Did Russians repaid many times over for bad treatement Russian POW's by Germans?

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#61

Mate, we agree that you agree to keep agreeing with me. Please don’t make a habit of this or all the fun will go out of our close relationship, which until the past few days has operated quite successfully based on mutual contradiction and constant conflict, at least until you had your toothache and it made you all soft and cuddly. :smiley:

So the conclusion is that the soviets did NOT repaid many time in terms od POW death rate. Right?

Apparently.

But perhaps you’ll allow me to retain a bit of scepticism on the wider issue of the Soviets getting stuck into the Germans.

Whould you care to compare the number of rapes in this thread, your honour?

Not in a million years. This site doesn’t have enough bandwidth to hold that debate.

Just to piss you off (not in the Gen Sandworm plain-speaking American sense but purely in the friendly Australian sense where ‘bastard‘ is a term of endearment), I still think the Russians / Soviets got stuck into the Huns when they got the chance.

At best only about 6,000 Germans survived from the 300,000 to 400,000 (figure depends on when you want to start counting) committed to the same effort at Stalingrad. Even if it was only 250,000, the survival rate including the 91,000 or so POW’s who left Stalingrad was only about 2,5%. This doesn’t suggest that Russia / Soviets were running a benevolent charity for the non-violent rehabilitation of misguided Germans, on or off the battelfield.

#62

Well, it is too late! :wink:

I clame German soldiers commited 10 millions acts of rape in the ocupied territories of USSR.

Compare it to alleged 2 millions rapes by RKKA.

Prove me being wrong!

#63

Where do “300,000 to 400,000” come from? Who are those people?

#64

I don’t have their names and addresses :), but my recollection is that von Paulus’s 6th Army was trapped in Stalingrad with about 250,000 to 275,000 troops, plus others were involved shortly beforehand.

#65

Sure you don’t know their adresses but you know the place of their death - Stalingrad.
Actually the The 6 army had in sept- oct about 250 000 soldiers.But for the period of oct- jenuary the 6 army lost the most part of its quantity.
In the february the Red Army captured the only about 90 000 of germans/romanian/italian soldiers.

#66

I am reading now the russian translation of the book “GEFANGEN IN STALINGRAD” by Franz Zapp, 1992. Here is the link to the russian translation: http://dl9.ohshare.com/v/210995/Franz_Sapp_Stalingradskiy_plennik.zip.html

He was and Austrian serving at radio communication center. He was captured 31-01-1943 in Stalingrad. Came home in 1946.

He sais in November they were ordered to go to the East instead of West. This way they were trapped in Stalingrad. And they were also ordered to blow up the things they could not carry with them. This included FOOD DEPOTS! And he sais that in many places it was done meticously. The food was not even destributed among the soldiers.

Already in the second part of December they had almost no food left. His own unit was lucky to find a sack of rye flour and some sugar. They were numerous cases of frost bites, so numerous that it was not cosidered to be an injury anymore.

The point is that when those 90-something tousand people were captured by RKKA they were already very much affected by the hunger and wounds. That is, of course, not to say that thirtreatment after capture was the best, but it has to be remembered.

#67

I assume it was just the standard practice of destroying items which could be of use to the enemy.

The point is that when those 90-something tousand people were captured by RKKA they were already very much affected by the hunger and wounds. That is, of course, not to say that thirtreatment after capture was the best, but it has to be remembered.

Agreed.

The other aspect is that, as with American and Filipino POW’s at Bataan and the German POW’s in American and French hands at the end of WWII, the capturing nation usually can’t handle the sudden demands on its resources of huge numbers of prisoners. The problem can be more acute during a war when the capturing nation doesn’t want to divert fighting troops and their supplies from a successful offensive, and just doesn’t have the capacity to manage the POW problem properly even if it wanted to,

In all of these examples, and other cases, reasonable medical treatment, shelter, food, and generally more humane treatment would have avoided many deaths.

In most cases it was, to varying degrees, a combination of inability to provide the POW’s with everything they needed and a lack of concern for, or even a desire to punish, the captives. The problems became much worse when wounded, ill and malnourished POW’s were forced to march long distances in bad conditions, as at Stalingrad and Bataan. Troops captured and kept in the same area, such as at Singapore, didn’t suffer as badly from the extra burden of forced marches.

It occurs to me that there should have been a similar problem with Italian POW’s captured in huge numbers in North Africa, but I don’t know anything about their treatment after capture.

#68

Rising Sun,

What about this one:
I clame German soldiers commited 10 millions acts of rape in the ocupied territories of USSR.
Compare it to alleged 2 millions rapes by RKKA.

Prove me being wrong!

#69

I double concur. While some Red Army soldiers did some pretty awful things, nothing compares to the wholesale starvation and systematic killing of Soviet POWs, numbering about four million deaths, last time I looked…

BTW, I wonder if any of our esteemed Russian friends and colleagues will quibble with those statistics? :confused:

Source for my information:

http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showpost.php?p=91467&postcount=25

It is from a Jewish website after all…:slight_smile:

#70

Oh Nck i have to conclude you now know how to be the russian friend :wink:

It is from a Jewish website after all…:slight_smile:

If you sure we could believe it… :slight_smile:

#71

Egorka i think the our friend Nickdfresh has expressed the BEST answer of this thread as:
How we could to compare the systematical annihilation of population in the East by the Germans ( they killed about 7-8 millons of civilians ) with the “raping of german wooman”.
I know only one explanation of the point to compare - but i/m afraid this explanation is based on the Nazy race superioty teories:
The honnour of ONE germans arian women is equal of life of 4-5 “slav subhuman”

#72

I don’t think there is a direct comparison Chevan, but as you stated to be in the past, the murdering of Soviet citizens by German forces in no way justifies the complete break down in discipline of the Red Army and the systematic use of rape as a weapon…

#73

Agree .
The rape of the population could not be justified by any means or violence in the East.
But … although it could be explained.
If you a 20 yaears young men who even did not finish the school and who saw as his most of his friend were killed by the Germans in front, his wife was killed in the occuped by Germans village “for the revenge for partisans attack”, his relatives died form a famine in the blocade Leningrad, and his brother was torture to the death in the German concentration camp for the POWs - i/m sure you find a not much of argument to consider the civils right of german population as the most holy thing in the world.
Certainly the simple human compassion is the importaint, but tell me honestly WHO DID think about compassion or at least christian ethic in that time?
May be the allies strategic high command - i strongly doubt , coz they killed not less of germans civiliand that the red army did. They were the “hight educated intelligents peoples” who nevertheless were able to order the firestorm henocide of population where the aim was the ONLY to kill as much germans as it was possible.( doctrine of bomber Harris).
Sure at that moment of war the human morale was a worst in any side.
BTW a lot of cases of rapes were the bitch of Red Army, but to say the repa was a mass is wrong. The most of the dirty thing made a so called second wave - the rear units .Besides there a lot of cases when european REPATRIATES ( who were liberated form the germans slavery) raped and grabed the german populations.This acts also were add to the “crimes of Red Army”.

#74

I’m not disputing that that was a factor. But some of the rapes were by Asiatic Soviet troops who never had a German soldier anywhere near where they lived, nor any ethnic connection with the Slavs who suffered under the Germans. They were just raping because they could, not revenging.

The most of the dirty thing made a so called second wave - the rear units .Besides there a lot of cases when european REPATRIATES ( who were liberated form the germans slavery) raped and grabed the german populations.This acts also were add to the “crimes of Red Army”.

Check out the Allied rear area problems in Normandy in 1944. I think that David Irving, before he went silly, covered aspects of this in his solid The War Between the Generals, but it’s been ages since I read it.

Rear area troops are often the bravest and most vicious. When they’re not facing the enemy firing at them.

Front line troops are too busy surviving to fuck the enemy women miles behind the lines where they’re fighting. That’s what the second line troops do.

#75

Guys! Hello!

In case I have to say it aloud, here it is: “There is not moral justification for rapes that were numerous. One is one too many.”

Yet, the issue is just like with the statement that Russians repayed many times over for the POWs (I am not really reffering to specific statement by RisingSun, but to the generaly spread feeling among the people in Europe and , probably, US).

We, Russians (Russians not only in the genetic sence. But all diferent ethnoses binded by the Russian ethnos.) Commited many crimes. Many bad crimes. So my point is that we have made enough real crimes for not to blindly accept those crimes we, in reality, did not commit.

One of those myths was about POW death rate. The second one is about rape, which extent I think is exhagerated.

I either heard of MASSIVE rapes (this one usually presented in such a way that there were so massive that there is not even point to talk about a numebr - everyone was raped.) or I also heard number 2 million.

One of the specifics of the crime of rape is that it one of the least visible crimes that can happen during the war. There are no bodies laying around, not empty houses left after the population is exterminated. This makes it easier to use for propagandistic purposes.

So if I estimate (I have seen this number in the discussion in other forums) the number of rapes by Axis in USSR to be 10 million, would I be wrong?

P.S: I am on holliday for the next 9 days. Away from the sucker called “computer”. Yes!!! :slight_smile:

#76

While the Germans doubtless committed some rapes it sounds like they were more focused on killing than raping in the USSR. I haven’t heard anything in the way of claims regarding the number of rapes in the USSR.

#77

Hello,

I though it could be relevant to the discussion in this thread to know what was the death rate of the inmates in GULAG system. It is interesting to compare these figures with the figures of death in POW camps for Axis soldiers in the territory of USSR.

[b]Death rate in the GULAG system 1940 - 1956.[/b]

       avg. year    number     death 
[u]year[/u]   [u]# inmates[/u]   [u]of deaths[/u]   [u]rate,%[/u]
1940   1.517.463     41.275     2,7
1941   1.893.180    115.484     6,1
1942   1.415.904    352.560    24,9
1943   1.195.652    267.826    22,4
1944   1.244.359    114.481     9,2
1945   1.376.756     81.917     6,0
1946   1.396.136     30.715     2,2
1947   1.861.560     66.830     4,0
1948   2.221.886     50.659     2,3
1949   2.425.620     29.350     1,2
1950   2.580.105     24.511     1,0
1951   2.441.957     22.466     0,9
1952   2.457.500     20.643     0,8
1953   1.437.015      9.628     0,7
1954   1.211.304      8.358     0,7
1955     913.585      4.842     0,5
1956     791.000      3.164     0,4

GULAG. Pages 441-442. Calculated based on the documents 
of "The Department of Registration and Distribution of inmates of GULAG". 
(Depository 9414 of the State Archive of Russian Federation)

Source: A.Dykov, “Myth about genocide: the Soviet repressions in Estonia (1940-1953)”.

#78

I believe that Appelbaum discusses these figures, and that they reflect only official deaths in camps. So they do not include deaths in transit (which were significant), unrecorded deaths, and people getting a 7.62 mm hole in the back of their head in the basement or yard of some prison, or by a ditch in the woods.

As with “tractor production figures”, all figures coming out of the Soviet union are suspect.

#79

Most of the death here are official. The documents used for it were for internal use, not for propaganda. In some cases the cause of death could be faked but the death had to be registered anyway. The higher bosses did not like when working power (inmates) disappears unexplainably.

For example, imagine an asshole guard, who does not like a specific prisoner. So he provokes him and shoots the prisoner claming the prisoner tries to escape. The death would be added to a specific statistics but would had to be registered in any case.

So they do not include deaths in transit (which were significant)

What transit do you mean? Who is being transported? From where to where?

unrecorded deaths

Well, it is obvious that unrecorded deaths are not recorded. That is why it’s called unrecorded. The question “how many” remain though.

and people getting a 7.62 mm hole in the back of their head in the basement or yard of some prison, or by a ditch in the woods

It looks to me that those victims are the ones who got death penalty. Who else would be shot for no reason?

#80

Transported from place of arrest to a camp, from camp to camp, and so on. Transit time was often weeks or even months, with very little food. Many died en route.

The “death penalty” was applied extremely liberally, as you should know, for various things that weren’t really crimes. At various times you could even be executed on suspicion, legal proof of being a “bourgeois concept”.

Even internal figures are suspect, if the higher ups think that too many people are dying in camps than the figures will be massaged downwards, if the higher ups at that time were looking for people to die, the figures will be massaged upwards.