Shooting Asians

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j.north
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Shooting Asians

#1

Post by j.north » 14 Apr 2003, 11:48

On 6 January 1942 the 75th Infantry Division (part of 6th Army) ordered its men operating in the Soviet Union 'to shoot all Asians whether military or civilian'. Army Corps XXIX transmitted the same order to all its divisions the following day.

Interesting.

We all know about the shooting of Jews in the SU (many of which are explained away because the Jews were leading activists in the Communist party or local Ukrainians wanted to extract revenge ..) but I wonder how the above order can be excused by the more revisionist-minded posters among us.

I also wonder what the Japanese might have had to say ...

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Re: Shooting Asians

#2

Post by Dan » 14 Apr 2003, 12:33

j.north wrote:On 6 January 1942 the 75th Infantry Division (part of 6th Army) ordered its men operating in the Soviet Union 'to shoot all Asians whether military or civilian'. Army Corps XXIX transmitted the same order to all its divisions the following day.

Interesting.

We all know about the shooting of Jews in the SU (many of which are explained away because the Jews were leading activists in the Communist party or local Ukrainians wanted to extract revenge ..) but I wonder how the above order can be excused by the more revisionist-minded posters among us.

I also wonder what the Japanese might have had to say ...
I don't know how many times pictures of Asians in German uniform have been posted on this forum. There were thousands of Asians who fought for Germany from Tatars to Turkmen and everything in between. Why don't you post a copy of this not very likely sounding order?


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#3

Post by Davey Boy » 14 Apr 2003, 12:37

That is an interesting bit of info, because we know for a fact that many Asians from the SU served in the German forces. There were the Kalmycks, from near the Caspian Sea, who looked fully Mongol, and also some other groups, like Turkomans and even Koreans. So the Germans, although racist, and constantly talking about the threat from the Asiatic hordes, did not shy away from using Mongols as manpower when needed. Was that order revoked soon after 1942, or what? Because if it wasn't, then how come the Kalmycks, Turkomans and others weren't all shot?

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#4

Post by Dan » 14 Apr 2003, 12:52

I tried to post a picture from one of those stupid Geocities sites. There were a few I hadn't seen before, a Thai with a Panzer Grenidier Division and a couple Mongols captured during Market Garden. Also some Turkmen in North Africa.

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Roberto
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#5

Post by Roberto » 14 Apr 2003, 13:48

The following text was translated from Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, pages 774 and following. The numerous source notes in the original were left out.
The Annihilation of Soviet Prisoners of War on Belorussian Soil

Open Mass Murder of Prisoners of War

a) The Annihilation of Political and “Racial” Opponents among the Prisoners

The Killing of Jewish and "Asiatic" Prisoners of War

[...]Another group of prisoners of war who were annihilated especially in the first months of the war were the so-called Asiatics. They killing was also part of the tasks of the Einsatzgruppen from the beginning. Although they were mentioned for the first time in Heydrichs order no. 8 of 17 July 1941, selections and murders by Einsatzgruppe B in Minsk already occurred before that. In accordance with the General Quarter Master Wagner’s order of 24 July the camp and guard personnel registered the "Asiatics (according to their race)" under the term "Asiatics", also in Belorussia. There are no reports about their killing by the Wehrmacht from this area, however. At an unknown time, for instance, 200 to 250 Red Army soldiers considered Mongolian were selected from the prisoner of war camp at Mogilev and shot by EK 8. In part the detachments of security police and SD also murdered them as presumed Jews, as Muslims are also circumcised. After several months protests from the Eastern Ministry and the Amt Ausland/Abwehr of the Wehrmacht High Command piled up because these entities considered the Asiatics, especially the Muslim Caucasians and soldiers from Central Asia, to be predestined collaborators. These protests led to an order by Heydrich of 12 September 1941 putting an end to the shooting of the “Asiatics”, which order, however, was not immediately followed by all Einsatzkommandos.[my emphasis]

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STALAGl3
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#6

Post by STALAGl3 » 14 Apr 2003, 13:50

There was an order to shoot all Asiatic Russians in 41-42 who were mainly POWs, but after the German defeat at Stalingrad the order was probably revoked or ignored.Then Nazis needed more manpower so they recruited anyone who could shoot a rifle. There were millions of Soviet citizens who collaborated or fought for the Germans, some of which were Asians.

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Roberto
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#7

Post by Roberto » 14 Apr 2003, 14:45

STALAGl3 wrote:There were millions of Soviet citizens who collaborated or fought for the Germans, some of which were Asians.
Is there a breakdown of those "millions"?

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#8

Post by STALAGl3 » 14 Apr 2003, 18:23

Roberto wrote:
STALAGl3 wrote:There were millions of Soviet citizens who collaborated or fought for the Germans, some of which were Asians.
Is there a breakdown of those "millions"?
Virtually every Soviet Nationality had their collaborators. From the Russians to the Kalmycks, there were Ukrainian SS as there were Latvian SS. There were Georgians and Armenians is Ost battalions as well as Mongolians. The estimated amt of Soviet citizens who served on the frontlines for the Nazis was 1.5 mil. You don't have to be serving on the frontlines to be a collaborator. Think of all the thosuands of Soviet people who hunted down Jews in pogroms, those who guarded the concentration camps, and anyone else who simply helped a German soldier by offering him some bread. A collaborator is anyone who helps an occupying force and the Bolsheviks defined a collaborator as anyone who didn't resist the invaders and anyone who surrendered.

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Roberto
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#9

Post by Roberto » 14 Apr 2003, 19:33

STALAGl3 wrote:
Roberto wrote:
STALAGl3 wrote:There were millions of Soviet citizens who collaborated or fought for the Germans, some of which were Asians.
Is there a breakdown of those "millions"?
Virtually every Soviet Nationality had their collaborators. From the Russians to the Kalmycks, there were Ukrainian SS as there were Latvian SS. There were Georgians and Armenians is Ost battalions as well as Mongolians. The estimated amt of Soviet citizens who served on the frontlines for the Nazis was 1.5 mil. You don't have to be serving on the frontlines to be a collaborator. Think of all the thosuands of Soviet people who hunted down Jews in pogroms, those who guarded the concentration camps, and anyone else who simply helped a German soldier by offering him some bread. A collaborator is anyone who helps an occupying force and the Bolsheviks defined a collaborator as anyone who didn't resist the invaders and anyone who surrendered.
OK, by such a definition, which would have honored Lavrenti Beria, there may have been millions of collaborators indeed.

As to the figure for Soviet citizens who "served on the frontlines for the Nazis", I presume it also includes civilian laborers (whose work was hardly voluntary, in most cases) besides the ca. 1 million prisoners of war who served as "Hiwis" (short for "Hilfswillige" = "auxiliaries") or as combat troops in the Wehrmacht.

The latter, by the way, seem to have made up a significant portion of the troops encircled by the Red Army at Stalingrad.

Antony Beevor & Artemis Cooper, Stalingrad, 1998
Appendix B
The Statistical Debate: The Forces of the Sixth Army in the Cauldron

The variety of numbers cited in regard to the forces of the besieged Sixth Army requires at least an attempt at clarification. The estimates about forces of the Sixth Army inside the Cauldron on 19 November 1942 varies greatly, mainly because there seem to have been so many Russians in their ranks that the same were included in the German rations lists, not being cited separately. Some of the numbers of Manfred Kehrig, the author of Stalingrad: Analyse und Dokumentation einer Schlacht, the magistral volume published in 1974 under the auspices of the Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, have been recently questioned by Rüdiger Overmans. Overmans, working solely on the basis or retrospective Wehrmacht estimates (in what was basically an attempt to calculate on the basis of the personnel registers of those who were caught inside the Cauldron), reduces the number of Germans besieged to 195,000 and puts that of the Hiwis at 50,000 and that or Romanians at 5,000, for a total of approximately 250,000 men. Kehrig had made an estimate of 232,000 Germans, 52,000 Hiwis and 10,000 Romanians, which gives a total of about 294,000. Other more recent studies calculate a total, on 18 December, of 268,900 men, of whom 13,000 had been Romanians and 19,300 had been Hiwis.
This last conclusion, taking into account the difference of dates and the consequent number of casualties occurred in the meantime, corresponds very closely to the total compiled on 6 December by the Oberquartiermeister of the Sixth Army, who said that “the rations of the Sixth Army inside the Cauldron” corresponded to a total of 275,000 men, including 20,300 Hiwis and 11,000 Romanians. (Romanian sources maintain that they had 12,600 men in the Cauldron, and there were also several hundred Italians.) If we add to these numbers the 15,000 men lost “only inside the cauldron” between 21 November and 6 December, this would mean that the number of men besieged on 6 December was almost 290,000.
All authors agree that about 25,000 wounded and specialists were evacuated by air, but there are very few certainties in regard to the number of dead or those who were taken prisoner. The truth will never be known due to the chaos that followed the Soviet offensive of 10 January for the crushing of the Cauldron. All we know with relative certainty is that about 52,000 members of the Sixth Army died between 22 November and 7 January, but we do not know how many of them were Hiwis. The Soviet number for the prisoners captured between 19 November and 31 January is 111,465, beside another 8,928 in hospitals, but they do not specify how many were Germans, and they also do not specify - which would be much more important - how many belonged to the troops encirled as opposed to those captured during Operations Winter Tempest and Little Saturn.
The Soviet attack of Operation Ring on 10 January 1943, in addition to the effects of disease, cold, hunger, exhaustion and summary executions suggests that the losses greatly increased and may well have reached close to 100,000 men, including Hiwis. Both Kehrig and Overmans estimate that the German losses between 22 November and surrender were close to 60,000. Of course they made no attempt whatsoever to calculate the number of Hiwis who died during the fighting, but we may assume that only very few of them managed to escape alive at the end thereof.

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#10

Post by michael mills » 15 Apr 2003, 04:04

There seems to be a clear contradiction between Heydrich's order of 12 September 1941 banning further executions of "Asiatics" (essentially Turkic Muslims from Central Asia and the Caucasus), and the claimed order of 6 January 1942, some four months later, mandating precisely such executions.

The contradiction needs to be resolved. It seems to me unlikely that Heydrich's order of 12 September 1941 would have been rescinded and the execution of "Asiatics" resumed. There were too many forces at play that favoured the fostering of the Muslim and other "Asiatic" minorities as collaborators against the Soviet regime and against the Slavic majority to have permitted that. Furthermore, among the anti-Bolshevik Russian refugees in Germany who contributed so much to German policy, there were not a few members of the Muslim minorities, eg Prince Veli Kayum, who were appalled at the initial exterminatory policies, and exercised their influence to prevent their continuation.

Perhaps J. North needs to post his source for the claimed order of 6 January 1942, and in particular the exact context in which it was issued.

As to the reasons why "Asiatics" were initially included in the categories of persons to be executed, they are probably to be sought in memories of what happened in the very first days of Bolshevik rule, when various Asian minority groups, in particular Chinese from the Far East, were used to do the dirty work of the Cheka and other organs of repression. That created the concept that such minority groups were particularly cruel and ferocious supporters of Bolshevism.

It was certainly the impression of the German leaders that any "Asiatics" encountered in European Russia must have been brought there by the Bolshevik regime for "special tasks", and thus fell into the category of "dangerous Communists". However, it did not take long for the Germans to realise their mistake, and to conclude that the Asian minorities were a good source of collaborators.

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Roberto
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#11

Post by Roberto » 15 Apr 2003, 10:38

michael mills wrote:There seems to be a clear contradiction between Heydrich's order of 12 September 1941 banning further executions of "Asiatics" (essentially Turkic Muslims from Central Asia and the Caucasus), and the claimed order of 6 January 1942, some four months later, mandating precisely such executions.

The contradiction needs to be resolved.
A clue to the resolution of the "contradiction" lies, I presume, in the fact that the execution on 6 January 1942 was carried out by Wehrmacht units, over whom Heydrich had no authority.
michael mills wrote:It was certainly the impression of the German leaders that any "Asiatics" encountered in European Russia must have been brought there by the Bolshevik regime for "special tasks", and thus fell into the category of "dangerous Communists".
What evidence do we have that such reasoning, rather than a racist animus, was the reason for the killing of "Asiatics" ?

Let's have a look at the whole of the chapter I translated from Gerlach's Kalkulierte Morde (a work that Mills is familiar with and has even expressed his approval of):
The Killing of Jewish and “Asiatic” Prisoners of War

In the German prisoner of war camps not only "commissars" were persecuted, but also other groups of people. Among them were the Jewish prisoners of war. To murder them was part of the task of the Einsatzgruppen from the beginning. Among the Soviet prisoners of war handed over to them – see previous section – there were also many Jews. What part they made up can however neither be established nor estimated.
Other institutions, however, were also involved in the search for Jewish prisoners of war. Among them were the "Commissions for the Scanning of Prisoners of War" of the Eastern Ministry, who at the latest in September 1941 took up their activity and primarily had the task to pick out skilled workers and possible collaborators among the prisoners and to sort them by nationalities. It was also their task to scan out "political and criminal suspects, especially agitating Soviet functionaries, commissars, long-term professional soldiers of the Soviet army [!], Jews and criminal elements"[my emphasis] and to report them to the camp commandants. There were 14 such commissions by the middle of October and at least 40 in total. With the participation of the infamous race referent in the East Ministerium, Dr. Wetzel, there were also racial investigations in the camps in 1941[my emphasis]. Wetzel after the war admitted that in the camps there had also been "racially" motivated executions, for instance of prisoners with "Mongolian" aspect[my emphasis]; these executions, it should be added, were possibly related to the investigations carried out at the time.
The Wehrmacht also murdered Jewish prisoners of war. Such happened for instance at the transit camp 131 (Slonim) in July 1941, There the ordinance officer of the District Commander J for Prisoners of War told by the transit camp commandant, Major v. Roeder, "that the liquidation of the Jews should be carried out according to more reasonable criteria, for instance doctors should not be removed just like that because in case of an epidemic they could still render certain services. He suggests that the transit camp commandant may eventually and in agreement with the field commandant carry out a selection of those people that are under all circumstances to be spared."
In fact the staff of the transit camps shot Jews, like at Baranovichi. The wording further indicates that there was a corresponding instruction. An order to kills Jewish prisoners of war also seems to have existed already on 20 June 1941 at the 22nd Infantry Division. General Major Wagner’s order of 24 July was understood by the District Commander J for Prisoners of War, Colonel Marschall, in the sense that the prisoners were not only to be sorted according to their nationality, but the first letter of their nationality was to be painted on their clothing with white oil paint – for Jews a J[my emphasis]. At the provisional camp Drosdy near Minsk it was similar. Later the Jews there were separated, and after the camp was moved to Masjukovchina there was a barracks only for Jews. Also in other camps the Jews were registered. For a time there was the order to transfer Jewish prisoners west from the rear area of Army Group Center, i.e. not to kill them immediately.
However, the efforts for murdering Jews were obviously increased anew in the rear area of Army Group Center in the autumn of 1941. According to the former Colonel Marschall’s account, he had heard from camp commandants subordinated to him "that there was some order to kill all Russian Jews". He said that he had sent an inquiry on this to von Schenckendorff, who had transmitted it to the Army High Command. There in turn the information had been confirmed and a new order for handing over prisoners to security police and SD been issued. This version is not credible in several aspects. But much indicates that Wagner’s order of 7 October, the background of which research has not been able to clarify so far, was meant not only to relieve the camp personnel from the murder work but also to provide for an increased persecution of the Jewish prisoners. The murder of Soviet Jews had been decided upon at this time; on 2 October the Army High Command had thus issued directives for taking hold of all Jewish property in the area under military administration. At transit camp 131 (Bobruisk) there seems to have been a radicalization at this time, at any rate. According to eyewitness accounts at the beginning of November about 200 Jewish prisoners of war were first mistreated and then shot. In the same month 800 Jewish prisoners are said to have been identified at fake medical examinations on hand of their circumcision and taken away.
At the same time there was a conflict between the commandant of transit camp 185 (Mogilev), Major Wittmer, and Einsatzkommando 8 because Wittmer refused to hand over Jewish prisoners of war and civilian prisoners. In another context he declared that he objected to "plain and simple murder". Wittmer can hardly be seen as a hero, however: at the beginning of July 1941 he had requested a company of Police Battalion 322 for the camp he led at Bialystok, which unit had then within 8 days shot 73 men due to alleged attempts to escape, more every day – and almost all were Jews. At his camp in Mogilev, with daily rations of partially only 1400 calories, starvation killed 40,000 men. His statements towards the representative of Einsatzkommando 8 thus seem somewhat hypocritical. As Wittmer in this respect had no full backing by the supreme commander of Army Group Center, von Bock, there was a selection by EK 8 in transit camp 185 soon thereafter, during which 196 Jews and functionaries were shot. Thereafter Jewish prisoners of war were continuously murdered in Belorussia, for example 207 men at the Vitebsk base camp by EK 9 in December 1941, regularly groups at base camp 352 (Minsk) in the years 1942 and 1943 and in the winter of 1942/43 at Gomel by the camp personnel, which in biting frost drained Jewish internees with water and let them freeze to death in the open. At Kritchev Jewish prisoners were first tortured with exceedingly heavy forced labor before they were shot.
Another group of prisoners of war who were annihilated especially in the first months of the war were the so-called Asiatics. They killing was also part of the tasks of the Einsatzgruppen from the beginning. Although they were mentioned for the first time ion Heydrichs order no. 8 of 17 July 1941, selections and murders by Einsatzgruppe B in Minsk already occurred before that. In accordance with the General Quarter Master Wagner’s order of 24 July the camp and guard personnel registered the "Asiatics (according to their race)"[my emphasis] under the term "Asiatics", also in Belorussia. There are no report about their killing by the Wehrmacht from this area, however. At an unknown time, for instance, 200 to 250 Red Army soldiers considered Mongolian were selected from the prisoner of war camp at Mogilev and shot by EK 8. In part the detachments of security police and SD also murdered them as presumed Jews, as Muslims are also circumcised.[my emphasis] After several months protests from the Eastern Ministry and the Amt Ausland/Abwehr of the Wehrmacht High Command piled up because these entities considered the Asiatics, especially the Muslim Caucasians and soldiers from Central Asia, to be predestined collaborators. These protests led to an order by Heydrich of 12 September 1941 putting an end to the shooting of the "Asiatics", which order, however, was not immediately followed by all Einsatzkommandos.

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source

#12

Post by j.north » 15 Apr 2003, 12:31

Dear mr Mills,

Perhaps you are right to ask about my source. I'll look up the archival reference for the 'claimed order'. But I'm not making it up.

I don't see any documented evidence suggesting the Germans thought that Asians were being used on special sabotage operations. Even if they were that's no excuse to shoot civilians or soldiers of the same race - you've got to find the actual culprits.

What we do have is documentary evidence that in 1941 and early 1942 the Germans were being incited (on racist grounds alone) against Asiatic soldiers. The 12th Infantry Division received was informedon 12 June (source: Bartov, Barbarisation, page 107):

‘All members of the Red Army – including prisoners – must be treated with extreme reserve and the greatest caution since one must reckon with devious methods of combat. The Asiatic soldiers of the Red Army in particular are devious, cunning and without feeling.’

General Hoth, commander of the 17th Army, among others thought ‘We clearly recognise our mission to save European culture from the advancing Asiatic barbarism. We now know that we have to fight against an incensed and tough opponent. But the battle can only end with the destruction of one or the other; a compromise is out of the question.’

We also have other evidence that Asians were being shot, this time in pow camps. Rosenberg, to his credit, or perhaps to discredit his rival, Himmler, castigated the execution of pows in his own letter to Keitel in February 1942:

‘The shooting of prisoners must be mentioned. These were partly carried out according to viewpoints which ignore all political understanding. For instance, in some camps, all the Asiatics were shot, although the inhabitants of the areas of Transcaucasia and Turkestan especially are among those people in the Soviet Union who are most strongly opposed to Russian subjugation and to Bolshevism. In November, for instance, a Kommando arrived in a prisoner of war camp in Nikolayev which wanted to liquidate all Asiatics.’

So there you have it. Some Germans knew the advantages in courting Asian collaborators (something which paid off later) but in the early stages (whilst the Germans were winning) the more violent-minded policies of annihilation prevailed.

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Re: Shooting Asians

#13

Post by Andrew E. Mathis » 15 Apr 2003, 18:18

j.north wrote:On 6 January 1942 the 75th Infantry Division (part of 6th Army) ordered its men operating in the Soviet Union 'to shoot all Asians whether military or civilian'. Army Corps XXIX transmitted the same order to all its divisions the following day.

Interesting.

We all know about the shooting of Jews in the SU (many of which are explained away because the Jews were leading activists in the Communist party or local Ukrainians wanted to extract revenge ..) but I wonder how the above order can be excused by the more revisionist-minded posters among us.

I also wonder what the Japanese might have had to say ...
Both sides in the Pacific theater fought total war on the level of the Eastern front in the ETO.

It doesn't suprise me that the U.S. took a "take no prisoners" approach and that they shot civilians. The Japanese raped Nanjing and they enacted the Bataan death march.

I don't think either nation can judge the other, except perhaps on the nuclear issue.

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Re: Shooting Asians

#14

Post by Kokampf » 16 Apr 2003, 01:26

j.north wrote:I also wonder what the Japanese might have had to say ...
Considering the racial contempt on the part of the ultra-nationalists within the Imperial Japanese armed forces for pretty much all other 'Asiatic' peoples - and their genocidal barbarity to the Chinese in Manchuria in particular - I doubt they would have taken the slightest interest.

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#15

Post by michael mills » 16 Apr 2003, 04:59

J.North wrote (quoting an order of 12 June 1941):
All members of the Red Army – including prisoners – must be treated with extreme reserve and the greatest caution since one must reckon with devious methods of combat. The Asiatic soldiers of the Red Army in particular are devious, cunning and without feeling.’
The above order bears out the contention I was making. The question is, why were the Asiatic soldiers considered to be "devious, cunning and without feeling"?

The answer is that Soviet Asiatics had acquired a bad reputation due to the high profile of certain groups of individuals of Asian origin in the Cheka during the Red Terror of the first years of the Bolshevik Revolution. The most notorious were a group of Chinese Chekists; Asiatics in general seem to have been tarred with their brush.

There was an element of racial stereotyping in that all Soviet Asiatics were initially judged by the bad reputation of the Chinese Chekists, who of course were unrepresentative. But that is a universal phenomenon.

Since Asiatic soldiers of the Red Army were not native to European Russia, whenever they were encountered by the German Army it was assumed that they had been brought into European Russia from their own areas in order to carry out a role in which their supposed "deviousness" and "cunning" would be used, much as the Chinese Chekists had been brought to European Russia from the Far East in 1919 in order to carry out a terroristic role.

That attitude of the German Army is very similar to that of the United States military leadership in the present conflict in Iraq, where fighters from other Arab countries are considered more "evil" than the ordinary Iraqi soldiers, and are being treated as criminals rather than as POWs.

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