What Happened to the German and Japanese POWs? - COLD WAR DOCUMENTARY

We are continuing our historical documentary series on the Cold War with a video on the German and Japanese PoWs. World War II was brutal in many regards, but it was even more pronounced in the case of the prisoners of war. Millions were imprisoned on either side of the conflict, and the losers of the war suffered even more than the winners. In this video we will discuss the fate of the German and Japanese PoWs.
Consider supporting us on Patreon: / thecoldwar
Sources:
Mark Harrison - The Soviet Union after 1945: Economic Recovery and Political Repression
Хлевнюк О. В. - Советская экономическая политика на рубеже 1940-1950-х годов и «дело Госплана»
Иголкин А. - Фундамент нефтяной сверхдержавы
Зубкова Е.Ю. - Послевоенное советское общество: политика и повседневность, 1945 - 1953. М., 2000.

[@TheColdWarTV]

We rely on your support to continue our work, so please consider supporting us at www.patreon.com/thecoldwar

[@LibertarianLeninistRants]

finally you added sources, thanks for listening to our demands

[@JoneshSwe]

Hey that annoying twat here... Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for adding sources! I think that will up the academic quality of the videos a lot as well as adding a bit of uniqueness to the channel since AFAIK, few "popular history" channels cite their sources. It was an interesting episode but I'd like to point out that the way the Japanese surrender was phrased "...the sudden surrender of Japan in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." might lead some people to believe that the atomic bombs were the reason for the Japanese surrender, which is a false narrative. The Japanese Supreme Council met on Aug 9, the first time they discussed unconditional surrender, and didn't hear of Nagasaki until the late afternoon. Hiroshima couldn't have been the reason either since that was about three days earlier, no crisis takes as long as three days to unfold. On Aug 8, Foreign Minister Togo Shigenori went to Premier Suzuki Kantaro and asked that the Supreme Council be convened to discuss the bombing of Hiroshima, but its members declined. It was too unimportant they argued. The scale and impact of the atomic bombings in comparison to the rest of the strategic bombing was also small. But the strategic situation changed rapidly, Japan had the diplomatic option of getting the USSR to mediate a peace treaty or a military option of inflicting high casualties upon the USA in order for the Americans to offer better peace terms. The Soviet invastion blew those two options off the table; The USSR could no longer be a mediator, it was a belligerent and being attacked from two great powers from different directions was an impossible military situation. Which lead to the Japanese accepting an unconditional surrender. So in reality, the Soviet invasion of Japan was the key factor in ending the war in Asia but the atomic bomb was a convenient narrative for the Western Allies (because, hey, Cold War propaganda yo!) so the strategic impact of the Soviet invasion of Japan was brushed under the carpet. Ward Wilson has written an excellent article about this, which I quoted slightly, for Foreign Policy titled "The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan … Stalin Did". I suggest any one interested in history to read that article. Cheers! :)

[@LibertarianLeninistRants]

@@JoneshSwe I read the article you recommended and it was quite an interesting read, thanks!

[@JoneshSwe]

@@LibertarianLeninistRants You're welcome, mate!

[@justinian-the-great]

Will you do a video about German and Japanese POW's in other Allied countries, mainly US, UK, France and China?

[@allmachtsdaggl5109]

My grandfather was in a camp toghether with Japanese pows. I guess that means he was very far to the east. He never told me much about it. If you asked him, he would shiver

[@VladderGraf]

He should have told everyone his story. Maybe it would teach others why it is not right to start a world war and genocide, and what happens next.

[@noneofyourbusiness5803]

He should have taught you to hate the communists, maybe you wouldn't have elected the STASI bitch then.

[@Zino95]

My great-grandfather was held captive in a soviet pow camp after Stalingrad and when I asked him about the war he just stared blankly in front of him and stopped talking. He was over 90 at the time, but it still got to him.

[@LanaW123]

@zyzz stop taking drugs. You are hallucinating too much.

[@tomsoyka4801]

he was Nazi blyad then

[@Woldemar94]

my great grand father was captured in the battle of stalingrad and got home by 1947, my ggmother couldnt recognize him at all when he managed to walk all the way from the gulag to east germany, he told her and to my gfather how he recieved almost no food at all and when he was dying there the guards just let him free outside the camp thinking he would fall dead in the road but with determination and some good samaritan that gave him just a bite of bread every now and then managed to get back home.

[@ShamanMcLamie]

This sounds like it should be a movie.

[@derblah9006]

Carlos Woldemar García Rebisch assuming that the gulag was in Siberia, there is just no way that someone could walk that.

[@Woldemar94]

@@derblah9006 think whatever, thats the story told to me by my granny

[@keelyleilani1326]

Anybody who fought for Hitler deserves that fate or worse in my opinion. Meanwhile my great grandfather was fighting to liberate your Totalitarian regime so that you could live a normal life.

[@Woldemar94]

@@keelyleilani1326 stfu with your todays morals, he was a farmer with some land and was drafter to war in the wehrmacht like any other young german at that time, dont talk if you know nothing, btw the true """""heroes""""" would be the russians not those come late to the party take all teh credit for doing nothing `Muricans

[@monteguetwist1190]

My Dad, a German went into a Russian POW camp at age 14. He escaped two years later and weighed less than 100 pounds. I can't believe he made it, but for the obvious reason, I'm glad he did.

[@capncake8837]

John Barber Who’s to say that his dad was a bad person? It’s not like every German soldier was evil.

[@celebrityrog]

@@capncake8837 If you’re fighting for Living Space then yes, you’re just as evil as those who worked in concentration camps.

[@hidof9598]

How did he do it? Did he elaborate

[@callofdutycrew6361]

@@capncake8837 mm

[@AlexP4563]

@@celebrityrog bruh he was 14

[@stephencarroll9935]

When you remember purposely destroying that one building in stalingrad only to see yourself rebuilding it years later

[@dereenaldoambun9158]

Karma is a bitch!

[@shawnv123]

lmao

[@victorwaddell6530]

There was a camp for German POWs from WW2 in my home county of Spartanburg , South Carolina . There is account of a few POWs taken into the forest as a work gang . They were issued axes , shovels and such to work with . The overseers came to trust them and would sometimes leave them unattended . One day they were forgotten and left in the woods . After a couple of days it was realized that they weren't at the base camp . The overseers returned to the spot they left them and they were still there , waiting to be picked up .

[@hanswurst6712]

Nice story. But what else should they have done? I mean they are in the US. Its not like it would make any sense to run away, because in the end they cant swim back to germany. ;)

[@victorwaddell6530]

@@hanswurst6712 They might have been repatriated back to Germany or stayed in America . I don't know their final story . During the US Revolutionary War the British Crown hired many mercenaries from the state of Hesse in Germany . Most of those Hessians were defeated and captured during the war . Many of them stayed on , found wives , and fathered American families . Americans and Germans aren't much different after all .

[@BewareOfTheKraut]

They then built the BMW factory in Spartanburg, I presume...

[@victorwaddell6530]

@@BewareOfTheKraut Good one . Around here BMW means Bubba Makes Wheels .

[@BewareOfTheKraut]

@@victorwaddell6530 Another good one.

[@BobatBG]

My grandfather's younger brother, a German speaking Soviet citizen born in the Ukraine, was captured at the battle of Stalingrad, fighting for the Germans. Prior to that, he had been fighting in the Red Army but captured by the Germans. As an ethnic German with Soviet citizenship, the Germans gave him the option of joining the war effort on their behalf, or going to a prison camp. So he switched sides, and that is why I assume the Soviet Union kept him in prison camp through about 1955 or so when he was eventually released to live in West Germany (this is my guess as to the reason why he wasn't let out. He had a low rank, below sergeant, so I assume he was not accused of some war crime. But I probably won't ever know one way or the other why he was kept so long after the end of the war). He said that he survived in the Soviet prison camps because of two things. First, he never believed anything his prison keepers said - they often engaged in trickery to get the prisoners to confess to certain acts. Some fell for that according to him, and well, the outcome wasn't ever good. Second, his calorie requirements were low compared to the other prisoners. He was short and had a slight build. When I saw him in 1974 while he was living in Germany, he was much smaller than me and I was 15 (I was average sized for my age). He said the larger and taller men tended to starve more quickly.

[@Gloopular]

I believe that's what happened regardless of physical size - the food rations were all the same size. So u were screwed if u were a big guy.

[@Legitpenguins99]

He sounds like he had one hell of a story

[@rerbitd7094]

12 years for killing people is in your opinion a lot?

[@maarten9272]

@@rerbitd7094 You know that killing other soldiers is part of a soldiers duty.

[@blugaledoh2669]

@@rerbitd7094 Killing other soldier is not the same as murder. It is part of your duty.

[@Hadrexus]

My great grandfather was a teacher during WW2, he was eventually drafted into the Afrika Korps, got captured there and sent to the USA. He remained in a POW camp for 10 years, and he used to say those were the best years of his life lol

[@crl477]

Do u think we will believe you? Hahaha

[@Hadrexus]

@@crl477 don't care if you do

[@LordVader1094]

@@Hadrexus based

[@Drunken_Master]

I live in a building in Belgrade, which was built by German POWs in early 50s.

[@ibrahimkiliclioglu7602]

There is a Mosque in Turkey, built by famous Spanish writer Cervantes(writer of Don Quixote) when he was prisoner of war in Istanbul. Its name Kılıç Ali Paşa Mosque. It is war tradition unfortuanetly.

[@justinian-the-great]

Will you do a video about German and Japanese POW's in other Allied countries, mainly US, UK, France and China?

[@TheMilpitasguy]

I was wondering about that too. Does he cover it in another video?

[@rackembarry]

i remember reading about how german POWs put to work in Texas befriended the poor blacks that worked on the farms near them n were even shocked at the poor treatment blacks faced in their own country

[@SirLoinofBeef235]

Near my dad's brother's family, in fact a block away in Sparta there was a German pow camp in a field with maybe a hundred tents. I only found due history and pix from a book mom found at a Salv army store . Doubtful younger people are aware living even adjacent to the still vacant field next to the foundry

[@AndresGrelan]

Alfred Strickert Well, you obviously can and should keep prisoners in clean barracks when your country is undamaged and safe. But when half of your country is in ruins and there are no workforce left after the brutal genocide of civilians because of these people I guess the matter suddenly becomes much more complicated

[@add-123]

If you want to read about the Holocaust the Americans and British committed on the Germans. Around 9 million dead civilians I will give you 2 good books to read one book called gruesome harvest another book called Germany must perish both of which were written by Americans not Nazis or propagandists the man who wrote Germany must perish was one of roosevelts speechwriters that book is the book that Joseph Goebbels was reading on the radio which scared the Germans so much that they wouldn't surrender till the very end. millions of Germans died due to American and English policy of starvation the more I looked into it the more I am utterly ashamed on being British yet we talked about the Russians as if they alone committed all the atrocities and it's not even close to being true I urge you to look this up for yourselves don't believe me or anyone else call out there and find the truth I did and it shocked me Edit The last dirty secret of ww2 is a good book as well it's all about eisenhower's concentration camps about 200 of em and the just over 1 million people who died of starvation in them and the mother's who were shot to death for trying to throw loads of bread to their starving Sons who close to starvation in front of their eyes

[@HirooKoslov]

My great uncle used to fondly talk about his time in a Siberian POW camp. He was an equivalent to a Major, so he wasn't made to do any hard labour. He talked about eating frozen rye bread with borscht soup, but instead of eating the bread he'd keep it to catch wild birds to eat. Sometimes the guards would even lend him their mosin to shoot swans with. He said he spent most of his time outside of leading the labourers, talking to his guards who would share their cigarettes and vodka with him in return for stories. This was when I was pretty small, so I didn't really know about how bad conditions in Soviet camps usually are, so I didn't really doubt his stories. But now I wonder if things really were that tranquil, or if he was making stuff up not to scare me. Though, I doubt his experience was that negative, as he always used to make borscht, he apparently acquired a taste for it in Siberia. He did however mention that it was constantly freezing.

[@duhni4551]

You have to remember that the prison guards in Siberian gulags were also "prisoners" there. It was not a place where anyone would gone by their own decision. So no matter were you prisoner or guard, they all were in same boat to some degree, though guards naturally had things better than the prisoners. But the stories your dad told seems likely to be true, even lending the rifle. After all, you can't escape Siberia even if you would escape from the gulag.

[@kenoliver8913]

In any huge decentralised prison system conditions will tend to vary randomly and enormously, depending on several things among which was who happened to be running the particular camp.This was true even of the German concentration camps. It was certainly true of Japanese camps, and even of western allied camps.

[@jeffarchibald3837]

Only 5% of the 105,000 captured at Stalingrad ever made it back to Germany.

[@I_am_Diogenes]

Less then 1500 is the only number I have seen .

[@mcfirebug]

the world at war

[@jeffarchibald3837]

No excuse for murdering prisoners on any side.

[@sebastianfournier4993]

That's because they were already in poor health at the time of the 6th army's surrender

[@MojoBonzo]

@@jeffarchibald3837 yeah right... its totally the same the action with the reaction... they have the same moral weight and validity...

[@HSMiyamoto]

One of my uncles was held as a slave laborer by the USSR. The Soviets captured him in Manchuria. I understand that he was not even in the military; he was working in business in Manchukuo when the Soviets invaded. Fortunately, he survived.

[@Eazycree]

Hannah Miyamoto was he working for the Japanese government because if so that’s most likely why he was imprisoned

[@Eazycree]

@@HSMiyamoto well the japanese did the same in china most infamously in nanjing

[@HSMiyamoto]

@@Eazycree If that were a valid argument, Hiroshima justifies 9/11.

[@rayray6490]

@@HSMiyamoto well the Saudis had nothing to do with Hiroshima/Nagasaki so the 9/11 point is moot. But if any of those Japanese POWs in Manchuria participated in war crimes in China or Asia, then it could be light case of karma.

[@rayray6490]

If your uncle was a good man and was simply caught up at the wrong place/time then sorry about that. War is the most terrible for civilians.

[@xt4ss1l0x]

My grandfather was injured by shrapnel and subsequently captured in Stalingrad. Spent a year as a Soviet POW. He escaped his camp and somehow made it all the way back to Germany. He got recaptured by the Allies and spent another 3 years in French captivity. He never told anyone how he managed to get back home, only that it was his only option to survive. Staying in the Soviet camp would have meant certain death for him.

[@FlymanMS]

In 1942? Sure, the rations were super small even for the Red army, let alone POWs of invading army. It got better over time after the war, you got to remember that people barely had food for themselves yet they still fed POWs and many of them came back (over 60% IIRC).

[@xt4ss1l0x]

@@FlymanMS Yeah I know. No one had it easy in Russia back then, so feeding millions of POWs in addition to the general population was pretty much impossible. My grandfather (19 years old at the time afaik) was put to hard labor pretty much right away (by his own account) and considering in how bad of a shape most german soldiers were when Stalingrad fell I'm inclined to believe him that getting out of Soviet captivity was pretty much his only option to survive. Sadly I was never able to speak to him about it myself. And saying that 60% suvived still means at least every third POW died, so the chance to get home was pretty slim either way.

[@xt4ss1l0x]

@M. DeV. I don't really understand what you want to tell me. I know what happened back then, there is no way to excuse it and I hope it will never be forgotten. However, you are talking like every German soldier deserved to die, just because they were on the other side of the battlefield. That kind of mindset (and generalization) is not helpful and makes it very easy to instill the kind of hateful toughts and ideas in ordinary people that made starting WW2 possible to begin with.

[@xt4ss1l0x]

@@santsantsantsantsant Well, I truly feel sorry for you if that is your opinion, because it shows that you lack any kind of empathy. I hope you know that most soldiers (of any nation) were ordinary people that never wanted to fight but were pushed/forced into service.

[@xt4ss1l0x]

@@santsantsantsantsantInsulting me for no reason won't make your arguments more valid. By your logic, every soviet citizen would have deserved to die because they didn't get rid of Stalin therefore they were responsibly for the deaths of tens of millions of their countrymen that died under his rule. Same could be said for the Chinese that followed Mao. But you wouldn't say that, would you?

[@lordofdarkdudes]

i know one german prisoner who ended up in sweden, my grandfather He was captured at the battle of breslau when they were sleeping and were shiped of to russia At the begning they were simply shipped around in train cars until one day they simply unhooked the locomotive and drove away leaving theam thiere stranded They considred runing towards the chinese border throught mongolia but decided not to. They were picked up after a while and were shipped off to a proper prison camp He was lucky that he was a smith becuse that meant that he was allowed to work in the smithy making parts for trucks. After a few years (cant rember when) he was relased and got back to germany were he worked for boing for a while but was not a huge fan of working thiere so he moved to sweden were he met my grandmother in 1951 and married her late 1952 and hade my father in 1953

[@Warrior1754]

So ur grandpa is Nazi??

[@Monolith308]

O ZY more likely a conscript

[@lordofdarkdudes]

@@Monolith308 no he volunteered to join the wermacth. Propaganda is a powerful tool

[@Monolith308]

Kk

[@Friedermanns]

Thanks for sharing your family experience of post 2nd W.W..

[@TheSonicfrog]

My Onkel Georg - a German paratrooper - was captured by the Americans shortly after D-Day when his unit fought and then surrendered after running out of food and ammunition. He was shipped to a POW camp in Texas, where they were treated far better than the black folks they occasionally ran into. At the end of the war, he was shipped to England where he was used as slave labor on an English farm for about 2 years, finally returning home to Germany in late 1947.

[@iggyarctic5711]

Good for the english!

[@thatsnodildo1974]

Ironic how pows got treated better in the west better than a regular black citizen

[@alexiscambridge4492]

Wow im offended cause I’m black

[@alexiscambridge4492]

When a Nazi is better treated then a black man .You know your country is fucked up

[@donovangordon1062]

@@alexiscambridge4492 Where did he ever say his grandfather was a Nazi? He was a German paratrooper, yes, but that's all that was mentioned. Unless he was actually in the National Socialist German Worker's Party, he would have just been another regular German citizen who had been conscripted into the military.

[@Ralphieboy]

"Only went to war with Japan at the last moment" overlooks a major Soviet offensive against Japanese forces in China that involved nearly three million soldiers on both sides.

[@gj1234567899999]

The offensive took place the same week as the atom bombs were dropped, and japan surrendered not long after that. So yes. The last moment.

[@Ralphieboy]

It involved packing up the bulk of their armed forces and shipping them from Western Europe to China. No small feat.

[@kn2549]

My great grandfather served in the Japanese army and was stationed in Manchuria when the Soviets invaded. He and his group of other soldiers were taken as POW and did labor work, such as cutting down trees and building railroad tracks in the remote areas of Russia. The Soviets also made their pows learn the Russian language and forced them to memorize communist songs. He told me how shocking it was at first seeing female officers in the Soviet army since that was unimaginable in Japan at that time and felt little bit humiliated being watched by them. He also said he had a chance to interact with the local Russian civilians and that they were really nice giving him bread and vegetables since pow werent fed enough. He also met German and Hungarian pows and would have friendly competitions to see who could get the day’s work done faster.

[@sctm81]

He was lucky to survive the war as tens of millions of Chinese and Russians didn't have that kind of fortune.

[@Balazs087]

k n thanks for sharing the story. Greetings from Hungary.

[@guyguy7634]

This is just depressing, WW2 was just horrible.

[@Tupadre97]

Yep

[@kevinchappell3694]

My dad and uncles fought.....glad I missed the whole bloody mess. 😮😑🇨🇦

[@ben2066]

Missed the mark really, mate

[@georgecummings3227]

Alpha guy Stadt world war three is not far in the future when the trade war begins world war is next look at the past.

[@AntonMiasnikov]

You wait for next one, then we talk...

[@bliblablubb9590]

How different was the whole process on the western side? Could you expand more on these?

[@old-moose]

Yes, please.

[@omgponies111]

I wouldn't be surprised if the conditions in the French POW camps was worse for Germans compared to the American and British camps.

[@Barwasser]

@@omgponies111 true. my Grandfather was there. Lost half his bodyweight as a 16yo...

[@TheColdWarTV]

The very next video will be about Soviet POWs.

[@cptrelentless80085]

The British used the captured Japanese army to fight Communists in South East Asia. The French used the SS

[@rtsgod]

Try watching "the human condition trilogy" about a Japanese man who runs a forced labor camp, gets thrown into the army, and then becomes a russian POW. It's an amazing series of films, and doubly amazing being a japanese film extremely critical of themselves during WW2 and war in general.

[@yumeneko63]

I saw the film. I fully agree with you about the film.

[@stefanodadamo6809]

Pacifism runs deep in the Japanese mindest since 1945. Despite their government being in the hands of a cabal of reactionaries, often direct descendants of unpunished members of the wartime cliques, most of the population is anti-militaristic to this day.

[@mrPowexistent]

Well yeah, because they got two **sun** dropped on them 🤔

[@jackelinevalverde3270]

@@stefanodadamo6809 Even before the ww2. Their great grandparents grandparents also went trought a harsh time under the Japanese military dictatorship.

[@hardcorehardo]

My grandfather who fought in the east would only tell war stories to my father when he was drunk. One of those stories was, that the last bullet was for yourself. He'd rather die than to end up in Soviet captivity. He ended up swimming across a river to get to American forces where he traded his iron cross second class for a bar of chocolate.

[@hardcorehardo]

@@doggo5577 welp does not make them any better though

[@rudranilghosh2187]

Communists are terrorist.

[@currentbatches6205]

5:01 - Heisenberg was 'recruited' by the Soviets, but commented that 'Many tracks lead into the bear's den, but none came out' and managed to get 'captured' by the Allies.

[@DerDop]

a romanian pow said in his memoirs that the japanese were singing odes for stalin because their only goal was to serve the emperor, and the only way to do this was to survive by any means. when the japanese were shipped home, the japanese commander who supervised this kind of behaviour commited harakiri .

[@capncake8837]

What’s the title of the memoirs?

[@pindur47]

Not my site here: My Hungarian FIL was in the HU Army during WW11. He and his unit were taken by the Russians and put in a forced labor camp. He was there after the war was over with even. Over 5 years there. Had to go directly into the hospital for nearly one year after that to recover. He was a strong young man but he saw so many die. He mentioned He worked in a mine. There were all sorts of prisoners. The Japanese in that camp were dying like flies he said. The demanded their rice portions and they weren't getting them. They did a hunger strike. In the end they released the Japanese early because of the food situation. My FIL was not even allowed to write his wife, she thought him dead and remarried and had another baby. He went home to find another man in his house! My American step-dad was a POW in WW11 and in Korea, they didn't get their red cross boxes at all.

[@equarg]

laszlo tassy 😖 Worst reunion ever....... I actually feel sorry for the new husband here. He thought the first husband was dead.......so did the wife. Awkward........the baby cries...... Double cringe. 😬 😬.

[@duartesimoes508]

Like in Castaway!

[@gacharose1738]

We had a pow camp outside of port Arthur Canada. They loved Canada. Many returned to Canada.

[@kikufutaba1194]

What a wonderful channel, thank you for posting. And as my English is not the best I find your annunciation and pronunciation very easy to follow.

[@danoarmstrong2597]

You really should do some research and a video on the America and British POW's that vanished upon being liberated by the Red Army. About 2000 American and British POW's held by the Germans (who the Germans confirmed through the international red cross that they had them), disappeared after being liberated by the red army. Very hard to find details on this, but there was even a case where the Red Army overran a POW column being marched west. The Soviets shot the German guards, and started marching them east. Two GI's got away, and made it to the American lines (which were only dozen miles away) letting them know what was up. The information was sent up the chain of command, and while senior leadership was busy trying to make a decision, the POW's were getting further and further away, and they were wasting day light. Having seen first hand the brutality and barbarism of the Red Army, the field commander got tried of waiting, and took his unit to go get these POW's. They drove through the Russian lines, and didn't encounter any resistance (other then being mobbed sometimes by over enthusiastically happy Red Army soldiers). It was once they got past the front line troops, that they started having problems, running into rear echelon units, especially political officers and NKVD units. They caught up with the POW's, and got into a pissing match with the Red officers. Eventually they had to disarm the Russians and take the POW's by force. Loaded them onto trucks, half-tracks, M-10's, then started back to their lines. They had to fight their way past several road blocks, and had a running gun fight with some of the Russian units. Again, once they got closer to the front line Red Army units, thing got a whole lot less hostile (and tossing them k-rations, cigarettes, and a few bottle of booze didn't hurt). They got back to American lines, and the commander was promptly relieved of command. The incident was covered up. Not only because the Reds were our Allies, but they held a lot of US prisoners, and incidents like this put them into jeopardy. It also didn't look good that a field commander took decisive action while senior leadership was busy finger fucking themselves instead of making a command decision. And the unit that "showed them up" as a Colored (African American) Tank Destroyer unit. So, the whole incident was squashed, hard.

[@zombieplus1423]

Can you give me a source for this?

[@danoarmstrong2597]

@@zombieplus1423 I read about the missing soldiers in a book I think was called "abandoned soldiers" which came out after the fall of the Soviet Union, using KGB archival materials. The unauthorized raid to get the American POW's I read about that back in 80's, in a military periodical type mag (which I can't recall the name or issue), having to do with something called "Operation Keelhaul". So I would start in those two place, operation keelhaul and a book with a name like abandoned soldiers.

[@lvd8122]

You know, after the horrors of WW2 people didn't want peace, they wanted retribution. Its honestly not surprising what happend to POW

[@aneesh2115]

Also funny is that they treated the Soviet POWs with no honor , regularly killing them , starving them etc . But they themselves wanted good conditions , so they ran west

[@Pravdik918]

Polish POWs in USSR didn't have it much better. What was the soviet excuse for that. How many russian cities did the polish burn or how many civilians did they rape...?

[@papageitaucher618]

@mr_ anheuser does that make it ok?

[@jacky9590]

@@aneesh2115 well at least in case of Hungary thats completelly false. Soviet soldiers who became pow's in hungary cried back those times after the war. Source. A Russian soldier talking to some hungarian hussar pow's.

[@aneesh2115]

@@jacky9590 we are talking about the Nazis , as that is what the video is about . Otherwise yes your point stands.

[@conoroates]

The soviets gave the same treatment to their own POWs that were captured in foreign nations upon their return to the USSR.

[@conveyor2]

@Pasha Staravoitau He's right. Soviets who had surrendered and later "liberated" were subect to charges of treason and frequently carried out. For starters: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_repressions_against_former_prisoners_of_war

[@FirstLast-ys6xx]

@Pasha Staravoitau wives of husbands who were captured by Germans were put in gulags.

[@a.s.m.islamulhoquelaskar]

@Pasha Staravoitau I have seen some basic trend in social media and KZbin when a topic is raised about Soviets that often people claim anything like it's a free market for accusation without any proper reference!

[@joehaliday1990]

Na the Soviet’s gave the nazi pows much better treatment, when the nazis captured soviet pows most where either executed, starved to death or worked to death

[@eddienom]

Awesome Video, I always curious about this topic.

[@Bogie3855]

Something I have always wondered about. Thank you for your efforts.

[@felixf5211]

I was born in the USSR; my family left in 1975. I was 11yo. Your set brings back memories.

[@duhni4551]

Just from curiosity, could you leave freely from USSR back then? This is genuine question, no ill intentions behind it.

[@felixf5211]

@@duhni4551 It's complicated. The USSR was going through an intense shortage of grain and could not feed its population. Henry Kissinger brokered a deal where grain was traded for a release of 50,000 Jews. My family was one of those. It still wasn't easy. To answer your question without qualifiers, no, one could not leave the country freely.

[@duhni4551]

@@felixf5211 Sounds horrible times =/ I am glad that at least some got out of there. This explains why so many Soviets came to seek asylum in my country, which is something i always wondered, why didn't they just move in normally. Thanks for answering =)

[@yourlocalscribe948]

So basically they were turned into slaves.

[@wolfgangkranek376]

Just like the Russians treated the POWs of the 1. WW., or even their own citizens. Up to Siberia they went... Little known fact, there not only existed a small group of US POWs in the early Sovjet Union who had fought against the Communists after the revolution, but also thousands of allied POWs who were "freed" by the Sovjets from German captivity and transported against their will to the Sovjet Union. Many of them never returned home. In the following years and decades this scandal was hushed up by all sides.

[@donculotta1551]

I have no problem with the USSR making the Nazis slaves. Nor do I have a problem with any ally of the Nazis (including my people of Italy) being turned into slaves.

[@secuter]

@@donculotta1551 I have no problem (Insert nation/ideology) doing something inhumanely despicable because (insert nation/ideology) did something inhumanely despicable... Okay. Stay in school kiddo, understand that both of these powers were absolutely horrible.

[@donculotta1551]

@@secuter okay snowflake. Will do so long as your rainbow and unicorn filled world where we hug each other all day long comes true😍😍😍

[@burtonkephart6239]

Don Culotta eh Donnie brasco go bug off Diego fellow !! I’m sure you wouldn’t last three days of what the Germans n Japanese had to face under Satan I mean Stalin !! You’re the arrogant snowflake !! Pompous ass what do you know of hard work !! Probably a kid !! Or at least a city boy that grew up in nice air conditioned city suburbs sucking on thumb watching tv all day!!

[@joegee6434]

I'm from a small farming town in Yorkshire, UK. We had German POWs working on the farms here until the mid 50s. Most of them refused to go home and married local girls.

[@philjamieson5572]

Excellent presentation. Great work. Thanks.

[@SimpleNobody2420]

you know you should of say In the title "What Happened to the German and Japanese POWs IN THE SOVIET UNION?". what happen to those under the allies control.

[@BigBennKlingon]

It's a misleading title.

[@SimpleNobody2420]

no shit.

[@equarg]

TS Kollmeier I saw an interesting documentary on KZbin called “War crimes of the allies”... It was....scary.😰 Still better then what Russia did though.

[@natterlynabob1472]

@bill Johnson You are right, but we still can't say much even now. Apparently this was peculiar to the Americans and Ike. They claimed that as the German government no longer existed, surrendering troops were no longer POWs, but DEFs (Disarmed Enemy Fighters). They were starved to death in camps along the Rhine. When Adenauer tried to bring up the missing million Germans with Ike, the President began a serious destabilizing campaign against the German government. This campaign was run by Allen Dulles similar to the campaign that installed the Shah in Iran. The few Germans who know about would rather not make an issue of it, and Americans are trained to lie about it and believe each other's lies.

[@Novusod]

The mass death of German PoW's at the hands of allies has been whitewashed from history. It is a story never told because it makes America look bad. Truth be told we treated them even worse than the USSR did and over 1 million died. What Ike did was a straight up war crime.

[@mecalpsha4473]

Nightmare of the Soviet Union - went to the *GULAG* never returning - horrible conditions one could not describe.

[@benjaminthompson8359]

I've learned a lot about WWII and the Cold War but have never thought about this topic. Thank you teaching me something new!

[@readingforwisdom7037]

David, you have presented a difficult topic in a balanced, factually supported-manner, leaving lots of room for those of us who have 'background' and 'contextual' grounding to form our own opinion. Very enjoyable show. I will be a repeat visitor.

[@Schischio0]

I highly doubt the release numbers until 1949. I had grandparents and great grandparents being in captivity until the late 50's with none of them being war criminals. Moreover, many of the POW released were severly ill or weakened, which meant that even when people came home they died months or weeks later. This should have been considered as well in the number of survivors.

[@winnifredforbes8712]

Yikes! This is really something no one ever thinks about. You kind of just assume they all packed up their cares and woes and took the next Greyhound bus home!

[@Jesse_Dawg]

Great video! These are really well made

[@stephen9869]

Why have I only just found out about this series! *Immediately subscribed!*

[@LibertarianLeninistRants]

yay we did it! there are sources in the description!

[@navidkarimi2552]

Just shut your mouth,you are the shame of history,Russian people defeated Germany,not communists.

[@justanothersam5708]

navid karimi jeez

[@Tupadre97]

navid karimi they worked together

[@yadmustafa1669]

@Bas Baas nooo! don't, you're scaring him

[@Metal_Enjoyer]

Libertarian Leninist Rants silence communist

[@raresvrincianu3035]

Excelent video! What about the romanian,polish hungarian prisoners taken by the USSR?

[@DavidSmith-jj1de]

Very interesting topic.

[@drmachinewerke1]

There were none . So says the Russians

[@Balazs087]

My great grandfather was a Hungarian POW captured in the Easter front. He made it back but died when I was 3 so not much I know about it unfortunately. But definitely a lot of Hungarian soldiers were captured.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

Ever heard of the Katyn Forest massacre?

[@edlawrence5059]

@@Balazs087 They were lousy soldiers.

[@auroroborealis3449]

The untold stories are the most educative. Thank you. Greetings from Amsterdam 🇳🇱

[@Coreythebartender]

Great video. Well done

[@krunk28]

Don't forget about András Toma a Hungarian pow who didn't get released until 2000. They lost his paperwork and thought he was crazy because nobody spoke Hungarian.

[@Paladin1873]

The Soviets weren't the only ones to keep prisoners after WWII. I knew a former German Luftwaffe member who spent several years after the war as a French POW. He and his fellow prisoners were told that since the Germans caused the destruction in France, they could rebuilt it. He was put to work building roads and bridges, a skill which he later brought to the USA when he immigrated. I met him in the 1970s when he was working on the construction of the US interstate highway system (I-10) in Florida.

[@Dede_Stepas]

Keep going. This is what history channel should be.

[@jebsails2837]

The re-education of German POW's begun during WWII was carried out in the US in my area. The idea was to isolate educated "Nazi's" with western sympathies. They attended classes, held discussions, ran mock government scenarios etc. They were then part of the cadre of repatriated prisoners who would begin the governing of the new Germany albeit (West). Narragansett Bay.

[@brianmorgan5739]

My Great Uncle Gus August was captured in Stalingrad. They sent him to a camp near Saratov. He wouldn't speak of his experiences in the Gulag.

[@tipracitor1139]

@Mr and Mrs. Smith Wow that is interesting. My acquaintance are also Volksdeutsche from the Ukraine, Bessarabia(Moldova), Romania and central Poland. The war was terrible for them, they suffered especially under Soviet rule. I hope that this will never happen again. May the fallen soldiers rest in peace. Ich wünsche dir schöne Grüße aus Baden

[@duartesimoes508]

@@doggo5577 the correct number does not exceed 20 million. Not 27 as I heard here, and certainly not 30!

[@captainkurt66]

Very interesting video. Thanks for creating it. Both my Opa and my great uncle were captured by the Allies. My Opa, by the Soviets. He spent time in Coal and salt mines and forestry camps. My Uncle was captured in North Africa by the Americans and spent the rest of the war working anywhere from Louisiana to Texas on farms and civil construction projects. It is interesting how many similar stories there are here.

[@EurasiaOnYT]

Great Video!!

[@joechang8696]

there was a book by a German POW. After the war, each POW was asked repeatedly, what did you eat on this day, that day, etc. He answered only rations. As soon as a POW confessed to eating a chicken, pig etc, he was convicted of stealing state property, and sentences to 5-10 years.

[@hodaka1000]

Unlike your comment about the percentages of deaths of prisoners of the USSR where you give both low and high estimations, you than compare those figures to the prisoners of the Japanese but only give a ridiculously low estimate of "as low as 12%" (?) It's generally accepted to be around 33%. My father was one of six survivors from a total of more than 2,400 Australian and British POW's from the Japanese camp at Sandakan in North Borneo and the Death March to Ranau. That's a death rate of 400 to 1. I enjoy "The Big Boom Celebration Day"

[@Monolith308]

Imagine how painful it would be to endure these camps potentially from the beginning of the invasion and endure brutal conditions until 1956 only to be sent home, *to east Berlin where you could only watch as the west enjoyed their lives*

[@CB-py1xh]

Communism is shit and improved nothing that basic human rights, free market and sane social security laws couldn't have improved ten times better.

[@pavle6378]

What`s with the space in the middle of a sentence? Are you nine?

[@Linguiphile]

My maternal grandfather was young enough that by the time he went to boot camp, the war was almost over. When the war did end, the army released him to ride a bus back home from the training camp on the Eastern Seaboard. My grandmother always said that she and the kids were so happy to see him walking down the road toward them.

[@MadCapMag]

Not exactly the most interesting of war stories, but thanks for sharing, I guess.

[@Spacemongerr]

​@@MadCapMag Not exactly the most interesting of youtube comments, but thanks for sharing, I guess.

[@bobapbob5812]

My Russian language tutor at Friendship Airport in Baltimore before I went to work on the hotline lived in Kuibyshev during the war. He said many of the prisoners from Stalingrad were there. The Italian and Romanians were often lightly guarded and the professor would visit the camps for the music. The Hungarians and Germans were closely guarded and the Hungarians were considered more vicious.

[@patrickwentz8413]

You should read about how the Japanese treated our troops captured on Bataan and Corregidor. Some units lost up to 54 percent of their soldiers in the Japanese death camps.

[@propagandabuster255]

On the desk is probably an IKEA table light.

[@coppeis]

How did I just discover this amazing channel??

[@waymondroland4276]

Very interesting stuff!

[@brokenbridge6316]

How very interesting. Always thought that German prisoners were treated in a horrible way. But I had no idea how badly till seeing this video. Nice job. My compliments to those who made this channel a reality.

[@eugenebraxton2987]

Good facts is always refreshing

[@nikitag1376]

Most historians I heard, say that 13-15% of germans POWs died in the captivity, while about 60% of the red army POWs died in Germany. The difference is so massive due to intentional eradication of soviet prisoners and better conditions in Soviet captivity still though very poor. It is commonly noted that out of 108,000 german POWs captured at Stalingrad only 5% came home. The high death toll usually explained by poor conditions during the encirclement of the 6th army, they had little provision and food. Captured POWs received rations but weakened by lack of food supplies in the 6th army didn't survive the cold and harsh conditions in labor camps.

[@jerryw6699]

Thank you for the vid, and the comments section will be even more interesting.

[@ieuanhunt552]

I don't know what is going wrong with your audio editing, but to your S'es sound wrong. Edit:love the channel

[@ronalddavis]

its a lisp.

[@soundkode]

First off, I could sit and speak with you every single day and talk history. Thank you for what you do, and I would be greatly interested in contributing to this channel and Kings and Generals (primarily Armenian-related items). I would like to ask you to confirm a statement you made. You mention German P.O.W.s were used in building the Georgian oil industry; is this correct? It seems Azerbaijan would be the correct location. Please, let me know.

[@soundkode]

Hello. Have you had the chance to read my message?

[@davidrosner6267]

Azerbaijan was the center of the Soviet oil industry in the mid-20th century but that doesn't mean that there weren't other oil producing regions.

[@soundkode]

@@davidrosner6267 Sure, but Georgia isn't one of them.

[@nepTune-hl2hu]

maikop oil fields placed in Georgia

[@milutinvukoicic1979]

What a beautiful set of strings production added when narrator was talking about deaths of POWs. It almost broke my heart... Almost.

[@deepalib3096]

Nice video

[@ivanalekseichuk3131]

*Interesting fact, Hugo Schmeisser, a high class weaponary designer, author of dozens iconic weapons includes MP-18, MP-40, Stg-44, was one of these German POWs. He had spent 7 years in Izhevsk, Soviet Union where he worked under supervision of Mikhail Kalashnikov. But oddly Hugo hadn't come up with any decent designs during this time. Meanwhile, Kalashnikov, a dude without any education and engineering background, all of a sudden produced one of the most durable automatic rifles ever. And AK-47 was the only project he worked on. So, seems these POWs were quite useless ;)*

[@mitchrichards1532]

lol, ok... Take a look at the Soviet SVT-40 and PPS-43 and tell me the AK47 isn't a blend of the two. That and take into account the SKS came out before WW2 ended, and basically is 90% of the way to the AK. Wehraboo idiot...

[@CrossOfBayonne]

@@mitchrichards1532 The AK-47 was somewhat influenced by German weapons of WW2 but not quite 100%.

[@iancostigan7865]

German pwo camp structures are still standing in Wisconsin. They were given the chance to work in farming for the most part. They thrived. The reason they thrived in my opinion is the were given liberties based on the merit of their contribution. Many were granted leave from the camp to go to town and purchase goods and also patronize the local taverns. The mps were very liberal as far as security and curfew. We have many Americans that became a new generation of Americans from German POW s that never went back to the father land.

[@jesusleyvamorales9942]

I subscribed!

[@mehmantatliyev4423]

In the late 40s my grandfather was general manger at a state owned transportation company in western Azerbaijan. He used to tell us about German prisoners who were brought to work there. Aside from enemy part, he would speak highly of German prisoners and about their work ethics. Even my mom who is 78 now told us a story that as a kid she used to visit her dad at work and although she was not allowed to approach the fence where prisoners were held, she would drop some pieces of bread to the other side of the fence as she felt that they were not fed properly.

[@HistoryHustle]

Great video, the book AFTER STALINGRAD provides a gruesome insight in the life of German POW's. Great you guys covered the Japanese POW's since I didn't knew much about that. There is a Korean movie named MY WAY that tells the story of two Koreans ending up at the German side on D-day that also spent some time in a Soviet POW camps after the battle of Khalkhyn Gol.

[@MobilMobil-kv5ke]

What about POW’s held by the United States for years? I would be interested in those stories. I know of a POW camp at Newport News. It was a labor camp where Germans were put to work sorting through the debris of military hardware from the battlefields of Western Europe to be recycled for the war effort. I know of German POW’s that worked in greenhouses in suburban Chicago planting seeds and tending plants. Where are those stories?

[@deprogramm]

Mobil206 Mobil206 they were freed

[@MobilMobil-kv5ke]

Vasting, yes they were. My father guarded prisoners at Newport News. He had a remarkable “Hogan’s Hero’s” type story. The Germans surreptitiously collected copper tubing and such to make stills that they “hid” in the camp. They collected all the starchy and sugary foods they could to ferment and make liquor. The guards knew all about it but it kept the prisoners so busy and on their best behavior that they let it slide UNTIL a couple of prisoners got out of hand and then the Americans went in and confiscated all the stills. The message was clearly delivered on how to get through the end of the war. I also recall a news piece here in Chicago decades ago where a former German prisoner made a pilgrimage back to the greenhouse where he worked back in the war. Many German prisoners were held here in the USA for years after the war.

[@dieplap7465]

love yourr vidd

[@WillN2Go1]

Good video. Fills in a lot of gaps. There was a significant contingent of German POWs in the far east in Kolyma and Anadyr, notably working in lead mines which is as unhealthy as it sounds. In contrast you should also cover the treatment of German and Japanese POWs in other parts of the war zone, the Allies of course, but also partisan groups, esp Yugoslavia and Poland. The point would be to form an idea of what kind of experiences were later repatriated with the survivors to Germany and Japan and how these affected future attitudes towards all the Allied countries. (My father from the age of about 12 to 15 had German POWs marched in to work on his family's farm in South Carolina. One guy had been a farmer and would take over my dad's wood chopping chore. It must have been to simply get some work out of the POWs and give them something to do because my father's family farm wasn't very big and couldn't pay for the additional labor.) I know from marching in Hong Kong last year and this, with almost all teenagers and people in their 20s, there is a deep deep support by much older people, many of whom were refugees who fled Communist China and want nothing to do with its government. People who grew up in the PRC and emigrated to Hong Kong after the return 1997, form about the only support for the authoritarian government. One could argue that the old people and these younger emigrants both share experiences in the PRC, and also in current Hong Kong yet have completely different points of view. Another aspect about the Gulag system to consider. Anne Applebaum in her (compilation) book on the Gulag, does a good job of reporting on how Stalin was convinced that slave labor would be profitable. There was a prisoner Frankel, who became a camp boss who was successful promoting this. And at the other end of the history of the GULAG are accounts of mass graves being uncovered and either bulldozed and ignored, or the people who find them being hounded and arrested. Which raises the question: In what ways is the modern Russian Republic still the USSR? (One could also make the case that Putin is a modern Ivan the Terrible, with his collection of corrupt oligarchs as the modern Oprikniki. (I think I know just enough to probably raise only 2/3rds of interesting questions.)

[@richardharepax123]

The shock they have when they get home years later and learn the war ended years ago

[@capncake8837]

I imagine that they would have heard about it while in the camps.

[@bobapbob5812]

Ethnic (Volks) Germans, esp from the Volga region were also used as forced labor. There is a monument to those Volga Germans who died in Krasnoturinsk in the Sverdlovsk Oblast with a giant granite cross.

[@ezragonzalez8936]

the lady at 12:10 that look in her eyes hoping to see her loved one just heart wrenching..

[@itsblitz4437]

Like the music used here in this video. Any names or links used?

[@Eizenhertz]

The last genocide of WWII. The genocide of the german POW in Sovietunion. Even the japanese death ratio is really high. About 3,5 % of the western POW died in german camps as a comparative figure.

[@user-gz4ec6sf3p]

Boo hoo don't start genocidal wars then

[@ahmadabbassi7886]

Stalin asked for 4 million slaves to rebuild russia. And the allies clapped and approved.

[@scutumfidelis1436]

@@zelimirmarinovic6800 Plus its not like liberalism has caused even bigger tragedies that are going on to today. Did you know that planned parenthood the first institutionalized eugenics program was started in America?

[@MrRinoHunter]

@Stephen Jenkins what country you from?

[@ale9744]

Ahmad Abbassi and Nazis killed 21 million Soviets mostly civilians and some Muslims Nazi sympathizer comments false pro-Nazi bullshit on you tube

[@w8lvradio]

Wow I love your office props! Can you tell us the radios TVs and models and how you aquired them? And PLEASE tell me that at least one of those radios has Connelrad markings... 73 DE W8LV BILL

[@DerDop]

in my hometown one of the watch repair shops is a family bussinnes. the older owner ( 90) learned how to fix watches while he was a POW. he shared food with a German pow, who was an engineer. the German went later to work for Russians in a watch factory and he teached him how to repair watches etc etc. fun fact: he states that the german engineer became the head of the factory, or something like that.

[@mad_max21]

Incomplete title. This video is only about German and Japanese POWs held by Soviets.

[@noidea8710]

4.10 that german pow looked like Vladimir putin

[@Moritz19081980]

My grandfather (German) was 6 or more years in a Siberian prisoner camp. They had to work hard and didn't get much food. They actually ate water with bugs because the bugs was the only protein they got.

[@spqr1945]

Soviet civilians did not have lots of food as well after a war.

[@Moritz19081980]

@@spqr1945 Soviet civilians did not have lots of food before the war either. ;)

[@deejaysyn420]

Is that Churchill's bio on the front of your desk (the orange books)?

[@ozdavemcgee2079]

You should do one on how USA held Germans in the Rhineland camps. Where Germans slet in the open, drowned in mud during rain at night, no sanitation, dysentery, typhus, lack of food, deaths from all of the above. And these included civillians, hitler youth teenages, and many women. Shamefull

[@Azteca2300]

Yes do a video on these camps too

[@geriharp132]

War is Hell...and the Germans started it

[@aaronjacobfox4612]

if they didnt start the war none of these would happen

[@PoweredByLS2]

@@aaronjacobfox4612 WWII was pre-destined with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles by design.....

[@evemastrokalos9272]

@@geriharp132 britain and france declaired war.

[@mrgrinch35iswise62]

@13:05 Russia and Japan are still at war, at least on paper. The two neighbours in the Pacific Ocean never signed a peace treaty officially ending World War II.

[@Afdch]

Well a ceasefire is signed, look up Soviet-Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956. So de jure sides aren't at war, though not at peace really too.

[@TheMatissV]

You need to do more later cold-war vids

[@arizon1985arx]

Is there is any difference between those POW's in USSR and simple slaves (for example in Roman Empire)?

[@Commonlogicguy]

They all *enthusiastically* participated in the development of rural areas of mother Russia in service to Soviet Union and its people.

[@mordapl1641]

Pow living conditions? *Laughs in Stalin*

[@deadby15]

if you attack first and butcher millions, then you can't expect to be treated nice.

[@mraaronhd]

I think something that wasn’t mentioned was how the pows treated each other during their time behind bars. There were many accounts of pows taking revenge against those who they thought had “sold out” to the enemy, or had did something that earned them more brownie points with their captors, thus earning better treatment over the other prisoners.

[@kyeyork9377]

May i ask why you dont show the Swastika? In this channel its history and ps great channel