Soviet POWs
The German treatment of prisoners of war captured during their invasion of Russia was one of the war's harshest chapters. It stands in sharp contrast to the conflict on the Western European front, where international conventions for wartime conduct were mostly obeyed by both parties, or even how Axis nations like Hungary and Romania treated their own Soviet POWs.
The figures are mind-boggling. 3.3 million of the 5.7 million Soviet POWs seized during Operation Barbarossa died in captivity. Many were tortured or subjected to experiments; Soviet detainees were the first to be subjected to the mass extermination techniques afterward used against Jewish inmates. When the winter weather set in, Soviet prisoners of war were stripped of their supplies and clothes by poorly-equipped German forces, resulting in their deaths. The majority of Soviet POW camps were just open spaces surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers, with no inmate housing.
They were the first people to live in several notorious concentration camps, including Auschwitz. Soviet POWs were the second biggest group of persons afflicted by Nazi policy after Jews, but this was motivated more by their supposed existential struggle against Bolshevik communism than bigotry.
- Year: 1941–1945
- Location: POW camps stretching from Nazi-occupied Poland to Italy
- Deaths: 3.3 to 3.5 million people
