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Remembered Today:

"burning the dead"


Skipman

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Something occurs to me that is worth venturing as a suggestion.

 

The early weeks of the war were marked by enormous French losses : when the Germans reported burying five or six French dead for every two  of their own in the Ardennes fighting of August 1914, the Allied press sought consolation in tales of immense slaughter of the Germans.  If the Germans suffered two thousand casualties at Mons, for example , British folklore insists that they lost six or even ten thousand.  Likewise at Le Cateau.

 

Might it be that the relative paucity of German dead - I stress the word relative - needed to be accounted for ?  Hence :

 

Yes, I know we only counted one thousand enemy dead, but you know these ******** burnt the other five thousand , don't you ?

 

The wish being father to the thought, perhaps.

 

Phil

 

 

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Surprised that the following relevant fact has not been mentioned: Later in the war, the British ministry of disinformation cooked up the story (so to speak), that the Huns had established factories to render their dead...

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5 hours ago, greatspywar said:

Do you have any idea which French divisions were around at that time? 

The 38 division d'infanterie was neighbouring the British 1st Division at the time, so you'll be looking at some pretty oddball 'scratch' units of zouaves and tirailleurs.... several régiments de marche of the 4/RZ, 4/RT, 1/RZ, 8/RT, 9/RT and 1/RT (75e and 76e brigades d'infanterie).

 

Dave

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10 hours ago, Derek Black said:

The wounded, in no mans land, were burned with petrol bombs at Aubers.

 

 

 

That's an interesting angle.

On the one hand, it doesn't relate to burning the dead.

On the other, though, the inhumane/illegal tratment of wounded it does fit in with the narrative of a barbaric foe,

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Dai,

 

That episode appalled me, and I wanted to check the veracity of the source.

 

It is a genuine letter, written by a young officer, and describes his experiences in the Aubers attack of May 1915.

 

I was wondering whether this was actually a flamethrower incident.....I know the first recorded attack against British troops was at Hooge in July of that year ; but I've also seen  a memorial plaque at the Butte de Vauqoix ( sp ?) which commemorates the first German flamethrower attack against Frenchmen, and that was at abut the same time as the Aubers incident. Perhaps this was a flamethrower that was mistaken for petrol bombing.

 

A tentative suggestion , but it might be worth considering.

 

Phil

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5 minutes ago, phil andrade said:

Perhaps this was a flamethrower that was mistaken for petrol bombing.

Yes indeed, quite possible.

Against wounded, rather than able bodied soldiers though must have been an illegal act even in those days?

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Yes, it was an atrocious act : if it happened as described....although in the murderous close quarters fighting that ensued in that battle, living, dying and wounded British soldiers were intermingled in front of the German defences. and the Germans- fighting for their lives -weren’t going to be fussy about the victims of their weapons.

 

This is my attempt to explain what does indeed come across as a very cruel and barbaric act.

 

Phil

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Here's something a bit more substantive about the matter of the thread.

 

MEMORIES OF FOUR FRONTS,  by Lt General Sir WM Marshall, describing the conditions in the Gully Ravine sector at Gallipoli, June, 1915.  Pages 88-89 :

 

Between the two stations the trench was filled with dead and the smell perfectly horrible and nauseating, more than human nature could stand.  The following day I managed to get a dozen tins of petrol....and that night men crawled out and poured this over the heaped-up dead.  The resulting fire was thoroughly satisfactory ; not only was the smell abated and the flies diminished, but the wind, setting towards the Turks' bombing station, the fire effectively destroyed that.

 

I heard that the G.O.C. -in - C. was at first rather perturbed about this burning, but luckily an order was found on the person of a dead Turkish officer, directing that the bodies of the infidels were to be burnt whilst those of the faithful were to be collected and reverently buried, so what was sauce for the goose was also sauce for the gander.  In future, we adopted the same expedient, for mitigating, as far as possible, the appalling stenches arising from the presence of so many unburied corpses.

 

He alludes to this again, writing about the trench fighting at Helles in July, 1915, page 100 :

 

We buried such bodies as we could get to and destroyed many others by the aid of petrol during the hours of darkness.  Still the stench of corruption remained in the air to an almost nauseating extent, and this, and the fact that the corpse - bred flies clustered on every particle of food, was perhaps the most trying part of the Gallipoli campaign.

 

I'm sure that I've read similar stories about the situation at Quinn's Post in the ANZAC sector.

 

Did the nature of the fighting at Gallipoli, and the conditions, account for this practice, and was it an aberration from other fronts in this respect ?

 

Phil

Edited by phil andrade
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German Dead, Furnaces Kept burning.

 Gruesome details are given by the “Echo Belge” as to how the Germans dispose of their dead. It states that many trains have been seen coming from the direction of Charleroi having as their sole loading the bodies of German soldiers, stripped of their clothing. At the Usine Sambre et Morselle(sic), at Montagn-sur-Sambre, two huge furnaces have been constantly burning, “and they never cease consuming the bodies of Germans brought from the Yser. ” In a café the proprietor refused to seve soldiers, who had become noisy. They appealed to an officer, who while he admitted that soldiers should not in accordance with the rules, have any more drink, added;--“Give liquor to these—they have need of forgetfulness. ” These were the men charged with the duty of putting the bodies in the furnaces. There are several articles in the newspaper of the Irish newspapers that say in some instances German bodies were 'rendered'

Edited by museumtom
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Hello Dai.

Its from The Tipperary Star, November 1914.

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Thanks Tom,

 

This thread has brought together many strands relating to the matter of the enemy (and the Allied Powers) burning corpses.

 

Tom's post I would say is one of the many reports in the press from the early months of the war.

It very much fits in with the propaganda campaign of that time that the enemy were brutal, and indulging in uncivilised behaviour, in burning and rendering corpses, generally out of sight behind enemy lines.

This time , a lot of detail, but again, second hand (at least), quoting a Belgian report.

But I would be willing to accept it as fact if I saw some war diaries quoting named sources who had personally witnessed the matter.

 

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My impression of German unit war diaries is that they are pretty much to the point on burials and I find it hard to believe that such a practice existed on a regular basis on the German side without there being a comment - even if oblique - somewhere in one of these on that. Personally, my view is one shared amongst the people of Kallstadt(Palatinate) - Falsche Nachrichten! Traurig! 

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Battlefield expediency sees to have been the reason for burning the dead at Gallipoli.

 

I am unaware of this being replicated on any other front ; although there must have been sectors in France and Belgium where great numbers of dead concentrated in small areas on static fronts made conditions abominable.  The heat was not as intense, of course, but still bad enough in the summer to cover the battlefield with an enormous seething quilt of flies.

 

The corpse factory stories were obviously propaganda ; and I suspect that the conveyance of dead in trucks on small railways facilitated the spread of such stories.  There are photographs of German soldiers moving heaps of dead in this manner, and a lurid story could certainly be inspired by such a sight. These dead soldiers were being wheeled away in small wagons to be buried : indeed, there is a comparable film footage of French soldiers doing the same thing in a sector of the Western Front in 1915, and no one claimed that these dead were destined for systematic cremation.

 

Phil

Edited by phil andrade
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Shepton Mallet Journal (courtesy of FMP)

Burning German Dead Soldiers

31 March 1916

The Germans are again burning the bodies of their slain soldiers in the blast furnaces of Seraing. This they do by night and the inhabitants are ordered to shut their doors and windows and put out all lights, but the nauseating smell which spreads throughout the entire region is sufficient to indicate what happens.

 

The bodies are brought in long goods trains, packed in fours and bound by steel wires. The furnaces dispose of about 800 a night, The cremated soldiers are in the official list as “missing” and so the truth of heavy losses in killed is hid from the German people.

 

 

Edited by Stephen Nulty
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On ‎11‎/‎22‎/‎2017 at 00:27, AOK4 said:

Hello,

 

Still today a lot of stories pop up saying thathe Germans burnt their dead in the cement ovens of Hainaut so that it would be unknown how many dead there were and also this was used in propaganda to show how barbaric they were (cremation was then seen as non-christian). I think there is a topic on this subject from some years ago.

 

I have done a lot of research about German cemeteries and burials and can find no evidence whatsoever that this would have been done. Certain individuals were cremated but only after repatriation to Germany at the request of the next of kin.

 

Jan

In looking at about a dozen Stammrolle books for different regiments there was no mention of ever burning the dead. In every case either a specific burial location was mentioned and in some cases maps also showed where the graves were located. This story is just that, a story designed to instill a feeling of barbarity in the German troops.

 

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3 hours ago, Ralph J. Whitehead said:

In looking at about a dozen Stammrolle books for different regiments there was no mention of ever burning the dead. In every case either a specific burial location was mentioned and in some cases maps also showed where the graves were located. This story is just that, a story designed to instill a feeling of barbarity in the German troops.

 

I think it is unlikely, even for horses, despite the picture of the field crematoria. The energy required to destroy large numbers of bodies, both physical and in terms of fuel would be wasteful and hard to find. It would be difficult to get the bodies back and if done near the front line the smoke and activity would have attracted attention from the enemy.

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On 11/23/2017 at 01:25, AOK4 said:

 

Can we please stop using these names for the Germans? There is no need to keep calling them Huns or whatever continuously.

 

Did you know that cremation was already relatively accepted in certain parts of Germany?

 

To give one example: Max Immelmann, the Eagle of Lille, was repatriated and cremated. He still has an urn grave in Dresden.

 

Hi

I am with AOK4 on this. When quoting directly from contemporary sources or trying to make a point as has been done in these other posts fair enough to use these names, however outside of that I think we need to address people correctly. This is a general comment not specific to this thread.

Cheers

James

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Sounds like a variation on the known cadaver factory myth - worth a read:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Corpse_Factory

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A pal on GWF has just sent me a PM, and cited  a thread from seven years ago, alluding to the hideous task of trying to recover British and Australian dead in the heat of mid July 1916 at Fromelles.

 

After days of effort, it was decided to try and cremate the dead.

 

They had to be heaped in one place, doused with petrol, and set alight.

 

This drew the attention of German gunners who put down fire on the funeral pyre and the men attempting to service it.

 

A revelation to me, and a stark refutation of my earlier supposition that this was not something practiced on the Western Front.

 

Phil

 

 

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Just a twopence worth... Having excavated and studied a fair few Roman and Anglo-Saxon cremation burials in my time I can assure you that the 'average' cremation leaves quite a few large pieces of recognisable bone behind... In modern crematoria these are then ground down to a fine-ish powder. Now, in the case of these reported ad-hoc crematoria at Fromelles and Gallipoli, etc., I can imagine how if the remains were left unburied, then the evidence would disappear soon - bone decays pretty fast when left exposed to the elements! If not left unburied, then - assuming the burial pits were marked - there should be some evidence for this.  But has anyone seen a reference in any contemporary records for the discovery of some form of mass cremation and/or burial thereafter? 

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On 11/23/2017 at 02:35, CROONAERT said:

The 38 division d'infanterie was neighbouring the British 1st Division at the time, so you'll be looking at some pretty oddball 'scratch' units of zouaves and tirailleurs.... several régiments de marche of the 4/RZ, 4/RT, 1/RZ, 8/RT, 9/RT and 1/RT (75e and 76e brigades d'infanterie).

 

Nothing to be found at first sight in the war diaries of the above mentioned units. I had a quick 'browse through'. However, the do mention the following:

 

1. Dead French horse were buried by medical unites, September 1914. (War Diary of the 38th Infantry Division)

2. 4th Zouaves Regiment mentions a burning farm near the German trenches, which shed some some light on the German working in their trenches. That would be a bit far fetched to link this to the WD of the British 1st Division... . This regiment sustained some severe casualties during the last day of September. However, soldiers could have joked about hoping that the Germans would burn (after having so many casualties inflicted by the Germans), as some kind of gallows' humour. Dead German soldiers might have been in the burning farm, hence the Zouaves told the story that the Germans are burning their dead. If you link this to the contemporary propaganda, you have a good anti-German story to share.

It could have been, but there is no sustainable evidence, except for the one phrase in the 1st Division War Diary... . So, what's next?

 

Not helpful, I know...

 

Cheers,

 

Jan

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