WW2 POW Survival Rates

[yonderTheGreat]

I hope this isn't a taboo topic on this forum. I THINK that it's not. Obviously we should steer away from some of the more unpleasant things that happened in WW2 to those that surrendered, because this is not the forum for those discussions, nor is that the topic I hope to focus on. So... with that out of the way...

I was chatting w/ Dad earlier today about various POW-related things. I had recently come across a chart that detailed the survival rates of POWs by nation of the soldier as well as nation holding those soldiers.

Thusly... the "Russians held by Germans" was a separate category than "Americans held by Germans"... and the Russians had a notably lower survival rate than the Americans.

I spent a good half hour looking for those numbers again today and couldn't, for the life of me, find them. Does anyone have that info handy perchance?

If I recall correctly, the highest survival rates were for Germans who made it to POW camps in North America. The lowest was for Chinese captured by the Japanese (in fact, the chart I saw simply had a total number for Chinese POWs who survived, and it was depressingly low).

And, as always, thanks!

 

[DoomBunny]

This the kind of thing? I grabbed it with a quick google, some further investigation would suggest Niall Ferguson, 'Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat', War in History (2004) as the source.

A word of caution however. Prisoner death rates only include the death of POWs, not all those who surrender. In reality the rate would be higher due to unrecorded killings, and particularly due to casualties as the result of surrender (i.e, one side tries to surrender and the other side doesn't realise).

 

[keynes2.0]

We finely have hard numbers with which we can say that British people are 5 times more gentlemanly then Americans and 86 more times more gentlemanly then the French.

 

[BaronNoir]

In Canada, we had exactly 137 POWS dying between 1939 and 1945 out of 35 000, including two Germans killed because not enough Nazis by fellow prisoners and five of the said fellow prisonners hanged.

Considering that the areas were the prisonners were held (in the middle of the Prairies) are arguably as cold as European Russian, if not colder....

 

[yonderTheGreat]

DoomBunny, that looks like the exact chart I was thinking of! Thank you so much!

And yeah, the stats were for those who made it to the actual camps. The discussion I had with my dad was after we watched Fury and were discussing Americans shooting prisoners. Mostly SS soldiers after Malmedy and then some incidences on Okinawa (due to the porous, chaotic nature of the fighting).

Again, thank you.

I'm curious how many Germans were captured by "Eastern Europeans" and just who those nations were. To my understanding. even though Hungary lasted to nearly the very end... the fighting that did occur between Germans and Hungarians was incredibly intense. Don't know much about that though. Also, does "Eastern Europeans" include Yugoslavian partisans? That might explain quite a bit about these numbers.

 

[DoomBunny]

I'd assume Romanian/Bulgarian/Polish/Finnish forces fighting for the Soviets. Can't imagine that the Yugoslav partisans would have been too keen on the whole 'prisoners' thing, nor that they would have kept an accurate record of captured Germans. Poland in 1939 is also unlikely, as captures would probably be low and I doubt they had time to take proper records.

 

[krieger11b]

That doesn't seem to take count that only 10% of German POWs taken by the Soviet Union survived to the 50's when the survivors were finally returned to Germany from Siberia.

 

[DoomBunny]

I don't have the book the table is supposedly from, so I can't really comment. My opinion of Ferguson in general isn't particularly high though.

Do you have another source for the 10% claim?

 

[stevieji]

We ended up discussing this recently in a thread about the legality of the attack on Pearl Harbour (of course). The figures are difficult to authenticate, but at first glance I'd have to quibble with the figure given above for German POWs held by Russians. Soviet figures indicate 86% of POWs eventually released and it seems clear to me that German estimates include large numbers of men who were simply MIA and never recorded as POWs.
All stats should be viewed sceptically, whatever their source - but for what its worth ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_prisoners_of_war_in_the_Soviet_Union

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_mistreatment_of_Soviet_prisoners_of_war

 

[Grosshaus]

I'd assume Romanian/Bulgarian/Polish/Finnish forces fighting for the Soviets. Can't imagine that the Yugoslav partisans would have been too keen on the whole 'prisoners' thing, nor that they would have kept an accurate record of captured Germans. Poland in 1939 is also unlikely, as captures would probably be low and I doubt they had time to take proper records.

Germans were evacuated from Finnish-controlled southern Finland before Finland changed sides attacking Germany. Meanwhile Germans in Lapland mostly were allowed to retreat to Norway without actively pursuing them. So the amount of Germans captured by Finns would have been minimal. But knowing the level of nutrition and sanitation in a country that just lost a war, casualty rate for those few could have been that bad.

I remember around 20% of Soviet POWs in Finland died. Could have actually been more than that. And as they were sworn enemies there was even conscious policy to keep Soviet POW camps last in line for getting supplies. Casualty rates for those POWs who were assigned to labour duty outside the camps, especially to the farms, were much lower.

 

[Henry IX]

The other thing to keep in mind is the condition of prisoners when they are taken. A significant number of them will be injured and even with the best will they could die. In the same way, those luck POWs sent to Canada were likely all reasonably healthy - any badly injured prisoners would most likely by held in Europe.

The condition of the POWs is one of the reasons why the Stalingrad survivors had such a high death rate. If you enter the Soviet system in poor health your chance of survival is very, very poor. It is noteworthy that higher raking individuals had much higher survival rates than privates, even NCOs had about half the death rate. This may be due to them being in better condition when they entered the Soviet camps.

 

[The Super Pope]

But muh clean Wehrmacht...

I've been spending too much time at r/ShitWehraboosSay

 

[IvanIvanovich]

I must say, I find it surprising that almost two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the opening of many archives to historians, many popular academics still use statistics taken from god knows where and god knows when.

It's easy enough to go to the Wikipedia page on the matter and look at the figures from the Russian State Military Archives, which has some rather detailed NKVD statistics on the death rates of Wehrmacht soldiers who died in captivity:

Total accounted prisoners of war: 2,733,739; released and repatriated: 2,352,671; died in captivity: 381,067 (13.9%).

The Russian-language Wiki page features more complete data, including details on the other Axis members' death in captivity rates:

Hungarians: 513,766 POWs - 54,755 died in captivity; Romanians: 187,367 - 54,612; Italians: 48,957 - 27,683; Finns: 2,377 - 403. Total Axis Allies: 752,467 - 137,753 (18.3% died in captivity).

Adding them up, total Wehrmacht and Axis allied POWs: 3,486,206; died in captivity: 518,520 (14.9%).

All in all, the rates are still very high, especially compared to the rates for the Western Allies, but they do go against the narratives painted by people like Mr. Ferguson. Prior to the Soviet collapse, the NKVD archives were closed; they were internal archives, based on mundane bureaucratic calculations (i.e. how many prisoners are where, what resources are needed to feed and house them, what manpower is there for use as forced labor, etc.). In other words, they had little reason to lie. Where then does the discrepancy come from?

 

[DoomBunny]

Like I said, Ferguson wouldn't tend to rank highly on my list of the world's greatest historians. Tbh, I wouldn't be surprised if much of the research for the book was done by assistants rather than the man himself, particularly where foreign language sources are concerned.

 

[Wagonlitz]

That doesn't seem to take count that only 10% of German POWs taken by the Soviet Union survived to the 50's when the survivors were finally returned to Germany from Siberia.

Some got home in the 40s; some even in 45.

I know this is just a single example, but I thought it might be relevant/interesting anyway. My grandfather's sister married a half Dane half German before the war. He was drafted and ended up getting captured on the East Front in 44. Due to being an electrical engineer he was put to work with the electric (or something like that); while working in a high voltage mast he was electrocuted and fell down to the ground and broke his back. Due to then being useless he was sent home in September 45.
He wrote down the deathtoll for the home transport and they are obscene...
They started out 1313 somewhere in Russia; before they left the station 30 had already died. When they arrived at the destination, which was Frankfurt, 305 had died---or 23% of the people on the home transport... And he writes that it actually could have been more. At every station where they stopped they left at least several bodies.

 

[Henry IX]

Form what I've read transport was often the most dangerous time. This seems to be related to bureaucratic issues/neglect/incompetence. Whilst being transported they are 1. not productive, so nobody is responsible for measuring their output and 2. nobodies particular responsibility. The camp commander doesn't care, he has already signed them out. The army is not tracking them. The railway administration is interested in timetables not prisoner care. Nobody is answerable for the bodies (even in the Gulag system the dead had to be accounted for).

Given that the prisoners sent home in '45 were most likely those who were least productive (e.g. sick and injured) they are also the most vulnerable to ill treatment.

 

[yonderTheGreat]

While I am ALL for being skeptical of sources of statistics, I don't quite see how someone can quote Wikipedia, of all places, as a worthy source.

Wikipedia may be a fine place to DISCOVER sources, but never directly cite Wikipedia when having a discussion about the legitimacy of sources...

A source which presents VERY different numbers when you look at the German claims.

We ended up discussing this recently in a thread about the legality of the attack on Pearl Harbour (of course).

Lol. That was my thread too. Hoo-Boy did it derail

 

[stevieji]

While I am ALL for being skeptical of sources of statistics, I don't quite see how someone can quote Wikipedia, of all places, as a worthy source.

Wikipedia may be a fine place to DISCOVER sources, but never directly cite Wikipedia when having a discussion about the legitimacy of sources...

A source which presents VERY different numbers when you look at the German claims.

Not sure what you're saying. Wikipedia was quoting official Russian sources - the doubt arises not from Wikipedia, but the Russian sources. Same for the German sources. I hate it when people knock Wikipedia - it's open to abuse, sure, but I think its excellent.

 

[keynes2.0]

Wikipedia is a fantastic resource for mathematics and astronomy. The problem isn't with wikipedia, the problem is that history has a lot of uncertainty so people need to read history prudently instead of expecting 100% accurate accounts.

 

[Easy-Kill]

Wikipedia is a fantastic resource for mathematics and astronomy. The problem isn't with wikipedia, the problem is that history has a lot of uncertainty so people need to read history prudently instead of expecting 100% accurate accounts.

Actually, as someone who has a PhD in Theoretical Astrophysics ... I would dispute that The science articles on wikipedia are basically a way for people to show how clever they are by writing some of the worlds most cryptic explanations to the worlds most simple problems

For History, wikipedia can be very good at finding 'encyclopedia' style factoids. That is, Wikipedia neatly summarises numerical data that you would often have to ready an entire book to fully appreciate.