Soviet prisoners of war
With the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, 3.35 million Soviet soldiers fell into German captivity within half a year; by the end of the war in 1945, the total had risen to 5.7 million. They were deliberately shortchanged in violation of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. Already within a few months, 2 million people died in this way. As the war progressed, Soviet prisoners of war were used for forced labor, much of it under inhumane conditions in armaments factories. Over 1 million died as a result of the hard labor. 30,000 Soviet soldiers were also “sorted out” and murdered for racist or anti-Semitic reasons.