Soviet Prisoners of War in World War II. Case Studies from Ukraine and Georgia
During World War II, up to 5.7 million Soviet soldiers and officers – men and women – were taken prisoner by the Wehrmacht. More than three million of them died due to inhumane captivity conditions or were murdered. Among the French POWs, the second largest group in German captivity, the mortality rate was 3%. These figures clearly show that the German treatment of the Soviet POWs was fundamentally different from that of the POWs from the Western allies. Germany denied Soviet POWs any protection in accordance with the Geneva Convention.
Within the Soviet group, in turn, the responsible German authorities categorised the POWs according to social, racial and political criteria, thus using the multiethnic character of the Red Army for Germany’s war aims. The panel discusses hierarchies in the camps and the POW’s survival strategies. What markers existed in captivity to demonstrate national identity and which increased the chances to survive? Who was killed and who was recruited for the SS or Wehrmacht?
Those who survived had to go through a so called “filtration process” and were questioned by the Soviet Security Services. The session focuses on individual fates of (former) POWs and gives evidence of the prisoners’ agency during and after the war. All presentations are based on a broad range of sources such as Soviet “filtration” and criminal files, Wehrmacht documents, memoirs, letters and other documents from Ukraine, Georgia, Germany and other countries. By compiling data from different sources, the session opens up new avenues for research on the entanglement of German, Soviet, Ukrainian and Georgian history.
Whereas Western scholarship has often generalised the history of Ukrainian and Georgian POWs as part of a broader Soviet experience or even viewed all Soviet POWs as “Russians”, the Ukrainian and Georgian historiography has faced significant changes, particularly in distancing itself from Soviet interpretations of the past.
The session consists of three contributions of 20 minutes each and a discussion of 30 minutes.
The paper provides an overview over social, racial, political and gender categories which were applied to the Soviet POWs in German captivity. Along these categories the Wehrmacht created internal hierarchies that were intended to weaken cohesion within this group and encourage POWs to collaborate with the Germans. The paper discusses these markers from the German, Soviet and the prisoners’ perspectives and shows their fluidity during and after the war. National and ethnic categories were also crucial in the Soviet “filtration” camps. The contribution presents findings from the project “Soviet and German Prisoners of War and Internees”, which documents war and postwar biographies. Sources from various countries are being made available in the project database “Memorial Archives”, creating a digital memory that is continuously expanded.
Ukrainian independence in 1991 raised the question of the Ukrainian contribution to World War II and the multiethnic character of the Red Army. The paper studies the problem of researching and identifying Ukrainians among Soviet POWs, defining them as an ethnic group or as residents of the Ukrainian SSR. What sources record the ethnic origin of the POWs? German documents often refer to captured Red Army soldiers as “Russians” in a generalised way. How did Ukrainians identify themselves under different circumstances? Already when Ukrainians joined the Red Army, they were faced with the choice of preserving or changing their identity. The German racial hierarchy and the course of war prompted POWs to demonstrate or hide their nationality. The paper opens up new perspectives on sources and Ukrainian historiography.
After Georgia gained independence, the complex issues in Georgian historiography were how to interpret the WWII and the role of Georgians who served in both the Soviet and German armies. The paper gives insight into the narratives at the national and international levels.
According to the criminal files kept in the KGB archive in Georgia, several former POWs were arrested by the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs in Georgia during WWII. The documents show that obtaining information about everyday life in the occupied territories, the functioning of German camps and the recruitment of Soviet soldiers was of central interest to the Soviet authorities. After WWII, the attitude towards POWs changed. How former POWs were treated during and after the war? What ideas were disseminated among Georgian POWs in captivity?