The following is a raw-material essay based on the article cited below.

RF: Why were so many Red Army soldiers captured in the early war? And why did at least a million of them work or even fight for the Nazis? Why did some of the POW prefer not to return home after the war?

Thurston, Robert. W. “Cauldrons of Loyalty and Betrayal: Soviet Soldier’s Behavior, 1941 and 1945.” Operation Barbarossa (1993, Charles Schlacks, Jr., Publisher) ed. Joseph L. Wieczynski

“German and other Axis invaders captured more than three million Soviet prisoners from 22 June 1941 to the end of the year.1 This roundup, the catastrophic loss of territory in the same period, and the claim that as many as one million Soviet citizens donned German uniforms during the war have led numerous authors to conclude that Red Army troops did not want to fight for their country, or more precisely for its regime. Supposedly the cumulative effects of terror and coercion made soldiers prefer surrendering to Hitler to fighting for Stalin. Similarly, the civilian population is said to have welcomed the Germans as liberators in the first months of the war; it was only the occupiers' stupid and brutal treatment of civilians that turned them against the Reich. This reversal, an appeal to traditional nationalism and patriotism, and even more coercion on the part of the Soviet party-state, the argument goes, produced the margin of victory.2" (Thurston 235)

“A brief look at Soviet performance in other fighting before June 1941 provides perspectives on behavior during the German invasion. In July and August 1939, the Red Army defeated a Japanese division at Nomonhan or Khalkin-Gol, located on the Manchurian-Mongolian border. The losers ‘admitted, grudgingly, that the Soviets were a first-class opponent.’11 No morale problems appeared among Soviet participants at Nomonhan; they had hardly been reduced to uselessness or treason by Stalinism.” (Thurston 237)
Red Army performed poorly (especially in the beginning) in the Winter War against Finland mainly because of a lack of full and proper preparations for the conditions.

Yet “...individual Red Army soldiers and units displayed remarkable courage and determination to fight. The Finns were deeply impressed with Soviet soldiers’ spirit, if not their combat abilities.” (Thurston 238)

“It is certainly true that a fair number of Soviet participants who later emigrated spoke of low morale at the time of the invasion and linked it to disloyalty.42 Such people might be expected to show antipathy toward the Stalinist regime and to denigrate the land they left behind in order to provide themselves with a strong psychological underpinning for their departure.43" (Thurston 241)
“...alienation from the USSR felt by such people stemmed more from the devastation of the Russian Civil War or a visceral hatred for socialism than from experiences under Stalinism.” (Thurston 242)

“By February 1945 the Wehrmacht had gathered enough Soviet and emigre Cossacks to form a division under the command of the seventy-two-year-old general Petr Krasnov, who had fought against the Red Army in the Russian Civil War and had left Russia after the Bolshevik victory. Of the eighteen thousand men in Krasnov's division, however, more than five thousand were German soldiers assigned to it. Like their commander, most of the Cossacks in this unit had not been Soviet citizens.48" (Thurston 242)

Many other Georgian, Baltic, Galician (W. Ukraine), Armenian, both slavic and non-slavic units also included considerable numbers of soldiers who were not necessarily former Soviet citizens. These people usually saw an opportunity in WW2 to settle scores and fight for aspirations going back to the times of the WW1 and the Russian Civil War. In other words, many of them, mistakenly, believed that the Nazi authorities would satisfy their nationalistic aspirations. Furthermore, proportionally the Slavs, especially the Russians, were least likely to serve the Nazis. Either way, most Osttruppen were eventually shipped westwards to the Atlantik Wall because “it was ‘risky’ to leave them on Soviet territory.” (Thurston 243) Among those who fought on the Western Front some proved notoriously loyal to the Nazis, while others revolted quickly under favorable conditions. Most likely, the desire to survive must have pushed them to serve for the Germans more so than clear-cut anti-Soviet feelings.
“But as Soviet citizens stranded in the West at the end of the fighting thought about returning to their native country, many factors worked on their minds. One influence was the terrible blunders of the war's beginning, which had often led directly to capture. One former POW recalled later that in his barracks, reserved for officers, only two of 150 still supported the Soviet government late in the war. ‘The rest were convinced that our defeats were due to the inability and short-sightedness of our military and our high political command, and were opponents of Stalin's policies and government.’76 This comment suggests that many of the negative feelings in this barracks stemmed less from basic antipathy to Stalin's rule than from the disasters of the war's early stages.” (Thurston 246)
In the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the resistance offered to the enemy was very mixed among Red Army units. For example, on the main axis of the German attack north of the Pripiat marshes, Soviet units performed weakly. At the same time, in Ukraine where the units were better alerted to the German invasion, they offered much stronger resistance.
“If Red Army soldiers were able to retreat into heavy woods or marshes, they sometimes fought on for months or even years.” (Thurston 238)

Of the roughly 3.35 million Red Army soldiers captured in 1941:
1). about 2,5 million (75 %) were captured in the 13 major encirclements. There were also many more smaller encirclements.
2). only the remaining 850 thousand of prisoners surrendered in other ways.
(Thurston 239)

“Given these circumstances, the argument that surrendering troops acted out of disloyalty is unacceptable. Obviously their morale was shattered, but that resulted from a situation in which they had struggled for days against great odds, often with little or nothing to eat and no way to shoot back.” (Thurston 239)

A lot of the Soviet soldiers did not surrender right way when encircled. Many individuals tried to get across the enemy lines disguised as civilians. Many more attempted to break out of the encirclements whether as coherent units or in small groups.
The German air superiority had a strong demoralizing effect on the Soviet soldiers. Especially feared were the “screaming” JU-87 dive-bombers, which would not have been as effective had it not been for Luftwaffe’s air superiority over the weaker Red Air Force.
The reservists that were called up to fill the ranks of the newly formed divisions frequently were not prepared for combat neither individually nor, most importantly, as units.
The Great Purges left a legacy that undermined the cohesion of the Red Army. Many loyal yet incompetent officers were distrusted by their soldiers because of the confusion and poor military performance.
Many Soviet soldiers surrendered because of their misconceptions about their enemy: in particular, many believed they would be fed and cared for better in German captivity than in the Red Army.
Heavy losses, the confusion of the retreat, and the constantly present threat of German air attack significantly lowered the morale of Soviet troops.

“The Nazi hierarchy of ‘races’ applied in POW camps as well. At the top were the British and white Americans, while the Soviet troops ranked near the bottom. About 2 percent of western Allied prisoners held by the Germans died, but mortality among Soviet POWs reached 60 to 70 percent.66 The German authorities made explicit plans in the spring of 1941 to treat Red Army prisoners worse than others;67 this project succeeded. Surrounded after capture by barbed wire and guards, many POWs never saw the German Reich. They starved or froze along the way, their corpses lining the roads in some areas like stacks of logs. A hundred grams of bread a day was not enough to sustain life if captured soldiers had to walk to their ultimate destinations, or if they rode in open railroad cars, as many did even in winter.68" (Thurston 245)

“A rough estimate of five million Soviet citizens in German hands toward the end of the war seems acceptable. Of those, perhaps half were left in western zones.71 Soviet figures, possibly incomplete, show that 451,561 of that portion did not go home. Here too ethnicity played a major role: while only 31,704 Russians did not return, 144,934 Ukrainians did not, and 109,214 Latvians, 63,401 Lithuanians, and 58,924 Estonians remained abroad.72 Nationalism and antisocialist feelings often precluded a return to a country that many in these groups did not consider theirs. Among the non-Russians who remained abroad must have been a high proportion of ‘westerners.’” (Thurston 245)
“ When ex-POWs and other Soviet citizens who had been under German control returned home, their treatment varied considerably. They were usually taken first to "checking-filtration points"; in general, rank-and-file troops and sergeants were not arrested, excepting those who had been Vlasovites or served the Germans as police. Otherwise, Soviet authorities released low-ranking POWS, although they often had to enter reserve or labor units of the Red Army for a certain period of time. However, returning officers went straight into ‘special camps’ of the NKVD. By 1951, Soviet data show, 4,304,381 citizens had returned to the USSR and had been processed by the authorities. Detailed information on their fate is available for the 4,199,488 who reached their homeland by 1 March 1946: of those, 272,867, about 6.5 percent, remained in the hands of the NKVD, although others went into exile.85" (Thurston 247)

“Several people who returned after the war from captivity or forced labor later fled to the West; they related that they were imprisoned or under suspicion by the authorities for only a short time.86 Unfortunately, and despite explicit government policy that returnees were to receive equal treatment with other citizens, they faced discrimination from local authorities and their countrymen.87 On the basis of this material, it appears that, as in other cases, Stalin (1) was deeply suspicious of whole groups of citizens, especially those who exercised authority; (2) required investigations of their conduct to determine guilt; and (3) presumed guilt among arrestees, who had to prove their innocence.88 This of course was often difficult or impossible. In any event, the Stalinist regime did not repress the returnees wholesale, but only those found guilty of offenses, albeit in a context of hypersuspiciousness and usually without a fair hearing.” (Thurston 248)

“Detailed sources on the early months of the war largely describe strong resistance and loyalty in the Red Army as the German invasion unfolded. If and when morale collapsed, leading to surrender, it was due largely to abysmal military conditions. Although various western writers have ascribed Soviet disasters in 1941 mostly to the impact of Stalinist horrors, evidence to the contrary has been readily available. Those horrors were certainly real and far-reaching, but they by no means produced widespread treasonous conduct during the German attack. The early Soviet defeats and surrenders had other, more immediate and tangible causes.
When at the end of the war some former prisoners and Ostarbeiter decided to remain in the West, they did not necessarily act out of hatred for Stalinism. More often they took the devastation inside the USSR into consideration; above all they feared punishment by Soviet authorities. Still, the vast majority did return, and most of them probably went willingly. For the great majority of Red Army soldiers, whether captured or not, World War II on the eastern front was their war, the people's war.” (Thurston 250)