German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union

On January 1, 1942, the number of German prisoners of war in the USSR was 9147. For the first time, a significant number of German troops fell into Soviet captivity as a result of the Battle of Stalingrad (89,000).

In 1943-1944, the Office for Prisoners of War and Internment Affairs of the NKVD of the USSR, together with the Main Political Administration of the Red Army, conducted active work around the creation of anti-fascist organizations of prisoners of war. In July 1943, the Free Germany National Committee was created from prisoners of war.

During the war, the work of prisoners of war in the national economy of the country was not of great importance, it became a significant factor only after the war. Prisoners of war participated in the restoration of the national economy, destroyed during the war - factories, dams, railways, ports and so on. They were also actively used in the restoration of the old and the construction of a new housing stock in many cities of the USSR. In addition, German prisoners were actively used in logging, in the construction of roads and railways in remote and inaccessible areas, as well as in the extraction of minerals - for example, uranium , coal , and iron ore . According to the Central Finance Department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, between 1943 and January 1, 1950, prisoners of war worked 1,077,564,200 man-days, earned 16,723,628 rubles and completed work in construction and industry with a total value of approximately 50 billion rubles.

On June 18, 1946, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted Decree No. 1263-519ss “On the Disposal of Sick and Disabled Prisoners of War of German and Other Western Nationalities” to their homeland.

In April 1947, a conference of foreign ministers of the USSR, the USA and Great Britain was held in Moscow, at which a decision was made to repatriate German prisoners of war until December 31, 1948. But in practice, repatriation dragged on until 1950. In addition, prisoners of war convicted of war crimes were not subject to repatriation.

In October 1955, after the visit of German Chancellor K. Adenauer, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a Decree "On the Early Release and Repatriation of German Prisoners of War Convicted for War Crimes" ^[1] , and more than 14 thousand German prisoners of war convicted for war crimes were repatriated from the USSR . In total, about two million German prisoners of war were repatriated from the Soviet Union.

According to official statistics from the Office for Prisoners of War and Internment of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR of October 12, 1959, a total of 2,389,560 German troops were captured, of whom 356,678 died in captivity. ^[2] Mortality was especially high in the early years of the war. Due to severe frosts, poor uniforms and poor nutrition, many prisoners, exhausted by the long marches, were already dying on their way to the camps. In the postwar years, mortality decreased significantly. Representatives of the International Red Cross were admitted to them. , and sometimes mail was delivered from the homeland.

Information on the number of prisoners of war of the armed forces of Germany and its allied countries recorded in the camps of the NKVD of the USSR as of April 22, 1956 ^[3] .

• "The Doctor from Stalingrad" - German 1958 feature film about German prisoners of war, based on the novel of the same name by a war correspondent, and later by writer Heinz Konzalik .
• “ Escape from the Gulag ” is a Russian-German feature film of 2001 about the escape of a German prisoner of war from a forced labor camp .
• Semigla is a 2005 Russian feature film about the difficult relationship between German prisoners and local residents in the Russian North .
• " Time to Collect Stones " is a 2005 Russian feature film about a German sapper who helped Soviet sappers clear mine after the war ended.

• List of Soviet POW camps
• Japanese prisoners of war in the Soviet Union
• Soviet prisoners of war during the Great Patriotic War
• Losses in the Great Patriotic War
• Memorial Museum of German Anti-Fascists
• The use of forced labor of the German civilian population in the USSR
• German prisoners of war in Azerbaijan
• Rehabilitation in Russia of German citizens convicted of war crimes

• The regulations on prisoners of war, approved by Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 1798-800 of July 1, 1941
• FOREIGN POWS IN THE USSR
• "Harvesting German labor." Captured Germans in Soviet camps
• The first German prisoners of war
• German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union
• Prisoners of war
• D. Kuzin German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union
• N. Bugay. Repatriation of prisoners of war Germans from the USSR in the 40-50s
• Y. Yeremeyev. Long Russian captivity
• I. Bezborodova. Wehrmacht generals in Soviet captivity
• E. Schuman. "GUPVI Archipelago"
• A. Morozova. Konrad Adenauer: a trip to nowhere
• A. Kuzminykh. Foreign prisoners of war and Soviet women
• Photo album 'Album of the stay of prisoners of war of German nationality in the USSR. Camp 230/1 MVD USSR '. The album contains photographs taken by German prisoners of war in the postwar period while in the Soviet prisoner of war camp.

• Vsevolodov V. A. “Shelf life is constant!” A brief history of the prisoner of war and internment camp of the UPVI of the NKVD-MVD of the USSR No. 27 (1942-1950). - M .: Moscow Publishing House, 2003 .-- 272 p. - ISBN 5-900747-12-3 .
• Vsevolodov V. A. Go in peace: to the history of the repatriation of German prisoners of war from the USSR (1945-1958) - M .: Moscow Publishing House, 2010. - 388 p. - 500 copies. - ISBN 5-85167-002-9 .