Fate of Germans who surrendered after the fall of Berlin

[Krimzon]

Hello,

I was wondering what happened to the German soldiers who capitulated and were taken prisoner by the Russians after the fall of Berlin. I red once that a lot of them perished in Soviet gulags. Did they receive no remorse at all? Maybe its not true what I heard and most of them survived captivity instead, but please tell me more.

Thanks!

[Carl Schwamberger]

From the accounts of a few German officers I read the time went like this: Initial capture, confinement in a temporary camp, and initial interrogation by Soviet intellegence or security officers. Transfer after several weeks to either a camp in Germany & evental assignement to a work unit cleaning up, or tranfer to a camp in the USSR. Those in Germany were usually relased over the next year or two. A few were sent to the USSR due to the wrong answers in subsequent interrogation. Those arriving in the USSR were questioned extensively. If their answers, or the testemony of other prisoners, indicated they were guilty of crimes against socialism or the people they would be given some sort of punative sentence and sent further east to the "Gulag". As one German put it "Admitting to having stolen a single socalist chicken was enough to have you sentenced for five years." Most of those survivng five to ten years in the labor camps were returned to Germany in the 1950s. There are stories of some who were lost of forgotten in Siberia. How accurate these are I cant say. I ran across one account of a German who dispaired of ever being released and was able to leave the labor camp and walk south to Iran or Afganistan. Of course such a story is difficult to confirm.

This was not entirely different from those taken by the British or Yanks. The main difference is they were not interested in keeping the Germans prisoner as long. Quite a few who might have deserved punishment were released or confined for just a few years.

[mars]

I believe most of German POWs captured by western allies retruned home in 1948

[Art]

Maybe its not true what I heard and most of them survived captivity instead.

The latter was the case. The majority of germans POWs that were held in captivity in mid-1945 were released till the beginning of 1950. It was allready in summer of 1945 when release of POWs that were sick or not able to work began. However the repatriation of healthy german POWs didn't began untill 1948. According to the official soviet report on the process of repatriation 348 454 ethnic germans were freed in 1948, 398 740 in 1949 and 36 740 in 1950. The Austrians who served in german army were on somewhat priveleged position as they were for the most part relesed allready in 1947 (48 747 reported). Those who stayed in captivity after 1950 were POW's alleged or sentenced for war crimes (their numbers was reported to be as high as 31 thousands). For the most part they were repatriated till 1956.

As concerns the deaths of POWs in captivity the following numbers are available. The document from were they were taken characterizes this POWs as "german" but from comparison with others sources it's clear that here the term "german" is also applied to the europian allies of Germany.
Number of deaths (percentage to the number of POWs):
1945 1946
January 23 827(4,2) 7559(0,53)
February 21 703(3,8) 5939(0,44)
March 17 184(3,0) 5216(0,38)
April 10 520(1,75) 3006(0,23)
May 7503(1,0) 1597(0,11)
June 4296 (0,43) 869(0,059)
July 3893(0,3) 862(0,064)
August 5433(0,35) 830(0,059)
September 7287(0,47) 652(0,052)
October 7817(0,53) 774(0,059)
November 8488(0,58) 672(0,054)
December 8883(0,62) 875(0,071)
One can see that the deaths rate among POWs was especially high in the first monthes of 1945 but stabilized on level comparable with natural rate till the end of 1946.

I also must say that the word "gulag" shouldn't be taken literally because POWs camps never were the part of Gulag system but were controlled by GUPVI (Chief Department on POWs' and Interned Persons's Affairs) of NKVD.

[Krimzon]

Thanks guys for your interesting information already!

[Larso]

Carl, I think this is the book you alluded to above. This is from Amazon.

As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Escape from a Siberian Labour Camp and His 3-Year Trek to Freedom (Paperback)
by Josef M. Bauer, Clemens Forell

Book Description
Originally published in 1955, As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me has seen international success ever since. It has been translated into fifteen languages, sold more than 12 million copies, and is the basis for an award-winning German entry at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. Recounting an incredible real-life adventure, it tracks the destiny of German soldier Clemens Forrell who, in the aftermath of WWII, was sentenced to twenty-five years of forced labor in a lead mine in the barren eastern reaches of Siberia. Subjected to the brutality of the camp and the climate, Forrell dreamed continuously of escape—and then daringly effected it. From East Cape across the vast trackless wastes of Siberia, for thousands of miles and three years, with fear as his most intimate companion, Forrell fled treachery and endured some of the most inhospitable conditions on earth. In a long series of taped interviews with esteemed German author Josef M. Bauer, Forrell unfolded his remarkable story of survival. Bauer not only reconstructs Forrell’s arduous journey to the Iranian frontier and freedom; he also poignantly evokes the emotional content of Forrell’s brave quest—emerging as an affecting portrait of a man who strove and triumphed against all odds.

The link, the readers reviews are interesting -

http://www.amazon.com/Far-Feet-Will-Car ... 34-4740769

[kalsby]

Carl, I think this is the book you alluded to above. This is from Amazon.

As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Escape from a Siberian Labour Camp and His 3-Year Trek to Freedom (Paperback)
by Josef M. Bauer, Clemens Forell

There is also a german movie based upon this book:

"So weit die Füße tragen" ("As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me")

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0277327/

[Andreas]

An OT discussion was moved into the correction forum:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=130908

Further off-topic posts in this thread will be deleted without warning. If despite this warning this thread does not stay on topic, it will be locked.

All the best

Andreas

[murx]

In der Sowjetunion gab es 2.000 (10), bzw. 4.000 Kriegsgefangenenlager (11), wobei 25 % im europäischen Teil der Sowjetunion, 20% in der Ukraine und Moldawien, 13, 8% in Belorussland, Ostpreußen und dem Baltikum, 2,3% in Westsibirien, 2% in Kasachstan, 0,2% in Turkmenistan, Usbekistan und Tadschikistan, sowie 11,5% im Ural lagen . Laut russischen Angaben waren 4.125.000 und nach deutschen Angaben 3.719.500 Kriegsgefangene dort interniert . ...Die Sterberate lag durchschnittlich in sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenenlagern bei 65- 70 % (14).

Transltion
The Soviet Union had between 2000 to 4000 POW camps. Of those 25% were located in the European part of the SU, 20% in Ukraine and Moldavia, 8% in Belorus, East Prussia and the Baltic region, 2.3% in West Siberia, 2% in Kasachstan,0.2% in Turkmenistan, Usbekistan and Tadschikistan, 11.5 % in the Ural. According to Russian reports 4.125.000 prisoners being held, Germany reported 3.719.000 prisoners to be interned in those camps. ... The averasge death rate in Russian POW camps amounted 65-70%

Quellenangaben / Sources

10 Neues Deutschland v. 09.01.1993, Gerd Kaiser, Die Geheimnisse des Tarnkäppchen- Archives
11 Alltag in Karaganda, Zur Geschichte des Kriegsgefangenlagers 99 Spasozavodsk, Dr. Barbara Steltzl- Marx, BIK Graz
12 Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in sowjetischer Hand, Kurt W. Böhme, 1966
13 Komintern- Archiv Moskau, Auszüge aus dem Bericht von Walter Ulbricht an Georgie Dimmitroff über die Arbeit im Lager 99 im Dez. 1941
14 Zur Geschichte der Kriegsgefangenen im Osten, DRK Suchdienst
15 Aufstellung des DRK Suchdienstes


It is BTW not easy to be "on topic".
With "fate of Germans": did you mean "German soldiers" ? German civilians? Nazis?
With "fall of Berlin": Do you mean the day of German capitulation?

From my own family, I can give you some personal history, illustrating what happened to some "Germans after the fall of Berlin":
My grandfather and my father lived close to Berlin. None of them were NSDAP members. My grandfather had been fired from the Reichsbahn based on "communist activities", which was not true, he said. He had donated 10 Pf for the funeral of a college who was passed over by a freight train. That co worker was a KPD activist. All who had donated were fired. As " revenge" my father refused to join any Nazi organisation and even the Wehrmacht (and he succeeded in avoiding conscription until the end). The family lived from some farming and my father's income, who worked in a high frequency research lab.
One day when my grandmother was in the fields, Grandfather was gone and never came home again. Some people assumed he was on his way to Dresden to complain at the Reichsbahn direction, others suggested he had been drafted into the Volkssturm and was killed in Berlin. He was declared "lost"( this is a very important detail to understand the mistakes in the recent official calculations of the Dresden air raid victims). Ten years later he was declared "dead", date of death: "Last months of WW II", place of death:"unknown, probably Berlin".
My father after the "fall of Berlin" took a job in a radio broadcasting station in the Russian occupied zone. For a funny remark, comparing Stalin to Hitler, in 1948 he was sentenced to live long hard labour in Siberia, then "pardonned" to 25 years and in 1956 he was sent "home" from Workuta in Siberia (to West Germany) by mistake together with the last German POWs.

My mother lived in Aschersleben in the Harz region and was in the BDM "because she loved hiking" and the BDM always was on hiking tours. When she had finished school she wanted to become "Nachrichtenhelferin" but wasn't taken because her father, a miller who was completely unpolitical, was not a NSDAP member. She hassled him so long until he entered the party for the sake of his only daughter which facilitated her plan to enter the Luftwaffe thereafter. Then she became Nachrichtenhelferin of the Luftwaffe, first in Berlin, then in Bourges in France.
When Berlin was fallen the Russians took her father and imprisoned him in Thurgau for being an NSDAP member. In 1946 he didn't confess what they wanted him to confess so he was beaten to death by some Russians.
Her mother had survived some air raids and suffered from a psychosis thereafter. She thought that angels with flaming swords had punished the world for their sins and she, who had survived this armaggedon (happening in remebrance of Soddhom & Gommorrha she believed) was chosen to christianize all other survivers, for still being sinners.
In 2001 the general attorney of the GUS forces send an official letter, that the conviction of my father had been anulled for being an act of injustice. Unluckily my father had died in the year 2000 not having been able to see his home or his mother one more time again. My mother died one year later. She always felt guilty for the death of her father.

[murx]

I attach some pages of the Journal of the Red Cross Search Service or "Suchdienst" from September 1955. It contains some interesting numbers.

Children Search service reported that after the war 90.000 children had lost contact to any of their relatives. 195.000 German families in the same time were searching their children. Until 1955 the search service was able to reduce those numbers to 17.000 each.

The search registries of Munich and Hamburg had been merged.The article says that the merger avoids double counting and useless efforts. The registry, containing all names of prisoners and military personel missed in action, killed in action or being held as POW (which is the Arolsen registry today) is reported to contain 20.000.000 (twenty Million) names.

Source attached

[murx]

some more files

[murx]

some more

[murx]

one more

[mathsmal]

I've got a copy of a Red Cross Suchdienst from 1972 - people were still actively searching for friends and relatives nearly 30 years after the end of the war.