Soviets executed three times as many Red Army soldiers as Nazis executed German ones

Sometimes the driest of statistics throw a harsher light on reality than any longer discussion. According to official statistics, during World War II, Soviet tribunals convicted more than 2.5 million Soviet citizens, condemned 472,000 for “counter-revolutionary activity,” and executed 217,000. “The death sentences, Radio Liberty’s Dmitry Volchek notes, were mostly carried out by the Special Department, later SMERSH, or by a group of the victim’s fellow Red Army soldiers.” Just how horrific these numbers are and what they say about the Soviet population’s much-ballyhooed enthusiastic support of Stalin is shown by comparisons with executions in other countries. During World War II, British military tribunals sentenced to death 40 soldiers, French ones - 102, and American ones - 146. German military tribunals, Volchek reports, sentenced to death some 30,000 soldiers – and approximately the same number of German deserters at the end of the war.

Read More:

• Putin reaffirms Stalinist version of origins of World War II, Pavlova says
• Top-6 Soviet World War II myths used by Russia today
• Soviet myths about World War II and their role in contemporary Russian propaganda
• Control over the past: Russia’s archival policy and Second World War myths
• Being a historian an increasingly dangerous profession in Russia, Agora study says
• Kremlin-promoted, mythologized Russian past opens the way to a return to Stalinism