“Of the 91,000 German prisoners captured by the Soviets, fewer than 6,000 would live to return to Germany.”
What happened to the other 85,000 Germans?
They died.
They joined adolf in hell?
They ended up on the Clinton kill list.
Todt im Osten
They died in Soviet labor camps. Of malnutrition, of exposure, of various and sundry other ailments. I had a German colleague whose father was a POW in the Soviet Union; he didn't come home until 1951.
Put to hard labor and short rations, often in places like Siberia, quartered in inadequate shelter, given little to no medical support, supervised by people that didn’t care much if the prisoners lived or died - and often would prefer that they died - and worked to death.
It was hard, brutal and bluntly inhumane. But it wasn’t much worse than what the Germans themselves did to the Russians and others, both military and civilian, in their push east. Ivan, it turns out, has a surprisingly long memory and is a very good hater if you exceed his rules of conduct; the surrendered Germans found out *all* about that the hard way.
As a followup and to paraphrase something a few other people have said: If you show up with a MILLION troops plus the declared intent to exterminate a civilization and LOSE, don’t expect to be remembered fondly. Or treated well in your defeat.