Dirty Tricks used by the Germans

[ander11]

removed

[River97]

Ian,

Just off the top of my head are the instances of Hospital ships and civilian transport vessels carrying war munitions to and from France.

Cheers Andy.

[centurion]

Good to see how the urban myth managed to adapt to war time conditions.

[Ken Lees]

And did you know the dastardly Germans killed some of our men, too?

It's true, I read it in a book.

[centurion]

Surrendering under a white Flag

What other colour flag would you surrender under?

Hidden shells in a quarry Made before the war ??.

Assume its the shells that were pre war.Yet another variant on the hidden supplies/pre prepared positions myth. How would a German agent know well in advance the route the German army actually took? As one well known German writer put it "no plan survives contact with the enemy". How does one transport large numbers of heavy shells across the border to the quarry without some one noticing?

Spys acting as french buying acres of land before the war!!

For what dastardly purpose? Sounds like that hoary old myth of German residents in Hampstead buying land and laying down court tennis hard courts that an invading German army could use as artillery emplacements!

Sugar factory with hidden wireless antennae in it, ( used to spot for german artillery )

There was something of a wireless scare ion Britain and France in 1914, almost any bit of wire was deemed by the incredulous to be a secret German wireless aerial (this included a lot of lightening conductors) funnily enough there seems to have been a dearth of transmitters.

Germans used poison on grapes in vineyards, resulting with British soldiers in hospital.

Outside of the Champagne area Picardy was not known for its vinyards and neither was Flanders. The British soldier picking grapes in a Champagne vinyard would probably be at most risk from the proprietors shot gun but British troops were not in grape growing areas. The 'Tommy" from the South African War onwards was often in hospital with dysentery and allied bugs acquired by eating unwashed fruit [As they were in WW2 especially in Tunisia and Italy]. Some French farmers of the time still disposed of human waste as a manure. In this light putting poison on grapes would seem somewhat superfluous.

Transport disguised as a Ambulance, but full with well armed troops.

Everybody accused everyone else of this but accusations seem to be about all there is

one spy captured with 15,000 franc sewed into his clothes

Wow what a dirty trick - carrying concealed money - I wonder how many articles of the Geneva Convention that broke. In any case how would he use such a large denomination note without attracting attention? Carrying notes sown inside ones cloths had long been a means of avoiding robbery. One of the oldest jokes in England dates from Henry the VIII's time and involves a Welsh itinerant labourer set upon by Highwaymen. After an intense struggle they mulct him of two pence farthing. 'Why did you put up such a struggle for so little?' they ask. Because I thought you were after the ten nobles sewn in my coat' he replied. [Later this, as did most of the old 'Welsh' jokes became an 'Irish' joke] but the point is people have been sewing money in their cloths for a long time .

[ph0ebus]

Hi Ian,

There was a tremendous amount of propaganda written (on both sides) and the book you read sounds like one piece of it. What is the title and author? There is no army (past and present) that has not engaged in some sort of trickery but some of the cited examples above are perhaps a bit suspect.

Thanks,

-Daniel

[truthergw]

I think dirty tricks is an unfortunate phrase. Much swankier is ruse de guerre which every army that ever was employed at every opportunity.

Two which spring to mind were employed by British artillery. Chinese attacks when the front line troops would make a noise, blow whistles, wave bayonets etc in the hope of tempting the enemy to man their firing line, whereupon a bombardment would be brought down on them. Another was to halt a pre attack bombardment for just a few minutes, the Germans would rush out of the dugouts to meet the expected attack and the bombardment would start up again. All's fair in love and war.

[phil andrade]

Take a look at Jack Sheldon's The German Army on the Somme.

There are some interesting allusions to how the Germans reacted when they discovered that British troops had taken over from the French. Amongst other things, they admonished their men to be careful of British tricks, such as the habit of offering to surrender and then drawing a knife on the unsuspecting captor and killing him.

Phil (PJA)

[centurion]

One country's ruse de guerre was often another's dirty trick. The Germans regarded the Q ships as the latter although as far as I can see they were a perfectly legit ruse de guerre

[SiegeGunner]

I presume that 'surrendering under a white flag' actually refers to instances where men who were apparently surrendering then resumed hostilities. There are documented examples of this on all sides, in most cases not as a 'ruse' per se, but because some men in the vicinity did not realise that their comrades had surrendered, or because those offering the surrender did not have authority to surrender anyone but themself or did not have the consent of their comrades.

As for 'shells hidden before the war', this sounds like someone finding a cache of shells bearing a date of manufacture a few years before the start of the war and jumping to conclusions.

Likewise with men falling ill as a result of eating wine grapes. Deliberate poisoning seems most unlikely, but grapes in an abandoned vineyard could easily have been exposed to fall-out of contaminants from the air or the uptake of contaminants from the ground.

There undoubtedly were dirty tricks, like booby-trapping desirable objects in abandoned positions, but the ones mentioned here seem largely unremarkable.

[Rockdoc]

The Germans certainly took any advantage and who could blame them? In the town's own history of Loos, it says that a senior officer of the troops that occupied it had been a mine manager before the War so he knew the area and the people very well, allowing him to take control much more easily than would otherwise have been the case.

Keith

[truthergw]

The Germans certainly took any advantage and who could blame them? In the town's own history of Loos, it says that a senior officer of the troops that occupied it had been a mine manager before the War so he knew the area and the people very well, allowing him to take control much more easily than would otherwise have been the case.

Keith

Henry Wilson in 1909, spent ten days touring the area of Belfort to Valenciennes by rail and bicycle. He was by no means the only British officer to spend annual holidays touring in areas where the army might be engaged. Would this be classed as a dirty trick? Were they spying ? Probably more so than the mine manager who was used by the Germans because of knowledge gained in his civilian occupation with probably no intention of applying it in war time.

[centurion]

Henry Wilson in 1909, spent ten days touring the area of Belfort to Valenciennes by rail and bicycle. He was by no means the only British officer to spend annual holidays touring in areas where the army might be engaged. Would this be classed as a dirty trick? Were they spying ? Probably more so than the mine manager who was used by the Germans because of knowledge gained in his civilian occupation with probably no intention of applying it in war time.

It would seem almost impossible to have toured Germany between 1900 and 1914 without falling over some British amateur agent or other. These included Baden Powell and Mansfield Smith-Cumming (later the first 'C' - head of MI6) the latter spoke no German. They masqueraded as tourists, butterfly collectors, business men and in one case, when BP was challenged near a rifle range, drunks.

[egbert]

It would seem almost impossible to have toured Germany between 1900 and 1914 without falling over some British amateur agent or other. These included Baden Powell and Mansfield Smith-Cumming (later the first 'C' - head of MI6) the latter spoke no German. They masqueraded as tourists, butterfly collectors, business men and in one case, when BP was challenged near a rifle range, drunks.

Ohhhh, these are massive dirty tricks used by the Brits

[truthergw]

Ohhhh, these are massive dirty tricks used by the Brits

Gluckliches neues Jahr, Egbert! Now don't you start. The Gerries were just as bad with German waiters and German bands, not to mention Chester sending his pals over disguised as sausages.

[edwin astill]

Not to mention dachshunds.

Edwin

[Tom W.]

I would like to know if this happen all over the Western front during the war, and did we use any dirty tricks against the Germans??

The Allies considered German poison gas and flamethrowers to be "dirty tricks" but then went ahead and used them, too.

[centurion]

Not to mention dachshunds.

Edwin

No Dachshunds in Germany then - plenty of Dackels

[No four legged Alsatians either]