The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

Not to dispute the overall point, but isn't the treatment of Soviet prisoners more due to the fact that the Germans regarded slavs as subhuman (and so, in the same category as jews, gypsies, etc.), rather than the fact that the Soviet Union didn't adhere to the Geneva Convention?

Well, we might need an actual historian to explain the ins and outs (this was what was related to me by at least one of the tour guides) but my sense is that it might be a combination of factors. The animus towards slavs meant that, barring any good reason not to (Geneva Convention), the Nazis would take whatever liberties they wanted.

But even so, I don't think they mass-slaughtered them like they did Jews and Gypsies.

Cathy, did you know that there's a Yizkor Book for the (former) Jewish community of Suwalki?
Go to this site and type "suwalki" into the text block: http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/database.html

Thanks! But the stupid netnanny the school uses is currently blocking it for some reason. (I HATE censorware, but that's a separate topic.)

My cousin who has been doing some geneology work may know about it, but I'll send it to him just in case.

I think the long-range plan was to exterminate the slavs. Part of the idea behind the invasion of the USSR was to create more "labensraum" for the German race. If I recall my WWII history correctly, the slavs were going to basically be mass-worked to death to make room for that.

Given that, and given that Germany wasn't all about obeying internationa law at that time, my intuition (w/out being a WWII expert) is that the USSR being part of the Geneva Convention would probably only have marginally improved the treatment of Soviet soldiers.

The fac that it wasn't in compliance with Geneva was the fact that Geneva Convention was signed 4 years after the war ended.

Actually, that was the fourth Geneva Convention. The third was in force since 1929, although I can't find independent corroboration about the Soviet Union's signatory status. Interestingly, Russia had signed an earlier version, but I guess that didn't necessarily bind the USSR?

I did find this note though:

There exists exemptions to the Third Convention for "High Contracting Parties" to this convention. In the case of a conflict between a signatory and a non-signatory the signatory shall remain bound until such time as the non-signatory no longer acts under the strictures of the convention.

(Art 2) "...Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof."

Which raises some interesting issues if what the tour guide said about the Nazis' treatment of the Soviet POWs was true.