Soviet prisoners of war were the first victims of the [Fascist] policy of mass starvation in the east. In August 1941, the [Wehrmacht] set a ration of just 2,200 calories per day for working Soviet prisoners of war. Even this was not enough to sustain life for long, but in practice the POWs received much less than the official ration. Many Soviet prisoners of war received at most a ration of only 700 calories a day.

Within a few weeks the result of this "subsistence" ration, as the [Wehrmacht] termed it, was death by starvation. The POWs were often provided, for example, only special "Russian" bread made from sugar beet husks and straw flour. Suffering from malnutrition and nearing starvation, numerous reports from the late summer and fall of 1941 show that in many camps the desperate POWs tried to ease their hunger by eating grass and leaves.

Epidemics

The [Axis powers] made little provision to shelter most of the prisoners they took from the Soviet military. Eventually the [Axis] established makeshift camps but the lack of proper food, clothing, and shelter took a terrible toll. Often the prisoners had to dig holes in the ground as improvised shelter from the elements.

By the end of 1941, epidemics (especially typhoid and dysentery) emerged as the main cause of death. In October 1941 alone, almost 5,000 Soviet POWs died each day. The onset of winter accelerated the mass death of Soviet POWs, because so many had little or no protection from the cold.

Even in POW camps [under Fascism], Soviet POWs had often been left for months to vegetate in trenches, dugouts or sod houses. In the occupied eastern territories conditions were even worse. In Belorussia only pavilions (structures with roofs but no walls) were available to house Soviet POWs. By the winter of 1941, starvation and disease resulted in mass death of unimaginable proportions.

Many Soviet soldiers, including many wounded, died on the way to the prisoner collection centers and transit camps; others died during transit to camps in occupied Poland or the German Reich. Most of the prisoners captured in 1941 had to march to the rear across hundreds of miles and those who were too exhausted to continue were shot to death on the spot.

When Soviet POWs were transported by train, the Armed Forces High Command permitted only open freight cars to be used. Sometimes days went by without the prisoners receiving any rations. This resulted in an enormous loss of life during winter months. According to army reports between 25 percent and 70 percent of the prisoners on these transports from the occupied Baltic countries died en route to Germany.

Mass Shootings

The large number of dead was due not just to irresponsible neglect by [Axis] officers but also to mass shootings. The [Axis] shot severely wounded Soviet soldiers to free the [Wehrmacht] of their care. Time and again [Axis] forces were called upon to take "energetic and ruthless action" and "use their arms" unhesitatingly "to wipe out any trace of resistance" from Soviet POWs. Those attempting to escape were shot without warning.

Moreover, a decree issued on September 8, 1941, stated that the use of arms against Soviet POWs was, "as a rule, to be regarded as legal"—a clear invitation for [Axis] soldiers to kill Soviet POWs with impunity.

In the middle of July 1941, Gen. Hermann Reinecke, who was the officer in charge of prisoner-of-war affairs in the Armed Forces High Command, permitted security forces under the Reich Security Main Office to screen Soviet prisoners of war in the POW camps for "politically and racially intolerable elements" among the Soviet prisoners. These prisoners were transferred to SS jurisdiction and killed.

This contributed to an enormous rise in the number of victims, since not only were "all important state and party functionaries" regarded as "intolerable," but so were "intellectuals," all "fanatic Communists," and "all Jews."

Executions

The executions did not take place in the prisoner-of-war camps or their immediate area. Instead, prisoners were transferred to a secure area and shot. The concentration camps proved an ideal location for executions. In Gross‐Rosen concentration camp, for example, the SS killed more than 65,000 Soviet POWS by feeding them only a thin soup of grass, water, and salt for six months.

In Flossenbürg, SS men burned Soviet POWs alive. In Majdanek, they shot them in trenches. In Mauthausen, Austria, so many POWs were shot that the local population complained that their water supply had been contaminated. The rivers and streams near the camp ran red with blood. Estimates of the numbers of victims of this operation range from at least 140,000 up to 500,000.

Even the Jewish POWs who worked for the Western Allies still fared better than Soviet POWs (be they Jewish or gentile).

The Axis presented millions of Soviet POWs with a lose‐lose situation: they could either serve anticommunism, or slowly die in agony. Most of them chose the latter. Quoting Christopher Simpsons’s Blowback, page 19:

In 1942, however, Vlasov was just the man that the political warfare faction was looking for, and the creation of an army of Soviet defectors under [Axis] control using him as a figurehead became its central preoccupation for the remainder of the war.

“The Germans started a form of blackmail against the surviving Russian war prisoners,” war correspondent Alexander Werth notes. “[E]ither go into the Vlasov Army or starve.” The overwhelming majority of Soviet POWs refused the offer, and about 2 million POWs who were given the choice of collaboration or starvation between 1942 and 1945 chose death before they would aid the [Axis]. But many thousands of Russians did join the invaders as porters, cooks, concentration camp guards, and informers, and later as fighting troops under [Axis] control.⁷

(Emphasis added.)