Today’s Annihilating Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union. Both Germany’s political leadership and the country’s army, the Wehrmacht, referred to this campaign as a “struggle of annihilation”. Their plans included the destruction of the Soviet state and the country’s economic exploitation. Ultimately, the German government was planning to murder all Jewish inhabitants of the Soviet Union and reduce the rest of the population to slavery or starve them to death.
German propaganda called the soldiers of the Red Army “murderous Bolshevik beasts.” The basic principles of international law and the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War were not to be applied to Soviet soldiers. The orders issued by the Wehrmacht High Command were correspondingly radical.
Excerpt from the secret “Orders on the treatment of Soviet POWs in all POW camps”, issued by the Wehrmacht High Command on September 8, 1941:
Bolshevism is the mortal enemy of National Socialist Germany. For the first time, the German soldier faces an enemy who is not only militarily trained, but has also been educated in the nation-destroying spirit of Bolshevism. The struggle against National Socialism has become his flesh and blood, and to win this struggle he will use any means available: sabotage, corrosive propaganda, arson, murder. Therefore, the Bolshevist soldier has forfeited all claims to being treated like an honourable soldier according to the Geneva agreement.
During the first few months of the war, German troops captured over two million Soviet soldiers. In the summer and autumn of 1941, 500,000 of them were taken to Germany as forced labourers for the German wartime economy. After exhausting marches and long transports in cattle cars, during which they were given next to no food, the Soviet POWs arrived at the camps that had been set up for them.
As the Ramones sang, “It’s a long way back to Germany”.
Culled from: Bergen-Belsen Wehrmacht POW Camp, 1940-1945