Russian POW's

[Chinaski1917]

thanks, what was the fate of Soviet POWs ? How true is it that when they were liberated they sent them back to Russian Gulags . And how was this justified by the Soviet Union ?

[Seppo Koivisto]

See also this link:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=113983

[Art]

thanks, what was the fate of Soviet POWs ?

See this thread:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 66&start=0
As far as I understand nobody on this forum has an exact information pertaining to the fate of POWs repatriated from Finland, at the same time the overall information about Soviet POWs repatriation is in principle available.

[Chinaski1917]

Thanks but Intertran aint that great on translating Finnish unfortunately.

So it concludes that most Russian POWs were not actually sent to GULAG camps when released back in USSR.

So what was the criteria to choose who went and who didn't ?

And there were actually collaboration incidents taking place. Russians being captured and then fight for Finland..

[mars]

that dependents, sometimes just individual's luck, I recalled in one old post here stated that one Soviet POW who was captured by Finns unwounded was allowed went home, and another one who was captured after both of his legs were blowed off was sentenced five years in Gulag

[Art]

So it concludes that most Russian POWs were not actually sent to GULAG camps when released back in USSR.

Depends on the definition of GULAG, this term as far as I can see tends to be very stretchable. Till the end of 1944 former POWs were subjected to filtration by NKVD, after GKO Decree of 4th November 1944 the most part of POWs and the bulk of civilians were repatriated bypassing NKVD filtration camps. POWs repatriated from Finland must be in principle in the first category. This is confirmed be the text of Decree, namely paragraph 3:

To allow NKVD USSR to hand over after the end of filtration all POWs from enlisted men and NCO being now in the NKVD special camps and those who arrived to the special camps from Finalnd or on 4th November from England for the employment in industry or to use them in the NKVD construction works and also as the guards of special camps and camps of GULAG

The word Finalnd is underlined in the original document, I don't know why.

So what was the criteria to choose who went and who didn't ?

In 1945 the criteria for candidates for drinking tea at Lavrenty Palych's looked as follows:
"Those who served in German Army and in special German combat units, soldiers from Vlasov's army [this term here stands for all collaborationists formations to only for ROA], policemen and other people raising suspicions"
But on practice the things could be more complicated, for example people from Moldavia, Estonia and Latvia who served in Romanian/German Armies as a result of obligatory consriptions were ulimately released by NKVD without large-scale harmful cosequences.

[mars]

Art, I do not think NKVD filtration camp equal to Gulag, as a fact, Soviet did have a war that time, and it was a necessary to set suck kind of filtration camps to check people come behind enemy line to prevent enemy spies, British also set up suck filtration camps to check every refugee come from Europe mainland between 1940-1944

[Slava_M]

Has anybody any numbers of Soviet POWs had been taken at June-August 1944?
As far as I know 92 RD had left some soldiers as POWs during the fighting at Vuoksi islands in the end of June 1944.
And of course 176 and 289 RD could left some soldiers as POWs.
According to Karelian Front war-time statistics, 150 Fortified District had left 2 privates as POWs during June 1944, 1 during July, and also during August 1944 - 162 Fortified district - 1 NCO; 313 RD - 1 private, 69 Marine Infantry brigade - 1 NCO and 1 private, 70 Marine Inf. br. - 1 NCO. But I think the numbers were higher as some MIA could became POWs.

[Janne]

Good question, Slava! I cannot recall ever seeing any figures for Soviet POWs taken in 1944, which - if it is not only a matter of me being particularly uninformed or ignorant on the subject - is a bit odd, because there obviously must be numbers available for anyone who has looked in the archives.

The best *I* can come up with is a sort of very unofficial and indirect tally for the whole of 1944: the number of POWs in Finnish camps in September 1944 was 916 higher than it had been in December 1943. During that time 322 POWs had died, so that "should" give us a ballpark figure - but I'm afraid there are a lot of uncertainties in this calculation...

FWIW straight out of memory I cannot remember or suggest any battles, locations or dates when any larger number of POWs would've been taken in the summer of 1944 - but I'll freely concede I haven't really paid attention to this particular subject in my reading.

[Esa K]

Don´t think either there where any greater numbers of Soviet POW´s in summer of 1944, those approx 900 Janne calculated could be pretty close to the whole thruth so to say.

Have some figures on Tali-Ihantala battle compiled from here and there wich I can dig out in a week or so. But, as a start, during evening/night 25/6-26/6 1944 it is said that JP 3 took 27 POW´s, probably from 45th Guards Rifle Division (or other units attatched to it?) in the area aroud the southern parts of the Konkkala hills.


Best regards

Esa K

[Simon Orchard]

What numbers of Germans did the Finns capture during the Lappland war and what happened to them at the end of the war? does anyone know where they were kept?
Also, were any Norwegians captured (SS-Skijäger Btl. Norwegen) and how were they handled?

From a German report to the British in May 1945 they state the Germans held only 76 Finns as POW. I have figures of a further 157 in North Norway belonging to German military or para-military formations.

[JariL]

Hi,

German POW's in Finland were sent to Soviet Union, a fate that was feared by the Germans. Greatest amount of POW's were taken in Suursaari (Gulf of Finland) after the failed German landing there and in Tornio/Kemi area in the beginning of the Lapland war. In Kemi a great number of German POW's managed to slip/were let to slip into Sweden which did not go unnoticed by the Allied control comission. All in all Finns captured some 1.300 Germans in Lapland War that were delivered to Soviet Union. However I am not sure if the 700 Germans that were captured in Suursaari are included in that figure or not.

Regards,

Jari

[Janne]

Weren't there more than 1200 German POWs captured in Suursaari in September? Although some of them managed to flee one way or another either then or later from the camp in Vääksy, the number cannot surely have been reduced to 700?

I believe that the 1300 German POWs in the Lappland War were all taken in the north. IIRC about 100 were captured "before the war broke out", 300 in Tornio and 500 in Kemi, but I have no idea where the rest came from; 400 would seem a lot of POWs taken in the course of the Finnish advance/German retreat after that, but unfortunately I cannot recall ever reading a detailled account - or about where they were kept before they were handed over to the Soviets.

I cannot recall any great number of German POWs slipping from Kemi - surely you must be thinking of the personnel and the patients (85?) of the German military hospital in Tornio, who evacuated themselves to Sweden in what seemed suspicious circumstances to the Soviets?

BTW there was a third, smaller group of German POWs taken in December: they were the survivors of the Z-boats which had ran into a mine field, about 70 in number, who ended up in the Soviet Union.

(FWIW I remember reading about a young German officer among the POWs (taken either in Suursaari or Fagerö in Inkoo) whose father happened to be a high-ranking Navy officer who contacted his Finnish counterpart and it was so arranged that the young man soon found himself in Stockholm. However, instead of getting himself interned and sitting out the rest of the war, he got himself back into Germany with the help of the German legation in time to get killed in infantry action.

[Simon Orchard]

Were any Germans still held by the Finns in May '45?

I imagine a certain number were also captured during the retreat up the Eismeerstrasse and the fighting around the Schutzwall stellung and on to Ivalo and Inari.

I wonder if the Germans made any attempt to get some of their men back through a prisoner exchange once they knew they'd be handed over to the Soviets and if that knowledge had any effect on how Finnish POWs were treated?

[Janne]

The German POWs were handed over pretty quickly: the ones captured in Suursaari spent about a month in a Finnish camp but I imagine that the process became swifter as the Allied (read Soviet) Control Commission put pressure on the Finns to produce results (or else...).

I don't think there were many - if any - Germans POWs taken after November 1944, as the nature of the fighting changed to more or less pure patrol activity and the Finnish troops involved were strongly reduced (in the end to about 600 mostly relatively fresh recruits.

In the beginning of the hostilities the Germans responded to what they perceived as an honourless act by taking about 200 Finnish civilians in Kemi and Rovaniemi as hostages, but when it became apparent that the hostages couldn't be used in a prisoner exchange, they were released.

The German soldiers felt strongly about the treacherous Finns who handed their comrades over to "the Bolsheviks" and their commanders used this angle in their propaganda. There would appear to have been a few cases of serious ill treatment and executions of prisoners. The general conditions (in the Arctic north in winter) were generally bad enough to make many Finnish POWs take up the Germans' offer to volunteer for the newly-formed Finnnish SS-unit.