Communications

REVIEWS OF BOOKS

To the Editor:

In the June 2002 issue of the AHR, John S. Conway's review of The Red Cross and the Holocaust by Jean-Claude Favez [/journals/ahr/107.3/br_125.html] asserts that the failure of the Soviet Union to sign the Geneva Convention of 1929 on POWs "provided the excuse for the Nazis to maltreat the vast numbers of Soviet prisoners of war taken after 1941, who were allowed to die in terrible conditions" and left the International Committee of the Red Cross "powerless to intervene." This attempt to discredit the Soviet Union has been repeated a number of times and reflects a common lack of objectivity in the realm of Soviet studies. It has been well documented that, in gross defiance of decency and international law, an estimated 3 to 4 million Soviet POWs died in German hands, the victims of murder, maltreatment, exposure, and starvation. What but an eagerness to pounce on an opportunity to discredit Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union could lend credence to "an excuse" for such atrocities? Are we really to assume that if the Soviets had signed the Geneva Convention this would have stimulated some latent humanity of the Nazi regime or a new competence from the notoriously ineffective ICRC?

     The world is well aware of the vicious Nazi treatment of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and civilians in occupied areas, but it neglects what has been termed "the forgotten holocaust" inflicted on the Soviet Union (Theo J. Schulte,The German Army and Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia, 1989, 180). Prior to its invasion of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany issued four notorious "criminal orders" (ibid., 13) depicting that invasion as a racial mission against a purportedly subhuman and evil combination of Slavs, Jewish Bolsheviks, and Asian Hordes, none of whom were considered entitled to standard legal rights or the rules of military conduct. One such order called for the execution of any captured Red Army political commissar, and Adolf Hitler personally urged his troops on the Eastern front "to remember that the enemy was not composed of soldiers, but of animals" (ibid., 191). As Soviet soldiers endured the barbarous consequences of such doctrines, the Soviet Union nevertheless pledged adherence to the protective provisions of the Hague Convention of 1907 and expressed general agreement with the principles of the Geneva Convention, except for Article 9, which provided for the segregation of POWs by race. While the still-segregationist United States accepted Article 9 (a State Department official considering it "designed to segregate prisoners for their own benefit and protection"; Foreign Relations of the United States ([1941], vol. 1: 1019), the Soviet Union rejected it as a racist violation of the Soviet constitution. Considering the racist essence of the Nazi onslaught, this was of more than peripheral concern. At that time, Germany was already bound by the Geneva Convention, and since this proved no deterrent to Germany's murderous treatment of Soviet POWs, the Soviet Union doubted the usefulness of the Geneva Convention or the ICRC and would neither trust nor dignify the Nazi regime by providing it with "the slightest pretext" (ibid. [1942], vol. 3: 567) for claiming adherence to civilized principles or international law.

Ephraim Schulman

Valdosta, Georgia Otto H. Olsen

     Gainesville, Florida

John S. Conway replies:

In response to the letter from Ephraim Schulman and Otto Olsen, neither I in my review nor Jean-Claude Favez in his book sought to diminish the horror at the maltreatment of Soviet POWs at the hands of the Germans. The fact remains that British and American POWs were treated according to the provisions of the Geneva Convention of 1929 throughout the major part of the war. Whether the Nazi military and political authorities would have treated Soviet POWs differently if the Soviet Union had signed the Convention must remain a matter of speculation. Recent scholarship, published also in Germany, indicates that increasing attention is being paid to the fate of what Schulman and Olsen call "the forgotten holocaust."

     It was always and still remains the principal aim of the International Committee of the Red Cross to mitigate the sufferings of all prisoners of war of whatever nationality.

John S. Conway

University of British Columbia

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