thom wrote:Just double-checked that Kivosheev's calculation of 1995 is based on his own numbers: 4,559,000 POWs – 1,836,000 returned = 2.7 million not returned from captivity.
There is a similar calculation by Gurkin and Kruglov who were both in Krivosheev's coauthor team: >4,500,000 POWs – 1,836,000 returned [– 180,000 emigrated] = 2.5 million died in captivity (see: Voenno-istorich. zhurnal 1996 (3), p. 33).
As for Polian – Finland was considered a part of the Soviet zone and repatriants are included in the second number, see: Zemskov, Istoriia SSSR 1990 (4).
Secondly, 253,829 out of the total of 280,471 POWs liberated inside the USSR have already been repatriated by 30.12.44. Do you have Polian, Zhertvy dvukh diktatur? – the table on p. 810 gives a breakdown by republics (I am not sure if this is in the English edition as well). What is strange is that 152,955 of those liberated by Dec. 1944 were from Russia – was there any Russian territory still occupied between 10-12.1944?
Anyways, repatriation/emigration figures together with the number of those liberated before 10.44 might help to get a realistic idea of mortalities of POWs in German captivity. The question is whether to use 5.2 or 5.7 million as starting point.
Thom, thanks for these additions. Yes, the 2,7 million not returning would be compatible with his lower figures. But the problem is missing in action - there needs to be many, many more in order to generate the numbers of POWs the Germans processed as captured. Not all missing in action can have become prisoners, some must have gone genuinely missing.
It is for this reason that I tend more towards the 5.2 million figure, since it is less of a 'stretch'.
Krivosheev gives
3,396,400 missing in action - recorded
1,162,600 unrecorded losses thus including killed as well
500,000 reservists captured before being registered
= 5,0559,000
N.B. also, the missing in action from border troops and NKVD units was 90,800 alongside 39.600 killed - this fits with what is now known of the destruction of the relevant units in 1941 (these figures for missing included in the 5,059,000 recorded missing overall).
I would add
- an unknown number of militia (policemen), railway workers, other uniformed state agency personnel
- opolchenie who had yet to be called into RKKA service (not many, most opolchenie units were taken into RKKA v quick)
- civilian males of military age (a hell of a lot)
One would ideally need to compare with other armies of the era, to give some indication as to the numbers who genuinely went missing in action from ground forces, i.e. were killed and bodies never recovered. However, it does not seem likely that it was more than 20% of KIAs (5,226,800).
This means one would need to ascertain the fate of just over another million Soviet citizens in order to reconcile with the German figures, if one accepts 5.2 million captured and up to 1 million genuine MIAs.
Therefore, I would conjecture
- a larger number of reservists were called up and not registered properly in the 1941 armies, indeed these reservists must have thought
- there must have been a significant number of policemen etc taken prisoner.
- local opolchenie units were being treated as prisoners
- men of military age as before
and finally
- German figure of 5.2 million may
still contain
yet more overestimates and ghost reporting. This possibility is allowed for in the May 1944 overview, but would require detailed reconstruction from the army groups.
N.B. we have not even discussed the Extraordinary Commission figures for POWs killed or died. These give 3,9 milion... even if one
halves this figure, that is still 1.85 million dying on Soviet territory, which means
- all of 845,000 deaths in OKH zone to 1944
- much of 495,000 deaths and disappearences in transit from OKH to OKW zone
- a significant overlap with 1,136,000 deaths in OKW zone which included Reichskommissariate Ostland and Ukraine
- some overlap with deaths in transit of 273,000 inside OKW zone
- some overlap with executions of 473,000 POWs inside OKW zone
= up to 3.222.000 total deaths and disappearences recorded by May 1944 of which
1,981,000 recorded deaths
473,000 recorded executions = 2,454,000 as a floor
768,000 deaths and disapperences in transit
on top of these, 67,000 escapes from the OKW zone, mostly from Generalgouvernement and RKs Ostland and Ukraine, most of these joined partisans.
But it's not only at the top end, i.e. generating enough missing in action to become POWs, but also at the
bottom end, i.e.
generating enough 'former prisoners of war' to be repatriated, that there are problems
The May 1944 OKW figures give:
1,053,000 POWs in captivity as prisoners of war, labouring/unfit
818,000 POWs had been released = mostly to serve in Osttruppen/Hiwis, but over
= total 1,871,000
Of the releases, 535,000 were in the OKH zone, many in 1941 (I have archival OKH/GenQu figures to pull out for this), of whom some became auxiliary policemen etc, and many were released into the economy, some therefore disappearing (and becoming partisans, or reuniting with Soviet forces), others being killed in action by partisans. Subsequent releases were all channelled into the Hiwis and Osttruppen.
The 283,000 released in the OKW zone largely became Hiwis and Osttruppen, but a number were also simply released in the RKs Ostland and Ukraine, which were part of the OKW zone, in 1941.
In June 1944, OKH Org Abt recorded 276,000 Hiwis on the Eastern Front, not all of whom were former POWs (2/3 were), and 366,000 Hiwis on all fronts. There were a further 121000 foreign troops under Army command, some of whom would have been former
In the same month, another source records 370,000 'Osttruppen' evidently including Hiwis, again many were recruited from the civilian population, as well as 160,000 POW labourers, on the Eastern Front, thus the figure for POWs fits with the OKW May 1944 report, which suggests 175,000 prisoners of war. (The second source says 194,505 POWs for May 1944, but there were also IMIs deployed.)
The long and the short of it is, we cannot assume that all 818,000 POWs categorised as 'released' survived the end of the war to be repatriated; many Hiwis and Osttruppen were killed in action; some others escaped and were able to rejoin the Red Army, or vanished completely.
What has yet to be factored in are Finnish and Romanian POWs, which make a marginal difference (Polian pp.130-1)
Finland - 64,188 POWs captured, 19,016 died, 712 escaped, 2,048 handed to Germans; 42,412 repatriated
Romania - 28,799 repatriated from Romania by March 1946
(- yet Hgr Suedukraine would have imported back some POWs under German control in 1944)
Then , of course, we have the 180,000 POWs that Krivosheev claimed in 1995 did not get repatriated because they disappeared or emigrated - well, how on earth can there have been 2 million POWs to be repatriated or emigrate when the Germans and their allies together seem to have had no more than 1.9 million in mid-1944!!!
(Only 147,000 Soviet POWs were taken in 1944 and 34,000 in 1945 by the Germans)
So in actual fact, it may well be that the Soviet figures for repatriated POWs are
too high.
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I do have Polian, Zhertvy dvukh diktatury (2nd expanded edition) and have been citing it extensively. No English edition as yet, unlike Against Their Will/ne po svoei vole. The breakdown by republics - it seems unlikely that it refers to the territory on which the civilians and POWs were liberated. Russia was completely liberated by the end of 1943! I therefore read it as referring to the national origin of the repatriatees. That makes more sense given the proportions.
What Polian exposes is there is a great big book to be written on the initial phase of liberation from January 1943 to the end of 1944 - there are just a few short articles and references that I am aware of, but it's a phase which is often skipped over in discussions of reconstruction and repatriation.
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Also, are you aware of any work on the repatriation of evacuees from the Urals/Central Asia to western Soviet Union? Anecdotally I have read quite a lot of memoirs of evacuees who returned to Belorussia not long after their home areas were liberated. But this process must have been semi-controlled by the Soviet state somehow, as they could hardly have allowed tens of thousands, eventually hundreds of thousands of civilians to leave their workplaces in the east and return home without telling anyone. Therefore, there should be some references to return of evacuees. There are some figures for the repopulation of Moscow in 1943-45 in the article I cited further up the thread on mortality in Moscow. But if you know of anything more general that would be very welcome.
