Grandfather's custom

Photo: Bundesarchiv

Mass murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war in Elena - a cold -blooded planned war crime. Its main goal is to demoralize the Ukrainian army and the population and force the political leadership of Ukraine to a truce and negotiations. It is no coincidence that on the eve of the death of the Azovs, the Prochrevsky telegram channels released the shocking video castration and murder of the Ukrainian prisoner of war.

But there is another probable motive for the crime - "to beat strangers to be afraid of their own." So far, the number of prisoners captured by the Ukrainian army is small, since it has not yet conducted large offensive operations. But now there has been a potential threat of the environment of the Kherson-Berislav group of Russian troops on the right bank of the Dnieper. If it is implemented, many thousands of Russian soldiers and officers will have a choice between pleating and death. It seems that the Russians decided to recall the rich experience of the Second World War, when the Soviet command encouraged the murders and torture of German prisoners of war to recapture the hunting of the Red Army.

On January 5, 1942, the Black Sea Fleet landed the landing in the port of Yevpatoria. The paratroopers broke into the city hospital, where the German hospital was located at that time. One of the few surviving paratroopers A. Kornienko recalled: “We broke into the hospital ... knives, bayonets and butt destroyed the Germans, threw them through the windows to the street ...” The same thing was going on in Feodosia and Kerch, captured by the main landing. In revenge, the Germans then also killed the wounded paratroopers.

The Russian historian Vsevolod Abramov writes about his meeting with the writer Konstantin Simonov: “During our meeting, Konstantin Mikhailovich told a lot about the Mehlis (Leo Mehlis was a representative of the High Command Bet on the Crimean Front. - Ed.), That I did not know. It turns out that the representative of the bet in the breaks of his main work loved to interrogate captured German officers. Most often, if the captive was not given, then the Mehlis called his adjutant and the fascist was shot near the house of the betting representative. It is not clear what homeland it was about. "

Mehlis himself, with satisfaction, wrote to his son about the systematic killings of prisoners: "In the city of Kerch, up to 7 thousand corpses of the civilian population (to children inclusive), all with fascists are shot by fascists. Blood is habitable with anger and thirst for revenge. I order the fascists of the prisoners. I order the Fisunes (the chief of the secretariat and the adjutant of the Mehlis. - B. S.), it is well swing. It destroys the robbers with special satisfaction. "

The commander of the 11th German army, Field Marshal Erich Manstein, recalled the events of January 1942: "In Feodosia, the Bolsheviks killed our wounded people in hospitals, but some of them, lying in the gypsum, pulled out the seas, doused with water and froze in the icy wind."

The prisoners were killed not only on Crimean, but also on other Soviet fronts. Here is the report of the Political Department of the 9th Guards Rifle Brigade of November 6, 1942: “The commander of the intelligence officer of the second battalion of the guard, Lieutenant Kuranov Mikhail Ivanovich, b/p, performing a combat mission with three fighters, capturing 5 Nazis, who were stubbornly resisted to the last opportunity, ordered them to shoot them. - He says, - They torn their torn apart the old parents. While the warrior’s heart beats in my chest, I will mercilessly destroy these creatures. Let these 5 bandits destroyed by me be a modest gift to the Soviet people on the day of the 25th anniversary of the Great October Revolution. "

Thus, the command and political agencies of the Red Army not only did not condemn the unreasonable murder of the prisoners, but also popularized this experience. The fighters of the mentioned 9th brigade from October 27 to November 6 seemed to be “exterminated, according to preliminary data, up to 900 enemy soldiers and officers, 23 fascists were captured, a significant part of whom were exterminated.”

On June 30, 1941, in the area of ​​the village of Bronniki near Rivne, the battalion of the 35th Infantry Regiment of the 25th motorized infantry division of the 1st Panzer Group was counterattacked by the 20th Panzer Division of Colonel M.E. Katukova from the 9th mechanized corps of Major General K.K. Rokossovsky. 180 soldiers of the battalion, in most wounded, who were surrounded and spent ammunition, were captured, and 153 of them were killed , including bayonets.

Panteleimon Ponomarenko, as a member of the Military Council of the North-Western Front, reported to Stalin in March 1942: "Of course, they will not give up if a) we will not completely handle the sensible leaflets, b) if we shoot prisoners in front of the Germans (they killed a group that went from the city to our parts with their hands)."

The case of the massacre of German prisoners was described by the former commander of the 11th Army Corps Erhard Raus: “This happened in March 1943 near Zhizdra in the band of the 2nd German Panzer Army. When German troops liberated the front section, previously captured by Soviet troops as a result of a counterattack, they discovered 40 corpses of the 590th Grenadier Regiment of the 321st Infantry Division from With outstretched eyes and cut ears, noses and genitals. " According to Raus, "Russians ... obviously, sought to impress German troops and lower their moral spirit, making numerous atrocities directly against them."

Another similar case is Raus to the first day of the Battle of Kursk, July 5, 1943: “Suddenly fierce counterattack of the Russians, supported by forty tanks, threw off our covers from the forest on the southern flank and hit the 320th Infantry Division ... During this counterattack, about 150 people from the 320th infantry division were taken. A telephone conversation between the lower and higher Russian headquarters (probably between the regimental and division headquarters), which went something like this:

Regiment commander: "I have 150 Fritz here. What should I do with them?"

The division commander: "Leave several for interrogation, and eliminate the rest."

On the same evening, the alleged regiment commander reported on the execution of the order, saying that most of the Fritz were killed immediately, and the rest - after they were questioned. "

The words of Rouse are confirmed by the fact that the 320th Infantry Division in the period from July 4 to 20, 1943 suffered the greatest losses missing compared to two other divisions of the Rouse corps-426 people (in the 106th Infantry Division there were 44 missing people, 17 in the 198th infantry infantry). (Frankson, Anders; Zetterling, Niklas. Kursk 1943. A Statistical Analysis. London: Taylor & Francis, 2000. Table 8.2. Cit. According to the manuscript, lovely provided to me by Niclase Cetterling.)

In the Red Army, the execution of prisoners was commonplace. For example, in the fighting journal of the 7th mortar brigade of the 1st Ukrainian Front, we read : “At 08:30 17.1.45, the fire plates of 171 GMP fought with an enemy of 5 armored personnel carriers and up to 100 people in the Dobrovno Dobrovno district, 49 German soldiers and officers were captured as a result.”

In order to recapture from the Red Army hunting to give up, Smersh in 1943 began to form groups that imitate surrender. Arriving close to the German trenches, they threw them grenades . Such a practice provoked the executions of the Germans surrendered to the Red Army.

But the case that happened in the winter of 1941 near Moscow and described by the German military doctor Henry Haap in memoirs based on the diary. A German soldier, blinded by the Soviet reconnaissance group, came to the position of their battalion: “He was an artilleryman - one of the four, sent to stretch the telephone cable to the observation post, located at some distance behind our positions.” It was very dark and cold, and we did not expect to meet any Russians, ”he suddenly heard a few shots, and all my comrades were dead, and all my comrades were dead again. Fell in the snow. I ran back in the same way that we walked, and landed straight into the hands of the Russians. They tightly grabbed my arms and legs and dragged me somewhere ... I tried to call for help, but one of them viciously hissed in a broken German so that I shut up ... But I still continued to call for help. And then they said something to each other and threw me into the snow. One of them quickly approached me with a knife in his hand ... I did not have time to understand anything, as I saw at first a dazzling flash, and then immediately felt a terrible pain in the right eye ... And then the same thing happened with my left eye ... And I didn’t see anything more, only one solid darkness ... The one that turned to me in my arm and sewed my arm and again in my ear: “Ta-ak ... Now go straight ahead, without turning it anywhere, and then you will get to your brothers, the same German dogs as you yourself. Tell them that we will kill them all. And the surviving eyes will tear out like you, and send to breathe in the Siberian mines. It will be our revenge!”

According to Khappa, the Germans took revenge on the blinded soldier: "They stumbled upon the same patrol of fifteen Russians who killed three of our gunners and completely inhuminably deprived the fourth vision and his people, remaining unnoticed, lay into an ambush by the introduction of snow -covered flesh and literally responded from close range from this group. From their machine guns. Such cases undoubtedly encouraged the enemy not to take prisoners.

Encouraging the executions of the prisoners, the command of the Red Army expected that the Germans would answer the same. There were practically no cases when the Red Army soldiers were punished for the murder of prisoners. The punishment could only be followed when one of the Red Army soldiers, hurrying, eliminated an important “language” before interrogation.

It should be emphasized that the effect of such a policy of provoking reprisals over prisoners was minimal, if at all. Cruel reprisals against German prisoners in Feodosia, Kerch and Yevpatoria in January 1942 did not prevent the Germans from taking 170 thousand prisoners in the defeat of the Crimean Front in May 1942. And during the Operation Citadel in July 1943, more than 50 thousand Red Army soldiers were captured .

The main factor here was not the fear of fighters and commanders of the Red Army to be killed or crippled in captivity and not the calculation that, on the contrary, they would feed and manage to survive until the end of the war, as German propaganda promised. The main role was played by the situation at the front. After in July - August 1943, the Red Army transferred to an almost continuous offensive, the number of Soviet prisoners decreased sharply. If in 1941-1942 the Germans took more than 5 million prisoners, then in 1944-1945 only 170 thousand. And the cruelty against German prisoners was completely meaningless.

Of course, the poor treatment of German prisoners was not only the result of the policy of the Soviet command. It was known about unproved cruelty against the Red Army in German captivity. In addition, Soviet prisoners, especially in the first year of the war, received completely insufficient nutrition, more than half of them died of hunger and diseases. Prisoners of war -Jews were subject to liquidation, and in the first months of the war - also political workers. Equally high during the war during the war was mortality from hunger and diseases in Soviet prisoners of war camps.

In the current Russian-Ukrainian war, the country, which has undergone aggression, tries to observe the norms of international humanitarian law as much as possible, while the aggressor country constantly violates these norms.