Confronting Captivity: Britain and the United States and Their POWs in Nazi Germany
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Confronting Captivity: Britain and the United States and Their POWs in Nazi Germany
392Paperback(1)
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781469614823 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The University of North Carolina Press |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2014 |
| Edition description: | 1 |
| Pages: | 392 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.20(d) |
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Confronting Captivity
Britain and the United States and Their POWs in Nazi GermanyBy Arieh J. Kochavi
The University of North Carolina Press
Copyright © 2005 The University of North Carolina PressAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0-8078-2940-4
Chapter One
Whitehall and British POWsAfter Dunkirk
World War II broke out on 1 September 1939 with Germany's invasion of Poland. Turning westward after the winter, the German armies during May 1940 invaded the Low Countries, where they met little or no resistance. In effect, the thrust of the German attack was such that it forced British and French troops to beat a hasty retreat from southern Belgium and northern France. Between 26 May and 4 June, approximately 220,000 British and 120,000 French troops were hurriedly evacuated from the beaches near Dunkirk across the English Channel to Britain. About 34,000 British Commonwealth troops failed to make it and fell into German hands.
By July the war had reached the British Isles, with the Germans attacking British coastal shipping and the country's southern ports. In the Battle of Britain the German air force (Luftwaffe) first tried to defeat the Royal Air Force so as to gain superiority in the air and prepare the way for an invasion by ground troops. Simultaneously, they began targeting small-scale urban centers and civilian populations. In late August, the city of Liverpool became the main target; on 7 September 1940, Berlin sent 300 German bombers and an escort of 600 fighter planes across the Channel in the first of a series of air raids that would strike London relentlessly for sixty-eight consecutive nights, killing 13,000 people. By then, more than 40,000 British troops were in German captivity as prisoners of war.
The impact of the huge devastation of infrastructures and the severe loss of civilian life the Germans were able to inflict during these months heightened the awareness among all levels of the population that after the fall of France Britain stood alone in the fight against Nazi Germany. This helps explain why in the aftermath of Dunkirk we find Whitehall focusing all its energy on the struggle for survival at home, with little attention given to the fate of British troops in enemy hands. Moreover, until Dunkirk the total of British POWs in German camps had never been more than 3,000, all held under conditions representatives of the U.S. government-the protecting power under the Geneva Convention-generally reported "to be good." There was also the salient fact that the government appeared largely unprepared to deal with the issue. The official history of the Foreign Office's Prisoners of War Department (PWD), published in 1950, offers the following critical assessment: "The War Office was, like the Foreign Office, lacking in imagination, and for some months the care of prisoners of war was, in that Department, in the hands of a few individuals having also other duties." The authors conclude: "If there had been in both Departments from the outbreak of the war special organizations, small though they might have been, various matters of detail having considerable importance in their bearing on the welfare of our prisoners might have been properly dealt with and settled." Initially, the Germans, too, lacked adequate facilities to absorb the large number of POWs who at this early stage had already fallen into their hands. For example, about 18,000 of the British troops that had been caught at Dunkirk were taken to Thorn, in German-occupied Poland, where a small number of forts on the edge of the town dating from the previous century were hastily turned into a POW camp. Soon, however, the Germans had put in place a system of base camps and work units that was to serve them for the rest of the war. It divided prisoners and placed them in different camps according to their military rank and the force they had served in. There were three kinds of main camps. A Stalag (an abbreviation of Stammlager) was a permanent central army camp for noncommissioned officers (NCOs) or enlisted men; an Oflag (an abbreviation of Offiziernlager) was a permanent central camp for officers; and a Stalag Luft (short for Stammlager Luftwaffe) was a central camp for air force prisoners. There was one Dulag (short for Durchgangslager), literally a transit camp but in fact serving as an interrogation center for air force personnel, who were then sent on to Stalags, and one Marlag (short for Marinelager) for navy personnel. Then there were Arbeitskommandos (work camps) and Lazarette (military hospitals). The entire German POW system came under the control of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), the High Command of the German Armed Forces, which meant that the final say in all POW matters officially lay with Adolf Hitler (who himself never visited any of the camps). Within the OKW overall responsibility belonged to the Abt Kriegsgefangenenwesen im OKW (Office for POW Affairs), but this office delegated much of its authority over the camps to the chiefs of the Luftwaffe, the Wehrmacht, and the Kriegsmarine (the German navy). The main POW camps were numbered (in roman numerals) according to the military district in which they were located (Germany was divided into twenty-two such Wehrkreise.) The POWs themselves had their own internal organizations and hierarchy. The highest-ranking officer in an Oflag served as the senior British officer (SBO) or senior American officer (SAO), while the spokesman in Stalags was the "man of confidence" (MOC), usually a noncommissioned officer chosen for the job by his fellow POWs or sometimes appointed by the Germans.
The POW camp on the outskirts of Thorn where the approximately 18,000 British Commonwealth troops had been taken was called Stalag XX A. Each of the forts that made up the main camp had an inside court (with or without a moat) and crescent-shaped concrete defense works two and a half stories high that were built into a hill and facing outward. The interior arrangements consisted of two kitchens at the center of the crescent and, between them, a hot-air delousing chamber and showers. The canteen was also located here, as was a room for food storage. The wings on either end held a dispensary, a room for tailors and shoemakers, and dormitories-all on the ground floor. Two galleries on the second floor had dormitories, each holding 30-35 men. Except for the sick, the men slept on the floor on burlap sacks filled with straw and had blankets. There were stoves in all rooms that were used as dormitories; as these rooms were built into the hill, daylight was faint, and electric lightbulbs had to be switched on most of the time. The forts were supplemented by wooden barracks, each of which had a small kitchen, washroom, and night toilet as well as windows. The number of occupants in these barracks ranged from 150-200 to as many as 800 in a large barrack. Noncommissioned officers were quartered at one end of each barrack. All forts offered showers with warm water and a section where prisoners could do their laundry.
Medical attention consisted of a dispensary in each camp and fort; Fort XIV had been turned into a hospital. The latter was attractively surrounded by a moat with two neat, prefabricated wards on top of the hill for lung and isolation cases. When a U.S. inspector visited Fort XIV in late July 1940, 195 men were hospitalized. Light cases slept in two-tier bunks, but serious cases had proper beds. All had mattresses and covering. There were bathtubs and showers and a large toilet with separate seats for scabies and venereal cases. POWs needing special treatment or an operation were sent to a military hospital nearby.
The American inspector who reported these details added that there was a shortage of clergymen but that efforts were made to hold Sunday services. Authorities in Berlin refused to grant permission for American ministers from Dresden or Berlin to visit the Stalag. Prisoners were offered no recreation and thus relied on what they could come up with themselves. It was possible for prisoners to do work in these camps, which the inspector thought was a good thing. Saturday and Sunday were rest days. Mail had been sent, but none had yet been received. Neither had individual packages from England. Eight hundred Red Cross packages had just arrived from Switzerland-about one per twenty-five men. The American inspector discovered that the commandant, a Major Wittmer, had himself been a prisoner of war during World War I and described him as an efficient, energetic man, "stern but fair." Generally, "the impression was most favorable."
For a description of what was in store for a POW entering Stalag XX A for the first time, we have the recollections of Private H. S. Bowers: "We seemed completely cut off from the world outside, wandering about down the dark corridors with water dripping eternally from the roof and down the walls, dimly lit with low wattage bulbs in places. The hollow echo of voices and food steps and a mournful dirge called 'Stalag Blues' that someone was playing on a trump, all ... contributed to what seemed to be part of another world. One could almost imagine that one had already died." Oflag VII C/H was the main POW officers camp. It was actually an old castle located in the heart of a small village, Laufen, near Salzburg, which formerly had belonged to one of the archbishops of southern Germany. When one of the American inspectors visited the camp in mid-June 1940, it held 601 officers and 82 orderlies. The camp commandant, one Lieutenant Colonel Frei, told the American that he expected to receive another 1,600 officers within a few weeks' time but that the proportion of about 8 officers to 1 orderly would be maintained. All the prisoners were English. Among them were a brigadier, C. N. Nicholson, who had commanded British troops in Calais and was the camp's SBO; several colonels; and 17 chaplains. Most of the prisoners had the rank of lieutenant. Two recreational fields surrounded the castle, which also had an unroofed inner courtyard. The top three floors of the four-story building served as sleeping quarters. Most of the rooms were large and had ample ventilation and light. The smallest sleeping room measured approximately twenty by fifteen feet. Twelve of the seventeen chaplains slept in this room. Ninety people slept in the largest room, which contained double-tier bunks and five windows. For each person there were two blankets and one pillow, but there were no sheets. Cold running water was available for washing, and prisoners, who were given one cake of soap monthly, were allowed a hot shower once in two weeks. There was one toilet seat for approximately every fifty men.
The major complaint was about food, which "is provided with the purpose of sustaining life but with all luxuries eliminated and with certain necessities sharply reduced in quantity. Considering the fact that the prisoners have little opportunity for exercise the menu as a whole seemed little better than what could be called starvation rations." But there was no trace of diseases customarily associated with bad or too little food, and no one seemed to have been hospitalized. The younger officers chiefly complained that there was not enough bread, while others protested they had to do without jam and wanted more milk and sugar. For his part, camp commandant Frei maintained that the prison rations were as good as-and for some items, better than-the fare German civilians were getting. German troops on reserve ate no better, and anyway this was the maximum allotment required by the Geneva Convention. Brigadier Nicholson thought that the attitude of the Germans toward the prisoners was courteous and that the camp was well organized and managed. Nicholson reiterated that there were no serious complaints and that suggestions for "greater comfort" should by no means be considered as a criticism of the camp or its discipline. Agreeing with Nicholson and describing Lieutenant Colonel Frei as "cultivated and conscientious," the American inspector concluded: "The irreproachable attitude of the camp commander and the senior officers and the fine morale of the prisoners together with the spirit of cooperation prevailing between captor and captured formed the major impressions obtained during this visit to Oflag VII C." Three months later, in September 1940, another American inspector by the name of Gordon Knox visited Oflag VII C/H. By now, the number of inmates had doubled: there were 1,240 officers and 220 orderlies. Although it had obviously improved somewhat, food continued to be the main source of complaint. Chief British prisoner physician Lieutenant Colonel T. Samuel Rambuilds estimated that each prisoner consumed 1,500 calories a day, and he reported mild cases of edema because of malnutrition. Knox considered none of these cases to be serious enough to require hospitalization; though showing a prison pallor, captives were obviously not starving. Patients received milk, white bread, milk pudding, red wine, and butter in addition to their regular rations. At the time of the visit, ten prisoners were in the sick ward; serious cases had been transferred to a nearby local hospital. Six patients had fallen ill before being interned in the castle. No one had died since the camp had been established.
Whereas Brigadier Nicholson again had no serious complaints to make, other officers were less reticent: one blanket per man was not sufficient; more electric lights were needed; mail from England was slow, particularly parcels (prisoners were allowed to send three letters and three postcards per month); provisions in the Geneva Convention pertaining to food were not being respected; clothing was needed; exercise fields were small, and there were no footballs; and prisoners were unable to buy hot coffee in the canteen. That treatment was overly strict was shown by an incident on 9 September 1940 in which three sentries had fired four shots into some windows of the camp at 1 p.m. The Germans explained to Knox that they had reason to suspect an impending escape because in the past two months six people had succeeded in escaping from the camp, only three of whom had been recaptured. Knox thought that the biggest shortcoming at Oflag VII C/H was overcrowding. He believed that many of the complaints would be dealt with and that the morale of the men, particularly what he called their "spirit of cooperation" with the Germans, would improve if a certain percentage of the prisoners were transferred to another Oflag. He agreed there was serious need for more clothing, particularly winter wear and shoes, but advised the British to bear in mind that the obvious hardships of POW life "must be expected and accepted and that a belligerent attitude and open distrust of the German authorities will not serve to ameliorate their condition." Letters from officers in Oflag VII C/H can help throw some more light on the internal situation of the prisoners.
Continues...
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What People are Saying About This
Arieh Kochavi's superbly researched study illuminates, in all its detail, this previously understudied aspect of World War II diplomatic and military history.—Mark A. Stoler, author of Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and U.S. Strategy in World War II
A lucidly written, thorough, and judicious account of a long-neglected but important aspect of World War II. Specialists will learn a good deal from it and all readers interested in the war will be fascinated by it.—Ronald Spector, George Washington University