Is it true, that some US and/or British Prisoners of WW II liberated from Red Army never returned home?

Question

Recently ago I got information, that US and British prisoners of ww II captured in Germany and then at first liberated from the Red Army, but not decapitated and transported to USSR Gulags and never returned home. Is that true? What was done respectively not done by their governments to bring them free? Is it possible, that some of them still live in Russia? Any information about their doom available?

Answer 1

There are stories, mostly unfounded, about thousands of American (but no British) POW/MIAs who never returned after liberation by the Soviets:



Remember Stalin and the West were allies until soon after WWII. At the Yalta meeting between Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt, the plight of POWs was discussed; as the camps were captured the POWs were to be repatriated, and the majority were certainly handed over - although in some cases it took a long time to be returned.



If any remained behind it was for one of the following reasons:



They were too ill to travel - this would have affected a sizable percentage of POWs as wounds or disease made travel impossible.



They became dedicated Communists - although I have never read of any British or American troops doing this - there were many German POWs who became communists, notably Paulus, the German commander at Stalingrad.



They had committed crimes after the camps were liberated. They would have been held until MPs from the POWs country could arrange for them to be returned.



They possessed useful knowledge - i.e the crew of the B-29s that crashed, and were either too valuable for the Soviets to release, or had died under interrogation.



They were so hostile to the Soviets that they were taken away and "re-educated".





There are persistent internet rumours of thousands of American MIAs who should have been liberated by the Soviets and who never returned home, but, I can find no reliable source for the information, and no scholarly article. I suspect that the numbers have been exaggerated (and may only be in the hundreds - notably the crew of the B-29s that crashed on Soviet soil) and that, in reality, the majority of American MIAs were those who were too ill to travel, or who died of their wounds or disease and who's records got lost / confused due to the fog of war,



See:

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/wora.html

Answer 2

I had family the Germans held as POW liberated by the Russians in late May 1945. Never once did they make any assertion or considered the Russians keeping fellow American and British service personnel. Anyone making such claims are I believed, confusing the unfortunate German held Georgian POW's with the American and UK POW's.



They could also be confused with the USSR deportation of captured German forces into the USSR that never returned.



Georgian military personnel originally from the USSR, captured by the Germans, (or joined them) were taken back into Russia never to be heard from again. At the time Georgia was a part of the USSR and to have been captured by the Germans would have been considered a crime against the state the USSR.



Any information that US, or UK prisoners were included might be found in the records of Georgian, German POW's the USSR did take back to the USSR.

Answer 3

particularly a great initiate. 9 in case you carry out a little advancements. somewhat over the precise on the tip, and persons particularly did think of they have been fixing some thing in this actual conflict. A trooper coughing up blood could have been despatched to the rear the two to steer away from infecting different troops or as taken care of as a conflict wound via fact the overpressure of close by exploding artillery actually might reason this variety of subject. There might, of course, have been counterexamples the place human beings did no longer get despatched back whilst they must have for a sort of motives. one among those motives is that for the duration of circumstances of shelling harm, the lungs have no fearful device, and somebody coughing up blood might enable it circulate via fact it did no longer harm all that plenty. different subject concerns, nevertheless, like trenchfoot, might circulate untreated. Dysentery became a extensive subject, as have been typhus and cholera. Sanitation became a extensive subject, inflicting those to unfold. Tone is stable and intensely Victorian. The generals did no longer circulate over the precise with the troops. do no longer forget approximately the thought that adult men interior the trenches are combating for another, no longer any particular ideology, and not for any romantic appropriate. one among my renowned memories from WWI is infantrymen interior the trenches on the two factors making a song Christmas carols with one yet another on Christmas day, then getting back to the combat the following day. i might substitute the date and use that. you may look up Sgt York's tale back one among those days. Edit: notice that letters going out might perhaps have gave the impact of this, yet whilst screened off by way of censors, they might no longer have made it abode. incredibly the final letter formerly this might in all likelihood no longer have made it.

Answer 4

i read an article a couple months ago about a guy that was liberated by the red army and fought with them for the remainder for the war. we was sent back to the states after the war ended and was decorated by both russia and the US.