Soviet Torture of German POWs

[Iron_Bismarck]

By 1943 the Communist Partisan resistance movement in occupied Ukraine was fully integrated into the Red Army. Liason officers would help coordinate Partisan operations to strategically assist the Soviet soldiers. For example, Partisans destroyed numerous rail-lines and derailed over 1000 trainloads of supplies and soldiers during the Battle of Kursk in July-Aug 1943, greatly hampering German mobility.

Furthermore, Partisans were notoriously brutal to captured German POWs. Partisans who captured German soldiers engaged in "Asian Methods of Torture", specializing in the gouging out of eyes, the severing of ears and noses, and castration.

However, no later than 1943, the Communist Partisans were fully integrated into the Red Army and must be seen as "an extension of the Red Army of the Soviet State".

Therefore, Communist Partisans frequently tortured and mutilated German soldiers under direct authority from Stalin and STAVKA.

Sources:

The War File — Partisans: The War Behind the Lines(DVD)
War of the Century — When Hitler Fought Stalin (DVD)
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/ba ... _kursk.htm

[phylo_roadking]

Therefore, Communist Partisans frequently tortured and mutilated German soldiers under direct authority from Stalin and STAVKA

Are you honestly expecting someone to disagree with this???

[raj-rif]

again this was much the same as thegermans had been doing to the populations of the east over ran by them during barberossa, dont forget that germans thought of those to the east as untermench and treated the as such. reap what you sow

[sid guttridge]

Hi IB,

Yup. The Soviet Partisans could be very brutal to prisoners.

It is therefor perhaps fortunate that comparitively few Germans fell into Partisan hands.

A far bigger issue in terms of the numbers involved was the treatment of captured Soviet Partisans at German hands. For example, the Germans had a set reprisal ratio of 100 hostages executed for every German soldier killed by Partisans and 200 for every officer. Puts "Asian Methods of Torture" (a silly, Nazi-era propaganda phrase) into some perspective, doesn't it?

Certainly many Partisans did many reprehensible things, but I doubt many of them were done "under direct authority from Stalin and STAVKA". Stalin and STAVKA (hardly blameless in other areas themselves) had rather more important things to concern them than whether and how individual German prisoners of the Partisans were to be treated.

Cheers,

Sid.

[phylo_roadking]

under direct authority from Stalin and STAVKA

Certainly not "direct", but every larger unit would have had its Political Officer etc. reporting back somehow....

The actual organisation and running of Soviet partisans is something there hasn't to my knowledge been much done on Plenty on the Free French and the Maquis, MilOrg, the Dutch Underground, the Chetniks and Tito's forces, Crete and the Greek Islands, Italian partisans after 1943...even Ho Chih Minh!!!...but almost nothing in English on the mechanics of the war in Russia. A pity.

[sid guttridge]

Hi Phylo,

If your point is that the Soviet high command were utlimately responsible for the manner in which their war conducted, then I agree fully. What they could not do was micro-manage the activities of all their minions behind German lines.

Cheers,

Sid.

[phylo_roadking]

Yes. In military terms.

But in the case of partisans - probably the Interior Ministry and the NKVD tried their best to do so!

And after all, NO general or general staff should micromanage....look what happened when ex-corporals tried their hand at it!

[STRELOK]

Unlike army at partizans there were no reasons to regret Germans. Many of them send away in woods with one purpose - revenge to Germans. Revenge - who served those at Germans. Germans have received, that have sown - revenge for the killed relatives, the raped women, the selected property. On Eastern there was a war on destruction - aggressors have received the adequate answer to the inhuman crimes.

[haen2]

Unlike army at partizans there were no reasons to regret Germans. Many of them send away in woods with one purpose - revenge to Germans. Revenge - who served those at Germans. Germans have received, that have sown - revenge for the killed relatives, the raped women, the selected property. On Eastern there was a war on destruction - aggressors have received the adequate answer to the inhuman crimes

.

Oh yes, I forgot.
All Germans were animals, and all bolsheviks were angels in disguise.
How there actually could be "communist" Ukrainers, I cannot understand. Not after what STALIN had done to their fellow citizens, who had been STARVED by the millions, when their crops purposely had been destroyed on his orders.
HN