Russia at war 1941-1945

rules, but also brought to the surface the chronic conflict that had been brewing for a long time between the officer and the commissar. In applying the new rules, the commissars (generally harder and more rigid people than the officers) had apparently gone to

extremes which the officers in many cases resented. Red Star clearly suggested now that the meting out of punishment was not the commissar's primary job, and that in fact, it wasn't his job at all, but the officer's; the commissar's primary job was "agitation and Bolshevik persuasion". This was a very clear indication that the two functions would soon be sharply divided. After this Red Star protest against the indiscriminate shooting of

"cowards" the ferocious articles in the press stopped almost completely.

Another theme that kept on recurring in Soviet propaganda was "Don't ever surrender.

Captivity in Germany is worse than death." Pravda of August 13, quoted with appropriate comments, numerous letters from Germany, including one from a German

woman called Gertrude Renn, and dated February 2,1941:

It is very cold, nearly as cold as in Russia. A lot of potatoes this winter got frozen.

These are given to the Russians who devour them raw. At Fallingbostell 200 or 300

Russians die every week, from hunger or cold. After all, they don't deserve anything else.

Whether genuine or not, this letter certainly sounds perfectly plausible in the light of what one learned then or later about Russian war-prisoners in Germany. For all that, especially in 1942, a black mark was almost automatically placed against the name of any Russian soldier who had fallen into German hands, while Russians who escaped from

German captivity (or even broke out of a German encirclement) were, as a rule, treated as

"suspects". Some were cleared; others put in "punitive battalions", others still, as we know from certain recent publications, were sent to Russian "labour" camps.

I recall a grim conversation I had with a Russian colonel shortly before the fall of Sebastopol, where many thousands of Russians were to fall into German hands.

What was it, the Colonel said, that made Sebastopol so different from Tobruk or

Singapore? "Isn't it because of the Russian's more intense hatred of the enemy, and because of the British temptation to surrender when all hope of holding out is lost? Is not the good treatment of British war prisoners by the Germans part of a definite policy—

aiming at stopping the British from fighting to the last man?"

"Do you then suggest," I said, "that if the Germans treated Russian war prisoners better, Sebastopol would have fallen long ago?" "No," he said rather angrily, "because such calculations don't enter the head of a Russian soldier, still less a Soviet sailor. These people loathe the guts of every German. Besides, they know that by fighting this hopeless battle of Sebastopol till the very end, they are tying up very large German and Rumanian forces, and are so helping the rest of the Front. Here is heroism—but heroism plus

definite orders."

I then brought up the question of the International Red Cross, the Geneva Convention, and so on. Would it not be better if Russian war prisoners were given some International Red Cross protection, for instance, as Molotov had indeed suggested? The colonel said to this: "I am not so sure about that. The damned Germans are going to trick the

International Red Cross, anyway, at least as far as our prisoners are concerned. We treat the German war prisoners reasonably well [This was, of course, much too sweeping a

statement] because, in the long run, it's a policy that will pay—not that we like doing it.

These swine are better fed than millions of our civilians—and that's a galling thought.

But would a convention with the Germans on war prisoners be a good thing? Our troops have gone through hell, and will go through many more hells before we are finished with this war. And in such a hell—I am ready to admit it—the thought that a comfortable bed and breakfast—the kind of thing British prisoners get—may be secured by the simple

gesture of surrendering to the Germans might be bad for morale. Not every man in our army has the makings of a hero. So let him die, rather than surrender... Listen, this is a terrible war, more terrible than anything you've ever seen. It's an agonising thought that our prisoners are starved to death in German camps. But, politically, the Germans are making a colossal blunder. If the Germans treated our prisoners well, it would soon be known. It's a horrible thing to say; but by ill-treating and starving our prisoners to death, the Germans are helping us."