(orchestral music)
- [Narrator] During the final days
of the Second World War, Allied forces
liberated many prisoner
of war camps such as this.
It is estimated that during
the course of the war,
as many as 35 million
people from all nations
spent time in enemy hands.
Germany alone had imprisoned
more than 15 million
men and women by the fall of Berlin.
Those that survived were
now free to go home.
But the future for German
servicemen was very different.
While their cities lay
in ruins, vast armies
were now incarcerated.
For them, life as a prisoner
of war had just begun.
(somber music)
During the First World War, the treatment
of prisoners was governed by
the 1907 Hague Convention.
These regulations had
proved unsatisfactory,
resulting in the need for a more thorough
agreement that took into account
new developments in modern warfare.
On the 27th of July 1929,
the Geneva Convention
was signed by 38 powers,
including Germany,
Italy, Britain, France and America.
These regulations contained
97 specific articles
covering the treatment of prisoners of war
and were to be overseen
by neutral parties.
They would act as a protecting power,
responsible for monitoring the conditions
of all prisoners held captive.
In 1939, America oversaw
treatment of all captives,
but once America itself entered the war,
Sweden became the protecting power.
The provision of a prisoner
of war code was one thing,
the question remained whether countries
would honor this agreement.
Would Nazi Germany, a regime which had
torn up the Treaty of
Versailles, made a mockery
of the Munich Agreement
and herded thousands
of Jews and political dissidents
into concentration camps
be bound by this code?
- The fact that Germany
signed the convention at all
and that it continued
to draw up regulations
for years before the war does indicate
that to some extent it did want to adhere
to the principles of
the Geneva Convention,
but one of the major problems it had
was that it was really two nations.
On the one hand, you had
the ordinary soldier,
the professional soldier,
the ordinary citizen.
On the other hand, you had Nazi Germany.
(somber music)
- [Narrator] From the
outset of hostilities,
Germany found itself responsible for large
numbers of captured men.
The lightning war philosophy of Blitzkrieg
relied on rapid military domination
followed by the
establishment of a government
controlled from Berlin, but this approach
did not allow for a protracted conflict
or for having to contain
large numbers of prisoners
for a long duration, a problem that was
highlighted by the outstanding success
of the Polish campaign.
Germany was taking vast
numbers of Polish prisoners,
who had to be housed and fed in a nation
which was already on rationing.
The overall responsibility for these men
fell to the (speaking
in foreign language),
the supreme commander of
the German armed forces.
The head of the OKW was Wilhelm Keitel,
but ultimate control rested with Hitler.
To prepare for the handling of prisoners,
the OKW instituted courses in Vienna
for those charged with
their care and provided
instructions in every soldier's paybook
on the proper conduct towards prisoners.
Prison guards were directed that on seeing
an escape in progress, no warning shots
were to be fired and that
should a guard ever need
to fire weapons, they must be
fired with the intent to hit.
- One of the problems
that personnel running
camps faced was that if
they tried to be decent
commandants, decent soldiers, they were
accused by the Gestapo, by the SS
and by the high command
of being a defeatist.
(somber music)
- [Narrator] The first
prisoners from the western
theater of operations were not housed
in purpose-built prison camps.
They were held in a converted
castle in Spangenberg
called Oflag IX-A/H, a small camp outside
Frankfurt called (speaking
in foreign language)
as well as other camps that had been
opened for the Poles since 1939.
- There were really three factors which
determined their existence.
One is that they were near
the western theater of war,
where operations were
actually taking place.
Secondly, they were still far enough away
from any friendly border
to discourage escape.
But the third and most important factor
is that they were convenient.
- [Narrator] Spangenberg
was old Medieval castle,
which had been expanded through history,
and had served many
times as a prison camp.
From October 1939, there were, in fact,
two camps at Spagenberg, the
(speaking in foreign language),
or upper camp was for
officers and was situated
in the castle on top of the mountain.
At the bottom of the
mountain, in the small
village of Elbersdorf was an old hunting
lodge known as the (speaking
in foreign language)
or lower camp, which
housed the noncommissioned
officers and other ranks.
Most of the prisoners
being held during that
first year were RAF and
French Air Force personnel.
But life was difficult
for these early prisoners.
There was a shortage of food, a situation
worsened by the fact
that no Red Cross parcels
came through until the
23rd of December 1939.
(somber music)
During the early months of
1940, the number of western
allies taken prisoner was very
small, but after the invasion
of the low countries in
France in May and June,
German armies began to
take western prisoners
in much greater numbers.
(dramatic music)
By November 1940,
thousands of French, Dutch
and Belgian troops were
being held behind barbed wire
along with 44,000 British POWs.
They were force-marched
on starvation rations
into Germany, Austria and Poland.
On arriving in Germany, the new prisoners
were sent to dulags or transit camps.
There was one for the army at Lindberg
called Stalag XII-A, and
there was another one
for the air force at
Oberursel called Dulag Luft.
As well as being a
transit camp, it was also
to be Germany's most
important interrogation center
for RAF prisoners.
Once processed, they were sent to a number
of permanent camps set up in Germany.
By now, Germany had
reopened camps which had
existed in the First World War.
The biggest was Stalag VIII-B in Lamsdorf.
It was to this camp that most NCOs
and other ranks were sent.
The camp housed thousands of prisoners
of different nationalities, all segregated
in different compounds.
The only chance these men had to meet
was when the camp held what was known
a red letter day, when
the guards would open
the gates of each of the inner compounds
and allow the men to mix freely.
At dusk, they were sent
back to their compounds,
and the gates were locked again.
The other occasion when they could mix
was on working parties.
Lamsdorf was a massive base camp for many
(speaking in foreign
language) or workers camps,
which were spread throughout Germany.
- The policy of forced
labor was not actually
in contravention of the Geneva Convention.
The convention stated
that officers should not
be allowed to work, that
noncommissioned officers
could only work in the
capacity of supervisors,
and that other ranks could work, for which
they were to receive something called
(speaking in foreign
language) or camp pay.
But they were not allowed
to work in any field
or industry that was actually
related to war production.
But in time of war, almost
any kind of labor is war work.
(somber music)
- [Narrator] In August
1940, the Germans started
to construct purpose-build camps.
Located generally in forest clearings,
these camps were cheap
and easy to construct.
Their layout was very
bare, and with regularly
spaced sentry towers, proved
much easier to watch over.
Conditions for the prisoners
improved because they
now had more living space.
There was room to exercise properly
and stage large sporting events.
Their diet was also improved because now
they had room to cultivate
their own vegetable patches.
The first of these
camps was Stalag Luft I,
which was located at
Barth on the Baltic coast.
(somber music)
The huge numbers of men captured
up to the fall of France
had not only taken the Germans by surprise
but also the British.
The prisoner of war
directorate of the war office
had no idea of the numbers
of men that the Germans
would take during that period.
(dramatic music)
Similarly, the war office was also having
to improvise makeshift
accommodation for German prisoners.
And, like Germany,
Britain found converting
old country estates an easy option.
The interrogation center
for German prisoners
was Number 8 Kensington Palace Gardens.
While the first prison camp of a permanent
nature was a mansion called
Grizedale Hall in Westmorland.
- The authorities in
prison had it a lot easier
than the German authorities
did, because these camps
were by no means overpopulated
with German prisoners.
For example, in March
1940, the number of German
officers and men in Britain was only 257,
and by mid-1941, it had
only gone up to 3,800.
Most of these were U-boat
crews and Luftwaffe
air crews shot down during
the Battle of Britain
and the Blitz.
- [Narrator] The Luftwaffe
and the U-boat arm
were the cream of the German armed forces.
Both highly trained and
motivated, they were
to prove difficult men to control.
There was a great deal
of strife and tension
between these men, coupled with a lot
of interservice rivalry.
Each of these services
trying to better each other
at escape attempts, led by a hard core
of persistent escape fanatics.
Generally, German prisoners
were treated much better
by the British than British prisoners were
treated by the Germans.
During the early years of the war,
the British authorities
were much more intent
on adhering to the Geneva Convention.
German prisoners tended
to be much better fed,
despite all the shortages in the country.
To some extent, it was
sheer numbers that dictated
the quality of treatment.
The fact that Britain had so few Germans
meant they were able to feed them better.
By mid-summer 1940, Britain
started to transport
German prisoners to Canada.
The main reason for a change in policy was
to conform with the Geneva Convention.
It was laid down that
prisoners had to be moved
out of a war zone, and
Britain, it was argued,
constituted one entire war zone.
The country was being
blockaded by the U-boats,
had just been through
the Battle of Britain
and the Blitz, and was preparing itself
for the threat of invasion.
One of the most persistent escapees was
the Luftwaffe Captain Franz von Werra,
who had already made
two quite daring escape
attempts and who was determined to escape
before he reached the
prison camp in Canada.
He was unable to make an escape
before reaching Liverpool
and boarding the ship.
Escape from the ship
itself was impossible.
But finally, in Canada,
when they were being
transported by train, he managed
to jump out of the window
and row across the St.
Lawrence River into America.
From there, he managed to find
safe passage back to Germany.
One of his first assignments on his return
was to visit Dulag Luft.
German intelligence
successes, based on prisoner
interrogation, were few and far between,
happening more by luck than by design,
such as during the fall of Crete,
when information literally
fell into their hands.
The only prisoners questioned
thoroughly were RAF officers
fresh from England, who were
interrogated at Dulag Luft.
The British permanent staff at Dulag Luft
seemed to be treated very well compared
to the prisoners in
Stalag Luft I at Barth.
For most of 1940, they
received no Red Cross
parcels and had to cook
their meager German
rations in the open air.
These men were writing
letters home complaining
about the poor treatment
they were getting,
compared to the luxury
treatment the permanent
staff were receiving at Dulag Luft,
through which all of them had passed.
In June 1941, 18 officers
escaped from the camp,
some of them reaching as
far as the Swiss border.
As a result of this,
there was a high-level
conference between Hitler,
Himmler and Goering.
Hitler ordered the (speaking
in foreign language),
the commandant, should be removed.
Himmler wanted the Gestapo
to take over the camp,
but Goering intervened and suggested
that von Werra visit
the camp to investigate
interrogation procedures and
to suggest security measures.
He sat in on a number of interrogations,
examined security measures and sent back
a report saying that the
interrogation procedures
were amateurish and that
the security organization
was virtually nonexistent.
He identified that interrogation methods
at the Dulag Luft were less effective than
those of the British.
The Luftwaffe interrogators
were mainly concerned
with gathering intelligence
for defensive purposes.
The British interrogators sought technical
and operational information
that would contribute
towards the bombing offensive.
As a result of von Werra's
report, the security
measures were made much more stringent,
and the interrogation
methods were improved.
As the war progressed and the Americans
entered the conflict, the
regime became tougher.
They were interrogated
at length by specialists,
and at times, the sick and wounded were
denied medical treatment.
They were taken to
solitary confinement cells,
which were used as sweat boxes.
The heat would become
unbearable and was only
turned down when prisoners
revealed information.
(somber music)
The major determining factor in prisoner
of war life was food.
The rations provided by
the Germans were meager,
five pounds of bread and
nine pounds of rotting
potatoes per man per week.
Another staple provision was cabbage.
Occasionally, the Germans
would issue some sausage meat.
Sugar, artificial coffee, salt, barley,
margarine and marmalade
were issued grudgingly.
- German rations were abysmally low.
The reason why they were so low was that,
of course, Germans didn't expect to have
a couple of million
prisoners, which including
the French and so forth in 1940,
and then towards the end of the war,
the Germans were desperately
short of food themselves.
Food was the worst thing,
I think, without a doubt.
And if it weren't for the Red
Cross, we would have starved.
- [Narrator] How well a
prisoner of war survived
was largely determined by the Red Cross.
This organization
established a huge network
for distributing food and
clothing parcels to POW camps.
Although in the early stages of the war
the flow of parcels was
disrupted, after 1941,
they were generally
issued at a rate of one
per man per fortnight.
The Germans did not see
it in their interest
to restrict supplies, owing to the fact
that by allowing Red
Cross parcels plus parcels
from friendly societies and
from prisoner's relatives,
they were saving money.
- The German rations
deteriorated as the war went on,
and because, of course, the
German's food got worse.
If it hadn't have been
for the Red Cross parcels
that came through, I doubt if many of us
would be alive now.
- [Narrator] Another fact
of prisoner of war life
was depression.
- We had a high number of people who got
very depressed, I suppose
about 8 or 9% would
get very depressed, and
it was very difficult
to get them out of this depression.
I mean, all you could
do was to talk to them,
and people would sit up
all night, six, seven,
eight of us listening to somebody,
hoping that it would get
them out of their depression.
But there was a generally
cheesed off if you
didn't get letters and things like that.
- We were in a very confined space,
so you had to be tolerant
of your fellow men.
It wasn't always easy.
There was times when you
wanted to be on your own.
If I saw anybody who
wasn't prepared to talk,
wanted to be on their own,
well, you respected them.
You didn't interrupt them.
- You didn't take enough exercise,
you didn't sleep as much as you should,
and you woke up in the night wondering
what was going to happen,
what was happening
at home, how your families were.
And one was, yes, pretty
depressed at times.
But one got out of it.
- [Narrator] In some
camps, it was possible
to appeal to German notions of fair play,
and there was even a certain
amount of mutual respect.
- I think what one admired
amongst the German cagers
was when they pure and
simply did their job
and were not vindictive or anything else.
To give Eggers his due,
as security officer,
he was always correct
in his behavior with us.
He never did any dirty tricks.
He knew the English very well.
His English was good,
although with an accent,
and he had vowed very early on to himself
never to lose his temper.
- He was a schoolmaster by
profession before the war,
and I think he really looked
upon us all as schoolboys.
- I was a valued client of the cells,
and there was a sergeant
there was out of the war,
you see, he was a World War I veteran.
And he was not venal.
He wouldn't be bribed or anything,
nor was he unpleasant.
He was fair.
Yet he was a good man.
Used to let his dog out,
you know, which was company
when you were walking up and down.
And I used to tease him a lot.
He would say, "Hauptman
Brooker," you know.
"You know the rules of the cells.
"You've been here often."
I would say, "No, never heard of them."
And he'd say, "You do, and I'm
not gonna read them out now."
I'd say, "Well, if you
don't read them out,
"I shall do" this, that and the other,
all the rules, you know,
and he'd go mad. (laughing)
But you see, it was a pleasant
relationship with him.
(somber music)
- [Narrator] In the first six
weeks of the Russian campaign,
the Wehrmacht scored sweeping victories.
But this initial euphoria was not to last.
The Germans were unprepared
for the brutality
of the battles that followed.
This was a disheartening time for Germany.
(guns firing)
- Yeah, Eggers, the anti-escape officer,
I was timing sentries into somewhere,
and I was in the embrasure
of a window, you know,
big long, five-foot embrasure,
and it was the time of Stalingrad.
And he came from outside
in and stood in the yard
up against the bars of the embrasure,
and of course, you weren't supposed to be
roaming around the camp at that time.
And I couldn't resist it, and I quoted
Heine's poem, you know
(speaking in foreign language).
"I don't know what's come over me
"that I am so sad."
That's a very not literal translation.
And I couldn't resist it,
so I spoke into his ear.
I was right up against him, you see,
and I said the poem, and he didn't
look around or anything, didn't start.
And then he said (speaking
in foreign language),
you're right.
He said, "Captain
Bruce," because he didn't
know what a flight lieutenant was,
"Will you go to cell?
"Will you go to your room?"
And he didn't put me in jug or anything.
Normally, I'd've been, you know, sentries
would have come, dragged you
off, and you'd be in the cell.
(somber music)
- The Gestapo, in fact, had tried to gain
influence over prisoner of war camps
as early as 1941, just
after the commencement
of the Russian campaign,
when they rounded up
thousands and thousands
of Russian prisoners.
And they passed an
edict which laid it down
that insubordination, active or passive
resistance must be immediately
broken by force of arm.
Prisoners who tried to escape must be shot
immediately without being challenged.
Warning shots are strictly forbidden.
- [Narrator] Now, although
this initially was
a decree regarding
Russian prisoners, it was
later used by the Gestapo
against British prisoners.
By now, prison camps
were becoming a serious
threat to state security.
Prisoners had specially
picked men to bribe
and compromise German guards.
- We had a system of bribery.
The people weren't allowed to go on a free
market type of bribery.
We had to have an ombudsman.
A Czech RAF officer was, in actual fact,
detailed to be the bribery officer,
and all bribery had to go through him.
Otherwise, you'd start
mucking up the whole market.
- The bribing experts would make friends
with the Germans, go up and
chat, because they spoke German.
And say oh, "Where do you come from?"
Say "Oh yes, I know that.
"It's a lovely area, isn't it?
"Have you got a wife?"
"Yes, I've got a wife."
And ask if you've got a photograph,
and look at their photograph.
And ask about the
children, in other words,
make friends with the person.
Then say, "Oh, by Joe,
you know, we're hungry.
"Do you think you could
bring me in an onion?"
Or something simple like that,
and give him a few cigarettes for it.
Right, you are then beginning
to get him under your control.
- Some of them were not
Nazis, but they obviously
had to tow the line.
And they are human people, like all of us,
and if you started talking to a guard,
and you talked to him about his wife
and his children and how they were,
when he'd seen them last,
within five minutes,
he was bringing out a picture from his
pocketbook and showing you his family.
And then you started
talking, and then you've got
them, as some people did, working out
of the palm of your hand.
They could bring anything in for you,
because you got under their skin.
- And after a time,
you've had lots of little
innocuous things like that.
You then start putting the pressure on
and say you want something that the German
knew you shouldn't have.
And if he gets difficult you say,
"Well, you know, of
course, what you've done
"already bringing me
these onions and so on in,
"you'd be in trouble if
the Germans, the senior
"officers found out
about it, wouldn't you?"
Get 'em under control like that.
All right, it might be dirty business,
but war is dirty business.
- [Narrator] The prisoners
were also in touch with home
by means of secretly constructed radios.
Escapes were becoming bigger,
bolder and better organized.
Between 1941 and 1944, there was a spate
of mass escapes by British POWs, starting
with the tunnel break from
an army camp at Eichstatt,
followed by the dramatic
escape from Oflag VI-B,
known as the Warburg Wire Job.
There was another mass escape by air force
officers from Oflag XXI-B
at Schubin in March 1943.
And this was followed by the tunnel escape
of 132 French officers from
Oflag XVII-A in Austria.
It was capped by the
tunnel escape of 132 French
officers from Oflag XVII-A in Austria.
In addition to all the prisoners of war
that the Germans were holding, there were
also five million foreign workers held
in labor camps, and the Germans feared
that the prisoners of war
and the slave laborers
would actually escape and unite.
This belief was fueled by the publication
of a book in America called
A Prisoner in Germany.
It was written by an
escapee from a French camp,
writing under the name of Robert Guerlain.
In it, he actively promoted
the idea of prisoners
and slave workers getting
together to form a second front.
(tense music)
This was of great concern
to the Gestapo and the SS.
The final straw came in March 1944 when
76 RAF officers escaped
from Stalag Luft III
and caused a nationwide manhunt.
Hitler was furious and
held Himmler personally
responsible for their recapture.
Only three of the escapees
made it as far as Britain.
The rest were recaptured and handed over
to the local Gestapo.
50 of these men were
executed by firing squad.
(somber music)
By the autumn of 1942,
the war in Africa was
turning against the Axis forces.
Italy had suffered great
losses before surrendering
in vast numbers.
The Italian soldier was
regarded by the British
authorities as less
fanatical and generally
more docile than the
German, which would lead
to a less severe security regime being
applied to these prisoners.
The war effort had led
to chronic shortages
in manpower, especially in agriculture,
so these new POWs were
soon pressed into service
as forced labor on the land.
The Africa Corps captured at this time
were to experience much
harsher conditions.
- [Man] There's no
shadow of doubt about it,
the enemy are on the run,
and we are after them,
right on their heels, no half measures.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Translator] This
project was badly organized
by the British, and we
were taken to a station
which was still on Tunisian soil.
The people did not even
know that we were wounded.
We were then transported
to Boerne by rail.
We didn't get any
blankets, and the carriage
was designed for cattle transport.
The British were very apologetic,
but they could not do anything about it.
Three days later, we
arrived in Boerne and were
picked up by French soldiers.
They took us to a British prison camp,
which was virtually a desert.
- Under the Geneva
Convention, a prisoner of war
remains the prisoner of
the army of the country
that captured him, but
what the British were doing
and the Americans were
doing, were actually handing
the prisoners over to
other national forces.
- [Translator] From here we
went to Iran on a British ship.
We were treated nicely,
and when we got there,
we were taken over by the Americans.
There, we were greeted
by one American for every
prisoner of war, in order to make sure
that we would not flee.
(somber music)
- [Narrator] In 1942, the
United States War Department
decided that all Axis prisoners captured
were to be brought to America.
This would conserve
manpower in combat zones
as well as ensure the handling of POWs
accorded fully with the Geneva Convention.
400,000 prisoners were eventually brought
to the States, while much
smaller numbers went to Canada.
By June 1944, Canada had opened 21 camps,
while America had 300.
That number rising to well
over 600 by the war's end.
The conditions the POWs were to experience
at these new camps were better than any
they had known before.
The barracks were spacious and clean.
There was very good
health care, abundant food
and consumer goods that had not been seen
in Europe for years.
There was no need any more
for Red Cross parcels.
Some felt that after everything
they had been through,
it was like being rescued
to be brought there.
In October 1943, the
first exchange of sick
and wounded British and German POWs began
at the Swedish port of Gothenburg.
Most of the Allied wounded were casualties
of Dunkirk and Dieppe,
while the German wounded
were mostly comprised of Africa Corps.
(somber music)
After D-Day, the advance towards Germany
led to whole armies surrendering
to the Allied forces.
Now, German prisoners were force-marched
long distances with little food
and poor medical attention,
just as the Allied prisoners
had suffered back in 1940.
Many were forced to sleep
outside in overcrowded
prison camps formerly used by the Germans
to hold French soldiers.
These conditions became a source
of embarrassment to the Allies.
- [Soldier] I've covered them
with a gun down at a clearing
station, thousands of them and all kinds.
The tough ones with a smile froze stiff
on their faces by shell fire,
and the plain Joes who'd had to much
and were ready to tell you that.
And their poker-faced officers who never
lost the poker-faced look.
The SS, the parachute
troops, the old soldiers
off the Russian front, I've seen 'em all.
The Hitler Youth babies
lookin' like they walked
out of Lincoln High, expert killers,
smart aleck with their talk of rights
under the Geneva Convention and askin'
"When do we go to America?"
And the other guy who'd
crawl out of a hole
with his hands up, all
through and talkin' too much,
ready to swear he hated
Hitler all the time.
The kids that knew how
a machine gun worked
and nothing else, grinning
like they were still on top.
They could hardly hold
that trigger finger still.
The middle-aged guys wanting to tell you
about the wife and kids, if you'd let 'em.
And they were through
killing when I saw 'em,
and through gettin' killed too.
Some of them thought they were lucky
and others didn't, and
some didn't give a damn.
I covered 'em down to
the rear, where it was
somebody's job to find
out what made 'em tick.
It wasn't my job to figure them out.
I just kept them covered,
and brother, I never
gave 'em more than the Geneva
Convention and that was all.
- [Narrator] The effect of the invasion
was to raise the spirits of
prisoners inside German camps.
They realized the Allies
were winning the war,
and that it was only a matter of time
before they would be released.
Rather than concentrate their energies
on trying to make escape attempts,
they instead took a far greater interest
in the progress of the war.
- Escaping ceased really
in 1944 because by then
Hitler had issued this
order that all escapers,
if caught, were to be shot.
- [Narrator] POWs were
warned that all areas
within several miles of
camp were to be declared
death zones, and anybody
entering these areas
without authority would be shot on sight.
- The end of the war was nearly there,
and we'd had orders from
England to stop escaping,
because it was just plain silly to go out,
because if you were
caught, the next thing that
would happen is your ashes
would come back in a tin.
Well, things just weren't worth that
at the end of the war.
- Anyhow, by then you see, September '44,
the Allies were on German soil,
and the attitude of the German populace
meant that if you did get caught,
you'd get pretty rough treatment.
- [Narrator] In March 1945, United States
forces crossed the Rhine.
On the 21st of April, the
Russians had reached the Elbe.
By the 2nd of May, the capture
of Berlin was complete.
(guns firing)
(somber music)
- We saw these airplanes
diving right below the castle,
and then they all disappeared.
Quiet reigned again.
They think they were
shooting at some SS troops
that had moved in to defend the village.
And after a long pause,
suddenly some tanks
emerged from the end
of the wood some three
miles from there, quite a long way away.
And there was a terrific
argument immediately
amongst us as to whether
they were American
tanks or German tanks.
And the experts all had their say.
These tanks just stayed quite
motionless in the field,
and there we were,
prisoners, who'd waited,
many of us, for five long
years with tremendous
patience suddenly were
seized with the most
irrational and ridiculous impatience.
People started shouting,
"What the hell do they
"think they're doing!
"Come on, get cracking!
"For goodness sake, don't just sit there!"
And all these sort of silly phrases echoed
'round about, but I suppose
it was natural, really.
It seemed funny to me at the time,
and then they attacked the village,
and the battle went on all day around us.
The next morning, the
Americans had clearly won
and made contact with us in the castle.
And I remember very much
we were, some of us,
waiting in this courtyard, most of us
in the courtyard, wondering
what the Americans
were going to do.
We'd seen from the windows they were
in charge of Konigs town.
And suddenly, eventually, this great door
into the British part of
the castle sprung open,
and through it, as I say in my book,
filthy and muddy from
battle, steal helmeted
and armed to the teeth,
came the first American GI
who most of us had ever seen.
It was a most fantastic memory.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] The Allied POWs, protected
by the Geneva Convention
and by the Red Cross
were hungry but in good health.
For Russian prisoners, the
situation was more desperate.
The bitter enmity that
developed on the Eastern front,
fueled by the Nazi belief that the Russian
people were of a lower breed, meant that
no such codes operated in the East.
Russia had not signed
the Geneva Convention
or organized support facilities
for its captured men.
So those that were
taken suffered terribly.
(dramatic music)
There would be no real
liberation for these men.
The belief that those
captured were tainted
by Western philosophy meant that
on their return, half
of them would be treated
as non-persons while the
other half were executed.
(somber music)
(fanfare music)
- [News Announcer] General
Eisenhower's battle
headquarters in the ancient city of Reims
was the businesslike setting for Germany's
unconditional surrender, and
just before the delegates
arrive, a few out of
the millions of beaten
German soldiers were
trudging past the building.
The Allied officers who took their places
on either side of
Eisenhower's chief of staff,
Lieutenant General Bedell Smith included
Admiral Burroughs and
Major General Susloparoff,
a terrific moment for them all.
The German delegates were
General Admiral von Friedeburg,
who'd previously surrendered to Monty,
General Jodl, German Army chief of staff,
and his aide, Major Oxinius.
It was, naturally, a brief
ceremony, and after Jodl
had signed on the dotted
line, the other signatories
completed the capitulation
of Reims at 2:41 a.m.
True, Jodl made a statement
about the sufferings
of the German Armed Forces and people
and hoped that the victor will treat them
with generosity, but the
surrender was unconditional,
signed with a gold pen by the Allies
and an ersatz pen by the Huns.
The Allies followed this by giving German
prisoners of war a different status.
They were now officially
known as defeated enemy,
thus, denying them prisoner of war rights
under the Geneva Convention.
Soldiers were herded
into massive compounds
without proper facilities.
They were denied the opportunity to write
or receive letters.
They were given very small food rations,
and were also not allowed
access to Red Cross parcels.
Large numbers of prisoners died
of hypothermia and malnutrition.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Translator] My home was
occupied by the Russians,
and I did not have a clue
what happened to my family.
After about five months,
we were allowed to write
to our parents, however, in
order to be allowed to write,
we had to sign a card which confirmed that
I was a solider of the
defeated German army
and that I asked permission to write.
I did not sign the card, because I did not
want to disavow myself.
- In Britain and Canada and America,
German prisoners underwent
a de-Nazification program
in which they were given
lectures on democracy
and shown footage of
liberated concentration camps.
This was part of a
policy of trying to make
them fit to live in a democratic nation.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Translator] The war
was very hard for us,
and I am sure it had
effects on my personality.
I went to war at the age of 21.
I was young lieutenant who
didn't have any political views,
and I wanted to support my fatherland,
which was in trouble.
Why it was in trouble, I did not know.
We were conscripted soldiers and officers,
and we fought this war
until the bitter end.
We lost friends, got injured
and came into captivity.
And when we returned
home, there was nothing.
We had to digest this, and
it formed our characters.
And everything else we
experienced was relative,
which also had an effect
on your view of the world.
We distanced ourselves.
It was also very
difficult for us to digest
what we learned in captivity.
We found out what happened
because of us, the Germans.
And we did not know about it.
In captivity, I saw
pictures of concentration
camps for the first time.
At first, we thought it was propaganda,
because we could not believe it.
But we had to believe
it and did believe it,
and this threw us into a deep depression.
(somber music)
- [Narrator] For Allied
POWs, the end of the war
meant that they were free to go home.
While in Britain,
prisoners were still being
used as slave labor.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Translator] We were
taken to a camp in Essex
called Essex Hill Hall, where
we were about 400 prisoners.
The commander of the camp was Jewish,
and we got along with him very well.
We did little favors for each other.
We went to little farms and brought back
some petrol for his little car.
And in return, he would turn a blind eye
when we stepped over the barbed wire
to meet our English girlfriends.
It was a very good relationship,
and I stayed in this
camp until October 1947.
- [Narrator] By the
late 1940s, the feeling
that German prisoners
should be made to pay
for Britain's war damage had been replaced
by a feeling that they
should be sent home.
Many, however, felt that they had nothing
to go back to and decided to stay.
The last boat carrying
German prisoners of war
left England in November 1948.
(ship's horn blowing)
(orchestral music)
