Space in POW's camps

[Lancer44]

As I know Germans, they had regulations for anything and everything.

Anyone knows how much space, (in square metres), German regulations provided for one men in Allied POW's camps?

This question is serious and I will appreciate well sourced answers.

Cheers,

Lancer44

[Jim O]

I assume that by "Allied" you are speaking of Western Allies as Soviet POW's were treated quite differently.

Also, since early in the war most POW's were airmen who had been shot down, most were held by the Luftwaffe whereas after D-Day ground forces were captured in large numbers. I suspect that they were held by other elements of German armed forces who may have had different regulations.

On a quick search last night when this was posted I also was thwarted. The Geneva Convention of July 27, 1929, of which Germany was a signatory, states in part:

With regard to dormitories the total surface, minimum cubic amount of air, arrangement and material of bedding-the conditions shall be the same as for the troops at base camps of the detaining Power.

Source: The Avalon Project : Convention Between the United States of America and Other Powers, Relating to Prisoners of War; July 27, 1929

Toward the end of the war German POW camps became extremely overcrowded as numbers of prisoners increased and German forces were forced to retreat into a progressively smaller area. Prior to that I would suspect that they honored their agreement (more or less) for ordinary prisoners but could not (at least not yet) find any more information on it.

Interesting question.

[Lancer44]

Originally Posted by Jim O

I assume that by "Allied" you are speaking of Western Allies as Soviet POW's were treated quite differently.

Yes, Jim. Soviet prisoners were treated differently up to the moment they decided to fight on German side.

I also cannot find any tangible data about living space regulations. On one Polish forum there was calculation that for one prisoner of koncentration camp Gremans were planning 6 cubic meters of living space. Obviously if bunks, tables, benches, wood burning stoves, etc were taken out, it become close to 3 or less cubic meters per person.

And there is no comparison between KL and POW camp.

I'm really interested how they planned POW's camps when they were "winning" the war, had resources, manpower and materials.

Cheers,

Lancer44

[Jim O]

Originally Posted by Lancer44

Yes, Jim. Soviet prisoners were treated differently up to the moment they decided to fight on German side.

But they surely did not fair well after the war. If they lived, they were given to Stalin to execute or throw in the Gulags until they perished.

[Lancer44]

Originally Posted by Jim O

But they surely did not fair well after the war. If they lived, they were given to Stalin to execute or throw in the Gulags until they perished.

It's true. Many suicides right in front of British soldiers. They preferred to die than go to Uncle Joe.

[Lancer44]

We may agree that in Konncentration Camps standard for one prisoner was probably around 1.7 sqm.
In POW Camps for Allies other than soviets - standard was around 3 sqm in the barracks.

Both figures looks like unbelievable luxury in comparison what was standard for this German POWs:

Source US Signal Corps.

It looks like they had just enough space for their two feet.

I looked at this page: http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/massacres_axis.html

Snippets below are from Duncans site. It seems to be objective. Do you have more information? I heard about canadian Bacque book but could not get it here.

There are some information on "revisionists" sites but I did not use them on this Forum.
I hope discussion will be interesting.

Lancer44

"STARVATION AT REMAGEN

After the capture of the Remagen Bridge, the US Army hastily erected dozens of Prisoner of War cages around the bridge-head. The camps were simply open fields surrounded by concertina wire. Those at the Rhine Meadows were situated at Remagen, Bad Kreuznach, Andernach, Buderich, Rheinbach and Sinzig.
The German prisoners were hopeful of good treatment from the GIs but in this they were sadly disappointed. Herded into the open spaces like cattle, some were beaten and mistreated. No tents or toilets were supplied.
The camps became huge latrines, a sea of urine from one end to the other. They had to sleep in holes in the ground which they dug with their bare hands. In the Bad Kreuznach cage, 560,000 men were interned in an area that could only comfortably hold 45,000. Denied enough food and water, they were forced to eat the grass under their feet and the camps soon became a sea of mud.

After the concentration camps were discovered, their treatment became worse as the GIs vented their rage on the hapless prisoners.
I
n the five camps around Bretzenheim, prisoners had to survive on 600-850 calories per day. With bloated bellies and teeth falling out, they died by the thousands.

During the two and a half months (April-May, 1945) when the camps were under American control, a total of 18,100 prisoners died from malnutrition, disease and exposure.
This extremely harsh treatment at the hands of the Americans resulted in the deaths of over 50,000 German prisoners of war in the Rhine Meadows camps alone in the months just before and after the war ended.

It must however be borne in mind that with the best will in the world it proved almost impossible to care for such a huge number of prisoners under the strict terms of the Geneva Convention. The task of guarding these prisoners, numbering around 920,000, fell to the men of the US 106th. Infantry Division.

The Remagen cage was set up to accommodate 100,000 men but ended up with twice that number. On the first afternoon 35,000 prisoners were counted through the gate. About 10,000 of these required urgent medical attention which in most cases was completely absent. All roads leading to the camps were clogged with hundreds of trucks bringing in even more prisoners, sent to the rear by the advancing 9th US Army.

By April 15, 1945, 1.3 million prisoners were in American hands. At war's end, 1,056,482 German prisoners were held in US camps in Europe, 692,895 were classified as prisoners of War and 365,587 classified as DEF's (Disarmed Enemy Forces)

Tourists, cruising down the Rhine today can pick out a small memorial and plaque built on the site of the former POW cage. In the Remagen cemetery there are 1,200 graves and at Bad Kreuznach, 1,000 graves.


HOW MANY?

Just how many German POWs died in Allied camps?

For over forty years we have been told that many hundreds of thousands of German soldiers had died in Soviet prison camps while at the same time keeping quiet about the number of prisoners who had died in American, French and British camps.

In 1997, around 1.1 million German soldiers were still officially listed as missing. According to the recently opened Soviet archives, which have been proved to be extremely precise and detailed, the Red Army captured 2,389,560 German soldiers. Of these, 423,168 died in captivity.

In October, 1951, the West German government stated in the United Nations that 1.1 million soldiers had not returned home. In other words, we were led to believe they had died in Soviet camps.

If we subtract the proven number of deaths in Soviet camps from the missing in Germany we arrive at the figure of around 677,000.
Where are these men?.

They must have been interned by the western Allies, the greatest majority being held in American and French camps where they died in their thousands through deliberate starvation, disease and hard work.

The standards set by the Geneva Convention were, in most cases, totally ignored by the Americans and French in relation to their treatment of German prisoners-of-war. The French deliberately starved many of their POWs in order to force them to join the French Foreign Legion. Thousands of Legionaires who fought in the Vietnam conflict were Germans, handed over by the Americans to the French in 1945/46 to work as slave labourers in the rebuilding of France's war damaged cities. Conditions in the French camps were just as bad if not worse than in the American camps. It is estimated that at least 167,000 German soldiers died in French captivity between 1945 and 1948."

[Jim O]

I would dispute some of the above as the Soviets took about 91,000 prisoners at Stalingrad alone (many of whom were not reptpatriated until 1955) and only about 6000 survived. That means that over 90% perished. Using math like that, or even close, I find only 423,168 deaths out of 2,389,560 (less than 20%) somewhat hard to fathom, even if Stalingrad prisoners were treated worse than others. It's also likely that of 1.1 million "missing", many were KIA.

That photo was shocking, but it's also clear that it was due to being caught unprepared, not intentional (this is not to say that atrocities were not committed by US and other Allied forces as clearly they were). Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that even if fed, men would die under those circumstances. Winning the war was the priority at that time and personnel and resources were needed for that first. This does not excuse those conditions in any way, they were atrocious. It does, however, offer some explanation.

I know for a fact (from personal conversations with war veterans including my father) that many Japanese, German, and Italian POW's brought to the US and held here were treated in accordance to the Geneva Convention, fed well, and paid for their work. Japanese POW's earned more than the pittance that they were paid to serve in Imperial Japan's armed forces and many were sent home with a tidy sum of money by Japanese standards. I remember in particular my father recollecting that the POW's he observed working on the bases where he was stationed in Florida were issued pith helmets of some sort for sun protection. He believed it was required by the Geneva Convention. In contrast, GI's performing similar duties had their regular hat and that was all.

I know this has gone off topic, but while that site may be "objective" it leaves some implications that I believe are unfair.

[Jim O]

To put into perspective some of how those German Soldiers were treated by Allied forces, see Soviet Prisoners-of-War for how Soviet POW's were treated by Nazi forces:

n a mere eight months of 1941-42, the invading German armies killed an estimated 2.8 million Soviet prisoners-of-war through starvation, exposure, and summary execution...

"Testimony is eloquent and prolific on the abandonment of entire divisions under the open sky," writes Alexander Dallin of the fate of these Soviet POWs. "Epidemics and epidemic diseases decimated the camps. Beatings and abuse by the guards were commonplace. Millions spent weeks without food or shelter. Carloads of prisoners were dead when they arrived at their destination. Casualty figures varied considerably but almost nowhere amounted to less than 30 percent in the winter of 1941-42, and sometimes went as high as 95 per cent" (Bartov, The Eastern Front, p. 110).

Many of the captured Soviet men were forced to walk "hundreds of kilometers" to their designated places of detention. Colonel Erwin Lahousen, a German foreign intelligence officer, wrote in October 1941 that "The columns of [Soviet] prisoners of war moving on the roads make an idiotic impression like herds of animals. The guard details ... can only maintain some semblance of order ... by using physical force. Because of the physical exertion of the marches, the meager diet and poor conditions in the quarters in individual camps, prisoners of war often break down, are then carried by their fellow-soldiers [see the photo at the beginning of this document] or are left lying. The 6th Army has given orders that all prisoners of war who break down are to be executed. Unfortunately, this is done on the road, even in towns ..." (Quoted in The Hamburg Institute for Social Research, The German Army and Genocide: Crimes Against War Prisoners, Jews, and Other Civilians, 1939-1944 [New York: The New Press, 1999], pp. 100, 142.)

Conditions in the prison camps themselves were similarly atrocious. "There were no barracks or permanent housing. The camps were simply open areas fenced off with barbed wire. The prisoners had to lie in the sun, then in mud, and in the fall -- with temperatures as low as minus 30 degreees centigrade -- faced the possibility of freezing to death." (The German Army and Genocide, p. 142.) A Hungarian tank officer who visited one enclosure described it as follows: "Behind wire there were tens of thousands of [Soviet] prisoners. Many were on the point of expiring. Few could stand on their feet. Their faces were dried up and their eyes sunk deep into their sockets. Hundreds were dying every day, and those who had any strength left dumped them in a vast pit" (Werth, Russia At War, pp. 635-36). Cannibalism was rife, and deliberate, according to Dallin: "German policy had caused, or at the very least had tolerated, the degradation of the prisoners -- and then held it up to its own people as something to be reviled, as something typical of a sub-human who could never be like Western man" (Dallin, German Rule in Russia, p. 415).

In his epic masterpiece The Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn describes the scene in one POW camp, with "the evening mist hoverng above a swampy meadow encircled by barbed wire; a multitude of bonfires; and, around the bonfires, beings who had once been Russian officers but had now become beastlike creatures who gnawed the bones of dead horses, who baked patties from potato rinds, who smoked manure and were all swarming with lice. Not all these two-legged creatures had died as yet. Not all of them had lost the capacity for intelligible speech, and one could see in the crimson reflections of the bonfires how a belated understanding was dawning on those faces which were descending to the Neanderthal." (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago [Harper & Row, 1973], p. 218.)

Mass death through starvation was anticipated well in advance by Nazi military planners. "Daily rations amounted to only one-fourth of what a normal person needed to survive. These meager rations resulted from the decision reached before the campaign, i.e. that providing food for the Wehrmacht and for Germany had the highest priority. 'As a result, millions of people will surely starve,' was the terse conclusion formulated at a conference of German State Secretaries in Berlin in May 1941." (The German Army and Genocide, p. 142.)

soviet2.jpg



Also, from that same site:

The Soviets took ferocious revenge on the millions of POWs who fell into their hands during the war. Many were simply executed; most were sent to concentration camps where they died of exposure, starvation, and overwork. German POWs (along with Romanians, Italians, and others) "were [not] treated even remotely in accordance with the Geneva Convention. Thousands froze to death and starved on the march or in unheated cattle trucks, and once in camps they were treated as slave labor. Heat, shelter, and clothing were all inadequate, diseases such as typhus were rampant, and food was so scarce that on occasion cannibalism occurred. In all, at least one million German prisoners died out of the 3,150,000 taken by the Red Army." (S.P. MacKenzie, "The Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War II," The Journal of Modern History, 66: 3 [September 1994], p. 511.)

which contradicts the 423,168 number by a factor of 2.

[Lancer44]

Hi Jim,
I agree that Duncans figures are not adding up. I also doubt Bacque figures.
But there is sort of hush up and some things are very strange.

I have a friend in Poland, professional historian and journalist. His name is Greg Czwartosz.
He wrote to "Polska Zbrojna", (Armed Poland), an official weekly of the Polish Army.
In 2002 he wrote an article in which he mentioned death of about 18,100 German POWs in US Army Camp in Bretzenheim in April and May 1945.
He also mentioned about 50,000 Germans which died from hunger in Remagen area.

Greg also was a bit harsh for Polish 1-st Armoured. He cited story written by Steven Ambrose in "Citizen Soldiers".
Ambrose, which is an unquestionable authority wrote about 1200 German POWs shot by Poles near Chambois.
According to relation of US Army captain Waters, Americans were waiting for 1500 POWs taken by 1-st Armoured.
Instead only 200 were delivered. When asked about the rest, Polish captain explained thet they were shot.
Waters resolutely asked - "Why didn't you shoot all of them?!"
The answer was - "We run out of ammo…"

After publication of this article Greg lost his job. Another periodical, monthly "Militaria XXw", (Militaria of XX century) also
recently refused to co-operate with him.
Here you can see Greg's article in shortened version.
http://www.polska-zbrojna.pl/artykul.html?id_artykul=957
Unfortunately it exist only in Polish version. Perhaps you know someone Polish?

I attached also two PDF files. One of full version of "Militaria XXw" and another article written by Greg Czwartosz, just to show you what caliber of men and historian he is.
He is stll writing, but earn his living as a PR manager for Warsaw Academy of Fine Art.

So, you see that some topics are tabu.
I can guess that treatment of German POWs in some areas was a direct result of Allied soldiers hatred which was magnified by grim discoveries of nazi camps like Bergen- Belsen and Dachau.
It is understandible. I believe that no one is to be blamed, certainly no soldiers of any nation.

But at last we should look that not everything was always rosy.
Treatment of soviet POWs by Germans was terrible. Soviets in revange did the same.
GIs, Canadians, Poles and French had their bad cards as well.
Majority of Germans was treated according to Geneva Convention but what about Status of DEF? Disarmed Enemy Forces?


Lancer44

P.S

PDF files mentioned are too big. Is any other way to send them to you?

L44

[Jim O]

Stephen Ambrose was caught for some "plagiarism" (if you know the incident you'll know why I used quotes) which tarnished his reputation a bit, but despite that he was still an excellent and reliable historian.

I agree that in some cases there was retaliation by individual soldiers and units, and in some cases, it may have been more systematic, on all sides. I have read reports of US forces intentionally starving German POW's toward the end of the war and in the early aftermath. How true they are I don't know but it is possible that it happened.

As for the PDF's, I have the limit set at 1.0 MB per file. I assume they are larger than that so I can increase the limit temporarily. Just let me know what the sizes of the files are and I'll take care of it.