The fates of thousands upon thousands of German soldiers, many just kids, surrendered to both the
Allies and especially the Soviets have never been accounted for and any attempts to uncover the
truth of their disappearance have been halted. Below: German POWs in Berlin 1945, Italy 1944
Because the German POWs had been conveniently redefined as "disarmed enemy forces", Allied
captors did whatever they wanted with their German captives, even bartering them away to others
for use as slaves. In fact, in a "Re-education" bulletin distributed by the "Special Service Division,
Army Service Forces" of the U.S.Army in 1945, tacit approval is given for the intentional transfer of
German POWs from Allied hands to the genocidal Red Army:
At one point, 80,000 prisoners of war a month were supposed to have to been returned from USA
captivity and discharged into the Allied zones of Germany as part of the 1.3 million allotted to France
for "rehabilitation work" (slave labor), but after the Red Cross reported that 200,000 of the prisoners
already in French hands were so undernourished they were unfit for labor and likely to die over the
winter, the USA stopped all transfers of prisoners to French custody until the French would maintain
them in accordance with the Geneva Convention. Below left: 1945 German POWs at their new
home in Verdun, France; POWs captured in France; Captured POWs being abused by mob (click)
In the communist realms, the conditions that German POWs, many just kids, endured on the Eastern
Front were beyond grim and did not follow any accepted protocol for treatment of captured soldiers.
Under the provisions of the Yalta Agreement, the U.S. and U.K. had agreed to the use of German
POWs in the Soviet Gulag as "reparations-in-kind", but comparatively few German were taken alive
before Stalingrad. Most were shot and many were mutilated alive. Out of the 90,000 Germans who
marched into Soviet captivity at Stalingrad, only 5,000 ever returned: 40,000 did not survive the
march to the Beketovka camp, where another 42,000 perished of hunger and disease. Those POWs
that made it alive to separate camps in Siberia and elsewhere in the western Soviet Union were
forced into slave labor and endured frequent beatings, brutal torture, poisoning and execution.
Thousands more captured soldiers were executed on the spot and thrown into mass graves. Food and
water were always scarce, living barely primitive. The result was an unacceptable rate of death.
“Many German prisoners will remain in Russia after the end of
war, not voluntarily, but because the Russians need them as
workers. That is not only perfectly legal, but also prevents the
danger of the returning prisoners of war becoming the core of a
new national movement. If we ourselves do not want to keep
the German prisoners after the war, we should send them
nonetheless to Russia."  Again, shades of Morgenthau.
After the End: Who Put the Bad in Bad Kreuznach?
The photos below show the magnitude of the situation. (Click to enlarge)
There was inadequate food and deplorable sanitary conditions. Prisoners could have no clothing
other than what they were wearing when arrested. Disease and epidemics ran through the barracks
where the prisoners had to sleep on the bare wood frames with only a block of wood for a pillow for
two years until blankets and bags of straw were finally distributed in 1947. They were not allowed
any activities, and even singing was prohibited. The windows of the overcrowded barracks were
blacked out and the prisoners were kept in almost total darkness. A total of approximately 60,000
German prisoners were held in Special Camp No. 7 after World War II ended, and 12,000 were
buried in unmarked mass graves. None were released by the Soviets until 1948, and most prisoners
remained there until 1950, and some were sent on to the Soviet gulags or handed over to the East
German Communist government for even more punishment.
When approximately 6,000 German Army officers were released by the Western Allies in the first
half of 1945, they were then re-arrested by the Soviets and held in Zone II at Sachsenhausen Prison
Camp which had formerly held the Communist political prisoners of the Nazis. Later, Special Camp
No. 7 was filled with German prisoners who had been sentenced by a Soviet military tribunal to 15
years of hard labor. By the end of 1945, it held 12,000 to 16,000 prisoners, among them 2,000
female prisoners, but the population grew.
There was no "peace treaty" in place at the end of the War. German POWs were labelled "disarmed
enemy forces" (DEF) rather that "prisoners of war" to skirt provisions of the Hague Land Warfare
Convention which mandated humane treatment, including those which stated: “After the peace
treaty, prisoners of war should be dismissed into their homeland within shortest period”. By this
manipulation of justice, German POWS could be taken to the lands of their former enemies and used
for slave labor for extended periods, often at the cost of their lives due to grim hardships encountered
before, during and after transit. Furthermore, a German soldier designated as DEF had no right to
any food, water or shelter, and could, as many thousands did, die within days.
Long columns of German prisoners, above, were marched on foot hundreds of tortuous miles toward
their doom in Stalingrad, Kiev, Kharkov, Moscow and Minsk where most were starved and worked
to death. Very few ever saw home again.
But these men were lucky. Only large numbers of captured soldiers were taken away to be enslaved.
If captured in smaller groups, even the US Army policy was to slaughter the prisoners where they
stood, especially if they were SS. The largest (currently acknowledged) massacres at the hands of the
Americans were the murder of 700 troops of the surrendered 8th SS Mountain Division, atrocities
carried out against the surrendered SS Westphalia Brigade where most of the German captives were
shot through the back of the head, and the machine gunning of three hundred surrendered camp
guards at Dachau. Over 1,000 captured SS Officers were also poisoned by eating arsenic-laced bread
in 1946 in an American camp near Nürnberg. There was also an alleged mass murder of as many as
48 surrendered German prisoners who were captured on April 15 1945 at Jungholzhausen. An eye-
witness stated: “The Americans forced the Germans to walk in front of them with raised hands in
groups of four. Then they shot the prisoners in their heads from behind.” The bodies were loaded
onto a truck and taken away. The matter is still under investigation.
The gulag's daily food ration was padded with 400 to 800 grams of bread, more than half of the
prisoner's daily 1200-1300 calories. The most productive workers received a modest food bonus
(ironically, the Morgenthau Plan for occupied Germany suggested the same allotment of 1300
calories a day per German, while the suggested minimum requirements for heavy labor are from
3100-4000 calories per day). In the gulags, the prisoner's food ration was linked to his production.
Realizing that the most productive work done by prisoners is in the first three months of captivity,
after which they were too debilitated to perform well, the exhausted prisoners were simply killed off
and replaced with fresh blood, ensuring a constant flow of new labor.
Between 1941 and 1952, millions of German POWs died in the Gulag. The last surviving 10,000 of
them were not released from the Soviet Union until 1955, after a decade of forced labor. About 1.5
million German soldiers are still listed as missing in action and join the ranks of those who vanished
while under Soviet captivity. In total, 5,025 German men and women were convicted of war crimes
between 1945 and 1949 in the American, British and French zones by Allied War Crimes Trials.
Over 500 were sentenced to death and the majority were executed, among them 21women
The Red Terror was let loose on surrendered German POWs in eastern Europe from Czechoslovakia
to Poland and beyond. Many were simply shot and thrown into mass graves, others were tortured
and mutilated first, and these retributions extended even to young boys. German POWs who fell into
the hands of the Yugoslav hordes suffered horrible fates. After 1986, a report appeared showing that
out of about 194,000 prisoners, up to 100,000 died from gruesome torture, murder, horrible
conditions, disease and intentional starvation.
In eleven Soviet camps set up within the GDR such as Muehlberg, Saxonia or Oranienburg, many
thousands also lost their lives. Between 1945 and 1950 there were 122,671 interned, from which
42,889 died of diseases and 756 were executed. However in Muehlberg at 7,000 to 9,000 out of
22,000 perished painfully from hunger, malnutrition and epidemics and were then thrown into mass
graves. Prisoners here as young as fifteen were completely isolated and not allowed to write or
receive any letters. Most were kept for years without ever knowing why they were arrested, since in
those camps there were no prominent national socialists. There were eleven silent or secret camps as
well "Five Oaks" at New Brandenburg where about 6500 prisoners died.
Around 93,000 ethnic Germans who lived in the Danube basin from 1939 to 1941 served in
Hungarian, Croatian and Romanian armies, and they remained citizens of those countries during the
war (many of these ethnic Germans served in the “Prinz Eugen” Waffen SS division of about
10,000, which automatically gave them German citizenship). 26,000 of these soldiers died, over half
after the end of the war in Yugoslav camps. When most of the “Prinz Eugen” division surrendered
after May 8, 1945, over 1,700 of them were murdered in a village near the Croat-Slovenian border
and the other half was worked to death in Yugoslav zinc mines near the town of Bor, in Serbia.
Aside from these Danube German soldiers, over 70,000 Germans
who had served in regular Wehrmacht died in Yugoslav captivity
from revenge murders or as slave laborers in dangerous work.
These were mostly troops of “Army Group E” who surrendered
to British in southern Austria on May 8, 1945 only to have the
British turn about 150,000 of them over to vengeance fueled
Communist Yugoslav partisans who dealt with them as brutally as
they could. Mob surrounds POW, left. Location unknown.
The fates of the remaining captured German troops in Yugoslavia was murder, both fast and slow.
First, up to 10,000 died in Communist-organized “atonement marches” (Suhnemärsche) which
stretched 800 miles from the southern border of Austria to the northern border of Greece. In most
instances, the prisoners were all tied together and forced to walk barefoot with no food or water. As
some dropped off one by one on these death marches, others were executed or tied together in
smaller groups and thrown into rivers where they were all shot for sport and drowned. On November
1, 1944, the Council for the Liberation of Yugoslavia declared all Germans "open prey" and less than
half of the German POWs and ethnic German civilians survived the partisans' genocide during this
time. Then, later in the summer of 1945, many more German POWs were murdered in mass
executions or thrown alive into large karst pits along the Dalmatian coast of Croatia. For the next 10
years, from 1945 to 1955, as was the case in the Soviet Union and other communist countries,
50,000 more German prisoners died from being worked to death as slaves and from the results of
disease, starvation or exhaustion.
An interesting footnote: After the war, many German combat veterans joined the French Foreign
Legion. Some were surviving SS members recruited directly from prisoner of war camps. Others
were men from lost German lands who had nowhere to go home to. Highly regarded by the French
for their discipline and bravery, an estimated 35,000 Germans took part in France's war in Vietnam.
Germans made up over half the Foreign Legion units in Viet Nam that bore much of the heaviest
fighting against the communist Viet Minh forces of Ho Chi Minh. In this brutal conflict, more than
10,000 Legionnaires were killed out of about 70,000 who fought. The Germans maintained their own
sergeants and spoke German almost exclusively.
Stalingrad
It is estimated that 700,000 to a million men may have died within the period they spent incarcerated
in American and French camps alone from 1945 to 1948. There are much higher estimates, however,
and attempts to uncover the truth regarding these camps in modern times, as well as excavation of
reported mass grave sites, have been vigilantly thwarted by, among others, the German government.
It is unknown how many perished under British captors but recently declassified documents indicate
widespread torture and abuse. Under all of them, many of the prisoners were used to do dangerous
work such as working with hazardous materials and mine sweeping in complete disregard of the law.
In 1945, thousands of German POWs were jammed into US Army vehicles going through towns
such as Nürnberg and Emskirchen (below). They often traveled for hundreds of miles without being
able to sit and with no food, rest or relief stops. Hundreds of German prisoners were confined in
makeshift US camps in Emskirchen and elsewhere. Some were sent to fields, mudholes, quarries
and hell holes elsewhere. It is very tricky giving numbers since most records are absent or inaccurate.
Half of the German POWs in the West were imprisoned by the US forces, half by the British. The
number of prisoners reached such a huge proportion that the British could not accept any more, and
the US consequently established the Rheinwiesenlager from April to September of 1945 where they
quickly built a series of  "cages" in open meadows and enclosed them with razor wire. One such
notorious field was located at Bad Kreuznach (in the photos below) where the German prisoners
were herded into the open spaces with no toilets, tents or shelters. They had to burrow sleeping
spaces into the ground with their bare hands and in some, there was barely enough room to lay
down. In the Bad Kreuznach cage, up to 560,000 men were interned in a congested area and denied
adequate food, water, shelter or sanitary facilities and they died like flies of disease, exposure and
illness after surviving on less than 700 calories a day. There are 1,000 official graves in Bad
Kreuznach, but it is claimed there are mass graves which have remained off limits to investigation.
At the end of June, 1945 the first camps in Remagen, Böhl-Ingelheim and Büderich were dissolved.
SHAEF offered the camps to the French, who wanted 1.75 million prisoners of war for use as slave
labor. In July, Sinzig, Andernach, Siershahn, Bretzenheim, Dietersheim, Koblenz, Hechtzheim and
Dietz, all containing thousands of prisoners, were given to France. In the British Zone, prisoners of
war who were able to work were transferred to France and the rest were released. At the end of
September, 1945 all the initial camps were dissolved.
By the winter of 1947, it was estimated that 4,160,000 German POWs were still held in 'work
camps' outside Germany: 750,000 in France, 30,000 in Italy, 460,000 in Britain, 14,000 in Belgium
(at one point, 48,000), 4,000 in Luxembourg and 1,300 in Holland (as discussed later, the Soviet
Union started with 4,000,000-5,000,000, Yugoslavia had 80,000 and Czechoslovakia 45,000) as
well as the USA's 140,000 in the US Occupation Zone with 100,000 more later also held in France.
Only by the autumn of 1945, after most camps had closed or were in the process of closing, was the
Red Cross granted permission to send delegations to visit camps in the French and UK occupation
zones and to finally provide minuscule amounts of relief, and it was not until February 4, 1946, that
the Red Cross was allowed to send even token relief to others in the U.S. run occupation zone. The
death rate for prisoners in these U.S. camps was at that point 30% per year, according to a U.S.
medical survey. Nearly all the surviving records of the Rhineland death camps were destroyed
Although it was always strongly denied, Morgenthau himself said his plan was implemented. In the
New York Post for Nov. 24, 1947, he wrote, "The Morgenthau Plan for Germany... became part of
the Potsdam Agreement, a solemn declaration of policy and undertaking for action.... signed by the
United States of America, Great Britain and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."
After the German capitulation in Norway on May 8,1945, over 5,000 German prisoners of war were
forced by the British, under the command of General Sir Andrew Thorn, to undertake clearance of
land mines in clear violation of the Geneva Convention of 1928. The POWs had to walk arm in arm
through mine fields already cleared of mines in hopes of triggering off land mines that were not found
previously. This act of cruelty led to the deaths of 184 German Soldiers and the injuring of another
252 POWs. Neither Thorn nor anyone else was ever held accountable for war crimes.
It happened in Denmark as well, and a Danish historian documented the killing of German POWs
during such clearance of land mines. It is assumed that about 250 German POWs met their deaths in
this way in Denmark when forced to perform this diabolical task. On the morning of July 22, 1945,
seven Germans were blown into the air as 450 land mines detonated. The other German POWs had
to then collect the body parts of their friends without using gloves or other protection.
Thousands of German and Croat soldiers captured in the final
days of the War were coldly executed and buried in mass
graves found in western Croatia. A site recently uncovered at
Harmica, 50 kilometres north-west of Zagreb, holds the bodies
of 4,500 soldiers, including 450 German officers, executed by
the communist partisans. The bones at Harmica were found in
six separate caves and laid in trenches upon discovery, left.
The officers were buried in a separate grave, presumably because they were separated from the
soldiers and executed last. The victims were troops of the 392 Infantry Division, set up by the
German command in Croatia in August 1943 and placed under the leadership of Lt. General Hans
Mickl. Other caves have shown evidence that prisoners were herded into them and were gassed to
death after the entrances were sealed. In previous discoveries of mass graves, those of both civilians
and military, it should be noted that the remains show evidence of having no clothing on and being
mutilated, burned, beaten to death, dismembered or of having suffered other obvious atrocities.
Below: About 250,000 Germans (including most of the Afrika Korps) and Italians surrendered in
Tunis in May 1943 and were taken as prisoners of war where they sweltered in large pens in the
desert heat. Many survivors were later sent to Egypt and camps in the US and elsewhere (click).
There were no impartial observers to witness the treatment of POWs held by the U.S. Army. From
the date Germany unconditionally surrendered, May 8, 1945, Switzerland was dismissed as the
official Protecting Power for German prisoners and the International Red Cross was informed that,
with no Protecting Power to report to, there was no need for them to send delegates to the camps.