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Remembered Today:

German pow's from capture to repatriation


johnboy

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I am looking for info on captured Germans. From capture/surrender  to POW camp. I have very little info other than that they were taken somewhere behind the lines. That there were pow camps in UK. I assume prisoners taken by other allies were passed to the British.I have too many questions for one post so If  I get some info I can ask more questions as we go along.

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13 minutes ago, johnboy said:

I am looking for info on captured Germans. From capture/surrender  to POW camp. I have very little info other than that they were taken somewhere behind the lines. That there were pow camps in UK. I assume prisoners taken by other allies were passed to the British.I have too many questions for one post so If  I get some info I can ask more questions as we go along.

 

  There's been quite a bit in the press lately, about Lodge Moor camp in Sheffield, apparently it was the largest POW camp in the UK in WW1.

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23 minutes ago, johnboy said:

I assume prisoners taken by other allies were passed to the British.

 

You assume wrongly. Each of the allies kept their own prisoners (Belgium being a bit of an exception as they didn't have enough territory to keep the German prisoners, so these were under French "care").

 

As was allowed at that point, prisoners (not the officers though) could be working. Officially not in the war industry and not too close to the front line, but both sides ignored that after a while. There was a huge outcry that German prisoners were sent to Africa to work in the French colonies there under bad circumstances leading to the Germans sending allied prisoners to the far away Baltics. The same thing happened when the Germans learned that the French were using German POWs close to the frontline to work on roads etc, leading the Germans to do the same with French POWs.

 

In the case of Germans captured by the British, they were transported by train and boat to the UK (at least a lot of them). In the Uk they were locked up, but a lot were working somehow as well (mining? agriculture?). Some Germans were kept in the LOC and were working for the army under POW Companies.

 

Jan

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Thanks Jan. I meant prisoners taken by the Canadians,Australians etc. They would hardly ship them to those countries, would they?

Were special trains used or just the normal? Were ships specially adapted ?

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3 hours ago, johnboy said:

I meant prisoners taken by the Canadians,Australians etc. They would hardly ship them to those countries, would they?

I'm not an expert - that's for sure ;-)

But I think they may have had some POW in Canada and US - possibly civilian merchant seamen (internees?) and/or naval seamen (POW)

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I‘m not sure about Canada but German Sailors, both civil and military, were held in the USA and Australia. It all depended where they were captured. 

 

Charlie

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Thanks Charlie. I have spent most of the day looking for books or accounts of how prisoners were brought to uk and the selection process as to which camps they were to be sent to.

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Thanks JP

The first link gives a lot of numbers held in britain A good starting point. I don't have access to the second link which sounded more helpfu

l.

I  am still interested as to how prisoners got from a theatre to camps in Britain

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4 hours ago, helpjpl said:

 

2. Chapter 2 - Arrest , transportation and capture:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt212169t

 

 

23 minutes ago, johnboy said:

I don't have access to the second link which sounded more helpful.

I  am still interested as to how prisoners got from a theatre to camps in Britain

 

You may be able to access Prisoners of Britain: German civilian and combatant internees during the First World War on JSTOR at your local library or you can register for a free account here:

https://www.jstor.org/register?redirectUri=/stable/j.ctt212169t&refreqid=excelsior%3A826fadc1efa9a7b8fb0d8059082e7236

 

JP

 

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thanks JP. I have registered but I get a message that my institution has not got access to the book.

When I first started I did not realise how hard it would be to find info. Loads of info for POW's of the Germans.

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Thanks Mike. At one time  there were over 200,000 german prisoners in Britain, But I can find nothing on how they were brought here.I have read of 9 liners being used in the early days but no explanation as to if they were transported in them  Who was guarding them on  their journey. Were trains especially adapted.With trains having to move stores, equipment. ammo etc it must have put a strain on the Railway Cos.

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4. First World War Click

The National Archives holds no lists of First World War enemy PoWs. For records of individual prisoners it will usually prove more fruitful to contact another organisation (see section 7).

Lists of names of enemy prisoners and internees were routinely forwarded to the Prisoners of War Information Bureau (PWIB) in London, which in turn informed the International Red Cross Headquarters in Geneva. Unfortunately, bombing in 1940 largely destroyed the lists and other documentation compiled by the Bureau.

However, you can find some related records at The National Archives, including:

  • two specimen lists of army, naval and civilian German PoWs in WO 900/45-46: these give the regiment, ship and usually the home address, place of internment, remarks regarding health, and date of transfer to internment in a neutral country
  • a summary of the work and history of the Prisoner of War Information Bureau in WO 162/341
  • occasional mentions of enemy PoWs by name within the card index of the General Political Correspondence of the Foreign Office: if you find an entry you can often convert it into an FO 383 reference
  • files on the employment of enemy PoWs in Britain in NATS 1/567-571
  • correspondence on enemy merchant seamen taken prisoner in MT 9 and MT 23

Mike

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Thanks again Mike. The first link is pictures of camps in UK. I think it for propoganda. All the prisoners shown are well dressed. Proper beds to sleep in as opposed to straw for Brits in Germany.Useful to see though.The second link is British men in German Camps. There is certainly a lot on German camps including stories from men who were in them conditions, food , treatment etc.

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I have gone through the links and leads given but my questions are un  answered. I suppose what I really need is a memoir of a german POW but I do not know german!

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Thanks very much Derek I have flicked through quickly and it seems to answer some questions. It seems to confirm something I read about 9 liners used as 'prisons' I will go through it carefully in the morning. Again .thank you for the link.

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