German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union

With the formation of the "National Committee for a Free Germany" and the "League of German Officers", POWs who cooperated with the Soviets received more privileges and better rations.

As a result of Operation Bagration and the collapse on the southern part of the Eastern front, the number of German POWs nearly doubled in the second half of 1944.

[5] Waitman Wade Beorn states that 35.8 percent of German POWs died in Soviet custody,[15] which is supported by other academic works.

[16][17] According to Edward Peterson, the U.S. chose to hand over several hundred thousand German prisoners to the Soviet Union in May 1945 as a "gesture of friendship".

[18] Niall Ferguson maintains that "it is clear that many German units sought to surrender to the Americans in preference to other Allied forces, and particularly the Red Army".

[19] Heinz Nawratil maintains that U.S. forces refused to accept the surrender of German troops in Saxony and Bohemia, and instead handed them over to the Soviet Union.

In its report of 1974 they found that 3,060,000 German military personnel were taken prisoner by the USSR[23] and that 1,094,250 died in captivity (549,360 from 1941 to April 1945; 542,911 from May 1945 to June 1950 and 1,979 from July 1950 to 1955).

Ullstein., 2000 Page 246 According to Russian historian Grigori F. Krivosheev, Soviet NKVD figures list 2,733,739 German "Wehrmacht" POWs (Военнопленные из войск вермахта) taken with 381,067 having died in captivity.

[14] The table below lists the Soviet statistics for total number of German prisoners of war reported by the NKVD as of 22 April 1956 (excluding USSR citizens who were serving in Wehrmacht).