pow exchanges of wounded personal

[cpaige]

How often? How many were exchanged? When did the first exchange occur? From Where? I would expect Holland and Switzerland were used but were their any more. Was the other countries severely wounded also exchanged like Russians and Italians for example.

[jwp2007]

some info on this thread

regards,

John.

[Doug Johnson]

Most of the various forms of exchange covered on this forum relate to Britain and Germany as these cover the interests of a large proportion of the members of the forum. Very little is known (by me) about exchanges between other countries, bearing in mind that whilst perhaps the bulk of the war took place on the western front, prisoners were taken by all sorts of nations all over the world including places like Japan and Australia. Although those in Australia were probably covered by British agreements those in Japan would not be.

France certainly had agreements with Germany regarding exchanges, similar to Britain, excluding the one regarding Holland but including one for civilians trapped behind the lines which were sent over by train. There was an agreement reached between Britian and Turkey but it does not seem to have progressed. I am not sure about agreements between places such as Belgium and Germany, Italy and Austria, Italy and Germany (probably not one), Russian and Germany, Russia and other nations like Austria etc, Japan and Germany, etc, etc. Russia and Germany do not seem to have had an agreement on the return of prisoners even after their fighting war ended; Russians were in Germany to well after the 1918 armistice and Germans were in Russia well after the revolution. I am not even sure that the Americans had any agreement with Germany, regarding prisoners of war, prior to signing one on the 11th November 1918.

The following is a list of nationalities of prisoners of war in Germnay in 1918 taken from Doegen's book;

French, Belgian, Russian, English (which includes all the Commonwealth countries), Serbian, Rumanian, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, American, Montenegran, Greek, and Brazilian (2 were at Brandenburg). These were all military, the civilians, mainly mariners, were even more diverse. I suspect that few of these nations had formal agreements.

Doug

[Doug Johnson]

Turned over a page in Doegen's book and a table appeared which I have not noticed before. This lists those released, exchanged and escaped from the camps etc by nationality!

I am not sure whether my translation is correct but the following relate to the British PoWs;

From the men's camps; 7 officers and 796 men were released or exchanged.

From the officers' camps; 486 officers and 34 men

From the exchange station; 424 officers and 6117 men.

This last one I presume largely relates to those men who were in hospital and not in camps and were therefore at some stage in Aachen which is presumably the exchange station (referred to as Austauschstation).

Again I presume that these numbers do not relate to those PoWs interned in neutral countries though whether the ones released after intenment are included I do not know; I suspect not.

Escapees are as follows (Entwichene, nicht wieder ergriffene Kriegsgefangene);

From the men's camps; 575 men

From the officers' camps; 41 officers

From the exchange station; 3 officers

These last figures look fairly accurate so the ones above may also be.

There are figures for all nationalities which if anyone is interested I will transcribe later but a staggering 98 272 Russians are reputed to have escaped from men's camps!

Doug