Historic Newpaper Articles

Fort Dix and the Return of Reluctant Prisoners of War to Russians in '45

But classified Government documents disclose that all but seven of the soldiers were handed over to the Russians after the public furor had died down. The ultimate fate of the soldiers is not known.

The United States, the documents show, never swayed from its original intention to return the soldiers to the Soviet Union. Classified "secret" at the time, the repatriation of the Russians has been referred to since only in academic publications.

According to files gathered from the Department of War, the State Department and the Army, Federal officials, were aware that the men would likely face death penalties. But they believed that the Soviet Government would hinder the return of American prisoners of war in the Far East if the Russians were not repatriated.

From internal Government memorandums and telegrams, it is clear that the Russians' plight provoked intense debate within the Truman Administration, with some diplomats, including W. Averell Harriman, then the Ambassador to the Soviet Union, urging that the United States allow the soldiers to stay.

Public attention was first focused on the ragtag group on June 29, 1945, when the soldiers attacked the military police at Fort Dix with pieces of metal. "They just didn't appear to care for their lives at all," Capt. Richard Riewarts told Army investigators. "They pointed to their hearts and said shoot at it."

The next day, with the riot widely publicized, President Truman stayed the repatriation, but, despite pleas from within the State Department, the Russians were quietly loaded onto a ship on Sept. 6, 1945. They were sent to Hof, Germany, where they were handed over to Soviet authorities.

The war had jumbled national borders in Europe, and repatriation had been a major issue among the Allies for several years, The British policy which was essentially adopted by the American Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1944, demanded that prisoners be returned "irrespective of the question of whether or not they want to be repatriated."

American officials were not happy with this. One telegram from officers in Europe predicted "a wave of unfavorable public opinion" if United States troops carried out the orders, Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War,' scrawled in a handwritten, undated memo that he objected.

"First thing you know," he said, "we will be responsible for a big killing by the Russians."

Under the terms of the Feb. 11, 1945, Yalta agreement, negotiated, by the Allied powers, nationals held by one nation were to be returned to their country of origin. Throughout the early months of 1945, though, the declassified documents show that the United States spurned repeated Soviet requests to repatriate the prisoners who claimed German citizenship because it feared that the Nazis would harm American prisoners of war.

By June 28, the entire group had been assembled at Fort Dix and the Soviet Ambassador was notified that their departure would take place the next day.

They were a mixed lot. Some had joined the Germans out of hatred for the Soviets. Others had been captured by the Nazis and pressed into the German army with threats of death. But all believed that a return to the Soviet Union would mean disaster for them and what remained of their families.

In 1942, the Red Army had declared that anyone captured by the enemy was a traitor. Although, Soviet officials later rescinded this directive, the prisoners in Fort Dix remained unconvinced. One 40 year-old officer, whose name was obscured on the documents, said: "I knew I was a traitor because when I was a commander in the Red Army, I myself read those orders to my troops."

Overnight, they fashioned a plan to provoke their own deaths. The metal beds in the Fort Dix barracks were easily dismantled, and the parts served as weapons for the Russians. At 9 the next morning, the Fort Dix executive officer, Captain Riewarts, ordered the men to fall out. He spoke in German, and he later told Army interrogators, "All I heard was a bunch of 'no's' or 'nein's'."

Tear gas was thrown into the barracks through a window to dislodge the recalcitrant prisoners. Moments later, the Russians charged out of the building toward the armed guards, shouting while swinging their makeshift weapons. Shots were fired, and nine Russians suffered wounds, none of them fatal.

After the guards quelled the uprising, Fort Dix officers found that three of the Russians had hanged themselves. Fifteen more nooses hung from the ceiling unused, the officers said.

According to the Army Inspector General's report, the prisoners were then loaded into buses and shipped to Camp Shanks, N.Y., to await their June 30 departure. The trip passed in relative calm, although one Russian had to be hospitalized after swallowing a razor blade.

The next day, the prisoners, were granted their Presidential, reprieve, pending completion of an investigation of the Fort Dix riot and the nationality of each prisoner.

Within the State Department, the Department of Legal Affairs contended that sending the prisoners to the Soviet Union would result in their execution and thus violate the prisoners' rights under the Geneva Convention. Ambassador Harriman reported from Moscow that trainloads of repatriates from all over Europe passed through the city, and he said those judged guilty of desertion were probably being shot.

The winding down of the war in the Far East ultimately led to a decision by the United States. On Aug. 20, 1945, Elbridge Durbrow, chief of the State Department's Division of European Affairs, said in a memo that the repatriation should take place without delay, "since there are a large number of American prisoners held by the Japanese in Manchuria who will shortly be liberated by the Soviet forces."

The last reference to the deported soldiers is an official Army shipping order that states that two Soviet majors, Valenian Sharapov and Pyotr Grechishkin, "will, accompany shipment 099 to B516 and thence to final destination."

From other documents, it can be inferred that the transfer was handled by an Army officer named Major Suffield and that B516 was Hof, a town on the autobahn between Nuremberg and Leipzig. The prisoners' "final-destination," however, remains a mystery.