How did they manage that?
Give him back his ten lost years?
Compensation?
Or just a pardon of sorts?
I’m at work, so I don’t have the sources right now but -on the quick- Hartmann was already dead for 4 years when rehabilitated.
This horse has lived at least twice as long as any normal horse.
Is this due to the sturdiness of the German breeding stock or to the willingness of the Soviet authorities to give the best grass to horses rather than to the proletariat? 
Same here, Igor. Will do when at home.
Without checking, didn’t Hartman remained a hard core NAzi even in Soviet captivity?
So in case with Hartman it then was more due to his pro-Nazi attitude than actual war performance.
Nah, you’re mistaking him with either Rudel or Herrmann. Hartmann was a colonel of the German Luftwaffe after the war with excellent connections to the US.
That should have made him feel better. :rolleyes:
I don’t think that this is compareable with the census case. Census figures are ment to be public. The internal reports on POWs - not.
F.ex. there exists a report/memo from, I think, 1948 from Molotov to Stalin where Molotov mentions number of remaining POWs and than sais something like: considering high mortality rate of POW I sugest to report a lower number. Several days later Soviet News Agency (TASS) reported a figure that was somewhat lower than the one mentioned in the memo.
By the way, if my memory serves me right, the census figures were not directly forged by those responsible to please Stalin. That is actually why they didn’t meet the “requiered” by Stalin numbers and were later purged. They had to make some doubtfull assumtions in their calculation and such. As I understood the hole deal with the forged census was due to the fact that the Soviet leadership actually had no idea of the demographical impact of the 1933 starvation. Add to this the demograhical shift (urbanization of population) which USSR experienced in 30-s. The point is that census result was complete surprise for Stalin.
That is probably right. I think it was Rudel that I had in mind.
No, it is due to superior Soviet medical service! Soviet enema treatment is the best in the world.
http://gazeta.aif.ru/data/mags/stavropol/770/pics/16_01_00.jpg
Enema?
I thought it was a champion parsnip.
No wonder you Russians are so tough. We use something like that for refuelling our submarines.
By the way, do you have contact details for any of the lovelies surrounding the parsnip?
I’m willing to show them my vegetable. :mrgreen:
Doesn’t that support my point about Soviet figures being manipulated to achieve a desired result, and being unreliable?
The first lot of statisticians worked out figures according to the evidence available to them. Those figures disagreed with Stalin’s ideas of Soviet population growth. Some of the people at the top responsible for those figures were sent to gulags.
Another team was appointed and it came up with figures which agreed with Stalin’s population estimates. That team didn’t go to the gulags.
The first one, yes.
The second one, no.
After his release I believe Hartman spent time in the United States consulting for the Air Force and even logging some test pilot time in the cockpit, before returning to the Luftwaffe…
No, it doesn’t. 
You see, the mentioned episode with Molotov sugesting to publicly anounce a lower figure in the press is actually shows that the internal figure was perceived as a real one. It is only out PR purposes a distorted (not too much distorted BTW) was reported. That is why internal documents (especially at the level of Stalin-Molotov) are so important to understanding of the picture.
One surely should apply modest amount of rational questioning when evaluating information, but there is a line after which it is not critical thinking, but rather paranoia. Lets not step behind that thin line…
An example would be Dr. Günther Wagenlehner, I just re-checked his reports. Wagenlehner was born in 1923 and as a Lieutenant of the Wehrmacht he was captured by the British near the end of the war. After his release he returned to his home in the Soviet zone of occupation. At first he was detained in Germany and then taken to a camp in the Soviet Union. After two escape attempts and involvement in a camp uprising he was sentenced to three times 25 years forced labour. He returned to Germany in 1955.
After the war he worked for more than 20 years as an expert for eastern affairs and psychological defence in the German Ministry of Defence.
He provides the following thesis for keeping Germans in the Soviet Union until the mid 50’s: In 1948 the Soviet government decided to send all German POW’s home until late 1949. However KGB and MVD prevented this by preparing the mass convictions of autumn 1949. In September 1949 Stalin decided that 17000 POW’s had to be sentenced to 25 years of forced labour according to UKAZ 43 (war criminals). The matching individuals that didn’t confess were supposed to be convicted for aiding and abetting (article 17). In this connection a soldier’s membership to an outfit like the “Großdeutschland”, “Brandenburg” units or the Waffen-SS in general was regarded as sufficient. Convictions were imposed in 5-10 minute trials.
On March 17, 1950 Stalin assessed that too many Germans were convicted and ordered the Minister of the Interior to release 5000 just convicted individuals. Meanwhile every former German POW who was sentenced according Article 17 of UKAZ 43 is immediately rehabilitated on enquiry.
IIRC this was the F-86 Sabre. Hartmann eventually was another victim of the so-called Lockheed Scandal of 1966 (concerning the F-104 Starfighter).
Correct me if I am wrong, but the first sentense Hartman got in 1949 with that rediculous acusation of destruction of Soviet airplains and a backery on the ground. After he was one of the leaders if the camp revolt where all inmates cooperation wit hthe camp administration were killed he got a new sentense. I have not read of the third 25 year sentense.
What year did he get 25 years sentense for an escape attempt?
He was obviously intitially framed due to his open and public opposition to everything Soviet. I suppose the camp revolt incident might be even more complicated affair.
He provides the following thesis for keeping Germans in the Soviet Union until the mid 50’s: In 1948 the Soviet government decided to send all German POW’s home until late 1949. However KGB and MVD prevented this by preparing the mass convictions of autumn 1949. In September 1949 Stalin decided that 17000 POW’s had to be sentenced to 25 years of forced labour according to UKAZ 43 (war criminals). The matching individuals that didn’t confess were supposed to be convicted for aiding and abetting (article 17). In this connection a soldier’s membership to an outfit like the “Großdeutschland”, “Brandenburg” units or the Waffen-SS in general was regarded as sufficient. Convictions were imposed in 5-10 minute trials.
On March 17, 1950 Stalin assessed that too many Germans were convicted and ordered the Minister of the Interior to release 5000 just convicted individuals.
More or less the same as I imagine what happened.
Meanwhile every former German POW who was sentenced according Article 17 of UKAZ 43 is immediately rehabilitated on enquiry.
In total there were app. 25200 foreign sitizens sentensed on the ground of the law № 39 of 19 April 1943.
Up to January 2000 about 11000 people sought rehabilitation. 8000 got rehabilitation, 3000 were denied.
There are only 5 articles in the order № 39 of 19.04.1943 http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=621&Itemid=30
You’re mistaking Hartmann and Wagenlehner here I assume.
There are only 5 articles in the order № 39 of 19.04.1943 http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=621&Itemid=30
I had no inside information about the Soviet official rules on that one, I just quoted Wagenlehner. Do you have any idea which “Article 17” he was writing about?
I found it myself, he simply meant Article 17 of the penal code of the Soviet Union…
Your assumption is entierly justifiable!
I tried to find what article 17 is. It seems that the 17 article of the penal code of 1926 (in force until 1960) covered accompliceship in a crime.
I guess the logic was that since the war against USSR was declared to be a crime and some organisations were declared to be criminal too, then the members of SS could be charged with accompliceship to the crimes.
BTW charging the mentioned guy for an escape attempt after the sentense was entierly possible juridicaly. The thing is that after such conviction the person would looses status of POW, which leads to the consequence: fugitive = crime = punishment.
As I understand by far most of these 16000 men were SS members, no?
From what I just re-checked the choice of those unfortunate ones was randomly. There were POW’s already put on a transport home and promised “woyenno plenny skoro domoy” and then kept back after all. The accusations also based on articles 58&59 of Soviet penal code (in my source listed as “contra-revolutionary activity, impairment of public property” etc.). A popular count of indictment was “shattering of the economical substructure of the Soviet system”. This could mean (all real cases):
- a German driver of a tank drove his vehicle through a cornfield, ergo he destroyed the harvest and hereby the economical substructure.
- some were sentenced after they confessed to have eaten a Russian chicken during the war…theft of Soviet property.
- a Wehrmacht shoemaker was convicted because of the exertion of his profession: he abetted the marching abilities of the invading forces.
- an army musician lifted the spirits of the fascist army.:lol:
- a pharmacist was sentenced because of the fact that he supplied the Wehrmacht with medication: strengthening of the Wehrmacht!
Eventually a certain amount of Germans had to stay and they picked some incidentally. Another explanation for holding the POW’s back is that the Soviet Union needed them as a Cold War dead pledge to put some pressure on Western Germany and derail its orientation to the west.
There is an old German POW camp in Espanola ONT 3 hours from my city. The camp is now a mill but there is still drawings on the wall from the POWs. The POWs were treated good and were given day passes to go for a walk or see a show, some POWs helped on frams and other odd job that thay could fined. after the war most of the POWs stayed in Canada or came back when thay fond Germany in ruins.