp, they swept into the territory and, after receiving the evening bread and sugar, were fried in the barracks on two red-hot iron stoves. It was some kind of "carnival" food in the dark. Most of the prisoners were already asleep by that time. And we sat, soaking up the heat with our exhausted bodies like sweet syrup.
When I look at the past tense from the height of the years I have lived, I can say that I have never, nowhere, in any place in the USSR, noticed such a phenomenon as hatred for the Germans. It is amazing. After all, we were German prisoners of war, representatives of the people who, in the course of a century, twice plunged Russia into wars. The second war was unparalleled in terms of cruelty, horror and crime. If there were signs of any accusations, they were never "collective", addressed to the entire German people.
At the beginning of May 1946, I worked as part of a group of 30 prisoners of war from our camp on one of the collective farms. Long, strong, newly grown tree trunks intended for building houses had to be loaded onto prepared trucks. And then it happened. The tree trunk was carried on the shoulders. I was on the wrong side. When loading the barrel into the back of a truck, my head was sandwiched between two barrels. I lay unconscious in the back of the car. Blood flowed from the ears, mouth and nose. The truck took me back to the camp. At this point, my memory failed. I didn't remember anything after that.
The camp doctor, an Austrian, was a Nazi. Everyone knew about it. He did not have the necessary medicines and dressings. His only tool was nail scissors. The doctor immediately said: “Fracture of the base of the skull. There is nothing I can do…”
For weeks and months I lay in the camp infirmary. It was a room with 6-8 two-story bunks. Straw-stuffed mattresses lay on top. In good weather, flowers and vegetables grew near the barracks. In the first weeks the pain was unbearable. I didn't know how to get comfortable. I could barely hear. The speech was like incoherent murmuring. Vision has noticeably deteriorated. It seemed to me that the object in my field of vision on the right is on the left and vice versa.
Some time before the accident with me, a military doctor arrived at the camp. As he himself said, he came from Siberia. The doctor introduced many new rules. A sauna was built near the gates of the camp. Every weekend, the prisoners washed and steamed in it. The food has also gotten better. The doctor regularly visited the infirmary. One day he explained to me that I would be in the camp until such time as I could not be transported.
During the warm summer months, my well-being improved markedly. I could get up and made two discoveries. First, I realized that I was still alive. Secondly, I found a small camp library. On rough-hewn wooden shelves one could find everything that the Russians valued in German literature: Heine and Lessing, Berne and Schiller, Kleist and Jean Paul. Like a man who has already given up on himself, but who managed to survive, I pounced on books. I read first Heine, and then Jean Paul, about whom I had not heard anything at school. Although I still felt pain as I turned the pages, over time I forgot all that was going on around me. Books wrapped around me like a coat that protected me from the outside world. As I read, I felt an increase in strength, new strength, driving away the effects of my injury. Even after dark, I couldn't take my eyes off the book. After Jean Paul, I started reading a German philosopher named Karl Marx. "eighteen. Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" plunged me into the atmosphere of Paris in the middle of the 19th century, and "The Civil War in France" - into the thick of the battles of the Parisian workers and the Commune of 1870-71. My head felt like it was hurt again. I realized that behind this radical criticism lies a philosophy of protest, expressed in an unshakable belief in the individuality of man, in his ability to achieve self-liberation and, as Erich Fromm said, "in his ability to express inner qualities." It was as if someone removed the veil of lack of clarity for me, and the driving forces of social conflicts acquired a coherent understanding.
I don't want to gloss over the fact that reading wasn't easy for me. Everything that I still believed in was destroyed. I began to realize that with this new perception, there was a new hope, not limited only by the dream of returning home. It was a hope for a new life, in which there would be a place for self-consciousness and respect for a person.
While reading one of the books (I think it was "Economic and Philosophical Notes" or maybe "German Ideology") I appeared before a commission from Moscow. Her task was to select sick prisoners for further shipment to Moscow for treatment. "Will you go home!" - a doctor from Siberia told me.
A few days later, at the end of July 1946, I was driving in an open truck, along with a few, as always standing and huddled close to each other, through the familiar dam in the direction of Moscow, which was 50 or 100 km away. I spent several days in a kind of central hospital for prisoners of war under the supervision of German doctors. The next day I boarded a boxcar lined with straw on the inside. This long train was supposed to take me to Germany.
During a stop in an open field, one train overtook us on neighboring rails. I recognized the two-meter birch trunks, the same trunks that we massively felled in captivity. The trunks were intended for locomotive fireboxes. That's what they were used for. I could hardly think of a sweeter goodbye.
On August 8, the train arrived at the Gronenfelde assembly point near Frankfurt an der Oder. I received my release papers. On the 11th of the same month, having lost 89 pounds but a new free man, I entered my parents' house.
Captured Germans in the USSR rebuilt the cities they had destroyed, lived in camps, and even received money for their work. 10 years after the end of the war, former soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht "changed knives for bread" at Soviet construction sites.
Closed topic
For a long time it was not customary to talk about the life of captured Germans in the USSR. Everyone knew that yes, they were, that they even participated in Soviet construction projects, including the construction of Moscow skyscrapers (MGU), but it was considered bad form to bring the topic of captured Germans into a wide information field.
In order to talk about this topic, it is necessary, first of all, to decide on the numbers. How many German prisoners of war were on the territory of the Soviet Union? According to Soviet sources - 2,389,560, according to German - 3,486,000.
Such a significant difference (an error of almost a million people) is explained by the fact that the count of prisoners was set very poorly, and also by the fact that many captured Germans preferred to "mask" as other nationalities. The process of repatriation dragged on until 1955, historians believe that approximately 200,000 prisoners of war were incorrectly documented.
heavy soldering
The life of captured Germans during and after the war was strikingly different. It is clear that in the camps during the war, where prisoners of war were kept, the most cruel atmosphere reigned, there was a struggle for survival. People died of hunger, cannibalism was not uncommon. In order to somehow improve their share, the prisoners did their best to prove their non-participation in the "titular nation" of the fascist aggressors.
Among the prisoners were those who enjoyed some sort of privileges, such as Italians, Croats, Romanians. They could even work in the kitchen. Distribution of products was uneven.
Often there were cases of attacks on food peddlers, which is why, over time, the Germans began to provide their peddlers with protection. However, it must be said that no matter how difficult the conditions of the Germans' stay in captivity, they cannot be compared with the conditions of life in the German camps. According to statistics, 58% of captured Russians died in fascist captivity, only 14.9% of Germans died in our captivity.
Rights
It is clear that captivity cannot and should not be pleasant, but there are still talks about the content of German prisoners of war that the conditions of their detention were even too mild.
The daily ration of prisoners of war was 400 g of bread (after 1943 this rate increased to 600-700 g), 100 g of fish, 100 g of cereals, 500 g of vegetables and potatoes, 20 g of sugar, 30 g of salt. For generals and sick prisoners of war, the ration was increased.
Of course, these are just numbers. In fact, in wartime, rations were rarely issued in full. The missing food could be replaced with simple bread, rations were often cut, but the prisoners were not deliberately starved, there was no such practice in Soviet camps in relation to German prisoners of war.
Of course, prisoners of war worked. Molotov once said the historical phrase that not a single German prisoner would return to his homeland until Stalingrad was restored.
The Germans did not work for a loaf of bread. Circular of the NKVD of August 25, 1942 ordered to give prisoners monetary allowance (7 rubles for privates, 10 for officers, 15 for colonels, 30 for generals). There was also a bonus for shock work - 50 rubles a month. Amazingly, the prisoners could even receive letters and money orders from their homeland, they were given soap and clothes.
big construction
The captured Germans, following Molotov's testament, worked on many construction projects in the USSR and were used in public utilities. Their attitude to work was in many ways indicative. Living in the USSR, the Germans actively mastered the working vocabulary, learned the Russian language, but they could not understand the meaning of the word "hack-work". German labor discipline has become a household name and even gave rise to a kind of meme: "of course, it was the Germans who built it."
Almost all low-rise buildings of the 40s-50s are still considered to be built by the Germans, although this is not so. It is also a myth that the buildings built by the Germans were built according to the designs of German architects, which, of course, is not true. The general plan for the restoration and development of cities was developed by Soviet architects (Shchusev, Simbirtsev, Iofan and others).
