<p>Column of <a href="/narrative/10135/en">Soviet prisoners of war</a> from the eastern front. Kharkov, Soviet Union, June 18, 1942.</p>

Nazi Persecution of Soviet Prisoners of War


Soviets Viewed as Subhuman Enemies

Soviet prisoners of war interrogated by German soldiers upon arrival at a prison camp.Yet for Nazi Germany this attack was not an "ordinary" military operation. The war against the Soviet Union was a war of annihilation between German fascism and Soviet communism; a racial war between German "Aryans" and subhuman Slavs and Jews. From the very beginning this war of annihilation against the Soviet Union included the killing of prisoners of war (POWs) on a massive scale. In part, German officials excused their ill treatment and murder of Soviet POWs by pointing out that the Soviet Union was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention and its soldiers did not warrant the protection that the convention extended to prisoners of war. In reality, their reasons were more complex. German authorities viewed Soviet POWs as a particular threat, regarding them not only as Slavic subhumans but as part of the "Bolshevik menace" linked in Nazi ideology to the concept of  a “Jewish conspiracy.”

Second Largest Group of Nazi Victims



Deliberate Policy

This death toll was neither an accident nor an automatic result of the war. It was a deliberate policy of the Nazi state. German treatment of Soviet POWs differed dramatically from German policy towards POWs from Britain and the United States, countries the Nazis regarded as racial equals to the Germans. Of the 231,000 British and American prisoners held by the Germans during the war only about 8,300—3.6 percent—died in German custody.

Critical Thinking Questions


Thank you for supporting our work
