From Incarceration to Repatriation: German Prisoners of War in the Soviet Union - Hardcoverby Susan C. I. Grunewald (Author) From Incarceration to Repatriation explores the lives and memories of the nearly 1. 5 million German POWs who were held by the Soviet Union during and after World War II and released in phases through 1956, seven years longer than the prisoners of any other Allied nation. Susan C. I. Grunewald argues that Soviet leadership deliberately kept able bodied German POWs to supplement their labor force after the end of the