English Translation

In recent times, especially since the Finnish war, the soldiers were kept strictly separate from the civilian population. They were, as one prisoner of war explained, almost as locked up in the barracks as here behind barbed wire. Exceeding the vacation by only half an hour was often punished with several years in prison or transfer to the work battalions. e) Stim- The mood in the army was not good. It was not uncommonly politicized among the soldiers and the army were not considered ready for war. In many cases there was also direct enmity against the government. This displeasure is quite understandable if one considers that among the Wehrmacht-san- terns there are extremely many whose families or relatives were liguided as kulaks. If one asks the prisoners how to explain among these circumstances the stubborn resistance of the Bolsheviks, they usually give two reasons: 1. A propaganda which has been subjugated for 20 years, which inoculated the people, that the prisoners of war were cut off from their noses, ears, tongues, that they were tortured to death and abused with the methods of the GPU which they knew well, and that they finally turned them into cruelties.