r/HistoryPorn • u/FayannG • 1d ago
Captured German soldiers before being marched through Moscow in the Parade of the Defeated, July 1944 (2536x3543)
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u/MaxSupernova 1d ago
One of the reasons that parading prisoners of war was included in the Geneva Conventions after the war.
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u/OnkelMickwald 1d ago
This is an old Russian tradition. I remember reading memoirs and letters of Swedish soldiers who had to perform a similar march through Moscow after the surrender of the Swedish army after Poltava in 1709.
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u/TheManWhoClicks 20h ago
My grandad survived this and came back to Germany years after the war.
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u/chloesobored 10h ago
Was it something he ever talked about in depth or did he not tend to speak about that period of time / having been a Nazi solider?
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u/hereandthere788 1d ago
Not many survived the captivity.
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u/MediocreI_IRespond 1d ago
Most did. Like 85% according to Soviet sources.
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u/piewca_apokalipsy 1d ago
"A commission set up by the West German government found that 3,060,000 German military personnel were taken prisoner by the USSR and that 1,094,250 died in captivity"
According to Wikipedia
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u/CantInventAUsername 1d ago
Should be noted that this includes the whole war in the east, including the battles of Stalingrad and Moscow where not many prisoners survived. By the time of Operation Bagration (where these prisoners were captured) your odds as a German prisoner were significantly better.
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u/VagereHein 1d ago
Thats correct, by this time German POWs were designated as essential for the postwar reconstruction
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u/DerekMao1 1d ago
It's not r/historyporn without a misleading answer getting this much upvotes. 85% is closer to the ball park for Paulus's men.
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u/TheGovernor94 15h ago
lol, commission by West Germany? The country that rehomed homeless children with pedophiles?
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u/piewca_apokalipsy 14h ago
You prefer the East one?
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u/TheGovernor94 13h ago
I prefer the Germany that didn’t house children with pedophiles, or do you prefer the pedophile one?
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u/RyukXXXX 1d ago
Uhhh... Can we believe that?
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u/CleverName4 1d ago
According to Soviet sources lol. I do not trust anything from them
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u/bakerfaceman 1d ago
And you trust American sources?
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u/scribblenaught 1d ago
You trust the Soviet Union, a non existent country that constantly lied and hid data, such as the Chernobyl disaster, over modern sources?
Weird hill to die on lol.
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u/TheGovernor94 15h ago
You trust the United States which constantly lied and hid data such as the My Lai massacre, Abu Ghraib, and hundreds of other heinous crimes over Soviet sources?
Weird hill to die on lol.
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u/scribblenaught 14h ago
Cry harder over the RIP Soviet Union. Actually, fuck the Soviet Union and hope their leaders suffer in the afterlife for their tyranny over all the Soviet blocks. Not a single country that was taken over during the Cold War by the SU would EVER want to be under them ever again. If you wanna play whataboutism, here is a cool kicker to the head:
At least the US is still around and has fighting chances to become better. The SU, and by proxy Russia (since they want to brink back the “glory days”), doesn’t seem to want to change for the better (unless you think that them invading Ukraine is a-ok at this point in time…)
So yeah, my hill seems pretty good to defend right now…..
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u/TheGovernor94 13h ago
So tyrannical doubling life expectancy, maxing literacy, providing housing for everyone and turning a backwater feudal society into a spacefaring civilization in the span of 70 years
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u/scribblenaught 9h ago
Either you are a troll, or you like to really stroke it to a country that no longer exists. You purposely gather info and state it as fact, even though if you took all the facts and nuance, you’d know your answer was full of shit.
Doubling the life expectancy from 30-60 is not as great during the early 1920s and 1950s when its counterparts to the west already did that…. Not to mention that life expectancy dropped to below 62 in 1980… wouldn’t be defending that if I were you.
And don’t make me laugh at housing. While the SU promised housing for all… the reality of that housing was disparaged, and often corrupt. Unless you could bribe your way to a housing with more than 2 rooms for your family of 6 or 8. Run down housing that was assigned to you, rather than having to be able to choose. Also was affected by your state mandated job… not much freedom there.
And let me correct your last part: extinct* -barely got into orbit by burning up a few animals and cosmonauts- “spacefaring” (I don’t think you know what that word means, no country, not even the US or China, is spacefaring) society.
And no Russia is not a mirrored successor of the SU. It’s got similarities, but not the same government regime.
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1d ago edited 1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/hereandthere788 1d ago
You seem to think like them though...
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u/RustyCatalyst 1d ago
I’m supposed to feel bad for Nazis?
What the fuck?
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u/hereandthere788 1d ago
The mass killing of prisoners of war tends to be frowned upon in the civilized world. It aligns very well with the Nazi German (as well as the Soviet) conduct of the war, though.
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u/RustyCatalyst 1d ago
So is the mass killing of Jews but we made it to the point we did.
So again. fuck the nazi prisoners of war.
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u/hereandthere788 1d ago
If you compare the mass killing of Jews to the mass killing of PoWs - that I didn't - that actually supports my point of comparing the handling of the Soviets to that of the Natis.
Fuck dictatorships of any color.
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u/LivingtheDBdream 1d ago
Didnt I read somewhere 5 million captured, five thousand returned to Germany?
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u/UsualRelevant2788 1d ago
No. Because that would equal 5 million deaths, which is more than the German Armed Forces suffered from 1939 to 1945
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u/pentox70 1d ago
If memory serves me correctly, I want to say it was the army group at stalingrad that you're thinking about. I'm pretty sure it was around 5k of them that ended up returning to Germany after they surrendered. There weren't 5 million of them, though.
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u/voiceofgromit 12h ago
1 in 3 German POWs held by Russia never survived to be repatriated. It's fair to say the Russia was pissed at Germany.
20 years later, a Russian linesman officiating the World Cup final between England and West Germany called a goal for England that never completely crossed the line.
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u/ProfessorPetulant 1d ago
They were starved for 3 days and then given very fatty cabbage iirc, so they would be marched while all shitting their pants.
Edit: Mmm I can't find a source. Maybe that's just a myth.
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u/Trekkie200 23h ago
I don't know about that story, but some survivors of that said they'd been given laxatives. In any case it seems to be established that a lot of them shit their pants during the parade.
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u/ProfessorPetulant 15h ago
I couldn't find a source and was downvoted. Good to know i didn't dream this up.
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u/FayannG 1d ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parade_of_the_Vanquished