From the first day when the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union, tens of thousands of our compatriots rushed to the front lines as volunteers. They not only provided medical and health services to the army, but also fought in various departments of the army. Without courage, dexterit

The Red Army was characterized by the unprecedented participation of women in hostilities during World War II. From the first day when the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union, tens of thousands of our compatriots rushed to the front lines as volunteers. They not only provided medical and health services to the army, but also fought in various departments of the army. Without courage, dexterity and Men are far less prepared to die for their country. “Communists hate any opponent, they are fanatical and dangerous,” the German wrote of Soviet female soldiers. They really fought to the end. After all, they knew that in captivity they did not have to wait for mercy...

"Russian women shot in uniform"

For the German occupiers, the large number of women joining the Red Army was an inexplicable phenomenon, although women also appeared In the ranks of the SS and the Wehrmacht, they only formed auxiliary units. Most of the mobilized German women served as guards in the concentration camps, while there were only a few in aviation, sabotage and reconnaissance units - more than a hundred, according to various sources. In the Red Army, women account for about 800,000. " Stalin did not feel sorry for Russian women...", the Nazis hypocritically declared in their agitation, while they themselves ruthlessly eliminated Soviet frontline soldiers because they refused to recognize them as soldiers, equating them with guerrillas Team.

Even before the attack on the Soviet Union, the German military command gave the Wehrmacht soldiers an order that was not in force until 1944: "If you meet a Russian commissar on the way, you can identify them by the Soviet star on their sleeve, and Russian women wore uniforms, then they had to be shot immediately. Whoever failed to do so, who did not obey orders, would be held accountable and punished.” Therefore, in the early years of the war, Soviet female prisoners of war were most often shot on the spot.

Historian Aaron Schnell, in his book "Captivity," cites the memoirs of an Italian soldier who fought with the "Russian Women's Regiment" near Kharkov. According to him, all captured frontline soldiers were sentenced to immediate execution by the Germans. "The women did not expect anything else. They only asked to be allowed to preliminary wash themselves in the bathhouse and wash the dirty sheets in order to die in a clean state, according to ancient Russian customs..." The author quotes eyewitness accounts. The historian cites many more cases of on-the-spot revenge, often accompanied by brutal torture and ill-treatment.

At the same time, many Soviet female prisoners of war ended up in German concentration camps. How many of them are being held there and the total number of prisoners is unknown. Historians have only shown that they accounted for no more than one-third of those in these camps. In German concentration camps, Soviet women were subjected to the same perverted torture and violence. "Concentration camp guards and camp policemen among former prisoners of war were particularly cynical about female prisoners of war. They raped the captives or forced them to live with them under threat of death," Arun Schnell wrote, citing eyewitness testimony and Confessions of concentration camp authorities tried by military tribunal .

The commander of the female barracks of Millerovo concentration camp was known for his special sophistication. She sent "half a liter" of the girls she liked to the police every day and, in case of resistance, subjected the prisoners to sadistic torture - burning with fire. Pepper in private parts or forced to sit on a wooden stake. Soviet female prisoners of war who refused to work in enemy munitions factories were also brutally tortured and executed: they were stripped naked, forced to stand in the cold for hours, starved, and Alan Schnell even quoted that in the oven cases of being burned alive. A particularly terrible fate awaited not only rebels and "vermin", but also Jews. So, for example, military doctor Tsilya Tverskaya was tied to two tanks and torn to pieces by the Germans.

What is the answer?

Not much information has been preserved about the fate of Nazi women captured by the Soviet Union.It is known that German female prisoners of war interned in the Soviet Union after the war participated in the recovery of the national economy destroyed by the occupiers, working in factories and factories, working on construction sites, logging, etc. How difficult the working conditions were is still debated.

In fact, the only evidence of the "nightmare of concentration camp life" is the recollection of prisoner Frieda Hlinsky, who claimed that during the four years she spent on various construction sites, "dozens of her compatriots died working in the Soviet Union and disease.” However, the reliability of this evidence is not supported by any evidence. If cases of violence and abuse against German women occur, they are not serious in nature.

The Soviet concentration camp regime more strictly complied with the provisions of the Geneva Convention. No matter how grim the fate of German female prisoners of war, it could not be compared with the desperate struggle for survival that our compatriots were forced to engage in. German camp.

Compared to Allies

At the same time, Americans, who knew Nazi atrocities not from personal experience but from extensive media coverage, harbored a real hatred for the Germans and, according to eyewitnesses, their treatment of Nazi prisoners of war. Much worse than the Russians. The Americans organized 19 concentration camps in Germany and built no barracks for prisoners of war. Both men and women were imprisoned in grass cooked in the open and died of dysentery due to extreme lack of food. "We were just being guarded," recalled Michael Priebke, a former Wehrmacht soldier who was imprisoned in a camp near Koblenz. "All the prisoners slept in the rain, in the wind, and lay like pigs in the mud. Yes, at least they fed the pigs! Sometimes they brought food - they gave potatoes every day. Then I met my uncle, who Say, you know, in Berlin , the Russians fed the Germans porridge with their field kitchens! That really surprised me."