Were prisoners of war treated humanely by Nazis?
The Geneva convention was intended to govern how Germans were allowed to treat prisoners of war (USHMM). However, Jews and Soviets were persecuted and abused maliciously. Both peoples were viewed as "subhuman," and had no chance of escaping vicious brutality and neglect. They were clearly not members of Hitler's Aryan race, and thus, Germany sought to annhiliate both parties. Nazis frequently murdered Prisoners of War, associating them with Jews and calling them the "Bolshevik menace" (USHMM).
Starting in 1944, many prisoners were moved inwards toward Germany. They were forced to walk on notorious death marches; the weak, old, and ill would walk for miles and miles, only to be shot or die of exhaustion. Others were sent to the bleak, frigidiceland of Siberia, Russia, where they would die of isolation and neglect in their own homelands.
Although it may often be overlooked, Soviets were huge victims during the Holocaust. Their suffering fell second only to the Jewish community. More than 5.7 million Soviets were taken as prisioners and over 3.3 million died during this short, awful length of time.