740.00114 European War, 1939/1935: Telegram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Thurston) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 4—3:48 a.m.]
1983. The Embassy has received a note61 from Molotov62 (which also has been addressed to all other diplomatic missions and published in the Soviet press) with respect to the mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war by the Germans.
The note states that the Soviet Government is in possession of information indicating that the German authorities are indulging in systematic cruel treatment of Red army soldiers and officers, such as torture with hot irons; the gouging out of eyes; the amputation of legs, arms, ears, noses, and fingers, disemboweling; and quartering by tanks. It is alleged also that Soviet prisoners are driven in front of attacking German columns; that sick and wounded Soviet soldiers are refused medical attention and thus are doomed to death from typhus, dysentery, and other diseases; that Soviet prisoners are being starved; and that in violation of the Hague Convention of 1907, Red army prisoners are driven by threats and beating to serve as wagon drivers, chauffeurs, and in other capacities to carry munitions to the front and as porters carrying munitions to firing positions. It is also [Page 1017] alleged that the German Army, both officers and men, engage in wholesale pillage being especially active in this respect in their search for warm clothing which leads them to deprive wounded Russian soldiers of their clothing even to the extent of removing warm clothing from wounded or dead women nurses.
The note also alleges that the German authorities are endeavoring to bring about the mass extermination of Soviet prisoners of war, in pursuance of which aim the German Supreme Court command and the Ministry for Food and Agriculture have issued a decree which provides that Soviet prisoners of war shall be given less food than prisoners of other nationalities and that the food norms established by this decree, namely 600 grams of bread and 400 grams of meat per person per month, doom Soviet prisoners to a painful death from starvation. The note adds that an inquiry on the subject by the Soviet Government through the Swedish Government elicited the reply that information published in the foreign press indicates that the facts are as alleged but that the text of the decree has not been published and is therefore unobtainable.
The note closes with the statement that “the Soviet Government indignantly protests against the brutal treatment of captive Red army soldiers by the German authorities who are violating the most elementary standards of human morality and charges the criminal Hitlerite Government of Germany with full responsibility for these inhuman acts of the German military and civil authorities.”