Approximately two million German prisoners of war were held in the Soviet Union during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 and in the years that followed. Most of them were captured during the great advances of the Red Army in the last year of the war. In the first months of the Soviet-German war, only about 26,000 Germans were captured by Soviet forces. After the Battle of Moscow

Battle of Moscow

The Battle of Moscow is the name given by Soviet historians to two periods of strategically significant fighting on a sector of the Eastern Front during World War II. It took place between October 1941 and January 1942. The Soviet defensive effort frustrated Hitler's attack on Moscow, capital of...

 and the retreat of the German forces the number of prisoners in the Soviet prisoner of war camps rose to 120,000. When the German 6th Army surrendered in the Battle of Stalingrad

Battle of Stalingrad

The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 23 August 1942 and 2 February 1943...

 in February 1943, more than 91,000 survivors became prisoners of war. Weakened by malnutrition and ill-equipped for the Russian winter many froze to death in the months following capture; only approximately 6,000 of them lived to be repatriated after the war.
As the desperate economic situation in the Soviet Union eased in 1943, the mortality rate in the POW camps sank drastically. At the same time POWs became a important source of labor for the Soviet economy deprived of manpower. With the formation of the “National Committee Free Germany” and the “League of German Officers”, pro-communist POWs got more privileges and better rations.
As a result of Operation Bagration and the collapse on the southern part of the Eastern front, the number of German POWs nearly doubled in the second half of 1944. Subsequently the mortality rate rose, especially during the winter months. In the first months of 1945 the Red Army advanced to the Oder

Oder

The Oder is a river in Central Europe. It rises in the Czech Republic and flows through western Poland, later forming of the border between Poland and Germany, part of the Oder-Neisse line...

 river and on the Balkans. Again the number of POWs rose - to 1.1 million. At the end of the war in Europe, a total of two million Germans were held as POWs in the Soviet Union.
A large number of German POWs had been released by the end of 1946, when the Soviet Union held fewer POWs than the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 and France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 between them. With the creation of a pro-soviet German state in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany - the German Democratic Republic

German Democratic Republic

The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...

 - in October 1949, all but 85,000 POWs had been released and repatriated. Most of those still held in captivities had been labeled “war criminals

War crime

War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict giving rise to individual criminal responsibility...

” and many sentenced to long terms in forced labor camps - usually 25 years. It was not until 1956 that the last of these Kriegsverurteilte were repatriated, following the intervention of West German

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

 chancellor Konrad Adenauer

Konrad Adenauer

Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer was a German statesman. He was the chancellor of the West Germany from 1949 to 1963. He is widely recognised as a person who led his country from the ruins of World War II to a powerful and prosperous nation that had forged close relations with old enemies France,...

 in Moscow.

British historian Richard Overy

Richard Overy

Richard Overy is a British historian who has published extensively on the history of World War II and the Third Reich. In 2007 as The Times editor of Complete History of the World he chose the 50 key dates of world history....

 estimated that 374,000 out of 3.3 million German prisoners of war died in Soviet labor camps The official Soviet number was 356.700 deaths (mortality rate is between 14% and 30%, depending on low and high estimates of deaths and total POW numbers) An estimate by a special commission says that almost a million of German prisoners died in the Soviet camps between 1941 and 1952., German Army historian

German Armed Forces Military History Research Office

The German Armed Forces Military History Research Office is located at Potsdam, the capital of Brandenburg, Germany.-Mission:...

 Rüdiger Overmans estimated that 1.094.250 German POWs died in the soviet captivity

According to Edward Peterson the U.S. chose to hand over several hundred thousand German prisoners to the Soviet Union in May 1945 as a "gesture of friendship". U.S. forces also refused to accept the surrender of German troops attempting to surrender to them in Saxony

Saxony

The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....

 and Bohemia

Bohemia

Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...

, and instead handed them over to the Soviet Union. Thousands of prisoners were transferred to Soviet Authorities from POW camps in the West, e.g. it is known that 6000 German officers were sent from the West to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp

Sachsenhausen concentration camp

Sachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May, 1945. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used as an NKVD...

 which at the time was one of the NKVD special camp

NKVD special camps

NKVD special camps were NKVD-run late and post-World War II internment camps in the Soviet-occupied parts of Germany and areas east of the Oder-Neisse line. The short-lived camps east of the line were subsequently transferred to the Soviet occupation zone, where they were set up by the Soviet...

 and from which it is known that there were transfers further east to Siberia.

According to the section of the German Red Cross dealing with tracing the captives, the ultimate fate of 1,300,000 German POW's in Allied custody is still unknown; they are still officially listed as missing.

German estimates

German prisoners of war held by the Soviet Union and deaths in captivity

Year	Quarter	Number of German POWs	Deaths in captivity
1941	IV	26,000	222
1942	I	120,000	10,525 (whole year)
	II	120,000
	III	110,000
	IV	100,000
1943	I	170,000	77,737
	II	160,000	34,876
	III	190,000	4,309
	IV	200,000	2,764
1944	I	240,000	3,220
	II	370,000	3,014
	III	560,000	7,241
	IV	560,000	58,359
1945	I	1,100,000	83,422
	II	2,000,000	37,765
	III	1,900,000	26,924
	IV	1,400,000	37,111
1946	I	1,300,000	47,664 (whole year)
	II	1,300,000
	III	1,300,000
	IV	1,100,000
1947	I	1,000,000	17,484 (whole year)
	II	970,000
	III	900,000
	IV	840,000
1948	I	760,000	3,547 (whole year)
	II	620,000
	III	550,000
	IV	500,000
1949	I	460,000	907 (whole year)
	II	380,000
	III	280,000
	IV	85,000
1950	I	47,000	114 (whole year)
	II	31,000
	III	29,000
	IV	29,000
Total			456,841

NKVD statistics

Below is the total number of German and Axis prisoners of war reported by NKVD as of 22 April 1956 (excluding former USSR citizens who were serving in Wermacht).

Nationality	Total accounted prisoners of war	Released and repatriated	Died in captivity
German	2 388 443	2 031 743	356 700
Austrian	156 681	145 790	10 891
Czech and Slovak	69 977	65 954	4 023
French	23 136	21 811	1325
Yugoslav	21 830	20 354	1476
Polish	60 277	57 149	3128
Dutch	4730	4530	200
Belgian	2014	1833	181
Luxembourger	1653	1560	93
Spanish	452	382	70
Dane	456	421	35
Norwegian	101	83	18
others	3989	1062	2927
Wehrmacht totals	2 733 739	2 352 671	381 067
%	100 %	86,1 %	13,9 %
Hungarian	513 766	459 011	54 755
Romanian	187 367	132 755	54 612
Italian	48 957	21 274	27 683
Finnish	2377	1974	403
Axis totals	752 467	615 014	137 753
%	100 %	81,7 %	18,3 %
Total prisoners of war	3 486 206	2 967 686	518 520
%	100 %	85,1 %	14,9 %

See also

• Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union
  Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union
  Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union was considered by the Soviet Union to be part of German war reparations for the damage inflicted by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union during World War II. German civilians in Eastern Europe were deported to the USSR after World War II as forced laborers...
  
  
• German prisoners of war in the United States
  German prisoners of war in the United States
  German prisoners of war in the United States were members of the German military interned in the United States as prisoners of war during World War I and World War II...