Some NKVD/GULAG statistics

[Uninen]

The 95% death rate is not credible. The average death rate among the German or Japanese POW is much lower than that.

So, how much is 5000 survivors of "95000" POW's (actual number propably over 100k..) taken in Stalingrad in %?

(hint around 5% survived, 95% died..)

[Samuel]

The 95% death rate is not credible. The average death rate among the German or Japanese POW is much lower than that.

So, how much is 5000 survivors of "95000" POW's (actual number propably over 100k..) taken in Stalingrad in %?

(hint around 5% survived, 95% died..)

The death rate of the German POW at Stalingrad is not representative of the average death rate among the German POW.
The high death rate among German POW at Stalingrad is more due to the health condition of the German soldiers at the time of their capture than to the Soviet policy.
More than 1.9 million German POW came back from the Soviet camps, this clearly show that an average death rate of 95% is not possible.

[Uninen]

Yes Samuel, i know that but i just seems that you and some other persons are trying to make it look like USSR "wasnt that bad" or even that it was "honourable and noble", and that of course isnt true as the nation is (was) most brutal terror state that has existed on this planet, and whose crimes agaisnt its own and foreign people way surpass those of even Nazi-Germany.

Futhermore i cannot see why you thank this "Sergey Romanov" for posting his "statics" as they are not accurate..

IE:

Code: Select all

 
OGPU-NKVD cases (1930-1936) (p. 433)

Year Arrested  CRC    ASA    Other   Conv.    EP     C&P     E&D    OM

1930  331544  266679  -      64865   208069  20201  114443  58816  14609
1931  479065  343734  100963 180696  170651  105683 63269   1093   -
1932  410433  195540  23484  214893  141919  2728   73946   36017  29228
1933  505256  283029  32370  222227  239664  2154   138903  54262  44345
1934  205173  90417   16788  114756  78999   2056   59451   5994   11498
1935  193083  108935  43686  84148   267076  1229   185846  33601  46400
1936  131168  91127   32110  40041   274670  1118   219418  23719  30415
Total 2255722 1379461 249401 876261  1391093 40137  897690  275678 177588

EP    - extreme punishment (execution)

Only in year 1931 105683 executions yet total of only 40137 for the whole timeframe?

Like glorifying of Nazi-Germany and Nazism and denying or playing down their crimes is forbidden on this forum, so should be the case with USSR.

[Samuel]

Yes Samuel, i know that but i just seems that you and some other persons are trying to make it look like USSR "wasnt that bad" or even that it was "honourable and noble", and that of course isnt true as the nation is (was) most brutal terror state that has existed on this planet, and whose crimes agaisnt its own and foreign people way surpass those of even Nazi-Germany.

Read again what I wrote. I wrote that an average death rate of 95% among POW was not credible. Should I accpet any number about the death rate only because the Soviet regime was criminal?

Futhermore i cannot see why you thank this "Sergey Romanov" for posting his "statics" as they are not accurate...

Where did I think "Sergey Romanov"?
I think that for some reason you just made up this claim.

[Uninen]

No, you should accept the true or accurate as possible number.. But the numbers here are totally inaccurate and made up. Actually most of Russian "documents" are totally made up, products of corrupt system.. there is not trusting in anything they have to say about ww2 at all, actually theres not trusting to them even now, just look KURSK, Moscow hostage drama, appartment bombings before 2nd Checnya war and the whole Checnya situation as whole.

And also the second thing, "you" in reference to the statics wasnt pointed at your person "Samuel" but to those individuals that actually thanked him for his rotten statics, and as far as i can remember you wasnt one of those person, sorry for not making my point clear enough and making you think that i was taking of you, I WASNT.

[michael mills]

Samuel wrote:

The high death rate among German POW at Stalingrad is more due to the health condition of the German soldiers at the time of their capture than to the Soviet policy.

The above claim is often cited by pro-Soviet writers as the reason for the 90% mortality of the remnants of the German 6th Army who went into Soviet captivity after their surrender in January 1942.

It insinuates that the Soviet captors did everything in their power to keep the German POWs alive and healthy, but they were just too far gone to be saved.

However, the reality is different. The Soviet captors discriminated among verious groups of prisoners, and the death rate varied accordingly. The German generals were very well treated, and none of them died so far as I know. Officers were generally well treated, and their mortality rate was not very high. By contrast, the ordinary soldiers were very poorly treated, and given hardly any food or medical attention; as a result their mortality was very high, about 95%. In addition, while the German captives were being marched to the holding camps, there were many instances of the Soviet guards simply shooting stragglers.

Furthermore, the mortality rate of the German soldiers taken captive at Stalingrad was about the same as that for all German soldiers who fell into Soviet hands between the beginning of the German invasion and about the middle of 1943. Only a handful of the German soldiers taken captive by the Soviets during that period survived to return home after the war. Not all of them were in poor physical condition when taken prisoner by any means; the fact that very few of them survived is a factor of their being in Soviet captivity for longer.

Very large numbers of German POWs did return from Soviet captivity, as Samuel points, out, in many vcases up to ten years after the end of the war. But they had nearly all been taken captive in the last year of the war, from early 1944 onward, or had gone into Soviet captivity after the German surrender in May 1945. The later in the war a German soldier was taken prisoner, the higher his chances of survival and return to Germany.

That is the reverse of the experience of the Soviet POWs in German hands, of whom over two million perished in captivity. Mortality was highest among those captured in the campaigns of Summer and Autumn 1941; well over half of them died during the winter of 1941-42. The Soviet soldiers captured during the campaigns of 1942 and 1943, who were fewer in number had a much higher chance of survival, since the conditions provided by their German captors improved, despite the fact that Germany's own position was growing steadily worse.

It is true that the ability of the Soviets to feed and house their German prisoners was limited, and the Soviet Union was in a desperate position. But the same applies to Germany, which also had a limited ability to feed its millions of prisoners due to the Allied blockade.

The Soviet Union had the advantage over Germany of being able to ask its allies Britain and the United States, which had food and medical supplies in abundance (less so in the case of Britain, but it was able to call on Canada), to provide aid to care for its German prisoners. But it did not do so.

As I wrote, a very large proportion of the German POWs held by the Soviet Union had gone into captivity after the German surrender in May 1945. The Soviet Union could have relieved itself of the burden of feeding all those millions of POWs by handing them over to the International Red Cross; but it did not do so, preferring to use them as slave labour, with the attendant consequences.

Even during the war the Soviet Union could easily have handed over the German POWs it was holding to its Allies on the basis that it was physically unable to feed them. For example, it could have handed them over to the custody of the British in Iran, in the same way as it handed over the Polish POWs it had been holding before June 1941. If it had done so, and the Germans captured at Stalingrad and subsequently had been held in British POW camps in the Middle East, their survival rate would have been much higher.

So it is totally false to claim that the Soviet Government had no choice but to let the German POWs it was holding die because of a lack of ability to feed them.

[Kunikov]

No, you should accept the true or accurate as possible number.. But the numbers here are totally inaccurate and made up. Actually most of Russian "documents" are totally made up, products of corrupt system.. there is not trusting in anything they have to say about ww2 at all, actually theres not trusting to them even now, just look KURSK, Moscow hostage drama, appartment bombings before 2nd Checnya war and the whole Checnya situation as whole.

Unless you can prove documented and archived information is 'totally made up' don't take guesses at what you know nothing about.

And also the second thing, "you" in reference to the statics wasnt pointed at your person "Samuel" but to those individuals that actually thanked him for his rotten statics, and as far as i can remember you wasnt one of those person, sorry for not making my point clear enough and making you think that i was taking of you, I WASNT.

I thank him, he's provided more useful information than you have in this thread.

[Samuel]

In addition, while the German captives were being marched to the holding camps, there were many instances of the Soviet guards simply shooting stragglers.

This was against the Soviet regualtion and this kind of behavior was punished [1] .

The Soviet Union had the advantage over Germany of being able to ask its allies Britain and the United States, which had food and medical supplies in abundance (less so in the case of Britain, but it was able to call on Canada), to provide aid to care for its German prisoners. But it did not do so.

During the war Soviets did ask for food and did recieve food from the USA. The Soviets set the rations for the POW at the same level as the rations for the civilian population.[2]

[1] Die Tragödie der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in Stalingrad von 19421956 nach russischen Archivunterlagen H. Mayer & al.
[2] Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in der Sowjetunion - Der Faktor Hunger

[David Thompson]

Please provide citations or references for factual claims.

[Karman]

The 95% death rate is not credible. The average death rate among the German or Japanese POW is much lower than that.

So, how much is 5000 survivors of "95000" POW's (actual number propably over 100k..) taken in Stalingrad in %?

(hint around 5% survived, 95% died..)

Quotation from the Russian variant of the article: Poljan P., Nolte H.-H.. Massenverbrechen in der Sowjetunion und im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland. ZumVergleichderDiktaturen // ZeitschriftfürWeltgeschichte 2(1), 2001. S. 125-147.
http://magazines.russ.ru/nz/2003/2/hans.html

Quote:

Уровень смертности у военнопленных был высоким с обеих сторон, но разница - около 57% у советских военнопленных и от 21 до 31% у немецких[19]

Translation: Death rate of POW was high on both sides but it differs: 57% of the Soviet POW and from 21% up to 31% of German POW.

Reference:
Overmanns R . Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg // Beiträge zur Militärgeschichte. Bd. 46. Schriftenreihe des Militärischen Forschungsamtes. Wien; München:R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999; Hilger A. Deutsche Kriegsgefangene in der Sowjetunion, 1941-1956. Kriegsgefangenenpolitik, Lageralltag und Erinnerung // Schriften der Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte - Neue Folge. Hrsg. Von G. Hirschfeld. Bd. 11. Essen: Klartextverlag, 2000; Streit C. Deutsche und sowjetische Kriegsgefangene // Wette W., Überschär G. (Hrsg.). Kriegsverbrechen im 20. Darmstadt: Jahrhundert, 2001. S. 178-192.


Zemskov's figures provided by Sergei Romanov were confirmed by American researches J. Arch Getty of University of California and Gabor T. Rittersporn of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris who had the access to the Soviet secret archives in 1993. Their article is here:

http://www.etext.org/Politics/Staljin/S ... R/AHR.html

Quote:
/////popular estimates of executions in the Great Purges of 1937-1938 vary from 500,000 to 7 million. We do not have exact figures for the numbers of executions in these years, but we can now narrow the range considerably. We know that between October 1, 1936, and September 30, 1938, the Military Board of the Supreme Court, sitting in 60 cities and towns, sentenced 30,514 persons to be shot. According to a press release of the KGB, 786,098 persons were sentenced to death “for counterrevolutionary and state crimes” by various courts and extra-judicial bodies between 1930 and 1953. It seems that 681,692 people, or 86.7 percent of the number for this 23-year-period were shot in 1937-1938 (compared to 1,118 persons in 1936). A certain number of these unfortunates had been arrested before 1937, including exiled and imprisoned ex-oppositionists who were summarily killed in the autumn of 1937. More important, however, our figures on 1937-1938 executions are not entirely comparable to those quoted in the press release. Coming from a 1953 statistical report “on the quantity of people convicted on cases of NKVD bodies,” they also refer to victims who had not been arrested for political reasons, whereas the communique concerns only persons persecuted for “counterrevolutionary offenses.” In any event, the data available at this point make it clear that the number shot in the two worst purge years was more likely a question of hundreds of thousands than of millions
....
Looking specifically at the hard regime camp populations (Figure C and the Appendixes), we find that in the twenty years from 1934 through 1953, the annual population increased in fourteen of the years and dropped in six. Of the six declining years, four were wartime; we know that approximately 975,000 GULAG inmates (and probably also a large number of persons from labor colonies) were released to military service. Nevertheless, the war years were not good ones for the GULAG. First, many of those released to the army were assigned to punitive or “storm” formations, which suffered the heaviest casualties. Second, at the beginning of the war, prominent political prisoners were transferred and isolated in the most remote and severe camps in the system and most “politicals” were specifically barred from release to the military. Third, of the 141,527 detainees who had been injails and evacuated during the first months of the war from territories soon to be occupied by the enemy, 11,260 were executed. Fourth, in the first three years of the war, 10,858 inmates of the GULAG camps were shot, ostensibly for being organizers of underground camp organizations.

Finally, wartime life became harder for the remaining camp residents. More than half of all GULAG deaths in the entire l934-1953 period occurred in 1941-1943, mostly from malnutrition. The space allotment per inmate in 1942 was only one square meter per person, and work norms were increased. Although rations were augmented in 1944 and inmates given reduced sentences for overfilhng their work quotas, the calorie Content of their daily provision was still 30 percent less than in the pre-war period. Obviously, the greatest privation, hunger, and number of deaths among GULAG inmates, as for the general Soviet population, occurred during the war./////

Pay more attention to the ethnic groups in GULAG camps in 1940. - 5400 Latvians and 16133 of Poles.

But my question is: if you do not rely on docs then what would you rely on?

[Topspeed]

Here is where I believe:

Insert from Remembering the Gulag book:

In the anti-civilization of the Soviet Gulag in the years 1929 to the death of Stalin in 1953, it encompasses some eighteen million people, four and a half million of whom never returned.

Read more here:

http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/may03/kramer.htm

There is also a new study in finnish about 33 memoirs of people who survived the Gulag called: Surviving the Soviet Meat
Grinder .

Here the source:

http://www.utu.fi/agricola/nyt/arvos/tekstit/490.html

The name is not very flattering.


Here is more statistics from an US source:

http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publicat ... ulag/1.pdf


rgrds,

Juke T

[Kunikov]

Here is where I believe:

Insert from Remembering the Gulag book:

In the anti-civilization of the Soviet Gulag in the years 1929 to the death of Stalin in 1953, it encompasses some eighteen million people, four and a half million of whom never returned.

Read more here:

http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/may03/kramer.htm

There is also a new study in finnish about 33 memoirs of people who survived the Gulag called: Surviving the Soviet Meat
Grinder .

Here the source:

http://www.utu.fi/agricola/nyt/arvos/tekstit/490.html

The name is not very flattering.


Here is more statistics from an US source:

http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publicat ... ulag/1.pdf


rgrds,

Juke T

And what exactly are you trying to prove with memoirs and an economic study of the GULAG? The '4 and a half million' doesn't have a source behind it.

[David Thompson]

Kunikov -- You said, of Topspeed's post:

The '4 and a half million' doesn't have a source behind it.

Topspeed sourced that statement with a citation to a book -- Remembering the Gulag. While page numbers would have been even more helpful, Topspeed has done what the rules require. If you have some reason to believe that those figures are inaccurate, say your piece and present your evidence.

[Kunikov]

Kunikov -- You said, of Topspeed's post:

The '4 and a half million' doesn't have a source behind it.

Topspeed sourced that statement with a citation to a book -- Remembering the Gulag. While page numbers would have been even more helpful, Topspeed has done what the rules require. If you have some reason to believe that those figures are inaccurate, say your piece and present your evidence.

"In the anti-civilization of the Soviet Gulag in the years 1929 to the death of Stalin in 1953, it encompasses some eighteen million people, four and a half million of whom never returned."

There is no source given to back up that statement, the whole 'article' is in reference to one book, applebaum's, which I have in my hands right now and I quote "To date, no completely satisfactory death statistics for either the Gulag or the exile system have yet appeared." The one number she gives 'reluctantly' is 2,749,163 aside from a year by year NKVD death count which excludes 'deaths in prisoners and deaths during transport.' Starting from 1930 until 1953 the number dead is 1,590,378.

[michael mills]

Anne Applebaum's approach is quite correct.

The statistics extracted from NKVD reports are to be regarded as proved minimum figures. The real number of victims of the GULag is certainly higher than those documented minimum figures; but as Applebaum points out, we do not have "completely satisfactory death statistics", so as yet we have no way of knowing by how much the true number of victims exceeds the documented minima.

The highest guesstimates made in the past must certainly be rejected; but the crimes of Bolshevism should not be minimised by a stubborn insistence on the minimum figures found in the Soviet-era archives.

Such minimisation would be equivalent to insisting that the number of victims of Auschwitz was only the 200-300,000 deaths documented in German reports.