On this day September 13th 1941.

On this day September 13th 1941.

German High Command announces that Russian POWs will get less rations than other nationalities.

From the very beginning, German policy on the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) was determined by Nazi ideology. German political and military leaders regarded Soviet POWs not only as racially less valuable but as potential enemies, obstacles in the German conquest of "living space."

The Nazi regime claimed that it was under no obligation for the humane care of prisoners of war from the Red Army, because the Soviet Union had not ratified the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, nor had it specifically declared its commitment to the 1907 Hague Convention on the Rules of War.

Technically both nations, therefore, were bound only by the general international law of war as it had developed in modern times. Yet even under that law, prisoners of war were to be protected.

In the middle of July 1941, Gen. Hermann Reinecke, who was the officer in charge of prisoner-of-war affairs in the Armed Forces High Command, permitted security forces under the Reich Security Main Office to screen Soviet prisoners of war in the POW camps for "politically and racially intolerable elements" among the Soviet prisoners. These prisoners were transferred to SS jurisdiction and killed. This contributed to an enormous rise in the number of victims, since not only were "all important state and party functionaries" regarded as "intolerable," but so were "intellectuals," all "fanatic Communists," and "all Jews."

The executions did not take place in the prisoner-of-war camps or their immediate area. Instead, prisoners were transferred to a secure area and shot. The concentration camps proved an ideal location for executions. In Gross-Rosen concentration camp, for example, the SS killed more than 65,000 Soviet POWS by feeding them only a thin soup of grass, water, and salt for six months. In Flossenbürg, SS men burned Soviet POWs alive. In Majdanek, they shot them in trenches. In Mauthausen, Austria, so many POWs were shot that the local population complained that their water supply had been contaminated. The rivers and streams near the camp ran red with blood. Estimates of the numbers of victims of this operation range from at least 140,000 up to 500,000.