2/3 of Russian POWs, 3.5m, executed by the Nazis

[TonyGosling]

Peter Calvocoressi, Guy Wint, Total War - "The total number of prisoners taken by the German armies in the USSR was in the region of 5.5 million. Of these, the astounding number of 3.5 million or more had been lost by the middle of 1944 and the assumption must be that they were either deliberately killed or done to death by criminal negligence. Nearly two million of them died in camps and close on another million disappeared while in military custody either in the USSR or in rear areas; a further quarter of a million disappeared or died in transit between the front and destinations in the rear; another 473,000 died or were killed in military custody in Germany or Poland." They add, "This slaughter of prisoners cannot be accounted for by the peculiar chaos of the war in the east. ... The true cause was the inhuman policy of the Nazis towards the Russians as a people and the acquiescence of army commanders in attitudes and conditions which amounted to a sentence of death on their prisoners."

During World War II, Nazi Germany engaged in deliberately genocidal policies towards Soviet Union prisoners of war (POWs). This resulted in some 3.3 to 3.5 million deaths, about 60% of all Soviet POWs
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_crimes_against_Soviet_POWs