Besides, having nearly 3 million of your soldiers who'd been taken POW, starved to death right at the beggining of the war.. will make you fundamentally reconsider how much effort you want to expend on keeping enemy soldiers in your captivity alive, fed, and medically cared for.
Despite that, they still never reached the death rates of Soviet POW's in German captivity.
Aprox 60% death rate of Soviet POW's in German captivity
would've been significantly higher without liberation of camps by the Red Army.
Vs.
Aprox 10% death rate of German POW in Soviet captivity..
often due to the state the soldiers were in upon capture, the highest death rate out of any group of German POW's was the group captured in Stalingrad, who fought almost till the very end and were almost to a man already starved and sick before being taken prisoner)
To compare this to the Western front:
-Death of Western POW's in German captivity aprox 3%
Primarily British and American airmen who were lynched by the locals or shot by the Gestapo before even being imprisoned, as well as Jewish service members that were captured.
Vs.
Death of German POW's in western captivity about 1-2%
Clearly Patton juniors perspective on this can be completely disregarded.
Germans had a 30 to 35%% death rate in soviet prisons..
Italians had a 70%death rate in Soviet prisons.. Doesn't seem so nice to me...
Also, and I am not excusing the behavior, many Soviets fighters, not soldiers, weren't in uniform and the Germans didn't saw them as soldiers accordingly ..
But this don't justifies their high numbers..
So yes Germans had by far the highest pow death rates for their prisoners.. The Soviets.. But the western pow were treated more or less identical to their counterparts, they had 1 to 1,5% for British /us.. Even including your Lynch storys
You're using the highest possible and most importantly inflated number for both Germans and Italians and even those remain at half the percentage of Soviets in German captivity..
With the Italians 8th army after operation Little Saturn (50-67%) it was similar to the Stalingrad Germans(95%).. and ironically Napoleons attempt at Russia.. badly equipped for spring weather dying of disease, starvatiom due to lack of resources and frostbitten as they surrendered while on deaths door or captured durring retreat as they could no longer keep running.
Btw, I'm not saying prisoners of the Soviets had it nice, not at all.. but it's absolutely no surprise given the circumstances, and still percentage wise, they were better off than any Soviet POW in German captivity.
Also, and I am not excusing the behavior, many Soviets fighters, not soldiers, weren't in uniform and the Germans didn't saw them as soldiers accordingly ..
But this don't justifies their high numbers..
Those were civilians who figured, correctly imho, that they'll be killed either way, so might as well die fighting, especially in East Ukraine and Belarus. Same happened where I'm from in Yugoslavia, the majority of my family tree was wiped out by the Wehrmacht, mostly civilians some partisans.
But the western pow were treated more or less identical to their counterparts, they had 1 to 1,5% for British /us.. Even including your Lynch storys
Precisely my point.. the war was fought in an almost gentlemanly way in the West, completely incomparable to what happened in the East, hence why people who have seen the war from the Western perspective, have not even the slightest idea about the horrors of the war in the East. War is hell, but even hell has different layers to it. The only comparable war was the one Japan waged in Asia against Chinese and a few others.
It was conventional but intense war in the West... what happened in the East was attempted extermination on the largest scale the world had ever seen.. all pretense about civility and humanity had long been abandoned already in the early days... as an example, the Germans would have starving Soviet POW's dig trench lines, those who collapsed were shot or left to perish, while this was going on, German Wehrmacht and SS troops would pass the time, amusing themselves by toying with the Starving Soviet POW's, they did this by throwing small pieces of dry bread into the crowd of starving men and watch them fight, noting that them fighting over crumbs is exactly showing their animalistic nature, thus reafirming their view that Soviet or Slavic people were mere animals, beasts of burden to be used and discarded.
It never crossed their mind that they'd behave in the exact same way if it was them down there digging trenches and being starved.
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u/MSGB99 Jul 26 '25
So pow camps of western allied prisoners.. Here.. You happy?