Stalin's War of Extermination by Joachim Hoffmann

[Wolf Stoner]

Chapter 10

All Along the Front, the First Prisoners of War Are Murdered as Early as June 22, 1941

The criminalization of the German Wehrmacht began immediately after the outbreak of the war and became the true field of activity of the Main Administration for Political Propaganda of the Red Army (GUPPKA, soon to be the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army) and its subordinate agencies. “Death to Fascist Vermin” was the leitmotif of Regulation № 20, issued to the “Divisional Chiefs for Political Propaganda among the Units and Armies” on July 14, 1941.This was published by the Chief of the Main Administration, Army Commissar First Rank Mekhlis, as well as Guideline № 081 of the GUPPKA, issued on July 15, 1941, to the “Politruks of the Companies and Batteries” “for unconditional implementation.” German soldiers were accordingly described to the Red Army as “Hitlerite fascist trash,” “fascist barbarians,” “fascist predators,” and “fascist reptiles.” Slogans included “Smash the Fascist Vermin From the Sky,” “Smash the Enemy’s Viper Nests,” “Grind the Enemy Hordes to Dust,” “Smash the Hitlerite Gang with Rifle Butts, Crush Them with Steel, Eliminate Them with Fire,” and “May the Fascist Vermin Perish from Starvation.”

These, and other, similar proclamations issued by the Main Administration, were immediately seized upon and repeated, as illustrated by a speech held on October 14, 1941, by Mushev, the newly-appointed official of the Political Administration of the 22nd Army, before the staff of a infantry division. Mushev criminalized the German army as a dissolute gang of robbers, as thieves and drunkards dedicated to “plundering with impunity, murdering the defenseless population, raping women, and destroying and burning cities and villages.” Where criminalization of the Germans was concerned, the military command was in no way far behind the political organizations of the Red Army. Marshal of the Soviet Union Budenny, Commander-in-Chief of the Southwest Front, in his Order № 5 of July 16, 1941, referred to German troops as “Hitler’s gangs of cannibals,” “fascist beasts,” and “fascist carrion.” Marshal of the Soviet Union Voroshilov, Commander-in-Chief of the Northwest Army (Member of the Military Council Zhdanov), in Order № 3 of July 14, 1941, referred to the Germans as “beastly fascists,” “fascist vultures,” and “fascist bandits.” Marshal of the Soviet Union Timoshenko, former People’s Commissar of Defense, Commander-in-Chief of the Western Front (Member of the Military Council Bulganin), in a proclamation to the inhabitants of the occupied territories of August 6, 1941, scourged the German soldiers as “Hitler gangs,” “Hitler hordes,” “fascist monsters,” “German robbers,” whose extermination by any method was justified. “German officers and soldiers are not human beings in green greatcoats, but wild animals,” a leaflet from the Political Administration of the Northwest Front stated on March 25, 1942: “German officers and soldiers must be exterminated, as one strikes down mad dogs.”

The indiscriminate vilification of all German soldiers, as revealed by these, and other similar, statements by the highest military and political leadership agencies, were clearly intended to prevent Soviet soldiers from surrendering to the enemy. The claim that Soviet soldiers could expect only certain death in captivity was constantly made in the Red Army. For example, on March 29, 1940, in his speech before the Supreme Soviet of the USSR following the Finish Winter War, President of the Council of People’s Commissars, Molotov, had formerly attacked the alleged “unprecedented barbarity and bestialities of the White Finns against the wounded and captured members of the Red Army.” Such accusations could, of course, only be held to be doubly true of the German Wehrmacht. In this sense, Mekhlis, on July 14, 1941, and on the days following, similarly proclaimed that the Germans would “mistreat, torture, and murder” their prisoners “in a bestial manner.” To the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army, it was now a question of inspiring Soviet soldiers with an “irreconcilable, raging hatred against the enemy” while instilling the Red Army with an “insatiable thirst for vengeance for [German] atrocities.” This was also the intended purpose of a propaganda text “Fascist Atrocities Against Prisoners of War,” published in Leningrad in 1941. This, in conjunction with a corresponding speech and note on alleged crimes against prisoners of war by Molotov on November 6, 1941, practically established the Soviet propaganda line to be applicable in this regard from that date until 1943, and thereafter until the end of the war.

In view of the above, it is not surprising that, as early as the third day of the war—i.e., June 24, 1941—Pochinko, a Soviet prisoner of war, testified that members of the Red Army were being encouraged “to show no mercy to German soldiers, since one [the Germans] will pay no heed to us [the Soviets] either and will torture us,” and will, as it reads, “cut off our fingers, noses, ears, and heads, or will cut open our backs and remove the spinal column, before shooting us.” High-ranking officers of the Soviet 6th and 12th Armies subjected to thorough interrogation were found to be aware of these conditions as well by readily admitting, on August 16, that “the murder of German prisoners of war might be possibly due to inflammatory anti-German propaganda.” After all, what else could one expect if members of the Red Army were constantly filled with atrocity stories, as in the leaflet mentioned above? “Every day, drunken Nazi officers were depicted as mistreating prisoners, putting out eyes, breaking or chopping off arms, tearing flesh off bones, and burying many prisoners alive.”

Characteristically, the murder of captured German soldiers and wounded began even before the inflammatory proclamations of the Soviet leadership agencies in regard to the German invaders had even had time to become effective. To be sure, these murders began without warning, on the first day of the war, on June 22, 1941, along the entire front. According to the record of the military court investigation, Lieutenant Hundrieser, a forestry teaching trainee in civilian life, on the morning of June 22, 1941, followed in the wave of the attack. A few kilometers from the German-Soviet border he witnessed the murder of ten wounded members of the 311th German Infantry Regiment who had remained behind. Other testimony relates to the murder of a helplessly wounded member of the 188th German Infantry Regiment at Javorov on June 22, 1941, as well as to the murder and robbery of large numbers of wounded and captured soldiers of the 192nd German Infantry Regiment near Jagodzin on the same date.i0 Captured air- craft crews were killed during the first days of the war almost without exception. In the early hours of June 22, 1941, a non-commissioned officer of the 77th Air Combat Regiment who parachuted from his plane was immediately killed after landing at Kedainiai by Soviet soldiers who rushed to the spot A gold dental crown was then torn out of his jaw. The Polish housewife Maria Morocz witnessed Soviet soldiers near Sokho Wola shooting a wounded aviator whom she had desired to help. Violations of international law by members of the Red Army became, in fact, so frequent in the final days of June 1941 that only a few of the cases investigated in accordance with the military courts and confirmed by eyewitnesses can be mentioned here.

On June 24, 1941, twelve wounded members of an infantry regiment who were left behind were found horribly mutilated after participating in an attack with the 23rd German Engineer Battalion at Surazh, west of Bialystok. One of the wounded soldiers was found nailed fast to a tree, with his eyes gouged out, and his tongue cut out. On June 25, 1941, members of a reconnaissance troop of the 36th Infantry Regiment in platoon strength were found driven together and “bestially slaughtered,” in a village in East Poland. On July 1, 1941, the bodies of Major Söhngen of the 7th Infantry Regiment as well as that of a First Lieutenant, two Master Sergeants, and several other soldiers were found in the Skomorocchy fortifications, north of Sokal, having been mutilated the day before. A medical investigation by Medical Captain Dr. Stankeit and Acting Medical Officer Wendler confirmed that severe violence, in the form of knife cuts, particularly in the vicinity of the eyes, had been inflicted. First Lieutenant Hufnagel of the 9th Panzer Division, following in the wake of the border crossing in late June 1941, found approximately eighty massacred German soldiers, including three officers of an unnamed infantry regiment, on the Busk-Tarnopol’ road. Similarly, also in late June 1941, members of an advance detachment, apparently of the 9th Infantry Regiment, were cut off while crossing a small river near Bialystok, and were killed and mutilated. In late June 1941, the staff and support sections of the 161st Infantry Division were surprised by Soviet troops near Porzecze, with the resulting capture of a number of wounded officers and soldiers. The Wehrmacht evangelical Protestant clergyman Klinger and Catholic military priest Sindersberger made the following eyewitness statements before a military court on June 8 and June 15, 1941: Lieutenant Sommer and six other soldiers were burned alive; Lieutenant Wordell and the others were either shot or beaten to death and then robbed. German medical personnel, clearly recognizable due to their Red Cross armbands, including Medical First Lieutenant Dr. Adelhelm and Medical Second Lieutenant Dr. Hottenroth, were also murdered by the Soviets, and lay in rows with other murdered soldiers. On June 28, 1941, Soviet soldiers surprised a clearly recognizable column of the 127th Motor Ambulance Platoon in the region of Minsk and butchered a great many of the wounded and accompanying medical personnel. According to the testimony of a survivor, “the terrible screams of the wounded” could be heard for a very long lime. The victims of acts of violence that were contrary to international law occurred at numerous locations, even during the very first days of the war, and included medical personnel, in addition to wounded combat personnel.

A distinction must, of course, be made between the “spontaneous” murders of German prisoners of war by Soviet soldiers that began on June 22, 1941, and continued “all along the entire front”—no matter how “bestial” they may have been—and the mass murders organized and committed by the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) that also began upon the outbreak of the war. As stated by the American Congressional Committee, chaired by Representative Charles J. Kersten, in the Conclusions to Special Report № 4 of December 31, 1954, members of the NKVD shot “all political prisoners in every city of the western Ukraine in the first days of the war, with the exception of a few who survived as if by a miracle.” Victims of these mass murders included the inmates of the prisons and concentration camps in the western Ukraine, i.e, eastern Poland, as well as those in the Baltic States, White Russia and, with the continued advance of German troops, inmates in the hinterland of the Soviet Union as well. Ukrainian, Polish, Lithuanian, Jewish, Latvian, Estonian, and, of course, Russian civilians, in addition to ethnic Germans and others, of all ages and both sexes, fell victim to these deliberately planned, cold-bloodedly systematic executions by shooting in all localities, all over the country. The great numbers of localities in which prison inmates were murdered, included, to cite just a few: Dubno, Luck, Dobromil, Zolkiev, Brzeznay, Rudki, Komarno, Pasichna, Ivano-Frankivsk (Stanislav), Chortkov, Rovno, Sarny, Drogobych (Drahobych), Sambor, Tarnopol’, Stalino (Jusowka), and, of course, Lemberg in eastern Poland (the western Ukraine); Pravienishkies, Rumshishkes (near Kaunas), Kaunas (Kovno) Telshiai, and Globokie (east of Vilna) in Lithuania; and Riga, Dünaburg (Daugavpils), Rositten in Latvia; Dorpat, and Reval in Estonia. Since liquidations occurred almost everywhere, it is practically impossible to list all locations; it should, however, be mentioned that over 4,000 corpses were found in Lemberg; 1,500 in Dubno; and 500 in Luck.

The NKVD not only shot their prisoners but, in many proven cases, tortured them to death by tearing out their fingernails, scalding and tearing off their skin, and comparable horrors. This was often done in the torture chambers that formed an integral part of all NKVD prisons in accordance with the traditions of the Cheka, founded by Lenin. The doctor of forensic medicine, Medical Captain Dr. Buhtz, listed a number of such cases on behalf of the Army Medical Investigation, in a “Preliminary Report on the Findings of the Forensic Medical Criminal Investigation of Bolshevik Violations of International Law in the Regions of the Army Group North (AOK16 and 18)” of December 4, 1941. For example, he investigated the case of three Roman Catholic priests murdered during the first few days of the war in Lankishkiai, one of whom was crucified and another of whom had his mouth sewn shut; he also investigated the murder of three doctors and a nurse in Panevezhys. In addition to male prisoners, women and children were also liquidated or tortured to death in the prisons and camps of the NKVD in the first days of July. A report of the Advanced Unit of the Secret Field Police of the XXXXVIII German Army Corps of July 1, 1941, stated that the bodies of 550 persons, murdered a few days before, including 100 women, had been found on July 26, 1941, in the prison of Dubno, adding:

“On entering the prison cells, the sight was so horrible that it cannot even be described in words. Over one hundred bodies, of men, old people, women, and girls approximately sixteen years of age, lay in the cells, shot, and mutilated with bayonet wounds.”

Corporal Steinacker of the Staff of the Signals (61st Infantry Division) declared, during a military court interrogation:

“All persons were completely naked. Approximately three or four women hung in each cell with their heads downward. They were fastened to the ceiling by cords. As far as I can remember, all the women had had their breasts and tongues cut out. The children lay crumpled up on the floor.”

It was found possible to identify a few of the perpetrators by name, such as NKVD Commissar Vinkur and a female NKVD agent Erenshtein.

The horrible details of the massacre of over 4,000 Ukrainian and Polish prisoners in the city of Lemberg (such as Brigidki Prison, Zamarstynow Prison, and the NKVD prison) have already been the object of detailed military court and forensic medical studies and post-war international investigations and require no further comment here. The forensic medical officer, Medical Captain Dr. Schneider, a professor of medicine, stated in an official letter to Medical Major General Dr. Zimmer on July 21, 1941:

‘'It has become clear to me that the atrocities against Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, and, unfortunately, against captured members of the Wehrmacht as well, committed by the GPU in Russia shortly before the evacuation of the cities, far exceeds everything previously... known in terms of atrociousness and cruelty... My assistant, who spent two days in Lemberg, told me that these events could neither be described nor even intimated. The murder victims were without any doubt sadistically tortured before death, in torture chambers installed for the purpose”.

As already mentioned and confirmed by extensive source material, in the present connection it is relevant that captured members of the Wehrmacht were also discovered among the civilian victims of the NKVD terror in Lemberg. The Soviets enforced a basic regulation that German prisoners, in violation of international law, were to be transferred from the military departments of the Commissariat of Defense (NKO) to the police departments of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD). For this purpose they were immediately transferred to the custody of NKVD convoy troops after interrogation, in keeping with a directive of August 4, 1941, of the Commander of the NKVD troops, Major General Appolonov. Just what it meant for prisoners of war to be transferred to the NKVD is best illustrated by the fact that Krivenko, who was responsible for the executions of the Polish POW officers in the Ostashkov camp in 1940 as Brigade Commander of the NKVD, and who was later to become a Lieutenant General of the NKVD, was appointed Chief of the Main Administration for Prisoners of War and Internees (GUPVI).

In addition to German soldiers of the ground forces, captured members of the Luftwaffe, in particular, were very soon transferred to NKVD prisons, where they met with violent deaths from the very outset of the war. Several airmen of the German Luftwaffe were even discovered among the mountains of bodies in the Lemberg NKVD prison; NKVD Commissars Loginov and Maslov shot three wounded German fliers, including two officers, in the Lemberg military hospital on June 29, 1941, before the Soviet retreat. On June 25, 1941, after an emergency landing near Tarnopol, several crew members of a Ju 88 bomber of the 51st Bomber Wing, including Master Sergeant Harenburg, were transferred to the local NKVD prison. There they were murdered in an inconceivably cruel manner, together with other captured crew members. One crew member, Master Sergeant Scheurich, who was hidden by an Ukrainian farmer named Picum and a few women, as well as First Reserve Lieutenant Küster, a mayor with a doctor of law degree, and Lance Corporal Kaluza, a lecturer on photography in civilian life, both from the staff of the 129th Artillery Command, described their impressions under oath in a military court deposition. According to them, the bodies of the aviators murdered in Tarnopol prison were in some cases chained, after which their eyes were put out, their tongues, ears, and noses cut off; and in some cases, the skin on the hands and feet was partially torn off.

A horrifying discovery was made on June 27, 1941, in the central office of the NKVD in Luck. Technical Military Administrative Advisor Brugmann, of the 14th Panzer Division testified under oath that the mutilated bodies of four members of the German Luftwaffe, including Second Lieutenant Sturm and an unknown First Lieutenant, were found with their limbs hacked off, accompanied by horrible bums caused by a soldering iron found next to them. On October 9, 1941, two medical officers of the Luftwaffe, Medical Major Dr. Golla and Medical First Lieutenant Dr. Knak, autopsied the bodies of eleven German fliers (including a First Lieutenant) and two army soldiers found in the NKVD prison of Proskurov. A Ukrainian prison supervisor, Kolomyets, testified in his military court deposition that the men were transferred on June 27-28, 1941, and killed in the cellar by a shot in the back of the neck during the night of July 4, 1941. In this case, as at Lemberg, at least some of the perpetrators were identified by name: the Deputy Chief of the NKVD in Proskurov, Deputy Chief of the NKVD Prison, and Watch Commander Kasanshy, and the “Chekists” Vassermann, Makhnevich, and Lubchak. The bodies of other murdered German fliers were discovered in the prison of the NKVD Border Troops in Slobodka on June 28, 1941.

Although a distinction must be made between the systematic murder actions of agencies of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) and the unrestrained murders committed by members of the Red Army, increasing numbers of violations of international law, committed by regular troops of the Red Army were observed under the influence of the then-current atrocity propaganda of July 1941 that absolutely exceeded all bounds of hatred. The seriousness of such violations may be illustrated by a series of randomly selected examples. On July 1, 1941, 165 wounded and unwounded members of the II Battalion of the 35th (motorized) Infantry Regiment of the 25th (motorized) Infantry Division were shot, or, as may be inferred from the investigation reports of July 2 and 5, 1941, “bestially” stabbed or beaten to death, west of Broniki, between Rovno and Luck. According to the testimony of a few survivors, these acts were committed deliberately, after robbing and partially undressing the soldiers, and chaining the “service rank” soldiers. This was done to the accompaniment of inflammatory shouting by, and even the personal participation of, a group of Soviet officers. On June 30, 1941, an unknown number of wounded were murdered in the district of the 119th (motorized) Infantry Regiment.

On July 1, 1941, Soviet soldiers in the Rokitno region mutilated 20-30 wounded members of the 465th Infantry Regiment, including Second Lieutenant von Ponigau; a few of these men were burned alive.36 Also murdered were 80 wounded members of the 295th Infantry Division who were left behind on the battlefield near Dabrovka (south of Rava Ruska) in early July 1941. Approximately 30 members of a medical company, some of them wearing Red Cross armbands, were killed in a Soviet massacre west of Minsk in early July 1941. According to eyewitness testimony, 26 members of an assault troop mission were mutilated near Bialyslok on July 8, 1941; near Suprashl on the same date, 20 members of the 23rd Anti-Tank Battalion were mutilated, almost all of them “to the point of unrecognizability”, following an ambush. Medical Second Lieutenant Dr. Berge testified that 48 members of the 1st Battalion of the 111th Infantry Regiment, “including the wounded and prisoners, were slaughtered by shooting, stabbing, or beaten to death with bludgeons” near Romanovka, west of Berdichev, on July 10, 1941. Seventeen wounded members of the 272nd Infantry Regiment left behind in a patch of forest near Raja north of Dorpat in mid-July 1941 were laid next to each other and strangled or shot by the Soviets after the crudest mutilations. As Medical Major Dr. Schmidt testified under oath in the military court investigation, 12-15 wounded German soldiers, captured by the Soviets on the Bobrujsk airfield before they could be evacuated, were killed on the same day, some of them after horrible tortures, such as gouging out their eyes, cutting out their tongues, and crushing their testicles.

Near Are in Estonia on July 29, 1941, a wounded Lance Corporal of the 1st Artillery Regiment, having survived by accident, watched as uniformed and armed Soviet women murdered his wounded comrades, cutting open the abdomen of one of them, whose both legs had been shot off, with a curved knife. Medical Master Sergeant Dr. Stock testified under oath to the bestial murder of the battalion doctor of the 171st Infantry Regiment, Medical First Lieutenant Dr. Reichardt, near Chelovka not far from Korosten on August 6, 1941. On August 16, 1941, the 16th Panzer Division reported that 40 members of the 79th Infantry Regiment and a few Hungarian soldiers had been found murdered at the Grejgovo railway station. According to the report of the commander of the III Battalion, Major Lenz, 48 members of the 164th Infantry Regiment, including a Lance Corporal Graf von Granier-Turawa, were obviously murdered after the battle near Barishovka on September 23, 1941. The wounded soldiers of an artillery battalion having fallen into Soviet captivity near Vjazma in early October 1941 suffered a frightful fate. As described under oath by Medical Master Sergeant Dr. Sonnleitner of the 2nd Medical Company of the 23rd Panzer Division, the men were burned alive in a nearby bam, together with 60 other wounded. By contrast, the mere shooting of 11 unwounded and 8 wounded soldiers at Rzhavej (Tula district) on the order of an unknown politruk in the fall of 1941, described under oath by Mazel, a Russian, seems almost merciful. Medical Captain Dr. Buhtz, a professor of medicine, autopsied or otherwise medically examined a total of 44 murdered German soldiers, including 9 fliers, II infantry soldiers, 14 anti-tank soldiers, and other soldiers and medical ranks in the district of the Army Group North between August 28 and November 11, 1941. His report of December 4, 1941, to which reference has already been made, indicates that, in the majority of cases, death was caused, not merely by shooting, but also by terrible tortures, by multiple cuts, in one case by “bestial gagging,” by blows with blunt instruments, gouging out their eyes, cutting their throats, cutting or hacking off their limbs, cutting off or crushing their genitals, and burning them alive.

The killing of German prisoners of war and wounded by Soviet soldiers that began on the first day of the war all along the entire front, and that soon rapidly increased, raises the question of how the leadership agencies of the Red Army felt toward these actions. The Soviet government, in reply to an initiative of the International Red Cross, and with a view toward the attitude of the Western powers, attempted to give the impression that they would, “on the condition of reciprocity,” recognize the principles generally applicable between civilized states relating to the legal treatment of prisoners of war under international law. The “Decree on Prisoners of War” of the Council of People’s Commissars of July 1, 1941, the Circular Letter of the Chief Administrative Officer of the Red Army on the standards of care for prisoners of war of July 3, 1941, and the Proposal of the Chief of the Medical Administration of the Red Army on adequate hospital treatment for prisoners of war of July 29, 1941, which was confirmed by the Chief of the Main Administration for Prisoners of War and Internees of the NKVD, were not, and there is clear evidence for this, enforced among Soviet troops, and were, in any case crassly ignored everywhere, as has been proven in all cases.

These decrees were obviously intended, primarily, to deceive foreign countries, for example, like the much lauded Stalin Constitution of 1936, guaranteeing and proclaiming every conceivable form of human rights and civil rights in the USSR, not a single one of which, in practice, ever existed, but that were, quite the contrary, cynically twisted to imply the exact opposite in every instance.

Were it not so, it would, for example, be impossible to understand how the prohibition of the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, Marshal of the Soviet Union Shaposhnikov, directed to the Staff Chiefs of the Fronts and Armies, against the confiscation of “personal valuables, money, and papers from prisoners” could have been quite so ostentatiously ignored. The commander of the Crimean troops, Vice Admiral Levchenko (together with Member of the Military Council, Corps Commissar Nikolaev, Chief of Staff, Major General Ivanov), by Order № 091 of November 1941, openly declared that all sums of money and valuables of prisoners of war were the property of the People, immediately ordering their surrender to the agencies of the Soviet State Bank by Directive № 0146 of the Council of the People’s Commissars. In practice, the treatment of prisoners of war was determined, not by the directives and decrees of the central authorities, which were only intended to serve as window-dressing, but rather, by the orders of the commanders, commissars, and political leaders, who were inspired by Soviet hate-propaganda slogans.

Many orders, reports, and statements of Soviet officers and soldiers, in any case, reveal the lack of restraint with which prisoners of war and wounded were simply massacred. Thus, before June 28, 1941, the Soviet commander of the 36th Machine Gun Battalion, near Rava Ruska, ordered all German prisoners of war to be shot. The Commander of the 225th Mountain Infantry Regiment, Major Savelin, ordered the shooting of 400 Romanian prisoners of war and a few captured German officers and non- commissioned officers west of Starozynine in Bucovina, on July 2-3, 1941, on the grounds of mere transportation problems. When the nurse Elena Ivanovna Zhivilova protested against the intended shooting of a wounded German soldier on the battlefield at Bjel, not far from Sukhari, in early July 1941, she was reprimanded in the presence of First Lieutenant Tolkach, Lieutenant Khaliulin, and a few politruks, and threatened with proceedings by the responsible battalion commissar, who had already shot a German prisoner of war at the end of June. The order was drummed into her to shoot all future captured officers personally, or, as she testified: “Even we nurses were supposed to shoot them with our ‘Nagans.’”

“Captured officers were all shot without exception,” say the notes of a member of the Red Army having returned to his parents at Usovka: “I have seen many executions of prisoners of war... thirty in one place alone.” At Khomutovka, the same Red Army officer observed the manner in which a politruk killed a wounded officer and wounded soldier. The Combat Report of a № 304 tank, signed by Second Lieutenant Efremov, the crew of which was said to be inspired by “the ardent desire ... to exterminate a whole load of fascist reptiles...” is typical of the manner of Soviet thinking on a lower level. This report contains an entry, dated August 31, 1941, reading: “Destroyed one medical vehicle consisting of two horses and ten wounded fascists.” The Chief of the 1st Company, Captain Gadiev, reported on August 30, 1941: "Shot 15 wounded,” while the political leader of the company, Junior Politruk Bulanov, reported on September 5, 1941: “Destroyed one medical unit.”

Numerous documents also reveal the responsibility of higher command agencies for the murder of prisoners of war. Thus, a major on the staff of the 21st Infantry Corps, commanded by Major General Borisov, shot two German officers by order of the Corps Staff on July 4, 1941. A driver on the staff of the 154th Infantry Division testified that 22 German prisoners of war were shot in the neck after interrogation by the divisional commander and divisional commissar in early August, after being forced to dig their own graves. The Chief of Staff of the 26th Armored Division, Lieutenant Colonel Kimbar, and the Chief of the Operations Branch, Major Khrapko, reported the shooting of 80 prisoners of war in Operational Report № 11 on July 14, 1941, quite casually, as if it were a matter of course: “80 men surrendered, and were shot”.

That such crimes could be committed on the basis of official military orders has been confirmed by Colonel Gaevsky of the 29lh Armored Division, in his testimony of August 6, 1941, relating to the shooting of lower- ranking German officers. That an order to give no quarter should be issued prior to the attack on Prokopovka on September 9, 1941, as testified to by Soviet Second Lieutenant fon Granc, Battalion Adjutant in the 800th Infantry Regiment, was, therefore, quite consistent. Shooting the wounded officers was reserved for the Regimental Commissar personally. Like other captured Soviet officers, the captured Commander of the 141st Infantry Division, Major General Tonkonogov, in his interrogation in August 1941, objected that he had no knowledge of the shooting of German prisoners, and that the wounded could be shot only as the result of “lack of discipline on the battlefield.” It was later discovered that Major General Tonkonogov had personally ordered the shooting of a German officer for refusal to provide information. Another Soviet general demanded information from a wounded sergeant, Seyboth, of the 35th Motorized Infantry Regiment, relating to a position not yet occupied by the Germans on September 19, 1941. The interrogated soldier testified under oath “that he would slowly torture me to death” for failure to provide the correct information. This Soviet General was also later captured by the Germans.

Refusal to provide information, which is permissible under international law, was repeatedly cited by Soviet staffs as grounds for shooting prisoners of war, perhaps even as a matter of basic principle. Thus, to cite a few examples, the chief of a German Engineer Company was personally shot by the Chief of Staff of the 53rd Infantry Division at Ilinskoe on October 14, 1941, after being given twenty minutes to consider, and being permitted to write a letter to his family. A German corporal was similarly shot on the order of Lieutenant Colonel Chicherin, the Chief of Staff of an unidentified division. Although similar actions can also be proven in relation to the Army, Corps, and Divisional Staffs, a “general order” for the shooting of prisoners does not appear to have existed during this phase of the conflict. The large numbers of such killings, which can be proven on the basis of testimony by Soviet officers, political officials, doctors, and soldiers as early as July 1941, were attributed by the Germans to “individual or special orders” of the various Soviet command agencies.

Captured officers and commissars accused each other of issuing such orders, but the commissars appear to have been chiefly responsible, as they had the earliest opportunity to do so, and were, furthermore, inclined to liquidate “capitalists” and “fascists” in addition to German officers. “The Soviets committed horrible murders all along the front, from the first days of the Eastern campaign onward,” stated a summary by the Wehrmacht Operations Staff on September 15, 1941. The argument, heard on occasion, that these murders were, in fact, committed in reprisal for application of the notorious Commissar Order by the Germans, must be excluded since the order was, of course, unknown to the Red Army during the early phases of the war.

The fact that Soviet command authorities can be proven to have issued repeated orders to shoot prisoners of war for refusing to make statements, in no way contradicts their simultaneous efforts to prevent the shooting of prisoners of war by Soviet troops on their own initiative—due to the desire of the Soviet leadership to keep prisoners of war alive for interrogation purposes. A great deal of material is available in this regard; for example, the Commander of the 168th Cavalry Regiment of the 41st Independent Cavalry Division, Colonel Pankratov, and the Regimental Commissar, Senior Politruk Kutuzov, protested against the shooting of prisoners of war during the most difficult phase of the winter, on December 28, 1941, simultaneously conceding that subordinate unit leaders were shooting all “captured German fascists” immediately instead of delivering them to the staff, thus hindering the intelligence gathering about the enemy. The Chief of Staff of an unnamed Infantry Division, apparently the 65th, Major Kotik, and the Commissar of the Staff, Battalion Commissar Kitsa, warned against taking the law into one’s own hands and simply shooting captured soldiers and officers “without even asking any questions.” Since such cases were becoming constantly more numerous, especially in the 38th Infantry Regiment, the Regimental Commander and Regimental Commissar were threatened with severe punishment in the event of repetition. Colonel Kashanskij, Chief of Staff of the 30th Infantry Division, in an order dated early July 1941, referred to the urgent need to deliver captured prisoners of war to the divisional staff for interrogation, even “if they are severely wounded. The Chief of Staff of the 62nd Army, Major General Moskvin, the Military Commissar of the Staff, Regimental Commissar Zaytsev, and the Chief of the Department for Enemy Reconnaissance, Colonel German, prohibited the subordinate units (31st, 87th, 196th, 131st, 399th, 112th Infantry Divisions, 33rd Guards Infantry Division, and 20th Motorized Infantry Brigade) from “shooting prisoners on the battlefield, regardless of the numbers involved,” under the threat of severe punishment, leaving the question of subsequently shooting them apparently open. Also, the Chief of Staff, of the 14th Army in the section of Murmansk, Colonel Malitsky, and the Commissar of the Staff, Battalion Commissar Burylin, in an order issued on September 8, 1941, complained that the subordinate units, such as the 88th Infantry Division, had simply begun to liquidate all prisoner transports en route, instead of delivering them to staff headquarters.70 The objection was not, however, made on the grounds, for example, that the executions constituted a crime against humanity or a violation of international law, but simply that it amounted to a “failure in the military training organization.”

The methods of interrogation in the staff headquarters have been described by a person who should know: a captured Regimental Commissar. In the winter of 1941-42, he stated that a form of “simple interrogation” existed in the Regimental Staff, as well as a form of “severe interrogation.” A form of “most severe interrogation” also existed in the Army Staffs, con- ducted by the Special Department of the NKVD. If the prisoner of war was unwilling to testify, then during the “severe interrogation” by the Regimental Staff:

“The soldiers present each held him tight by the head or feet, after which the prisoner received five to ten blows on the buttocks and back with a club, in the presence of the Regimental Commanders and Regimental Commissars. If the prisoner was still unwilling to testify, the beatings continued for approximately five to ten minutes, in increasing severity. He was again intermittently interrogated. The beatings only stopped when the prisoner was unconscious or dead.”

As for the “most severe interrogation” in the Army Staff, Major Kyanchenko of the Army Staff of the 19th and, later, the 33rd Army, reported:

“that the prisoners, stripped naked by the NKVD, were beaten with rubber truncheons, and that their ears were battered off at the same time since the face was also beaten. Their fingernails were also torn out. Another method was to cut off the tips of the fingers with sharp knives. To increase the pain, the fingertips were not cut off with a single blow, but gradually, with several blows.”

During comparable interrogations in the Divisional Staff, braided leather straps were used on prisoners of war, who were naked in these cases as well. If the prisoner of war gave testimony of slight value after a “severe interrogation,” he was “finally shot on order of the regimental commander.”

When the interrogation was completed, the command authorities took no further interest in the fate of the prisoner, but rather handed him over to the Special Department of the NKVD, “which is known to have shot all prisoners.” Thus, for example, according to the testimony of the Chief of the Operations Branch in the Staff of the 1st Motorized Proletarian (Infantry) Division, Lieutenant Colonel Liapin, Quartermaster Colonel Rosentsvaig of the 57th Armored Division personally shot two German officers shortly after interrogation on September 16, 1941. On February 21, 1942, a Soviet Colonel reported the shooting of a German flight officer even in the presence of the Commander-in-Chief of the 3rd Army, Lieutenant General Kuznetsov, and other high-ranking officers of the Army Staff.

The Chief of Staff of the 47th Army in the Caucasus, Colonel Vasilev, the Military Staff Commissar, Senior Battalion Commissar Makov, and Department Chief for Enemy Reconnaissance Lieutenant Colonel Baranov, in reference to the usual murders of prisoners of war in the units in 1942, cited the case of two fliers shot by the 83rd Independent Marine Infantry Brigade. The commanders and commissars of all units were not, for example, fundamentally prohibited from shooting prisoners of war, but, rather, only from “shooting prisoners of war without permission by the Military Council of the Army.” The usual Red Army manner of procedure in dealing with German aircraft crews after interrogation was described by the liaison officer on the Operational Staff of the Defense District of Tuapse (TOR), Second Lieutenant Redko, on November 26 and December 1, 1942:

“At the staff of the 47th Army, three German fliers were interrogated for three days, they were given nothing to eat, then they had to take their uniforms off, dig their own graves, and were shot.”

A directive of December 1941 from the Chief of the Political Department of the 9th Cavalry Division to the commissars of all units states:

“Inform the combatants and commanders that, in this sense, the enemy will never find any protection, anywhere, even among the highest staffs...there will always be time to settle accounts with them. None of the invaders will leave our land alive.”

The Wehrmacht Investigation Office for the Violation of International Law issued its express conclusions after an evaluation of captured documents and hundreds of prisoner testimonies in a memorandum of March 1942, stating that the Soviet prohibition against the murder of German prisoners of war was “not based on any concern for the legality of treatment of prisoners of war under international law, but rather, and exclusively, upon the Russian staff interest in the delivery of the prisoners of war for intelligence purposes”.

Many documents, nevertheless, reveal something approaching a political motive in addition to considerations of purely military expediency. Thus, the Commander-in-Chief of the 5th Army Major General Potapov (together with Member of the Military Council, Divisional Commissar Inkishev, Chief of the Political Propaganda, Brigade Comissar Kolchenko) in his Order № 025 of June 30, 1941, referred to the shooting of German officers and soldiers as, of course, “perfectly legal,” while, nevertheless, prohibiting “arbitrary” shootings in the future, not merely to get a chance to interrogate German soldiers before they were shot, but for the political purpose of encouraging the disintegration of the German army.

The Chief of the Department for Political Propaganda of the 31st Infantry Corps, Brigade Commissar Ivanchenko, apparently still imbued with erroneous precepts of class consciousness, in his Order № 020, addressed to the political agencies of the 193rd Infantry Division of July 14, 1941, not only complained “that prisoners of war are being strangled and stabbed to death,” but that “shameful acts... of robbery”—i.e., the violent confiscation of “watches, pocket knives, and razors”—were taking place as well. The same Brigade Commissar, who was obviously rather naive, cited the political hazards of this “prisoner procedure that is unworthy of the Red Army.” He explained to his subordinate political agencies that “German soldiers—workers and farmers—are not fighting voluntarily; when a German soldier surrenders, he is no longer an enemy.” It was therefore necessary to take “all possible steps to ensure the capture of soldiers and officers in particular.” And, in complete ignorance of the Party line and actual conditions, he added: “Remember that prisoners are permitted to keep all personal possessions, to wear their uniforms, and even retain their medals.”

Similarly, the Chief of Staff of the 21st Army, Major General Gordov, who was later subject to reprisals, i.e., persecuted, and the Staff Commissar, Brigade Commissar Pogodin, in an order to the troops on August 8, 1941, which was also brought to the attention of the Military Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Chief of the Special Department of the NKVD of the 21st Army, once again emphasized the alleged “governmental prohibition” against “the mistreatment of prisoners, or the theft of their personal effects,” whether it involved a “gold watch” or a “handkerchief.” This was an extremely naive misconception of customary practice among soldiers in the Red Army. The order further stated that the Red Army should put an immediate stop to the “disgraceful excesses” of these marauders. The political motive in other cases was perhaps not so evident, for example, when the Commander of the 6th Infantry Corps, Major General Alexeev, the Military Commissar, Brigade Commissar Shalikov, and the Chief of Staff, Colonel Eremin, stated on July 23, 1941, that it was impossible for the leadership agencies to obtain information on the situation of the enemy “since many units of the corps have shot all the prisoners taken thus far.” The Chief of Political Propaganda of the 159th Infantry Division, Battalion Commissar Sevastianov, and the Chief of the Special Department, Rakhuv, were at least reprimanded for a “terrible case” of arbitrary execution. At the same time, the Divisional Commanders and the Commander of the Corps Troops were warned that they would be strictly called to account for any violations of international law. As late as December 2, 1941, the Chief of Staff of the Coastal Army in Sevastopol objected, by Order № 0086, to the widespread practice of “exterminating” prisoners of war without prior interrogation. He also believed that the “common practice of shooting prisoners immediately after capture makes us an object of dread to the enemy and prevents the enemy from surrendering.

Orders of this type originated from a phase of the war when the old slogans of the Communist class warfare “Proletarians of the World, Unite” still existed pro forma, This slogan, it was now stated, had led to “uncertainties” in some cases, and, therefore, “to disorient a certain stratum of members of the army.” Since it was now admittedly a matter of “destroying all fascist villains,” it was now thought advisable to replace the “Proletarians Unite” slogan with another one. On December 10, 1941, the Chief of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army, Army Commissar First Rank Mekhlis, by Directive № 278, caused the slogan “Proletarians of the World...” to be immediately deleted and replaced by the clearly visible words: “Death to the German Occupiers!” in the letterheads and headings of all political organizational texts—from the Army newspaper “Krasnaya Zvezda” to the most insignificant leaflet. This slogan was accordingly believed, by the entire Red Army, to constitute the unchanging guideline, and, in that sense, was now understood to be taken literally.

to be continued

[Wolf Stoner]

Chapter 11

“To the Last Man”
The Endless Murders of Prisoners of War

The principle of “national” extermination in Soviet political propaganda, as opposed to the formerly applicable principle of international class warfare (which had hitherto always been adhered to and had not yet been forgotten), made its first appearance in Stalin’s official call for a war of extermination against the Germans in his speech upon the occasion of the twenty-fourth anniversary of the October Revolution in Moscow on November 6, 1941. He proclaimed to the representatives of the party and social organizations during the commemorative session of the Moscow Soviet:

“Well now, if the Germans want a war of extermination, they will get it (thunderous, long drawn-out applause). From now on, it will be our task, the task of the peoples of the Soviet Union, the task of all the fighters, commanders, and political officials of our Army and Navy, to exterminate to the last man all Germans having invaded the territory of our homeland as occupiers (thunderous applause; shouts of 'Quite right!’; cheers). No mercy to the German occupiers! Death to the German occupiers! (Thunderous applause.)”

Of course, Stalin’s wish was his command. His Soviet propagandists took him literally, and the new slogan was disseminated throughout the Red Army in accordance with the established rules of political agitation. The manner in which Ilya Ehrenburg, in particular, gave free rein to his instinctive hatreds has been clearly described elsewhere. Ehrenburg seized upon Stalin’s proclamation, constantly adding new variants in his calls for the indiscriminate murder of all German soldiers. “Five million... bodies will be buried in our earth,” he wrote on December 2, 1941. “We have decided to kill all the Germans invaders,” he proclaimed to the soldiers of the Red Army on December 3, 1941:

“We quite simply intend to kill them. The accomplishment of this humanitarian mission has now become the responsibility of our people. We are continuing the work of Pasteur, who discovered the anti-rabies vaccine. We are continuing the mission of the scientists who discovered the means of destroying deadly microbes.”

“The Germans... must be driven into the ground. They must be killed, one after the other,” he wrote on December 22, 1941, and on February 20, 1942: “Your assignment is to kill them—to put them below ground.” On March 13, 1942, he reiterated: “You must wipe the Germans from the face of the earth.”

Ehrenburg’s proclamations, as confirmed by a document found on the body of a dead Soviet soldier, had by 1942 become a long since established commonplace in the Red Army. The document found on this particular soldier was entitled: “Topic of Presentation for the Politruks,” based on the Ehrenburg slogan already quoted:

“When you have killed one German, kill the next, the third...Kill the Germans—your aged mother begs this of you. Kill the Germans—your children beg this of you. Kill the Germans—the earth of your homeland calls out to you. Do not let a single one escape....”

“Let us destroy the fascist villains to the last man,” stated the lead article in the daily army newspaper “Leninskij Put” (Lenin’s Way) and quite accordingly on November 30, 1941:

“Every one of us must faithfully carry out Comrade Stalin’s order to exterminate all German occupiers to the last man. To kill ten, twenty, one hundred fascists villains—is the responsibility of every Soviet fighter, officer, and political worker.”

Ehrenburg’s remarks, and those of the Political Main Administration, were in every respect in accordance with the High Command agencies of the Red Army.

The Commander-in-Chief of the West Front, General of the Army Zhukov, with Member of the Military Council and Deputy Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR Bulganin, on December 14, 1941, jointly issued an order that contained slogans such as: “Not one Hitlerite bandit having invaded our country must escape alive... our holy duty consists of taking cruel revenge... and destroying the German occupier to the last man.” The Military Council of the Leningrad Front addressed a proclamation to the inhabitants to the rear of the German lines on January 1, 1942, directing them not to permit German soldiers—referred to as “Hitlerite dogs” and “fascist cannibals”—to escape anywhere, “except in the earth, in their graves.” All methods were said to be justified in this “unmerciful war of extermination ”“rifles, grenades, axes, scythes, crowbars.” On occasion of the turn of the year 1941/42, the Commander-in-Chief of the 54th Army, Major General Fediuninsky, Members of the Military Council, Brigade Commissar Sichev, and Brigade Commissar Bumagin as well as the Chief of Staff, Major General Sukhomlin, in an “Order to the Troops of the 54th Army”, demanded that they “exterminate the German two-legged beasts at the entrances to the great city of Leningrad,” Another order, this time issued jointly with Member of the Military Council, Brigade Commissar Kholostov, and Chief of Staff, Major General Berezinsky, called for “the extermination of all fascist bandits to the last man.” Stalin’s words of November 6, 1941, also formed the motto of Colonel General Yeremenko, appointed Commander-in-Chief of the 4th Shock Army on December 30, 1941. Upon the transfer of command, Yeremenko’s order of the day, issued to the troops of the 4th Shock Army jointly with Member of the Military Council, Brigade Commissar Rudakov, and Chief of Staff, Major General Kurassov, read:

“I call upon all members of the Army to exterminate and destroy all occupiers to the last man in execution of the orders of our great political and military leader, Comrade Stalin.”

According to the findings of the German General on Special Assignment with the High Command of the Army, in the Red Army, Stalin’s words were generally “understood and interpreted...” to mean that “every member of the Wehrmacht—whether in combat, wounded, or captured—was to be killed.” Captured documents and the testimonies of Soviet prisoners leave no doubt whatsoever that Stalin’s words were to be considered an order. Thus, according to the testimony of a captured regimental commissar, “Stalin’s order of November 1941” stating that “all prisoners of war ... are to be shot,” was decisive in the treatment of German prisoners of war. Although this particular commissar, nevertheless, wished to make the restriction that German deserters should be transferred to the rear as prisoners. He was, however, contradicted in the deposition of Red Army member Kisilov of the 406th Infantry Regiment. Prior to the attack on Leskij on January 17, 1942, so Kisilov, his platoon leader, Second Lieutenant Kolesnichenko, announced the following order from the regimental commissar: “No prisoners are to be taken; all Germans are to be killed. Not a single one must be left alive.” Also found among the papers on a dead Soviet officer was a reference to corresponding treatment of the matter in the approaching Party meeting of the 8th Battery on December 28, 1941. According to this reference, the oral propaganda and agitation that formed the central emphasis of Party work “extends in particular to execution of Comrade Stalin’s order: All Germans... are to be exterminated to the last man.”

According to the comment in the politruk’s notebook, “the task of exterminating the fascists having invaded our territory, as established by Stalin,” also formed the topic for political education in the 5th Company of the 2nd Battalion of the 870th Infantry Regiment of the 287th Infantry Division on February 10, 1942. According to the testimony of Second Lieutenant Paramonov, Stalin’s Order also advocated killing the wounded, “since, after all, they could not work, and therefore represented no advantage to us.” Master Sergeant Marushak of the 28th Mechanized Infantry Regiment and other prisoners of war unanimously confirmed that Stalin’s order “to take no more German prisoners, and to shoot all captured German prisoners and wounded immediately,” was read out to the troops by the political leaders in all units on a daily basis, and sometimes by the officers as well, starting on November 6, 1941. According to Red Army soldier Seibel of the 337th Infantry Division, a copy of Stalin’s order to exterminate every German soldier was handed out to every Red Army soldier. According to Master Sergeant Shcherbatiuk, leader of the Independent Signal Detachment of the 351st Infantry Division, “Stalin’s Order to destroy all Germans was universally made known.” Shcherbatiuk added that he had personally heard of “numerous shootings and massacres.”

As early as November 15, 1941, the Divisional Doctor of the 20th German Infantry Division, Medical Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Mauß, and the Battalion Doctor, Medical Captain Dr. Buchard, performed autopsies on the bodies of seventy soldiers of the 90th Infantry Regiment who had fallen into the hands of the enemy near Borovik. The conclusion was that most of them were murdered after being wounded in combat. By order of the Commissars of the 1st Soviet Motorized Guards Infantry Division one hundred German prisoners of war were shot at Naro-Fominsk in this region between December 1 and 6, 1941, while an additional number, as stated in a report by the Chief of the Reconnaissance Department of the Staff of the 33rd Army, Captain Potapov, were shot by other units, for example, the 222nd Infantry Division. Seventy-two members of the German 76th Infantry Regiment, (20th Motorized Infantry Division) some of whom were wounded, were mutilated, murdered, and robbed at Budogoch west of Tikhvin in mid-December. Amadeo Casanova, a member of the 250th Spanish Infantry Division, described the murder of a wounded Spanish lieutenant and four wounded Spanish soldiers north of Novgorod on December 27, 1941, under oath in his military court deposition. Wounded soldiers of the “Blue Division” were also murdered and mutilated at another location.

“One of the worst atrocities of this terrible war,” according to Sir Reginald T. Paget, the British defender of Field Marshal von Manstein before a British military tribunal—at least concerning the hideousness of the homicides—was the systematic murder of German prisoners of war, especially the wounded, captured by the Soviets during the landing operations at Feodosija (Crimea) in very late December 1941. In the hospitals of Feodosija alone, approximately 160 severely wounded soldiers who were left behind, and a medical second lieutenant and six medics of the 715th (Motorized) Army Medical Company, as well as a Russian male nurse remaining with them, who all “exhibited the highest degree of sacrificial courage,” were shot, thrown out of the window, beaten to death with iron bars, or allowed to freeze to death in the breakers of the sea, or otherwise gruesomely murdered by Soviet soldiers, and to some extent by Red sailors. The unanimous testimonies of Russian and German eyewitnesses, including Medical Captain Burkhardt, provide an unequivocal picture of these cruel events while simultaneously indicating the identity of the persons responsible.

The Russian (most likely Tatar) male nurse Kalafatov testified under oath to the murder of wounded soldiers in the hospital located opposite the Villa Stamboli on January 6, 1942, after a Soviet army officer who acted properly was replaced by a hate-filled junior grade lieutenant from the Black Sea Fleet by the name of Aidanov. At another location, the Tatar male nurse Bursud, in fear of being personally shot, watched the murder of wounded German soldiers from a hiding place while they were being stabbed, cut, or hacked to death, during which he was able to hear the “horrible cries of the Germans.” According to a shocked Russian married couple, a German soldier left lying on the street with a severely wounded thigh who “whimpered day and night” and whose limbs were frozen in the mean-time, was killed by shots in the face by members of the Soviet Navy called over for that purpose by a uniformed Soviet woman (“a doctor or commissar”).

When the Russian Dr. Dmitriev cautiously asked the Commissar of the 9th Infantry Division (mistakenly referred to as the 9th Infantry Corps), in the presence of other commissars, why the wounded were being shot, he was told that the executions were being committed according to instructions based on “Stalin’s speech of November 6, 1941, stating that all Germans... were to be exterminated.” The commissar “therefore thought it perfectly logical that the German wounded should also be annihilated.” German wounded were also “cruelly mutilated” by Soviet soldiers during a landing attempt at Evpatorija (Crimea) on January 5, 1942.

It is obvious that the incidents cited above represent only the tip of the iceberg; there is a great deal of proof that indicates that this is so. Technical Administrative Officer 2nd Rank Malyuk mentions the shooting of twelve German prisoners of war within the immediate staff zone of the 2nd Shock Army near Paporotno on January 13, 1942, by order of the Chiefs of the Special Department of the NKVD and the Army Commissar of the 2nd Shock Army, Brigade Commissar Vasilev. The general mentality of the troops of the Red Army is also revealed by a front-line report by the Soviet writer Oleg Erberg, broadcast by Radio Moscow on January 24, 1942, relating to the shooting of a captured German officer by a “heroic” Soviet tank crew. The tank commander was said to have declared: “I want to shoot this dog from in front, using my revolver, so as to feast my eyes on his fear.” The Chief of Staff of the 636th Infantry Regiment, Major Sushinsky, reported emotionlessly to the Chief of Staff of the 160th Infantry Division, together with Junior Politruk Duchkov on February 4, 1942, that Master Sergeant Kabulov had stabbed a wounded German to death with his bayonet at Besedino “because he was seriously wounded.” Wehrmacht Corporal Emmerich testified under oath during his deposition by a military court that thirty wounded German soldiers left behind the day before at Shellesharo on February 17, 1942, were found in the following condition: “Their eyes had been poked out, some of them had had their ears, noses, tongues, and sexual organs cut off... they were all tortured to death”.

Rector Ziekur of the Staff of the German 62nd Infantry Division, in his capacity as burial officer, had to identify the bodies of 42 horribly mutilated soldiers from the 179th Infantry Regiment at Trojchatyj (on the Kharkov-Lozovaja highway) on February 24 and 25. He reported:

“The first impression was unnerving in several cases, their noses had been cut off and their eyes gouged out. In very many cases, their ring fingers had been cut off... On one soldier, all the fingers of the left hand had been cut off, while the left arm was dislocated and tom off.” Rector Ziekur stated that the Russian population was “disgusted and shocked by these mutilations.”

In testimony before the 570th Squad of the Secret Field Police, two partisans who had been caught in the act, Kleshnikov and Kusmenkov, described the manner in which the partisans usually treated their captives. According to their testimony, six German soldiers were forced to dig their own graves in the snow by order of Commissar Yudenkov after their interrogation by partisan staff at Gortop near El’nja on February 27, 1942, a very cold day, and were then slaughtered in the following manner:

“They were lined up and then pushed out individually and stabbed in the back with a bayonet. Several partisans then stabbed the wounded with their bayonets. After each individual killing, the bodies were thrown to one side, and the next one was killed. The prisoners were taken to the place of execution bare-footed and dressed only in a shirt and underwear. I myself stabbed them several times.”

Technical Administrative Officer 2nd Rank Kalepchenko, head of the burial detail of the 1260th Infantry Regiment of the 380th Soviet Infantry Division, testified to having buried 40 German soldiers at Griva in mid-March 1942, all of whom showed signs of severe mutilation.32 All these examples, selected from among innumerable others, can, of course, only provide a general idea. Information relating to the Soviet murder of prisoners of war often reached the Germans only by accident. For example, that a German “transport of wounded soldiers had been captured by the Russians near Toropec, and that all the wounded had been shot or horribly stabbed” during the winter of 1941-1942 only became known to the Germans at a later time.

It has already been stated that the mistreatment of prisoners of war for which the Stalin regime was responsible was not universally understood by the Soviets either, and was sometimes the matter of objections that were at least partly politically motivated. In Uspenovka on March 1, 1942, Efrosinia Mikhailova was an eyewitness to the consultation between a Soviet Major, a First Lieutenant, and a Commissar in her house as to what to do with eight German prisoners of war. When even the commissar advised further transport of the prisoners, he was overruled by the Major who said: “But you know Stalin’s order.” The eight German prisoners of war were thereupon taken out behind the house and shot. At Komary (Sevastopol) in November 1941, a Soviet platoon leader shouted at a Soviet soldier, Demshenko, who wanted to help a wounded soldier: “Leave the German devil alone, he will be shot.” Demshenko was only able to delay the shooting temporarily by saying: “The poor wounded fellow can’t help it, it’s our humanitarian duty to bandage his wounds.”

It was not, however, humanitarian considerations that finally led to a new interpretation of Stalin’s Order of November 6, 1941, but rather interest on the part of the command agencies, an interest that still existed during this phase of the war, as before, in obtaining enemy intelligence through prisoner of war interrogations. This was accompanied by an even more compelling interest in furthering the disintegration of the German army. After all, it was obvious that if German soldiers knew that they were going to be shot or mutilated after falling into Soviet captivity, the result would be a stiffening of German resistance. On November 6, 1941, Stalin left no doubt in the minds of the Red Army that all Germans invaders of the Soviet territory were to be “exterminated to the last man,” and his words were interpreted accordingly. On February 23, 1942, Order № 55 was issued by Stalin on the founding anniversary of the Red Army in his capacity as People’s Commissar of Defense. His prior interpretation was now suddenly construed to mean something entirely different. Stalin now claimed, in particular, that the assumption that the Red Army would “fail to take German prisoners due to hatred for everything German...“ was a “stupid lie and a foolish slander” against the Red Army, which was said to be imbued with feelings of respect for other peoples and races—a truly shameless allegation in view of the hate propaganda being propagated by Stalin himself on the Soviet side. Nevertheless, it was unmistakable what Stalin’s words contained in Order № 55 meant:

‘'The Red Army captures German soldiers and officers and spares their lives if they surrender. The Red Army annihilates German soldiers and officers if they refuse to lay down their weapons...”

The Commander-in-Chief of the West Front, General of the Army Zhukov, who, on December 14, 1941, together with Bulganin, a Member of his Military Council, had called upon his troops to “take cruel revenge” and not to permit a single “Hitlerite bandit” to escape alive, now felt himself compelled to make an about-face. In an order directed to the “Commanding Officers and Members of the Military Councils,” Zhukov, together with Member of the Military Council Khokhlov, in regard to the Order of Stalin № 55, now prohibited “all shooting of prisoners... no matter who they are.” He suddenly made the allegation that “Comrade Stalin has never mentioned the shooting of enemy soldiers if they lay down their weapons, allow themselves to be taken prisoner, or voluntarily desert to us.” According to an order of Army Commissar 2nd Rank Kuznetsov of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army, German troops were to be exposed to a heavy propaganda barrage designed to convince them that the Red Army “feels no racial hatred against the German people, and does not have the idiotic intention to destroy the German people and German Reich.” Consequently, German soldiers and officers who surrendered would be taken prisoner and the Red Army would guarantee their lives.

The mere fact that the anti-German hate propaganda disseminated by Ehrenburg and others continued to rage without restraint reveals the deception. Stalin personally used ambiguous language in his order of the day of May 1, 1942, speaking of the duty to exterminate the “German” invaders— not “fascist” invaders—”to the last man, unless they lay down their weapons”. Order of Stalin № 130, also disseminated among the units of the Red Army in 1942, called for irreconcilable hatred from Soviet soldiers. The Germans had received information relating to an alleged Stalin “secret order” to take no more individual German prisoners but rather, only in groups, on the grounds of practicality. Soldiers offering resistance to the last, aviators, and so-called “fascists,” were also to be shot, as revealed by many reports that, in fact, mention the shooting of officers, National Socialist party members, or prisoners of war expressing “fascist” ideas. This was a clear counterpart to the shooting of commissars and political leaders partly practiced by the Germans until the spring of 1942.

The Wehrmacht-Untersuchungsstelle fur Verletzungen des Völkerrechts (Armed Forces Department of Inquiry for Violations of International Law) of the German High Command of die Wehrmacht, which evaluated the relevant material, considered the Soviet “change of course” initiated since February 23, 1942, to be a pure propaganda measure directed, in any case, at foreign countries. They observed, in September 1942:

“an incessant series of brutal violations of international law, not decreasing in the slightest degree. The methods and systems of Russian actions have remained the same from the beginning of the campaign against Russia until September 1942.”

In fact, the mistreatment of prisoners continued, as will be seen from a number of examples.

Thirty-eight bodies of German soldiers, found chained together after the end of the winter frost near Promenaja, showing “signs of the crudest torture” inflicted to their heads, may have been murdered even before February 23, 1942. According to the report of the 6th Panzer Division to the High Command of the 9th Army of April 29, 1942:

“For example, their eyes had been gouged out, the tips of their noses cut off, and their tongues tom out. Others had their jaws and limbs smashed, probably with rifle butts, after which they were finally killed by pistol shots. A few of them were completely naked, others again wore only a few items of clothing. There were also clear indications of strangulation.”

After February 23, 1942, an isolated case is reported in which a culprit, platoon leader Second Lieutenant Kudriavtsev of the 1264th Infantry Regiment of the 17th Guards Infantry Division, was handed over to a Soviet court martial for murdering four German prisoners of war, but only because his actions prevented the gathering of enemy intelligence. Otherwise, Order of Stalin № 55 remained broadly disregarded.

First Lieutenant Shevanov, a Battalion Commander in the 1129th Infantry Regiment of the 337th Infantry Division, stated in evidence during his military court deposition that the leader of the Infantry Regiment, Major Ashkinaze, had ordered a severely wounded non-commissioned officer shot, and that Regimental Commissar Kondratev had ordered two wounded Germans shot at Glasunovka between March 14-17, 1942. He was said to have learned from First Lieutenant Shoftyak, the leader of the Infantry Platoon of the Special Department of the NKVD of the Division, that all officers and severely wounded Germans and Finns were, on principle, to be shot. First Lieutenant Nishelsky, Company Chief in the 3rd Battalion of the 15th Infantry Brigade, testified on July 8, 1942, that the Brigade Commander of the 15th Infantry Brigade, Balabukha, had issued him an order to “gouge out the eyes of German soldiers,” an order that Nishelsky personally considered a “shame and a disgrace,” and that he had therefore not forwarded. Sergeant Yurchenko of the 764th Infantry Regiment of the 393rd Infantry Division reported under interrogation on July 20, 1942, that his Battalion Commander, Captain Bursky, had by his own hand shot five wounded German soldiers with a pistol behind the hospital in Chemoglasovska near Kharkov. In Besabetovka in July 1942, two mass graves were discovered of German soldiers of the 92nd Infantry Regiment who, according to the doctor of forensic medicine, Medical Major Dr.Panning of the Army Medical Inspectorate, had either been killed by shots to the back of the neck, or who had been tortured to death, like the Commander of the 1st Battalion, Major Schönberg. According to testimony of Red Army member S.F. of September 26, 1942, Commissar Andropov of the 851st Infantry Regiment, before an attack, described another commissar as a “brilliant example” because he killed 150 Italian prisoners of war near Serafimovichi. In July 1942, at Aleevka, between Lozovaja and Kharkov, First Lieutenant Sutyagin was an eyewitness to the shooting of forty-six German prisoners of war, including four officers, who had not been interrogated and were forced to dig their own graves. The order for the executions was issued by the Commander of the 123rd Infantry Regiment of the 22nd Infantry Division, Major Kulikov, and Regimental Commissar Otmikhalsky. When nearby Soviet officers gave voice to their disgust, they were accused of treason and threatened with being shot by Regimental Commissa Otmikhalsky.

The circumstances surrounding the mass murders near Grishino, Postyshevo and Krasnoarmejeskoe have been unequivocally elucidated. Here, over 600 members of the Wehrmacht and allied armies as well as members of the army entourage, including Red Cross nurses and female communication assistants, were either shot or horribly butchered in the days after Stalingrad, between February 11 and 18, 1943. According to incomplete data, it was possible to identify the following persons in particular: 406 German, 89 Italian, 9 Romanian, 4 Hungarian, and 8 Ukrainian soldiers; 58 members of the Organization Todt; 15 railway workers; and 7 German civilian workers. The investigation of the occurrence began immediately after recapture of the territory by the German 7th Panzer Division on February 18, 1943. The record of a subsequent military court legal investigation reads in part: “All the bodies were naked...almost all the bodies had been mutilated... many bodies had had their noses and ears cut off. Other bodies had had their sexual organs cut off and stuck in their mouths.” “Truly animalistic” attempts had also been made “to cut off the breasts” of the Red Cross nurses. The chief of an anti-aircraft battery of the 14th Guards Armored Brigade, Second Lieutenant Sorokin, named as responsible persons for this massacre, among others: the Political Department of the 4th Guards Armored Corps, under Major General Poluboyarov, and its subordinate 14th Guards Armored Brigade, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Shibankov, who apparently had been killed some time before.

The unanimous testimonies of prisoners of war, in addition to captured documents and radio conversations intercepted by the Germans, therefore leave no doubt that prisoners of war continued to be murdered in 1942-1943 as before. It must, furthermore, be noted that it was only possible to discover and investigate crimes such as those of Feodosija, Grishino, Krasnoarmejskoe, and other places when German troops managed to recapture the scenes of such massacres, which became more and more rare with the progress of war. The dehumanization evoked in the Red Army as a result of Soviet war propaganda is further illustrated by two reports. For example, in the 875th Infantry Regiment of the 158th Infantry Division, prisoners of war were murdered on a daily basis with the personal participation of the Chief of Staff, Major Borisov, and other officers. Sina Krasavina, a female medical auxiliary in the (above mentioned) regiment, admitted to personally murdering a German prisoner of war in March 1943 at the order of the Chief of the Special Department of the NKVD, Samarin, an act for which she was decorated with the Order of the Red Flag. In the region of another division, according to one eyewitness, able-bodied German wounded were led in groups to a ravine in October 1943,

“where the bodies of men shot previously lay in rows; they were shot with machine guns and machine pistols. I saw the shooting of two such groups... In the valley, I saw at the place of execution approximately two hundred corpses of persons already shot.”

The reaction of the German Wehrmacht to the uninterrupted series of murders of German soldiers must now be examined. It has already been mentioned that the High Command of the Wehrmacht prohibited all reprisals as early as July 1941 on the grounds that “reprisals would fail because of the mentality of the Russians, thus unnecessarily contributing to the bitterness of the war.” The Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Field Marshal von Brauchitsch, was also of the opinion that reprisals would be ineffective in regard to the Soviet Union in contrast to the Western powers, and would, furthermore, have a negative influence upon the abstractly favorable prospects for German front-line propaganda where the Red Army was concerned. An order to this effect was issued to all divisions of the German Army of the East, without regard to “serious violations of international law by the Russians.” At the same time, on July 1, 1941, a decision of the “Führer and Supreme Commander” was issued to treat the wives of all “officers and commissars,” and all Soviet women, “carrying weapons in accordance with orders as prisoners of war when found in uniform.” Whereas, if captured in civilian clothing, they were to lose all protection under international law and be treated as partisans.

On July 5, 1941, the Commander-in-Chief of the 6th Army, Field Marshal von Reichenau, ordered Red Army Major Turta of the 781st Infantry Regiment of the 124th Infantry Division summarily shot because, as stated in the execution order, the division had since June 22, 1941, “deliberately mistreated, tortured, mutilated, and murdered German soldiers of all ranks following capture, whether wounded or not, in a manner so cruel and bestial as to be hitherto inconceivable.” These bestialities were done “under the very eyes of, and with the toleration of, officers fully and entirely responsible for the crimes of their subordinates.” Although von Reichenau continued to grant Soviet soldiers ordinary treatment according to the customs relating to the treatment of prisoners of war, he believed himself obligated to administer a “hard and justified atonement” to the officers of the Red Army’s 124th Infantry Division on behalf of his “murdered comrades.” This was, after all, simply an isolated case of reprisal, the victim of which may perhaps have been the person responsible.

Generally, the German command authorities do not appear to have deviated from the provisions of international law in regard to prisoners, even on the eastern front. For example, on July 10, 1941, the battalion doctor of the II Battalion of the 53rd (Motorized) Infantry Regiment reported to the divisional doctor of the 14th Motorized Infantry Division that one officer, eight non-commissioned officers, and sixty-five soldiers of his regiment, some of them wounded, had been captured by the Soviets, and that, as proven by an investigation, all had been murdered “deliberately and according to order” by shooting them in the back of the neck, stabbing them with bayonets, or beating them with rifle butts, at the bridgehead at Dzisna on July 8, 1941. A number of the wounded men showed signs of the “cruelest forms of mutilations.” When the shocked head physician asked his professional superiors for instructions on the proper future treatment of wounded Russians, on the grounds, as he wrote, that “it was difficult for me to continue to act as I would have previously considered it my duty to do, after learning of this criminal attitude on the part of the enemy in relation to our wounded,” he received an order that was characteristic. The Chief of the General Staff of the 3rd Panzer Group, Major General von Hunersdorff, reported, through the battalion doctor on July 13, 1941, that “on the grounds of fundamental considerations, there could be no question of a change in attitude on the part of German soldiers toward enemy wounded.” He simply ordered that there should be no reduction in the quality of care for the fellow German wounded as a result.

When it was proposed to the High Command of the 17th Army that high-ranking officers of the Soviet 6th and 12th Army be shot in reprisal for the murder and mutilation of nineteen German wounded soldiers and two medics in a Red Cross vehicle in August 1941, the army commander, Lieutenant General von Stülpnagel, rejected this idea as well, with quite analogous justification. When German soldiers became enormously embittered after the massacre of Grishino-Krasnoarmejskoe, the Commanding General of the XXXX German Panzer Corps, Lieutenant General Henrici, issued an order of the day on his own initiative on March 3, 1943, warning the troops against permitting themselves to become carried away to the point of engaging in acts of revenge as a result of these occurrences. The order read in part:

'‘We, nevertheless, wish to adhere closely to the soldierly principle that an enemy who has been captured in uniform, who is no longer capable of fighting and is unarmed, belongs in a prisoner of war camp.”

At Nuremberg on March 22, 1946, the President of the International Military Tribunal, Judge Lawrence, rejected an application by defense lawyer Dr. Stahmer for admission into evidence of the White Book of the German Reich Government on “Bolshevik Crimes against the Laws of Humanity and the Laws and Customs of War,” first series, 1941, as evidentiary material for the defense. Lawrence concurred with the application of Soviet Chief Prosecutor General Rudenko, who permitted himself to portray the legal investigation documents collated in the White Book as “inventions” and “forged documents” characteristic of “fascist propaganda,” purely and simply intended to “hide the crimes which were perpetrated by the fascists.” Since the victims of the crimes investigated and analyzed in the White Book consisted solely of German and German-allied soldiers, the International Military Tribunal considered such material “irrelevant” in full accordance with the London Agreement. It is precisely this fact that justifies the presentation of a few of the innumerable documented cases of mistreatment of German prisoners of war who are otherwise consciously and methodically relegated to forgetfulness by the journalistic profession in relation to the German-Soviet war.

to be continued