THE SOVIET PRISONERS OF WAR WERE VICTIM OF THE CHINISM OF TWO DICTATORS: HITLER AND STALIN

The millions of Soviet soldiers who were captured by the Nazis experienced conditions of imprisonment so cruel that most of them met death. The survivors, at the end of the war, were even accused by Stalin of having surrendered out of cowardice.

ATTACK ON THE SOVIET UNION

On June 22, 1941, the German armed forces attacked the Soviet Union by surprise. Despite the fact that, two years earlier, a “non-aggression” agreement had been signed between the two nations, the so-called “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact“. The Soviets were not ready to face such an invasion. Of course, they had already guessed, like all of Europe, that Adolf Hitler was not a reliable political leader. However, as Germany was fighting the UK, they assumed that the Nazis would not have dared to commit their country to a second front. Furthermore, the Soviet armed forces were in a serious state of disorganization at the time. The reason was that the tyrant Iosif Stalin, due to his paranoia, had ordered the elimination of a large number of the officers, as he feared that they might dismiss him. The so-called Stalinist “Purges” had determined that entire divisions no longer had trained officers to lead them. The experience of which was based on participation in the First World War and the civil war which, for many years, had bloodied the Soviet Union. In their place were young officers, mostly very willing but without any war experience. What is more, they were flanked by political commissioners, completely imbued with the regime’s propaganda, who wanted to impose their strategies despite being divorced from any military preparation.

The Soviet soldiers, in this serious situation, tried to resist the invaders but, in the first months of the conflict, they were surrounded in huge pockets. Deprived of any connection with the rest of the army and, consequently, of the necessary supplies, they had no alternative but to surrender.

There were many episodes of heroic resistance. It is enough to recall how the Brest fortress in Belarus and the Sevastopol fortress in Crimea fearlessly opposed the Germans. Just as the city of Leningrad stubbornly resisted a very long siege. In this way the Soviets had time to reorganize and arrange an effective defense. Among the various measures adopted was the release of the officers interned in the gulags, so that they could resume the command of their units. Furthermore, it was imposed that the political commissars could no longer be interested in the tactical choices made by the officers.

THE CRUEL CONDITIONS OF PRISONY

Meanwhile, millions of Soviet soldiers, prisoners of the Germans, were interned in concentration camps. The Nazis considered the Soviets to be subhuman (Untermensch) and they had no intention of respecting the rules of war towards prisoners. One of the first nefarious measures adopted was to reduce the number by causing a good part of them to starve. As a result, the already scarce food rations were drastically reduced. Historians claim that 3.5 million Soviet prisoners of war died in the Nazi concentration camps. 60% of those who were captured.

Nazi plans called for a large part of Russia to be populated by German settlers. Therefore, they intended to eliminate a good portion of the Soviets, while others would be enslaved. In the new order established by the Nazis, the surviving Soviets would be denied medical treatment in order to accelerate their extinction. In Hitler‘s plans there was a “Great Germany” that would push its borders as far as the Ural Mountains.

To further aggravate the situation there was the fact that Stalin had not signed the Geneva Convention of 1929, in which some rules had been established to which the nations involved in a conflict had to comply. Consequently, the International Red Cross was unable to organize inspections in the concentration camps where Soviet prisoners were interned.

THE INHUMANITY OF STALIN

Among the millions of Soviet prisoners was also Stalin‘s son: Jakov. The father, in his infinite insensitivity, when he learned that he had committed suicide, commented by asserting that he had finally committed a man’s act. A parent who demonstrates such cynicism, in the face of the death of a child, certainly could not have shown humanity towards his compatriots locked up in Nazi concentration camps.

The same inhumanity showed it towards those who managed to survive the imprisonment. When the war was over, when they returned to their homeland, Stalin wanted each of them to be subjected to a pressing interrogation by the agents of the political police. Many were accused of having surrendered out of cowardice and lack of patriotism. As a result, 250,000 ex-prisoners were sentenced to serve many years interned in brutal Siberian gulags.

THE STORIES OF MARIO RIGONI STERN AND ALEKSANDR SOLZENICYN

In the Nazi concentration camps they had the opportunity to meet Italian and Soviet prisoners. Who had fought in the boundless Russian plains and then found themselves sharing the same fate. When, on September 8, 1943, Italy broke its alliance with Germany, hundreds of thousands of Italian soldiers were captured and interned. As for the Soviets, there was no protection from the International Red Cross for the Italians. As the Italian soldiers were considered by the Germans to be internees and not prisoners of war. The writer Mario Rigoni Stern, in some of his stories, tells of the encounter with Soviet prisoners. And of the solidarity in which they faced those terrible conditions together. In the delusional and senseless racial classification, advocated by the Nazis, the Italians occupied a measly notch more than the Soviet prisoners. At the top were the British and American prisoners. Who, as Anglo-Saxons, were considered akin to the German Aryan race. Considerations of a ruthless and paranoid ideology.

Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solženicyn wrote the book “A day of Ivan Denisovič”. In which he tells the misadventures of a Soviet soldier who, during the Second World War, is captured by the Germans. After two days, he manages to escape and return to his unit. Despite this, at the end of the conflict he will be sentenced to serve ten years in a gulag. As he was found guilty of showing signs of defeatism by surrendering to the enemy. In the novel Solzhenitsyn has the opportunity to expose the cruelty of existence in the gulags. The writer himself had met her having been interned for a few years following a letter, written to a friend, in which he criticized Stalin’s work.

CONCLUSIONS

It is touching to think of those Soviet soldiers who, after having had to fight a war unleashed by the mad nationalism of Adolf Hitler, experienced ferocious imprisonment in a concentration camp where the application of Nazi ideology was in force. Finally, at the end of the war, when they hoped to have passed that troubled period, they instead had to suffer the accusation of having been cowards and undergo imprisonment in the terrible Stalinist gulags.

The madness of tyrannies must remind us of the consideration of the late president of the Italian republic Sandro Pertini:

“The worst of democracies is better than the best of all dictatorships”.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

“Operation Barbarossa: Hitler’s Invasion Of Russia 1941” by Glantz

“Operation Barbarossa: Hitler’s Invasion of Russia” by Hans Seidler

“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn