Con la locuzione atrocità dei nazisti contro i prigionieri di guerra sovietici ci si riferisce agli omicidi politici ed allo sterminio per negligenza nella custodia deliberatamente condotti verso i soldati dell'Unione Sovietica dalla Germania nazista. Ne conseguì la morte di un numero, variabile secondo le stime, dai 3,3 ai 3,5 milioni di prigionieri di guerra, circa il 60% di tutti i sovietici catturati dai tedeschi nel corso della seconda guerra mondiale.[1][2][3][4][5]
Secondo le stime dell'United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), circa 3,3 milioni di prigionieri di guerra sovietici morirono in custodia nazista, su un totale di 5,7 milioni catturati. Questa cifra rappresenta circa il 57% di morti sul totale, avvicinandosi così al rateo di morte degli ebrei in custodia nazista (pari a oltre il 60%[6]) e spicca a confronto con la morte in prigionia di soli 8.300 britannici e statunitensi su un totale di circa 231.000, con un rateo di morte del 3,6%.[7]Alcune stime variano da 5 milioni di morti, inclusi quelli uccisi subito dopo la rinuncia (un numero indeterminato, anche se certamente un gran numero).[nonchiaro][8][9] Solamente il 5% dei prigionieri sovietici che morirono erano di etnia ebraica.[10] Tra coloro che morirono ci fu il figlio di Stalin: Jakov Džugašvili.
Peter Calvocoressi, Guy Wint, Total War - "The total number of prisoners taken by the German armies in the USSR was in the region of 5.5 million. Of these, the astounding number of 3.5 million or more had been lost by the middle of 1944 and the assumption must be that they were either deliberately killed or done to death by criminal negligence. Nearly two million of them died in camps and close on another million disappeared while in military custody either in the USSR or in rear areas; a further quarter of a million disappeared or died in transit between the front and destinations in the rear; another 473,000 died or were killed in military custody in Germany or Poland." They add, "This slaughter of prisoners cannot be accounted for by the peculiar chaos of the war in the east. ... The true cause was the inhuman policy of the Nazis towards the Russians as a people and the acquiescence of army commanders in attitudes and conditions which amounted to a sentence of death on their prisoners."
Christian Streit: Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die Sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen, 1941-1945, Bonn: Dietz (3. Aufl., 1. Aufl. 1978), ISBN 3-8012-5016-4 - "Between 22 June 1941 and the end of the war, roughly 5.7 million members of the Red Army fell into German hands. In January 1945, 930,000 were still in German camps. A million at most had been released, most of whom were so-called "volunteers" (Hilfswillige) for (often compulsory) auxiliary service in the Wehrmacht. Another 500,000, as estimated by the Army High Command, had either fled or been liberated. The remaining 3,300,000 (57.5 percent of the total) had perished."
Nazi persecution of Soviet Prisoners of War United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - "Existing sources suggest that some 5.7 million Soviet army personnel fell into German hands during World War II. As of January 1945, the German army reported that only about 930,000 Soviet POWs remained in German custody. The German army released about one million Soviet POWs as auxiliaries of the German army and the SS. About half a million Soviet POWs had escaped German custody or had been liberated by the Soviet army as it advanced westward through eastern Europe into Germany. The remaining 3.3 million, or about 57 percent of those taken prisoner, were dead by the end of the war."
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