Also somewhat related video from the now-shutdown Great Big Story, “Meet the Man Who Escaped the Soviet Bloc in a Homemade Plane”:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ilPGLj87ybo
Mikhail Devyatayev
21–30 of 36 posts
Re: Mikhail Devyatayev
#22seems like they probably were better off in the camp
The Germans hated the Russians (and generally anyone east of them). You had a 57% chance of dying if you were a soviet POW, compared to a 3.6% chance if you were British or American [0]. [0] - https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-perse...
The idea of "Hogan's Heroes" resonating at all is still utterly bizarre to me, given the legacy that we have now of WWII Germany, but I guess with some countries, gentlemen's rules of war were still a thing.
Re: Mikhail Devyatayev
#23What is fascinating and tragic is how how Soviets treated their own repatriated POWs. The hero of this story remained classified a criminal until 1957 when the head of the Soviet space agency personally pled his case.
Why was he considered a criminal?
According to Soviet penal code, paragraph 58-1, betrayal of motherland, aka treason. Punishable by death or 25+5 in prison camp.
True and proper communist wouldn't have let himself be captured.
Re: Mikhail Devyatayev
#24From one prison to another. Socialist regimes are pretty much similar in regards of valuing human life.
Re: Mikhail Devyatayev
#25Missing from this article is why Devyatayev was considered a criminal: "The NKVD did not believe Devyataev's story, arguing that it was impossible for the prisoners to take over an airplane without cooperation from the Germans. Thus, Devyataev was suspected of being a German spy and sent to a penal military unit along with the other nine men. Of the escapees, five died in action over the following months. Devyataev h…
Someone seems to have added that text. :)
Re: Mikhail Devyatayev
#26Could the title please be changed to the title of the Wikipedia article, so that it is boring and nobody bothers to read it. That seems to be the intention behind this HN guideline:
"please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
Re: Mikhail Devyatayev
#27Could the title please be changed to the title of the Wikipedia article, so that it is boring and nobody bothers to read it. That seems to be the intention behind this HN guideline: "please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Believe it or not, the "boring titles" often times get better attention. I found that out a couple weeks ago, when I posted my open source project using just the title of the website and it not only made it to the front page, but stayed there for several hours. Whereas I tried for the last several years with more descriptive titles, and it would get at most 1 - 3 upvotes before disappearing from the new submissions queue.
Re: Mikhail Devyatayev
#28Missing from this article is why Devyatayev was considered a criminal: "The NKVD did not believe Devyataev's story, arguing that it was impossible for the prisoners to take over an airplane without cooperation from the Germans. Thus, Devyataev was suspected of being a German spy and sent to a penal military unit along with the other nine men. Of the escapees, five died in action over the following months. Devyataev h…
We’re there any returning POWs who weren’t considered to be criminals?
Russian history is just brutal, particularly during the Soviet era. A meaningful portion of its citizens were deemed criminal and the definition of criminal changed with time. All sorts of things got you dead or imprisoned: your class, your region, your town, ethnicity, religion, friends, family, profession and everything else.
There will be loads of good books about it, but Simon Sebag Montefiore has done a few - Young Stalin and The Court of the Red Czar come to mind immediately.
Re: Mikhail Devyatayev
#29seems like they probably were better off in the camp
The Germans hated the Russians (and generally anyone east of them). You had a 57% chance of dying if you were a soviet POW, compared to a 3.6% chance if you were British or American [0]. [0] - https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-perse...
The Russians had a reputation for brutality, and so were considered by the German army to be undeserving of the gentleman's rules of war. Once Germany finally fell, many civilians were raped or killed or starved under the occupying Russian forces. People either hunkered down and hoped for a miracle, or fled to anywhere they could find that was controlled by the French, English, or Americans, who had a reputation for the rule of law.