From time immemorial, people have been at war with each other. This often results in captivity. Wounds, hunger, illness, slave labor - all these hardships of bondage finally wear down and destroy the prisoners, who with all their souls strive to find freedom. They hope that they will still be welcomed at home.
Woe to the vanquished
The ancient Egyptians called the captives the living dead, and this already says everything about their fate. Behind the uniqueness of Egyptian architecture are countless slaves, on whose bones everything grew.
According to the Spanish chronicle, during the lighting of the main temple in the capital of the Aztecs, 80 thousand prisoners were sacrificed, killed in terrible ways.
The Europeans also acted barbarously. In the 13th century, in the era of Christianity, the ancestors of "peaceful" Latvians showed brutal ferocity towards the prisoners - they executed them, for example, by quartering.
And what was the attitude to the prisoners in Russia? There is little evidence, because the chroniclers described big events, not everyday life. In the "Strategicon" 600 AD NS. Mauritius Strategia is evidence of the humane attitude of our ancestors to disarmed enemies: “The Slavs do not keep their captives in slavery, like other peoples, for an unlimited time, but, limiting the period, offer them a choice: do they want to return to their homeland for a certain ransom or stay free there? " Mercy to the vanquished was demanded by the “Cathedral Code” of Moscow Rus (1649): “To spare the enemy who asks for mercy; not to kill unarmed; not to fight with women; do not touch youngsters. To deal with the prisoners with humanity, to be ashamed of barbarism. No less weapons to strike the enemy with philanthropy. A warrior must crush the enemy's power, and not defeat the unarmed”(Suvorov). And they have been doing this for centuries. For example, after 1945, 4 million Germans, Japanese, Hungarians, Austrians, Romanians, Italians, Finns were captured … What was the attitude towards them? They were pitied. Of the captured Germans, two-thirds of us survived, of ours in German camps - a third! “We were fed better in captivity than the Russians themselves ate. I left a part of my heart in Russia,”the German veterans testify. "The daily ration of a private: 600 g of rye bread, 40 g of meat, 120 g of fish, 600 g of potatoes and vegetables, other products with a total energy value of 2533 kcal per day" ("Norms of boiler allowance for prisoners of war in the NKVD camps"). For comparison: the total calorie content of the Muscovite consumer basket in September 2005 was 2382 kcal!
It was customary to redeem captive relatives in Russia. For centuries they lived under the threat of raids, the likelihood of captivity was part of life - and a kind of "state insurance" arose. Since the 16th century, the entire population has been paying a tax - "polonyanichny money" (redemption treasury, enshrined in the "Cathedral Code"). The money was given by the tsar himself, the money spent was collected "by the whole world" through an annual distribution among the population, and they again replenished the treasury. It was considered a godly deed to give money for ransom from captivity. For the sake of rescuing their own, they went on military campaigns, although for some of the soldiers this meant death in a new battle. The dead were given crosses in a foreign land, the survivors were awarded; Those who returned from captivity after the Russian-Japanese war marched solemnly along Nevsky Prospekt, and the capital honored them as heroes.
It was Russia that proposed the development of general rules for a humane attitude towards prisoners; in the 20th century, international laws appeared: the Hague Convention "On the Laws and Customs of War" (1907), the Geneva Conventions "On the Treatment of Prisoners of War" (1929 and 1949). True, all this was on paper, but in fact the atrocities continued. Everyone knows what the "cultured" Germans and Japanese did in World War II: experiments on humans, fat melted out of them to make soap, millions of deaths in camps … In our time, morals have not improved: cruelty towards prisoners is still practiced very widely …
Hands up
Russia's haters gloat over the large number of our prisoners in World War II. According to various estimates, the number of Soviet soldiers in German captivity in 1941-1945. ranged from 4,559,000 to 5,735,000 people. The numbers are really huge, but there are many objective reasons for such a mass capture of people.
1. The surprise of the attack
No matter what the proponents of the idea said “the USSR would have attacked Germany anyway, Hitler simply preempted Stalin,” but it was the Germans, not the Russians, who attacked, and this is a fact.
2. Number of attackers
On June 22, 152 divisions, 1 brigade and 2 motorized regiments of the Wehrmacht went into battle; Finland fielded 16 divisions and 3 brigades; Hungary - 4 brigades; Romania - 13 divisions and 9 brigades; Italy - 3 divisions; Slovakia - 2 divisions and 1 brigade. Considering that 2 brigades are approximately equal to 1 division, we get that in total 195 divisions went to the "crusade against Bolshevism" - 4.6 million people! And the victorious Wehrmacht was helped by more and more nations of the "united Europe".
3. The quality of the attackers
The USSR was attacked by experienced professionals, who got their hands on in the war.
4. Unsuitability of many commanders
The defenders did not have experienced officers - a consequence of the pre-war purges in the army, which washed to the surface a mass of mediocrities and simply scoundrels. People were possessed by fear, the enemy relied on their paralyzed will no less than on their combat power: on the eve of the war, the Wehrmacht General Staff reports on the state of the Red Army noted that its weakness also lay in the fear of the commanders of responsibility. In an atmosphere of suspicion, uncomplaining obedience to orders from above was highly valued. And how many "wild" orders were there at the beginning of the war!
5. Lack of reliable rear
Even if the defenders held on to death in spite of everything, there were burning cities in the rear. The warriors were worried about the fate of their loved ones. Streams of refugees filled up the sea of captives.
6. An atmosphere of panic
The rapid advance of the enemy through their native land frightened people. Fear made it difficult to act effectively against the attackers.
7. Repression in relation to those who surrendered
"Order of the NKO of the USSR No. 270" deprived many people of the opportunity to be full-fledged soldiers. If a person came from the side of the enemy, for example, escaped from captivity, then he was considered a traitor. The presumption of innocence did not work. And yet, many captured tried to escape: in groups, alone, from the camps, at the stage; there are a lot of cases, although the chance to leave was very small.
Western Front, "Ardennes Breakthrough" - Wehrmacht counterattack against the Western allies from December 16, 1944 to January 28, 1945. Having wedged into the enemy's front for 100 km, the Germans captured 30 thousand Americans! Given the scale of the hostilities in which they participated, this is a lot. The Anglo-Saxons did not hold the blow at all, quantitatively and qualitatively prevailing over the agonizing enemy, even when his days were numbered! If we compare the situation for the same factors that took place during the attack on the Soviet Union, it turns out that American and British soldiers were captured by the enemy no less often than ours, if not more often.
1. Surprise
“75,000 American soldiers at the front,” writes Dick Toland in his book about the operation in the Ardennes, “went to bed as usual on the night of December 16th. None of the American commanders anticipated a major German offensive that evening.”
2. Number of attackers
In the offensive, you need a threefold superiority in everything! The Germans, on the other hand, collected one and a half times fewer soldiers than the Anglo-Saxons - 25 divisions, including 7 tank (900 tanks) and 800 aircraft. The Wehrmacht divisions were much weaker than the Allied ones both in terms of the number of personnel and in armament; understaffing in them reached 40%. According to the allied headquarters, all German formations in their combat power corresponded to 39 Allied divisions, which by mid-December 1944 had 63 full-blooded divisions on a 640 km front (of which 40 were American), including 15 tank divisions (10,000 tanks), 8,000 aircraft; there were 4 airborne divisions in reserve.
3. The quality of the attackers
The position of the Germans was critical; they were losing the war on all fronts; their allies have already surrendered or fled to the enemy, increasing the already powerful potential of the anti-Hitler coalition. Our army was stationed in the east of the Reich, preparing for the final assault. The Allies almost broke through to the Rhine, also preparing an offensive. The economic situation could not be worse: the Anglo-American carpet bombing turned the country into ruins, destroyed the industry, there was not enough people or raw materials. For the operation, the Germans collected literally the last crumbs - hastily prepared adolescents and men over 40; fuel was for 1 refueling, ammunition - 1 set.
4. Unsuitability of commanders
Perhaps, although on the eve of the war, allied officers did not shoot en masse, as it was in the USSR.
5. Rear of the defenders
The homeland and families of the British on their islands were not threatened by ANYTHING, not to mention the Americans who came from a well-fed country, already World War II fattening on military orders.
6. An atmosphere of panic
Taken by surprise, the Anglo-Saxons did not put up a worthy resistance, a disorderly retreat began, and then a panicky flight. The American journalist R. Ingersoll wrote in his book Top Secret: “The Germans broke through our defenses at a 50-mile front and poured into the breach, like water into a blown-up dam. And from them on all roads to the west the Americans fled headlong!
7. "Order No. 270" they did not have
The warring soldiers were people of the "democratic world", "free in their choice."
Historian Garth's assessment: "The Allies were on the brink of disaster." The Western allies were saved from defeat by two circumstances - flying weather and Soviet soldiers.
January 6, Churchill to Stalin: "There are very heavy battles going on in the west … I will be grateful if you can tell me if we can count on a major Russian offensive on the Vistula front or somewhere else during January?" A week later, the Red Army rose from the Baltic to the Carpathians, crushed the enemy's defenses and went forward. The Germans immediately removed the pressure in the west and began to transfer troops to the eastern front.
The Ardennes Shame was no exception. Korean War: 155,000 killed and 20,000 (!) Captured Americans. The conditions for capturing so many healthy, well-fed, experienced (World War II has just ended) soldiers? The United States was at that moment a world gendarme with a nuclear club and a readiness to use it (Hiroshima! Nagasaki!), They were supported by the "world community" represented by the puppet UN troops - and yet 20,000 prisoners (including 7140 people who simply surrendered) that in comparison with the number of their troops on the Korean Peninsula, shamefully large!
The cult of the prisoner of war
It must be admitted that the United States responded adequately to the mass surrender of its soldiers and the associated loss of the army's image. The "cult of the prisoner of war" was developed and skillfully introduced; within its framework, the American "GI" to this day are presented exclusively as heroes (compare with the actions of the pro-Western media in Russia!), everyone who falls into the hands of the enemy is considered a fighting warrior. Examples? The completely false "story of private Jessica Lynch", inflated by the media, where they insist that she fought back to the last bullet, and was tortured in captivity. The authors of the myth are not embarrassed by the absence of at least one witness of its capture by the Iraqis. The heroine is created, her memoirs and Hollywood "propaganda" are already in the works.
The sophisticated intensive development of the moral stability of soldiers in battle, the display of the horrors of captivity by all the media led to the fact that only 589 ji-ai surrendered in Vietnam - 12 times less than in Korea, although the war lasted three times longer, and passed through it more than 3 million soldiers. This is a success!
In 1985, the medal "For Dignified Service in Captivity" was instituted. It is awarded retroactively and posthumously to U. S. prisoners of war.
And on April 9, 2003, the president announced a new public holiday - "American POWs Remembrance Day": "They are national heroes, and their service will not be forgotten by our country." All this confirms the confidence in the soldiers that they will be taken care of if they are "unlucky" in the war: "The Motherland does not forget and does not blame its own people."
Strangers among their own
But not everyone is so liberal. So, in Japan, they preferred suicide to captivity, otherwise the relatives of the captive were persecuted by their own. In Germany and the USSR during the Second World War, the relatives of the missing person (“What if he surrendered?”) Were denied support (they did not pay benefits, pensions).
Do you remember that recently 8 Turkish soldiers were captured by the Kurds? Released two weeks later, they went to prison at home. Accusation: "Why didn't you fight back to the last bullet?"
Human rights activists complain about the fact that in the CIS the attitude towards the problem of captivity has not changed. For example, Azerbaijani soldiers who have been in Armenian captivity are condemned for treason under Art. 274 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Azerbaijan. This is a heavy charge, and they are given 12 to 15 years for it. A person who surrendered is perceived as an enemy; this is not only the position of power, but also the attitude of society. Hostility, lack of empathy and social support - all of this is what ex-captives face on a daily basis.
Ready for death?
In captivity, you can "find yourself" (injury, unconsciousness, lack of weapons and ammunition) or "surrender" - raise your hands when you still can and have something to fight.
Why does an armed man who has sworn allegiance to the Motherland raise his hands? Maybe this is the nature of man? After all, he obeys the instinct of self-preservation, based on a sense of fear. In life, there is partial fear, fear of something, and very rarely - absolute fear, fear of imminent death. It disrupts everything (even blood circulation!), Turns off thinking and previous perception of the surrounding world. A person loses the ability to think critically, to analyze the situation, to control his behavior. Having suffered the shock of fear, one can break down as a person.
Fear is a massive disease. Today, 9 million Germans suffer from panic attacks from time to time, and more than 1 million constantly (with 82 million people) - in peacetime! This is an echo of the Second World War in the psyche of those who were born later.
10 years after the Vietnam War, 1 million 750 thousand US servicemen (2/3 of those who fought) were officially recognized as in need of psychiatric treatment. This condition was passed on to their children.
Each has its own resistance to fear: in case of danger, one will fall into a stupor (sharp mental oppression until complete numbness), the other will panic, and the third will calmly find a way out. In battle, under enemy fire, everyone is afraid, but they act differently: some fight, and take others with your bare hands!
Behavior in battle is influenced by the physical condition, sometimes a person "just can't do it anymore!" A message from the encircled 2nd Shock Army of the Volkhov Front (spring 42nd): “The swamps melted, no trenches, no dugouts, we eat young foliage, birch bark, leather parts of ammunition, small animals … 3 weeks we received 50 g of crackers … last horses … The last 3 days have not eaten at all … People are extremely emaciated, there is a group mortality from hunger. " Recently healthy young men are tormented by hunger, cold, non-healing wounds, enemy fire without the possibility of shelter …
War is constant hard labor. The soldiers dug up millions of tons of earth, usually with a small sapper shovel! The positions have slightly shifted - dig again; a respite in combat conditions was out of the question. Does any army know about sleeping on the move? And with us it was a common occurrence on the march.
There is an outlandish form of casualties in the US Army - "battle fatigue"; when landing in Normandy (June 44th), it amounted to 20% of all losses, later - already 26%. In general, in the Second World War, the losses of the United States due to "overwork" amounted to 929,307 people!
People are broken by the prolonged tension from the likelihood of being killed in areas of greatest risk (leading edge in defense, first echelon in the offensive). Our soldier remained in battle formations until death or injury (there were also a change of units, but only due to large losses or considerations of tactics).
American pilots were on their way home after 25 sorties. The calculation is simple: from each raid on the Reich, 5% of the crews did not return, that is, the pilot after 20 sorties had to be in the “next world”. But whoever was lucky, he "exceeded" the norm up to 25 sorties - and goodbye. The war was in full swing for a lot of healthy American guys, it was coming to an end. And our pilots? The same long-range aviation, which made 300 sorties into the deep rear of the enemy?
It is often written how well the Germans had a "rest from war" (vacation). But this is half-truth. Holidays were, while the war was "hunting" for them. And when they became "not up to fat", then there were no vacations. We had no time for fat throughout the war. The only force in the world could withstand the blow of the German military machine - our Army! And our exhausted, sleeping on the march, having eaten horses in need, "not cool" soldiers OVERCOME a perfectly equipped skillful enemy!
The behavior in combat is influenced by the attitude towards death, and here people are very different. A surgeon who worked in Vietnam during the American aggression, to the question "What distinguishes the Vietnamese as warriors?" Everyone has heard about the Japanese kamikazes, about the Muslim martyrs. Yes, fanatics, but the main thing here is that people went to death deliberately, preparing in advance for it, this is not a suicide of losers.
Captivity captivity strife
Earlier in Russian the word "captivity" meant submission. And therefore, it is better to perish than to submit! Submitted, resigned to your fate - then you are a prisoner; no - it means that you are a slave, a fighter bound by the enemy, not captured, not subordinate!
Let's go back to Order No. 270: it defined the attitude of the state towards its warriors who were captured, and in violation of age-old traditions. This became, perhaps, the main misfortune of our prisoners: "The Motherland has renounced and cursed!" They were very afraid of being captured, but despite their courage and fortitude, at the beginning of the war this happened to many.
The meaning of the word ("captivity" = "submission") was obscured by the very fact of falling into the hands of the enemy: "In captivity, it means surrendered!" The warrior who fell into captivity, who did not submit, was equated with an obedient coward.
“It all depends on how the person behaved when he fell into the hands of the enemy. Even the most hopeless situation cannot deprive him of the opportunity to resist”(Marshal Meretskov).
This is about those very prisoners of ours who pierce our eyes. How to behave if "Motherland has renounced and cursed"? The majority tried to escape: in groups, separately, from the camps, at the stage; there are a lot of cases, although the chance to leave was very small. Here are the data from German sources: "As of 01.09.42 (for 14 months of the war): 41,300 Russians fled from captivity." Further - more: "The shoots have become rampant: every month from the total number of those who fled, up to 40,000 people can be found and returned to their places of work" (Minister of Economics Speer). Further - even more: "By 01.05.44 (there is still a year of war), 1 million prisoners of war were killed while trying to escape." Our grandfathers and fathers! Which of the crafty transcordon moralists can say this about their cowardly "warriors"?
Brave, cowards - everyone wants to survive, if there is even the slightest chance. And someone in captivity went to the service of the enemy, so that at the first opportunity they go to their own. We often crossed over. But they knew what awaited them ("Order No. 270"), and therefore they also often left for a foreign land: from 23 "eastern" battalions of the Wehrmacht in Normandy, 10 battalions surrendered to the Allies!
Westerners think differently: “The most valuable thing in life is life itself, given only once. And you can go for EVERYTHING, just to keep it. Concepts such as “die for the homeland”, “sacrifice oneself”, “honor is more precious than life”, “you cannot betray” and other nonsense have long ceased to be the yardstick of a soldier and a man.
