The treatment of POW’s by all sides has a more sinister undercurrent. Little known are the deaths of 167,000 German POW’s in French captivity, or the estimated 68,000 German prisoners who died from deliberate starvation in American camps.
These pale in contrast to the millions of Soviet prisoners who died in German captivity, whether they were worked or starved to death, or shot soon after capture, the Ponary massacre a prime example. Similarly Soviet citizens suffered horribly under German occupation and the death toll of these people may never be known.
While the ‘official’ death toll of Jews is put at 6,000,000, there will always be conjecture as to the exact figure. Professor Raul Hilberg’s exhaustive study of SS records arrives at a figure of 5,100,000 Jews being eliminated. The missing 900,000 figure may very well be other civilian executions which may/may not have been lumped under an overall figure.
There are similar discrepencies in Soviet figures. Your figure of 2,388,433 German POW’s is very close to other sources, but there are higher figures quoted for the number of German prisoners who died in Soviet captivity, as there are still some 480,000 unaccounted for German prisoners according to the Russian archive at Podolsk. Part of the problem lays with the long held belief most of the still reported as missing 700, 000 German prisoners had been in Soviet captivity. Clearly these figures are incorrect, but where does the discrepency lie?
Can there be a similar discrepency in your figures of Jews killed in the former Soviet Union by German forces? Document 2273-PS compiled by SS Major General Stahlecker for Heinrich Himmler reports 229,052 Jews shot in five months of operations from June 1941.
My apology for my earlier misquote of 10,000 men. Cause-fading memory and a lack of caffeine.:shock:
Regards to all,
Digger.