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5 Elon L. Rev. 359 (2013)
Hitler's Forgotten Genocides: The Fate of Soviet Pows

handle is hein.journals/elonlr5 and id is 367 raw text is: HITLER'S FORGOTTEN GENOCIDES: THE FATE OF SOVIET POWS THOMAS EARL PORTER, NORTH CAROLINA A&T STATE UNIVERSITY The sheer enormity of Soviet losses at the hands of German forces during the Second World War staggers the mind. During the immedi- ate post-war period, Stalin did not want the West to know just how badly the Soviet Union had been mauled or the fact that far more Soviet soldiers had died than German ones (up to three times as many); consequently, the Soviets claimed that the total number of dead was 7 million, while Western estimates were between 10 to 15 million Soviet dead.' It was only during the Khrushchev era that the true scale of the disaster was revealed and the more accurate figure of 20 million dead was generally accepted.2 Of these, only half were soldiers.' The rest were at least 10 million civilians, including 2 million who died as slave laborers in Nazi Germany.4 The death toll has more recently been put at 25, 27 and even 30 million, though I suspect the latter figures also take into consideration the decline in birth rates.5 InJanu- ary 2009, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev appointed yet another commission to give a definitive accounting of Soviet losses.6 Soviet military records are not particularly accurate, but it is esti- mated that the total number of its dead from combat, hospitals, or I Michael Ellman & S. Maksudov, Soviet Deaths in the Great Patriotic War: A Note, 46 EUR-AsIAN STUD. 671, 671 (1994). 2 RotF-DIETER MOLLER & GERD R. UEBERSCHAR, HITLER'S WAR IN THE EAST 1941- 1945: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT 142 (Bruce D. Little trans., 1997). 3 Id. Velikaia Otechestvennaia Voina, 1941-1945 gg: voenno-istoricheskie ocherk, vol. 4, 289. 5 Ellman & Maksudov, supra note 1, at 671. 6 Irina Titova, Medvedev Orders Precise Soviet WWJI Death Toll, HUFFINGTON POST (Jan. 27, 2009), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/27/medvedev-orders-precise-s n 161433.html?view=screen. (359)

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