Soviet Union murdered German Prisoner of wars

[Art]

GUPVI was a structural unit of the NKVD.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Art,

What interests me is whether we know if they were holding all German POWs or just particular categories?

Cheers,

Sid

[michael mills]

I found this article about GUPVI:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Admi ... _Internees

It appears that it was the body responsible for running the Soviet POW camps, and also internment camps for civilian internees.
On that basis, I would presume that the numbers of POWs given in the GUPVI reports represent the total number of POWs in Soviet hands at any one time.

[Richard Anderson]

On that basis, I would presume that the numbers of POWs given in the GUPVI reports represent the total number of POWs in Soviet hands at any one time.

Possibly, but knowing how these things work, it is also possible there was significant "wastage" at times from the time they were captured to where they were passed to division to corps to army cages before their intact was recorded by GUPVI. Some of the wastage was real...PW died because they were captured wounded or sick, they did really try to escape and were shot, they were in fact murdered, they committed "suicide by guard"...or the wastage was just a statistical anomaly, where the initial counts were in error, some PW slipped away after being counted, someone entered a wrong digit in a report, and so on. Trying to reconcile these figures is always problematic.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Guys,

The real problem here seems to be that, despite the Soviet wartime archives being advertised as largely "open" for a couple of decades, the serial statistics that presumably once existed on the numbers of POWs held have not surfaced for reasons unknown.

That is why Overmans had to make post-war calculations based on a sample of German personnel records and we are left struggling with a handful of sometimes possibly incompatible Soviet stats that have leaked out.

It seems clear that the death rate of German POWs was much higher than it should have been, but how much higher is unclear.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Art]

What interests me is whether we know if they were holding all German POWs or just particular categories?

Theoretically GUPVI registered all prisoners psychically delivered from military units to acceptance points on the front. Naturally POWs that died or were repatriated were removed from the balance, as well as those assigned to Soviets-sponsored military formations, intelligence or propaganda operations, men sentenced to jail terms, transferred to prisons and Gulag camps, Soviet citizens transferred to filtration camps. Some sort of lag between physical capture and acceptance by GUPVI apparently existed and could reach weeks or in some cases even months.

The real problem here seems to be that, despite the Soviet wartime archives being advertised as largely "open" for a couple of decades, the serial statistics that presumably once existed on the numbers of POWs held have not surfaced for reasons unknown.

Even the minimal "serial" statistics encompasses hundreds of documents compiled on a daily basis or each 5 days. It is unlikely that such a large corps of documents would be fully published. Sample reports were included in published collections of documents, for example:
http://docs.historyrussia.org/ru/nodes/ ... ect/page/1
Higher-level summary stats compiled by GUPVI and its sub-units were also included in publications.

For a brief description of sources relating to POW captivity in USSR see the Google translation of this page:
https://www.vestarchive.ru/2013-1/2585- ... voiny.html
In short, GUPVI records are concentrated in the Russian State Military Archive in Moscow, which is in principle readily accessible. Yet, declassification continued until the very recent years, there were files which were declassified in 2018, for example. I can't say if there are any records now remaining classified.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Art,

Thank you. Very informative.

So it is a reasonable assumption that the GUPVI statistics was at least meant to be comprehensive as to numbers of German POWs held and that should be out working premise?

Cheers,

Sid.

[michael mills]

As a matter of interest, did the Soviet Government in the course of the war ever release information to the Red Cross on the Axis POWs it was holding?

[Art]

So it is a reasonable assumption that the GUPVI statistics was at least meant to be comprehensive as to numbers of German POWs held and that should be out working premise?

As comprehensive as stats with 0.5 million error margin and further hundreds of thousands disappearing without a trace in reporting? Not worse, I would say.
At the same time "authors [of the summary report of the UPVI activity from 22 June 1941 to 1 March 1944] openly admitted that beginning from the war start and until April 1943 their office only recorded prisoners present in camps. As concerns hospitals, their patients were not subject to reporting, and registration of prisoners of war at acceptance points was unsatisfactory".
From:
http://www.history.nsc.ru/website/histo ... _Red_2.pdf

Hence some huge gaps in reporting especially for the winter 1942/43. Consequently numbers of deaths given in the GUPVI summary stats are understated by many tens of thousands. Beginning from the year 1944 or even the second half of 1943 GUPVI reporting looks more or less sound. There are further issues, for example status of Romanian forces disarmed in August-September 1944 - were they counted as POWs and how many of them.

[Richard Anderson]

As concerns hospitals, their patients were not subject to reporting, and registration of prisoners of war at acceptance points was unsatisfactory".

Hence some huge gaps in reporting especially for the winter 1942/43. Consequently numbers of deaths given in the GUPVI summary stats are understated by many tens of thousands. Beginning from the year 1944 or even the second half of 1943 GUPVI reporting looks more or less sound. There are further issues, for example status of Romanian forces disarmed in August-September 1944 - were they counted as POWs and how many of them.

Very good points Art. The issue of reporting PW through the medical system was not unique to the Soviets; i ran into something similar with the 90th US Infantry Division in Normandy. At one point during the breakout they overran a German field hospital with some 1,100 patients and medical personnel (including both German and Allied medical personnel and patients) that were evacuated through the medical system rather than through the corps-to-army-to-beaches PW evacuation system. It is unclear at which point in the chain they were counted, since it is almost impossible to get the various counts to reconcile. For example, for the three months from 6 June-31 August, I can "prove" the Americans captured 80,868 Germans (the number reported evacuated "over the beaches", as found in the US Army Center for Military History Historical Manuscripts Collection, “The Administrative And Logistical History of The ETO, Part VI, Neptune: Training, Mounting, The Artificial Ports” (Historical Division, United States Army Forces, European Theater, by Lt. Clifford L. Jones, March 1946, file number 8-3.1 AA v.6.), 101,361 Germans (the number reported evacuated by divisions to corps and army PW cages, as found in NARA RG 331, SHAEF General Staff, G-1 Administrative Section Decimal File 704/1-6, which is missing some data for much of August), 138,838 Germans (the number reported captured by divisions in the same source previous), or 176,284 Germans (the number in the consolidated SHAEF reports NARA RG 331, SHAEF General Staff, G-1 Administrative Section Decimal File 383.6/1, Daily POW Reports.)

So I can easily demonstrate a 100% discrepancy in well documented data. However, assuming the discrepancy was due to 80,000-odd German PW being murdered by US forces is a bit of a stretch.

[AriX]

Russian count only those Wehrmacht PoW's whom had died in NKVD camps. The trick is that the dosen't count those, who died in the transit camps which were under the Red Army.

As a matter of interest, did the Soviet Government in the course of the war ever release information to the Red Cross on the Axis POWs it was holding?

No.

[SloveneLiberal]

About the estimates of how many soldiers were shot by the Red army Just after being captured Slovene Institute for modern history published in 2017 some findings concerning the Gorenjska area or Oberkrain. First the numbers of soldiers reported by the Germans as missing were very high at eastern front.

For example when 1389 cases concerning Slovenes conscripted in German army were checked from Deutsche Dienststelle results showed that Germans registered 211 soldiers killed in combat and 48 which died for other reasons. 304 soldiers were however registered as missing. And further study of the missing showed that they were actually killed in 80% of the cases.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi SloveneLiberal,

How was it established so long after the event that 80% of the missing were killed, if they were registered as missing for over 70 years?

And what does "killed" mean in this case? Murdered as prisoners as per the thread title?

Cheers,

Sid.

[SloveneLiberal]

They were registered as missing in German documents, yet some of these returned back home after WW2, some as part of Yugoslav army which was organized in USSR from POWs.

I asked before what are the estimates of captured German soldiers which were killed just after being captured by Red army. Such people were of course not registered later in USSR camps for POWs. This sample is i believe giving some inside to this question.