General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: German prisoner of war camps in the US??? [View all]Victor_c3
(3,557 posts)The Soviet Union (Russia) lost about 23,000,000 people during the war, or just under 14% of its population. The Germans were fighting a war of annihilation with the Soviets, not just a war of conquest.
I took a couple of German history classes when I was in college. This is a subject that I'm very well versed on and interested in reading about. since Germany didn't exist as a unified country until the late 1800s, most of the history of Germany invariably focuses on WWII and the period leading up to that war.
Up to about 1/3rd of German labor during WWII was made up of Russian civilian slave labor. They were treated only slightly better than the Jews and other people thrown into the concentration camps.
I lived in Germany for about 4 years while I was serving in the Army. My wife and I went on a trip to some tourist trap in the Black Forest region and the old German guy came up to me and started talking all excitedly to me about how much he loved the US. He said that he spent some time in a POW camp in Texas, learned English, and fell in love with our country.
I lived off-base and rented an apartment from an old German guy. I always thought it was funny that, of all the old German men that I saw and spoke to, that they all claimed that they had nothing to do with WWII or the Nazis. Kind of funny, since I was living in Bavaria and about 40 minutes outside of Nuremberg - the center of support in Germany for the Nazis during WWII.