The war between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia (1941–1945) was
arguably the largest and most brutal theater of land warfare in
the twentieth century. Fueled by bitter ideological antagonism,
the enormous cruelty at the front extended directly into the
treatment of prisoners of war on both sides. Of 5.7 million
captured Red Army soldiers, about 3.3 million died in German
captivity—a staggering mortality rate of 57 percent. By
comparison, the mortality rate of British and American POWs in
German hands lay between 3.5 and 5.1 percent. On the other side,
almost one-third of up to 3 million German and Austrian
prisoners of war perished in Soviet captivity. And Germany’s
allies fared little better: 2 million of their soldiers, mainly
Hungarians, Rumanians, Czechs, and Italians, were captured by
the Red Army during the war and suffered mortality rates at
times comparable to that among the Germans. In Soviet and German
POW camps, years of hard labor and almost unbearable living
conditions shaped the lives of those wh