Films/DVD Asylum

Re: Uh Vic...

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Evgueni

In Reply to: Uh Vic... posted by Joe S on April 18, 2000 at 13:26:19:

> The conditions for Western (read American & British) POWs were
> actually quite good compared to those of Russian POWs who were
> rather routinely sent to forced labor or concentration camps if not
> simply shot on the spot.
I've read that this difference was due to the simple fact - Geneva Conventions required the country of POWs citizenship to pay the other side (i.e. those who captured them) for their keeping expenses (food etc.). US and Great Britain did this. Stalin declared that every Soviet soldier was fighting until the last drop of his blood, so those who got themselves captured by enemy were declared the traitors (and the fact of their very existence was declined), and Soviet government refused to pay for their keeping.

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I suspect that the treatment of Soviet soldiers... Joe S 18:52:24 04/18/00 (0)
...ultimately had more to do with the professed Nazi fight for aryan ethnic purity and Hitlers obsession against Communism. The behaviors German troops engaged in on the Eastern Front itself (as per Hitlers edict for how war in Russia was to be waged) defied human characterization. It wasnt war as much as an all out attempt to erase all life from the Russian territory they conquered. Military as well as civilian.
Of course Stalins treatment of repatriated prisoners of war was not exactly a human interest story as you say.
joe

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