Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union was considered by the Soviet Union to be part of German war reparations for the damage inflicted by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union during the Axis-Soviet campaigns (1941-1945) of World War II. Soviet authorities deported German civilians from Germany and Eastern Europe to the USSR after World War II as forced laborers, while ethnic Germans living in the USSR were deported during World War II and conscripted for forced labor. German prisoners of war were also used as a source of forced labor during and after the war by the Soviet Union and by the Western Allies.
Nazi Germany had used forced labour of people in the occupied territories since the beginning of World War II. In 1940, it initiated Ostarbeiter, a massive project of enslaving the populations of Eastern European countries to use as forced labour in German factories and agricultural facilities. The Soviet government proposed the use of German labor as reparations in 1943, and raised the issue at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. The USSR began deporting ethnic Germans from the Balkans in late 1944, most of the surviving internees had returned by 1950.[ citation needed ] The NKVD took the lead role in the deportations via its department, the Chief Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internee Affairs (GUPVI).
Information about the forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union was suppressed in the Eastern Bloc until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Before that, however, it was known in the West through accounts released in West Germany and recollections of the internees. Historians cite German accounts that cover the employment of German labor by the USSR. Statistics for the Soviet use of German civilian labor are divergent and contradictory. This article details the published statistical data from the West German Schieder commission of 1951–1961, the German Red Cross, the report of the German Federal Archives and a study by Gerhard Reichling (an employee of the Federal Statistical Office of Germany). Recently declassified statistical data from the Soviet archives on the use of German civilian labor in the Stalin era were published in the book Against Their Will (Russian : «Не по своей воле», 2001).
Since the fall of the USSR the Soviet archives have been accessible to researchers. In 2001, the Russian scholar Pavel Polian published an account of the deportations during the Soviet era, Against Their Will . Polian's study detailed the Soviet statistics on the employment of German civilian labor during the Stalin era. [1]
In 1943, Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to the UK, was ordered by the Soviet government to form a task force on the issue of post-war reparations from Germany. Maisky's report of August 1944 proposed the employment of German civilian labor in the USSR as part of war reparations. At the Yalta Conference the Soviet Union made it clear to the Western Allies that they intended to employ German civilian labor as part of war reparations, at this time the U.S. and UK did not raise any objections to the Soviet use of German civilian labor. [2]
By the summer of 1944, the Soviet forces had reached the Balkans that had ethnic German minorities. State Defense Committee Order 7161 of December 16, 1944 instructed to intern all able-bodied Germans of ages 17–45 (men) and 18-30 (women) residing within the territories of Romania (67,332 persons), Hungary (31,920 persons), Yugoslavia (12,579 persons), which were under the control of the Red Army. Consequently, 111,831 (61,375 men and 50,456 women) able bodied adult ethnic Germans from Romania, Yugoslavia, and Hungary were deported for forced labor to the USSR. [3]
During the 1945 military campaign in Poland, the Soviet Union interned suspected Nazi party members and government officials in camps in the Soviet-occupied areas east of the Oder-Neisse line. Persons held in these short-lived camps east of the line were subsequently transferred to NKVD special camps in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany or to the Soviet Union for forced labor. [4] By May 1945 the NKVD had selected for deportation to the USSR 66,152 German civilians who were considered suspected Nazi party members and government officials, as well as 89,110 able bodied adults (mostly men) for forced labor. In early 1947 the Soviets sent an additional 4,579 Germans from the Soviet occupation zone to the USSR as forced laborers. [5]
The Soviets classified the civilians interned into two groups; the first Group A (205,520 persons) were "mobilized internees" who were able bodied adults selected for labor; the second Group D (66,152 persons) "arrested internees" were Nazi party members, German government officials and suspected agents, and others considered a threat by the Soviets. [6] Soviet records state that they repatriated 21,061 Polish citizens from labor camps which indicates that not all of the internees were ethnic Germans and some could have been ethnic Poles. [7]
The Soviets sent about three-quarters of the laborers to the Donets Basin to work in the reconstruction of heavy industry and mines, and about 11% to the Urals' heavy industries. The workers were housed in concentration camps under armed guard. The working and living conditions were harsh and according to Soviet records about 24% of those interned died. Forced labor turned out to be inefficient and unprofitable since many of the women and older men were not able to perform heavy labor. Repatriation started as early as 1945 and almost all were released by 1950. [8]
Ethnic German civilians interned by USSR - Soviet data from the Russian archives
Country | Number |
---|---|
Former eastern territories of Germany and Poland | 155,262 [9] |
Romania | 67,332 [10] |
Hungary | 31,920 [10] |
Yugoslavia | 12,579 [10] |
Soviet occupation zone in Germany | 4,579 [11] |
Total Interned | 271,672 [12] |
Repatriated by 12/1949 | (201,464) [13] |
Died or "withdrawn" | (66,456) [14] |
Still Held 12/1949 | 3,752 [15] |
Source of figures Pavel Polian-Against Their Will [16]
Notes:
1. Country indicates the location where the persons were conscripted, not citizenship.
2. The 201,464 surviving internees were citizens of the following nations- Germany 77,692; Romania 61,072; Hungary 29,101; Poland 21,061; Yugoslavia 9,034; Czechoslovakia 2,378; Austria 199; Bulgaria and other countries 927. [17]
3. Figures do not include German civilians interned in the Kaliningrad Oblast, the former East Prussia
4. Figures do not include "Forced Repatriation" and "Resettlers" Ethnic Germans from the USSR who had been resettled by Germany in Poland during the war. They were returned to the USSR.
5. Figures do not include military POWs.
6. Still held 12/1949- Persons convicted by Soviet military tribunals and held in MVD prisons in the USSR [18]
Thanks to the opening of the Russian archives, the fates of some of these civilians are now known. By late 1996, the German Red Cross had received from Russia 199,000 records of deported German civilians who had either been repatriated or died in Soviet captivity. For example, the records of Pauline Gölner reveal that she was born in 1926 in Wolkendorf in Transylvania, was arrested on January 15, 1945, and sent to forced labor in the coal mines of Chanchenkowo (Ukraine). She died there on February 26, 1949, 23 years old. [19]
There is currently an ongoing research program in collaboration between Russia and Germany: [20]
The ethnic German minority in the USSR was considered a security risk by the Soviet government and they were deported during the war in order to prevent their possible collaboration with the Nazi invaders. In August 1941 the Soviet government ordered ethnic Germans to be deported from the European USSR. By early 1942 1,031,300 Germans had been banished to Central Asia and Siberia. During 1945 the Soviets deported to the special settlements an additional 203,796 Soviet ethnic Germans who had been resettled by Germany in Poland . [21] [22] During the war, shortages of food plagued the whole Soviet Union, especially within the special settlements. Life in the special settlements was harsh and severe; food was limited and the deported population was governed by strict regulations. According to data from the Soviet archives, 687,300 Germans remained alive in the special settlements by October 1945, [23] and an additional 316,600 Soviet Germans served as labor conscripts during World War II in NKVD labor columns, later informally referred to as "labor army". Soviet Germans were not accepted in the regular armed forces but were employed instead as conscript labor. The labor army members followed camp-like regulations and received the GULAG rations. [24] In 1949, the German population in the special settlements was put at 1,035,701 by the NKVD. [25] According to J. Otto Pohl 65,599 Germans perished in the special settlements; he believes that an additional 176,352 unaccounted for persons "probably died in the labor army". [26] During the Stalin era the Soviet Germans continued to be confined to the special settlements under strict supervision. They were rehabilitated in 1955, but were not allowed to return to the European USSR until 1972. [21] The Soviet German population grew despite the deportations and forced labor during the war: in the 1939 Soviet census the German population was 1.427 million; by 1959 it had increased to 1.619 million. [27]
The West German government-sponsored Schieder commission during the 1950s documented the population transfer of Germans from East-Central Europe after World War II. The head of the commission was Dr. Theodor Schieder a rehabilitated former member of the Nazi party. In 1952, Schieder was chosen by the West German government to head the Commission that would document the fate of the Germans from Eastern Europe.
From 1953 to 1961, the Schieder commission made estimates of the numbers of German civilians who died in the expulsions and those deported to the USSR for forced labor. These estimates are still cited in current accounts of the expulsions and deportations. [28]
The following is a summary of the figures published by the Schieder commission from 1953 to 1961 for forced labor only. The figures are rough estimates and are not based on an actual enumeration of the dead.
The West German Search Service working with the German Red Cross attempted to trace German civilians deported to the USSR and estimate the approximate number who died. The results of these West German efforts to trace the fate of those deported was detailed in a study by Kurt Böhme published in 1965 Gesucht wird, Sought After. The number of deported was derived by estimating the number of persons sent to the USSR, and was not based on an actual enumeration. The work of the German Search Service to trace the fates of civilians in eastern Europe was only partially successful. [33] The figures for those deported and deaths were rough estimates and not always based on confirmed reports. As of 30 September 1964, the Search Service compiled information on 504,153 German civilians interned in the USSR (217,827 were still alive in 1964, 154,449 had returned home, 85,145 were reported missing, and 46,732 confirmed dead as forced laborers). [34]
The figures from the German Red Cross are cited in some English language accounts of the German civilians deported to the USSR. [35]
Forced labor of German civilians - estimate by German Red Cross in 1964
Description | Number deported | Death rate | Dead & reported missing |
---|---|---|---|
A. "Reparations Deportees" | 375,000 | 45% | 169,000 |
B. Forced Labor in Kaliningrad Oblast | 110,000 | 45% | 50,000 |
C. "Forced Repatriation" and "Resettlers" | 300,000 | 37% | 111,000 |
D. Civilians held as POWs | 45,000 | 22.2% | 10,000 |
E. "Forced Service" | 26,000 | 0.4% | 100 |
F. Klaipėda (Memel) residents | 10,500 | 9.5% | 1,000 |
G. "Convicted POWs" | 7,500 | 9% | 700 |
Total | 874,000 | 39% | 341,800 |
Source of figures: Kurt W. Böhme - Gesucht wird - Die dramatische Geschichte des Suchdienstes Süddeutscher Verlag, München 1965 Page 275
Notes:
These categories in the Red Cross figures for deportees are also listed above in the Russian archive statistics.
A. Reparations Deportees ("reparationsverschleppte") Ethnic German civilians conscripted for labor in the Soviet Union for damages caused by Germany during the war. Origin- Former eastern territories of Germany and Poland -233,000; Romania 80,000: Hungary 35,000 and Yugoslavia 27,000. Most of the survivors were released by 1950. [36]
E. "Forced Service" ( "Zwangsverpflichtete") -In the latter part of 1946 6,000 skilled workers mostly from the Soviet occupation zone accompanied by 20,000 family members were conscripted for work in the USSR under contract for five years. They were held under favorable conditions they began to be released in 1950, the last returned home in 1958. [37]
These categories in the Red Cross figures for deportees are not listed above in the Russian archive statistics.
B. Forced Labor in Kaliningrad Oblast- German civilians interned in the former East Prussia, most of the survivors were released by 1948. [36]
C. "Forced Repatriation" and "Resettlers" ("Zwangrepatriierte"/"Vertragsumsiedler") Ethnic Germans from the USSR who had been resettled by Germany in Poland during the war. They were returned to the USSR. [38]
D. Civilians held as POWs — The Soviets classified these persons as POWs and they were held in POW camps, they were ethnic Germans from the Former eastern territories of Germany and Poland. [39]
F. Klaipėda (Memel) residents- Ethnic Germans who remained in Klaipedia after the war. They were deported into the USSR, [40]
G. "Convicted POWs" (Strafgefangene) POWs convicted of war crimes and held in Soviet prisons. They were released by 1955. [39]
In 1969, the Federal West German government ordered a study of expulsion losses to be conducted by the German Federal Archives which was finished in 1974. The study estimated a total of 600,000 deaths caused by what they call "crimes and inhumanites" in the eyes of West German law, including 200,000 in forced labor in the USSR. Their definition of crimes included confirmed deaths caused by military activity in the 1944-45 campaign as well as deliberate killings and estimated deaths due to forced labor. They maintained that report was only intended to provide historical documentation not as a basis for criminal charges in the future. [41] However, in Poland and Czechoslovakia, during the Cold war, these charges were viewed as an attempt to seek revenge and revert to pre-war borders. The authors maintain that their figures cover only those deaths caused by violent acts and inhumanities (Unmenschlichkeiten) and do not include post-war deaths due to malnutrition and disease. Also not included are those persons who were raped or suffered mistreatment and did not die immediately. No figures were given for Romania and Hungary.
The following is a summary of the deaths estimated in the German Federal Archive Report. The figures are rough estimates and not based on an actual enumeration of persons deported and those that died.
Civilian Deaths Listed by German Federal Archives 1974
Description | Total Deaths | Oder-Neisse region, Poland | Czechoslovakia | Yugoslavia |
---|---|---|---|---|
Forced Labor-Deported to USSR | 205,000 | 200,000 | - | 5,000 |
Forced labor -N. East Prussia | 40,000 | 40,000 | - | - |
In Post War Internment Camps | 227,000 | 60,000 | 100,000 | 67,000 |
Violent Deaths during war 1945 | 138,000 | 100,000 | 30,000 | 8,000 |
Total | 610,000 | 400,000 | 130,000 | 80,000 |
Source: German Federal Archive, Spieler, Silke Vertreibung und Vertreibungsverbrechen 1945-1948. Bericht des Bundesarchivs vom 28. Mai 1974. Archivalien und ausgewählte Erlebnisberichte. Bonn 1989 Pages 53–54
This category of deportees in the Federal Archive Report is also listed above in the Russian archive statistics.
A. Deported from Former eastern territories of Germany and Poland for forced labor in the USSR - Over 400,000 civilians deported to USSR of whom they estimated about 200,000 died. The author of the study based these figures on the German Red Cross report which is detailed above. [42]
B. Deported from Yugoslavia for forced labor in the USSR - About 27,000 to 30,000 civilians deported to USSR of whom c. 5,000 died. [43]
C. The German Federal Archives study did not provide figures for Romania and Hungary.
These civilian deaths in the Federal Archive Report are not listed above in the Russian archive statistics.
D. Labor camps in northern East Prussia Kaliningrad Oblast - 110,000 held by USSR in northern East Prussia. Overall they estimated 40,000 persons perished. [42]
E. Held in post-war Polish internment camps - The German Federal Archives estimated 60,000 deaths of the 200,000 Germans in post-war Polish internment camps. The report mentioned that ethnic German citizens from pre-war Poland were considered "traitors of the nation" and sentenced to forced labor. [42]
F. 67,000 deaths in Yugoslav internment camps. [44]
G. 100,000 deaths in Czechoslovak internment camps. [45]
H. The report also estimated 138,000 violent civilian deaths during military campaign in 1944–1945;(100,000in Poland, 30,000 in Czechoslovakia and 8,000 in Yugoslavia). [46]
A study of German forced labor and expulsions by the West German researcher Dr. Gerhard Reichling was published by the Kulturstiftung der deutschen Vertriebenen (Foundation of the German Expellees) in 1986. Reichling was an employee of the Federal Statistical Office who was involved in the study of German expulsion statistics since 1953. Reichling's figures for German forced labor were based on his own calculations, his figures are estimates and are not based on an actual enumeration of the dead. Dr. Kurt Horstmann of the Federal Statistical Office of Germany wrote the foreword to the study, endorsing the work of Reichling.
Description | Deported | Deaths |
---|---|---|
Germany (1937 Borders) | 400,000 | 160,000 |
Poland (1939 Borders) | 112,000 | 40,000 |
Danzig | 10,000 | 5,000 |
Czechoslovakia | 30,000 | 4,000 |
Baltic States | 19,000 | 8,000 |
Hungary | 30,000 | 10,000 |
Romania | 89,000 | 33,000 |
Yugoslavia | 40,000 | 10,000 |
USSR | 980,000 | 310,000 |
Total | 1,710,000 | 580,000 |
Source of figures: Dr. Gerhard Reichling, Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen, Teil 1, Bonn 1986 (revised edition 1995). Pages 33 and 36
This category of deportees is also listed above in the Russian archive statistics.
A. Deported from Eastern Europe to USSR 1945-1950 as reparations labor, Total 600,000. (Germany (1937 borders) 400,000; Danzig 10,000, Czechoslovakia 30,000; Baltic States 10,000; Hungary 30,000; Romania 80,000; Yugoslavia 40,000.) [47] Total Dead 224,000 (Germany (1937 borders)160,000; Danzig 5,000, Czechoslovakia 3,000; Baltic States 6,000; Hungary 10,000; Romania 30,000; Yugoslavia 10,000.) [47]
These categories of deportees in Reichling's report are not listed above in the Russian archive statistics.
B. "Forced Repatriation" and "Resettlers" – Soviet ethnic Germans returned to the USSR after World War II. Total deported 310,000 (USSR 280,000; Baltic States 9,000; Poland 12,000; Romania 9,000) [47] Total Dead 110,000 (USSR 100,000; Baltic States 3,000; Poland 4,000; Romania 3,000) [47]
C. Soviet Germans Deported in USSR 1941-1942 – Total deported 700,000 of whom 210,000 died [47]
D. German forced labor in post-war Poland 1945-1950 – Total 100,000 of whom 36,000 died. [47]
The Soviet Union exploited the technical expertise of the German specialists who were resident in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany as well as POWs held in the USSR. In October 1946 the Soviet NKVD forcibly deported from East Germany "a few hundred" selected German experts to work in the USSR. They were held under favorable conditions and most were released by 1948. They worked in the aviation industry and the development of submarines. A selected few remained in the USSR until the early 1950s including German scientists who worked in the Soviet Union on the development of ballistic missiles, Helmut Gröttrup was among this group. [48] They were not directly involved in the missile program but were only consulted by Soviet engineers. Manfred von Ardenne worked on the Soviet atomic bomb project and was awarded a Stalin Prize. [49]
Forced labour was also included in the Morgenthau Plan draft from September 1944, and was included in the final protocol of the Yalta conference. [50] The Soviet Union and the western allies employed German POW labor up until 1949.
German POWs were impressed into forced labor during and after World War II by the Soviet Union. Based on documents in the Russian archives Grigori F. Krivosheev in his 1993 study listed 2,389,600 German nationals taken as POWs and the deaths of 450,600 these German POWs including 356,700 in NKVD camps and 93,900 in transit. In addition he listed 182,000 Austrians taken prisoner [51] [52] In his revised 2001 edition Krivosheev put the number of German military POWs (Wehrmacht of all nationalities) at 2,733,739 and dead at 381,067 [53] These figures are disputed by sources in the west that give a higher number of POWs captured and estimate losses may be higher than those reported by the USSR. Richard Overy in The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia puts total number of German POWs captured by the USSR at 2,880,000 of whom 356,000 died. [54] However, in his Russia's War Richard Overy maintains that according to Russian sources 356,000 out of 2,388,000 POWs died in Soviet captivity. [55]
A research project by German military historian Rüdiger Overmans stated that 363,000 German POWs died in Soviet custody; Overmans cited the statistics of the West German Maschke commission that put the number of German POWs taken by the Soviets at 3,060,000, of whom 1,090,000 died in captivity. [56] [57] Overmans also believed it was possible, although not provable, that 700,000 German military personnel reported missing actually died in Soviet custody; [58] Overmans estimates the "maximum" death toll of German POWs in the USSR at 1.0 million, he maintains that among those reported as missing were men who actually died as POWs. [59]
During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, Germans and Volksdeutsche fled and were expelled from various Eastern and Central European countries, including Czechoslovakia, and from the former German provinces of Lower and Upper Silesia, East Prussia, and the eastern parts of Brandenburg (Neumark) and Pomerania (Hinterpommern), which were annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union.
A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944–1950 is a 1994 non-fiction book written by Cuban-born American lawyer Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, former research fellow at MPG in Heidelberg, Germany. The work is based on a collection of testimonials from German civilians and Wehrmacht military personnel; and devoted to the expulsion of Germans after World War II from states previously occupied by Nazi Germany. It includes as well selected interviews with British and American politicians who participated at the Potsdam Conference, including Robert Murphy, Geoffrey Harrison, and Denis Allen. The book attempts to describe the crimes committed against the German nation by the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia at the end of World War II – as perceived by the expellees themselves and settlers brought in Heim ins Reich from the east.
World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history. An estimated total of 70–85 million people perished, or about 3% of the estimated global population of 2.3 billion in 1940. Deaths directly caused by the war are estimated at 50–56 million, with an additional estimated 19–28 million deaths from war-related disease and famine. Civilian deaths totaled 50–55 million. Military deaths from all causes totaled 21–25 million, including deaths in captivity of about 5 million prisoners of war. More than half of the total number of casualties are accounted for by the dead of the Republic of China and of the Soviet Union. The following tables give a detailed country-by-country count of human losses. Statistics on the number of military wounded are included whenever available.
Mass evacuation, forced displacement, expulsion, and deportation of millions of people took place across most countries involved in World War II. A number of these phenomena were categorised as violations of fundamental human values and norms by the Nuremberg Tribunal after the war ended. The mass movement of people – most of them refugees – had either been caused by the hostilities, or enforced by the former Axis and the Allied powers based on ideologies of race and ethnicity, culminating in the postwar border changes enacted by international settlements. The refugee crisis created across formerly occupied territories in World War II provided the context for much of the new international refugee and global human rights architecture existing today.
From 1930 to 1952, the government of the Soviet Union, on the orders of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin under the direction of the NKVD official Lavrentiy Beria, forcibly transferred populations of various groups. These actions may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of "anti-Soviet" categories of population, deportations of entire nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite directions to fill ethnically cleansed territories. Dekulakization marked the first time that an entire class was deported, whereas the deportation of Soviet Koreans in 1937 marked the precedent of a specific ethnic deportation of an entire nationality.
The evacuation of East Prussia was the movement of German civilian population and military personnel from East Prussia between 20 January and March 1945, that was initially organized and carried out by state authorities but quickly turned into a chaotic flight from the Red Army.
Order 7161 is the top secret USSR State Defense Committee Order no 7161ss of December 16, 1944 about mobilisation and internment of able-bodied Germans for reparation works in the USSR. It was part of the organisation of forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union since the ending period of World War II.
Against Their Will... The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR is a historical research book by Pavel Polyan (2001), published by the Memorial society. It is the first comprehensive study of all massive-scale forced migrations within the Soviet Union. The book is based on published materials and archival data made public. It contains a large number of summary tables.
Demographic estimates of the flight and expulsion of Germans have been derived by either the compilation of registered dead and missing persons or by a comparison of pre-war and post-war population data. Estimates of the number of displaced Germans vary in the range of 12.0–16.5 million. The death toll attributable to the flight and expulsions was estimated at 2.2 million by the West German government in 1958 using the population balance method. German records which became public in 1987 have caused some historians in Germany to put the actual total at about 500,000 based on the listing of confirmed deaths. The German Historical Museum puts the figure at 600,000 victims and says that the official figure of 2 million did not stand up to later review. However, the German Red Cross still maintains that the total death toll of the expulsions is 2,251,500 persons.
A sybirak is a person resettled to Siberia. Like its Russian counterpart sibiryák the word can refer to any dweller of Siberia, but it more specifically refers to Poles imprisoned or exiled to Siberia or even to those sent to the Russian Arctic or to Kazakhstan in the 1940s.
The flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland was the largest of a series of flights and expulsions of Germans in Europe during and after World War II. The German population fled or was expelled from all regions which are currently within the territorial boundaries of Poland: including the former eastern territories of Germany annexed by Poland after the war and parts of pre-war Poland; despite acquiring territories from Germany, the Poles themselves were also expelled from the former eastern territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union. West German government figures of those evacuated, migrated, or expelled by 1950 totaled 8,030,000. Research by the West German government put the figure of Germans emigrating from Poland from 1951 to 1982 at 894,000; they are also considered expellees under German Federal Expellee Law.
The expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War II was part of a series of evacuations and deportations of Germans from Central and Eastern Europe during and after World War II.
The German evacuation from Central and Eastern Europe ahead of the Soviet Red Army advance during the Second World War was delayed until the last moment. Plans to evacuate people to present-day Germany from the territories controlled by Nazi Germany in Central and Eastern Europe, including from the former eastern territories of Germany as well as occupied territories, were prepared by the German authorities only when the defeat was inevitable, which resulted in utter chaos. The evacuation in most of the Nazi-occupied areas began in January 1945, when the Red Army was already rapidly advancing westward.
Hungarian–Soviet relations were characterized by political, economic, and cultural interventions by the Soviet Union in internal Hungarian politics for 45 years, the length of the Cold War. Hungary became a member of the Warsaw Pact in 1955; since the end of World War II, Soviet troops were stationed in the country, intervening at the time of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Starting in March 1990, the Soviet Army began leaving Hungary, with the last troops being withdrawn on June 19, 1991.
Amnesty for Polish citizens in USSR was the one-time amnesty in the USSR for those deprived of their freedom following the Soviet invasion of Poland in World War II. The signing of amnesty by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet on 12 August 1941, resulted in temporary stop of persecutions of Polish citizens under the Soviet occupation. Their mass persecution accompanied the 1939 annexation of the entire eastern half of the Second Polish Republic in accordance with the Nazi-Soviet Pact against Poland. In order to de-Polonize all newly acquired territories, the Soviet NKVD rounded up and deported between 320,000 and 1 million Polish nationals to the eastern parts of the USSR, the Urals, and Siberia in the atmosphere of terror. There were four waves of deportations of entire families with children, women and elderly aboard freight trains from 1940 until 1941. The second wave of deportations by the Soviet occupational forces across Kresy, affected 300,000 to 330,000 Poles, sent primarily to Kazakh SSR. The amnesty of 1941 was directed specifically at Polish victims of those deportations.
Pavel Markovich Polian, pseudonym: Pavel Nerler, is a Russian geographer and historian, and Doctor of Geographical Sciences with the Institute of Geography (1998) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He authored over 300 publications and is most known for his research on the history and geography of forced migrations.
Approximately three million German prisoners of war were captured by the Soviet Union during World War II, most of them during the great advances of the Red Army in the last year of the war. The POWs were employed as forced labor in the Soviet wartime economy and post-war reconstruction. By 1950 almost all surviving POWs had been released, with the last prisoner returning from the USSR in 1956. According to Soviet records 381,067 German Wehrmacht POWs died in NKVD camps. A commission set up by the West German government found that 3,060,000 German military personnel were taken prisoner by the USSR and that 1,094,250 died in captivity. According to German historian Rüdiger Overmans ca. 3,000,000 POWs were taken by the USSR; he put the "maximum" number of German POW deaths in Soviet hands at 1.0 million. Based on his research, Overmans believes that the deaths of 363,000 POWs in Soviet captivity can be confirmed by the files of Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt), and additionally maintains that "It seems entirely plausible, while not provable, that 700,000 German military personnel listed as missing actually died in Soviet custody."
NKVD special camps were NKVD-run late and post-World War II internment camps in the Soviet-occupied parts of Germany from May 1945 to January 6, 1950. They were set up by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) and run by the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs MVD. On 8 August 1948, the camps were made subordinate to the Gulag. Because the camp inmates were permitted no contact with the outside world, the special camps were also known as silence camps.
Statistics for German World War II military casualties are divergent. The wartime military casualty figures compiled by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht through January 31, 1945 are often cited by military historians in accounts of individual campaigns in the war. A study by German historian Rüdiger Overmans concluded that total German military deaths were much higher than those originally reported by the German High Command, amounting to 5.3 million, including 900,000 men conscripted from outside Germany's 1937 borders, in Austria and in east-central Europe. The German government reported that its records list 4.3 million dead and missing military personnel.
Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern-Central Europe is the abridged English translation of a multi-volume publication that was created by a commission of West German historians between 1951 and 1961 to document the population transfer of Germans from East-Central Europe that had occurred after World War II. Created by the Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims, the commission headed by Theodor Schieder consisted primarily of well-known historians, however with a Nazi past. Therefore, while in the immediate post war period the commission was regarded as composed of very accomplished historians, the later assessment of its members changed. The later historians are debating how reliable are the findings of the commission, and to what degree they were influenced by Nazi and nationalist point of view.