German policy towards Soviet prisoners of war during World War II was driven by Nazi ideology, which defined Russian (Soviet, Slavic) people as untermenschen, useless sub-humans, the same category that included Jews and Roma. The fate of the Russian POWs was sealed. 

Laws about Prisoners. The Soviet Union hadn’t ratified the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, nor had it committed to the 1907 Hague Convention on the Rules of War. This meant that, technically, both the Soviet Union and Germany were only obligated to the customary international laws of war of that time.  But even the customary laws provide for the protection of prisoners of war. 

Invasion of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were allies in the war against Poland that had begun on September 1, 1939.  Then, without warning, on June 22, 1941, German troops attacked the Soviet Union in ‘Operation Barbarossa.’  

German troops, aided by local police and civilians, carried out mass murders of Soviet Jews in ‘the Holocaust by bullets,’ the roundup and extermination of more than a million Jews by the Einsatzgruppen, mobile German killing squads. The Nazi goal was to gain living space for Germans and to eliminate the untermenschen. 

And among those untermenschen were the POWs. 

Russian POW pointing at Nazi guard

Killing POWs. The Nazis used several brutal tactics. Prisoners were starved to death, given only about 700 calories as a daily ration. Reports from late 1941 document that prisoners ate grass and leaves in futile efforts to survive. 

The prisoners were given no real shelter.  They dug trenches in the ground for protection from the elements, but epidemics of typhoid and dysentery killed at least 5,000 people a day. 

Thousands of prisoners were transported to Germany, either on forced marches with no food, shelter, or adequate clothing, or by train in open freight cars. As many as 75% of these prisoners died before ever reaching Germany. 

Prisoners were shot. A decree issued on September 8, 1941, stated that the use of arms against Soviet POWs was “to be regarded as legal” —German soldiers could kill Soviet POWs with impunity. 

Several hundred thousand POWs were murdered in concentration camps, through starvation, by being burned alive, or shot. 

POWs at Auschwitz were used as experimental subjects for the eventual murder of Jews by gassing.  At least 600 POWs were killed by Zyklon-B in an Auschwitz gas chamber. 

By the end of the war, as many as 3,500,000 Russian prisoners were dead – a number exceeded only by the 6,000,000 Jews who were murdered. 

Prisoners of war must be protected.