POW Conditions

[Guest IMDB Fan]

Yeah sorry that this topic has cropped up before on some of the other threads of this forum but I was wondering if there`s a defintive account from a book or website that states what conditions were like for servicemen captured by the enemy ?

My interest wis pricked by an edition of the BBC documentary series TIMEWATCH . A common view of the First World War is of Christmas day 1914 when the Jerries and Tommies got together in no mans land had a few drinks and had a game of footie , the point being that if you take off off the uniform we`re all the same person . Sorry I`m digressing . The TIMEWATCH edition revolved around British prisoners who were kept under the most appaling conditions in German POW camps and were basically used as slaves with summary execution by the guards ( Often just because they felt like it ) being relatively common . The documentary made the point that POWs in German care suffered a much higher death rate than British POWs during the Second World War when Hitler , Himmler and Heydrich were running the show

TIMEWATCH only confined itself to Brits held by Germans 1914-18 but I`m also interested in finding out about POWs held by the Turks . Apparently the death rate was something like 60 % even considerably higher than the death rate of Japanese POWs

Anyone know where I can find this info ?

[Stephen Nulty]

Check this site, mentioned several times on the forum in the past.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jeffery.knaggs/diary.html

[KONDOA]

Look out for :

No Heroes, No Cowards by Hawtin Mundy.

It gives a reasonable view of events etc.

Roop

[Doug Johnson]

I doubt whether there is such a thing as a definitive view of the treatment of prisoners of war. Every experience differed and depended on several factors such as;

Nationality. Generally English were badly treated at the beginning, French were OK, Russians OK at some camps but later very badly treated. (I have not located any attitude relating specifically to Scottish as yet)

Year of capture. Very bad in 1914 as the camps hardly existed. Very bad again in 1918 when prisoners were forced to work behind the lines due to lack of labour.

Rank. Very important. Officers not too bad (except at the beginning), NCO's OK, privates less so, working long hard hours in some cases, and civilians were scum of the earth as they were not covered by the Geneva convention.

Place of detention. Again important as some camps were notorious and some were OK

Condition. ie wounded/not wounded. Medical treatment at all times was sparse.

Red Cross Parcels. Generally food was bad all over and at all times but with red cross parcels was better than the German civilians and Guards ate. No parcels meant poor food unless fellow prisoners helped.

Personal accounts abound and 'Prisoners of the Kaiser' by Richard Van Emden has some good ones from recently living ex prisoners (not Officers though). Alternatively down load some of the WO161 pages from the NA @ £3.50 for some 50 pages. Later ones are more readable.

There are some inferences that the Turks did not go in for taking prisoners in general. (All the Kings Men)

There are also many references stating that the poor treatment of British prisoners in Germany was due to the poor treatment of German prisoners in British hands.

Doug

[Guest British Sapper]

A very interesting thread indeed.

My Grandfather who was born in 1881, was a POW in WW1. He was captured after a gas attack, and permanently lost sight in one eye. He died in 1960.

Even though both my parents served in WW2, he would never have a word said against the Germans, he said, he was treated better by the Germans than he was by the British Army in the trenches. As far as I know, he was just a private in the North Lancs Regt.

I find that interesting.

I myself served in BAOR for a few years and know the Germans to behave 'korrectly'.

[Doug Johnson]

British Sapper,

As I said, every experience was different. Some did not have a bad time, some may even have had a good time though few would openly admit to such. The reports in WO161 are from three classes of prisoner; escapees, wounded/sick or noncoms. I would suspect that most escapees did not have a good time or they may not have tried to escape. The wounded or sick were repatriated because they were not getting better due to the lack of medical facilities. Both of these groups may have been biased but a number of them failed to report any real problems with treatment so their treatment was not bad. Unfortunately the majority report some form of ill treatment or lack of care. Some reports are quite shocking. There are some instances of prisoners being shot for various trivial reasons. One prisoner was shot by a guard because he was so weak he stumbled against him. Apparently there were also fliers given out to some troops taken prisoner later in the war that stated that they were being deliberately badly treated as reprisals for the British treatment of prisoners. There are several references to these. The prisoners were asked/told to write home stating that they were being ill treated and why. There are also several reports of prisoners being forced to work close to the front lines where many were killed by shellfire from their own side.

On the other hand Cpt Donaldson was being transferred by train from Uchter to Clausthal when he saw a British Tommy reclining under a hedge with his arms round the waist of two young German girls looking very happy. Farm work was one of the best placements. Bill Easton (Prisoners of the Kaiser) was made an honorary Sgt in the German Army! Such stories are however rare so to hear your Grandfather's would be very interesting.

Anti German feeling was certainly around after the war in relation to the treatment of prisoners and George Connes (a French Officer) wrote his story in the 1920's but could not get it published as it was not anti German. (he wrote it in response to a friend's book which was very anti German, the friend also being a prisoner in the same camps) It was not pro German either but it was only published last year. It is called 'A POW's Memoir of the first world war; The Other Ordeal' I got a copy through Amazon and it is an excellent book, in English, with some wry humour.

It must also be remembered that the German population as a whole was not doing too well either. In Feb 1918 the German raider Wolf returned home. The crew, having lived on whatever food they could capture and, being short of fresh food, were looking forward to getting some decent food when they found out that they were actually already eating better than those at home!

Doug

NB the ability to speak German also changed the type of treatment received, as noted in WO161.

[healdav]

There are a few books by ex-POW - one or two available on the internet (UKANS site).

Escaping Club springs to mind (long out of print, but you may find a copy of the Penguin edition - red- somewhere).

For the treatment of POW by the Turks see 'Road to En-Dor'.

[Doug Johnson]

'My four years in Germany' by James W Gerard, former American Ambassador to Germany is available free at www.gutenburg.org. Chapter ten covers his efforts in regard to conditions at camps including his visits. Not many camps are covered but it gives some background as to why the treatment varied so much betwen camps.

Doug

[Lindsey]

Try getting ' Prisoners of the Kaiser' by Richard Van Emden a recent publication, with accounts of life, treatment etc.

[Guest IMDB Fan]

Thanks for the replies guys . I should have mentioned that Chris has published a list of books featuring accounts of British prisoners held captive by the Turks after the seige of Kut . I guess the problem with such an in depth site is that it takes a while to come across what you`re looking for

[bob lembke]

Guys;

I have no specific information as to the treatment of British POWs of the Germans (although I do so have re: Russian prisoners). However, I have some info touching on related matters that you have touched on.

German food supplies: I have 50-60 WW I era letters, mostly Feldpost between my father and grand-father, both of whom served in the Imperial Army. Most of the letters, especially my fathers, are obsessed with food. He was in an elite storm unit (Garde=Reserve=Pionier=Regiment (Flammenwerfer)); according to many sources such units had better rations, and I assure you they were miserable. Each man had a bread ration, which I think initially was 750 grammes a day, but as the war went on the ration was cut and stranger and stranger things were included; turnup powder, possibly sawdust, etc. He wrote from Stenay-sur-Meuse at Verdun in late 1916 to his father about the food. He said that dinner was usually two spoons-full of very bad "fruit" jam (to be eaten with part of the bread ration), but that in the last week they only had four such "dinners" in a week. About this time they had Christmas dinner, and they did not receive potatoes, which they were hoping for; they were considered a great delicacy.(Three days later he was badly wounded in a flame attack on the French on Dead Man's Hill.)

He told me that in combat they sometimes had to take a break and possibly nap from weakness from hunger. He was a "wheeler-dealer", and scrounged things and dealt them, in particular coffee captured on raids on allied trenches. (He described tins of about 900 grammes, which would indicate two pounds. Was that a standard type of British packing?) He sent tins to his family and they traded this amazing delicacy to buy more basic foodstuffs for themselves. Even his father, a staff officer, had trouble getting food and described how he would drop in on the enlisted men of some unit at dinnertime and join their meal.

A measure of the problem was that after the Armistice was signed the Allies maintained the blockade to force the Germans to sign the Treaty, and supposedly 800,000 people died as a result between when the Armistice started and the Treaty of Versailles was signed.

I'm not trying to get you guys to sob for the Germans, but the food situation, and every time of supply, was very bad. According to the Geneva Conventions POWs are to be fed as well as the captor's troops. That was not very good at all. If they were fed as well as the German soldiers they were being very badly fed.

General propaganda: In the last 3-4 years I probably have read 200-300 sources, mostly in German and French, on WW I, and there is an astonishing amount of clearly fabricated stuff written. All sides produced it, but I have found most of it in English, from American, Canadian, and UK sources. There was a very strong canpaign to sway American public opinion to enter the war. When my father moved to the US in 1926 the anti-German propaganda in the popular culture and media was still in full-bloom.

Although I have no specific information, I would be very surprised if prisoners were being shot out of hand in considerable numbers. I might point out that the Imperial War Museum states that, in the entire war, the German Army shot a total of 18 of their own men in 4 1/2 years. Among the things that I have read was that the German Army had 100,000 French and Belgian young girls and women chained up in underground cells for the "comfort" of the Hunnish soldiers. Also, that the roads of northern France were totally overflowing with Belgian girls, say 15, that had been raped and then (or before? The sources are not precise on this) one arm was chopped off below the elbow. Every girl had one arm chopped off; never was one left with both arms, nor was any girl left with both arms cut off (unless they had starved to death in the meanwhile; that could be possible). Every girl had one, but only one, arm chopped off. Which arm, the sources do not state. I have read in the memoirs of American generals about the organization of specific "hate-everything-German" campaigns among the men.

Between when his school shut down and when he went into the Army my father worked on a nobleman's estate, a Rittergut, and he kept in touch with it for 10 years, and worked on it after the war as an administrator. They had many Russian POWs on the farm, and one guard, an old man with a 1870 model single shot rifle. The man was old, and the rifle (.45 caliber) was heavy, so one of the POWs was detailed to carry it for him. They slept between white sheets, and most of them had never seen such a thing. When the war was over they were sent back to Russia.

Then, one by one, they began to show up, saying: "Remember me? I'm Ivan. You remember how hard I worked? Can I join the farm again?" They had left home and walked for months across many of hundreds of miles to return to where they were held prisoner, as they had never been treated as well as there. (My father spoke some Russian, which he learned in Russia pre-1914.)

Bob Lembke

[De Petrowski Alexander]

What the stories about the German Army's behaviour against Belgian civilians is concerned, some facts, a total of 6 000 civilians (mainly adult males) were murdered by the German Army during the 1914 campaing in Belgium. (there is little if any truth in the many murder stories about women and children and in the mutilation stories)

one reason was the theory held by many German Officers that to break an enemy army's will to fight is to be cruel against it citizens, a second was the German Army obsession (dating from the 1870's war) with franc tireurs (illegal civilian fighters) to such an extend that every shooting they could'n readily explain had to com from franc tireurs. A third had to do with the social position of the Officers Class in pre-war Germany who were to an extend placed above the law compared to other Germans, giving them the idea that they could do whatever they wanted against people outside their Class and rarely if ever having to accept responsability for their actions.