War Crimes and Atrocities by Janice Anderson

Author:Janice Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Omnipress
Published: 2011-06-16T16:00:00+00:00

countless atrocities

The amount of atrocities that took place in the Soviet Union during World War II are too numerous to list, but it is fair to say that, second only to the ‘cleansing’ of the Jewish population, the massacre of Russian prisoners of war must rank as one of the greatest atrocities. During the first seven months of the war, it is estimated that over four million Soviet soldiers were captured, but by the end of February 1942, just over one million remained alive. Many died from the severe weather conditions they had to face when they were forced to march in the open day and night. They fell by the roadside in their thousands. When they did eventually reach the prisoner of war enclosures, sometimes as far away as 400 km (250 miles), they simply collapsed and died before they could even have their first meal. Held in inhumane cages, the prisoners often resorted to cannibalism after they had eaten everything else available to them, even down to the last blade of grass. For example, a dead dog, which was thrown over the wire fence, was quickly pounced upon by the prisoners and torn to pieces with their bare hands in their desperation to eat.

Thousands more died from torture or as slave labourers, who were forced to work in quarries and factories. Out of 9,000 prisoners sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp, only 800 were alive when US troops set them free in 1945. In the famous Dachau camp, only 150 survived out of a total of 10,000 prisoners of war who arrived there in 1941. It is estimated that, by the year 1944, over three million Russian prisoners of war died in this way.

The camps continued to be used after the war, still full of German, Polish, Hungarian, Rumanian, Bulgarian prisoners of war and refugees. After Stalin’s death in 1953, his successors slowly started to reform the camps. Many of the prisoners were released as the worst of the camps were shut down. Others were renovated to improve their conditions, and by the mid-1980s the population of these camps was down to about four million.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of communism in 1991, many articles have been published about the atrocities and war crimes that took place during World War II. The estimated death toll of these atrocities is believed to be over 39.4 million, but if all the evidence came to light it is fair to say that this figure is probably grossly underestimated.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.