| After the End: Who Put the Bad in Bad Kreuznach? |
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.
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.
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. 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.
The photos below show the magnitude of the situation. (Click to enlarge)
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.
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.
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. 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.
The photos below show the magnitude of the situation. (Click to enlarge)
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.
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.
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.
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. As of October 2007, 540 secret mass graves had
been registered across Slovenia, believed to be holding up to 100,000 bodies. Since that time, many
more have been unearthed.
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 were found
in six separate caves and laid in trenches upon discovery. The victims were troops of the 392
Infantry Division, set up by the German command in Croatia in August 1943 led by Lt. General
Hans Mickl. In other caves, POWs were herded in and were gassed to death after the entrances were
sealed. In previous discoveries of mass graves of both civilians and military, the remains wore no
clothing and had been mutilated, burned, beaten, dismembered or suffered other atrocities. In 2009, ”
hundreds” of mummified corpses shot by Tito’s Partisans were found near Lasko in Slovenia.
Croatia's Interior Minister said there could be as many as 840 mass graves in Croatia alone and
estimated another 600 in neighbouring Slovenia and around 90 in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
An interesting footnote: After the war, many German combat veterans joined the French Foreign
Legion, some recruited directly from POW camps. Others were men who had no home to return to.
Highly regarded by the French for their discipline and bravery, up to 70% of the French Foreign
legion after 1945 consisted of former German soldiers. The Germans maintained their own sergeants
and spoke German almost exclusively. From 1945-1954 the Legion Etrangere recruited 30,000-
35,000 Germans. During the 1st Indochina War c. 40-50% of the LE personell in South-Eastern Asia
were Germans and among the last 7000 soldiers that left Vietnam in 1954 after the peace treaty,
1600 were German.
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.
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.
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.
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. As of October 2007, 540 secret mass graves had
been registered across Slovenia, believed to be holding up to 100,000 bodies. Since that time, many
more have been unearthed.
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 were found
in six separate caves and laid in trenches upon discovery. The victims were troops of the 392
Infantry Division, set up by the German command in Croatia in August 1943 led by Lt. General
Hans Mickl. In other caves, POWs were herded in and were gassed to death after the entrances were
sealed. In previous discoveries of mass graves of both civilians and military, the remains wore no
clothing and had been mutilated, burned, beaten, dismembered or suffered other atrocities. In 2009, ”
hundreds” of mummified corpses shot by Tito’s Partisans were found near Lasko in Slovenia.
Croatia's Interior Minister said there could be as many as 840 mass graves in Croatia alone and
estimated another 600 in neighbouring Slovenia and around 90 in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
An interesting footnote: After the war, many German combat veterans joined the French Foreign
Legion, some recruited directly from POW camps. Others were men who had no home to return to.
Highly regarded by the French for their discipline and bravery, up to 70% of the French Foreign
legion after 1945 consisted of former German soldiers. The Germans maintained their own sergeants
and spoke German almost exclusively. From 1945-1954 the Legion Etrangere recruited 30,000-
35,000 Germans. During the 1st Indochina War c. 40-50% of the LE personell in South-Eastern Asia
were Germans and among the last 7000 soldiers that left Vietnam in 1954 after the peace treaty,
1600 were German.
Stalingrad
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.
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 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.
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.
Because the German POWs had been conveniently redefined as "disarmed enemy forces", Allied
captors did whatever they wanted with their German captives and even bartered 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 ala Morgenthau's genocidal plan:
“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."
Long columns of German prisoners 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.
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."
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, Italy, unknown
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.
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 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.
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.
Because the German POWs had been conveniently redefined as "disarmed enemy forces", Allied
captors did whatever they wanted with their German captives and even bartered 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 ala Morgenthau's genocidal plan:
“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."
Long columns of German prisoners 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.
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."
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, Italy, unknown
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.
A few weeks after the war officially ended, on July 16, 1945, a US military freight train at Assling,
near Munich which was carrying tanks "accidentally" crashed into the rear of a train carrying German
prisoners of war which had stopped due to an engine breakdown and the US train carrying the tanks
had been given a signal by the American signalman to proceed despite the track ahead being blocked.
On the POW train, 96 German soldiers were killed and six others were killed on the US train.
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. 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. There were other incidents of lawlessness and outright murder.
Many German soldiers at the end of the fighting desperately tried to get to a place where they could
be taken captive by the Americans rather than the Russians. Some swan, ran or crawled to safety.
Others resorted to stealing US jeeps or donning US uniforms to accomplish this and when caught
were usually treated as spies and executed.
In one case, 3,000 loaves of poisoned bread were fed to German prisoners in one camp. There are
differing accounts of the story, one coming from a man who claimed in a 1998 book to have
masterminded the scheme as part of a larger terrorist plot to murder millions of German civilians by
poisoning water supplies. However, the official American version was that a bakery worker who
supplied bread to American prison camps claimed he received arsenic in bottles from Paris and
poisoned 3,000 loaves of bread. In any case, it was took sophisticated planning and a knowledge of
chemistry to accomplish the act and the death toll was anywhere from 200 to 700 German veterans.
The New York Times (April 23, 1946) stated: "POISON PLOT TOLL OF NAZIS AT 2,283;
Arsenic Bottles Found by U.S. Agents in Nuremberg Bakery That Served Prison Camp". It reported:
"NUREMBERG, Germany, April 22 (AP) U S Army authorities said tonight that additional German
prisoners of war have been stricken with arsenic poisoning, bringing to 2,283 the number taken ill in
a mysterious plot against 15,000 former Nazi Elite Guard men confined in a camp near Nuremberg"
(end). The outcome of this cowardly act is unknown, however, the self-confessed poisoner who
boasted of the murder was never prosecuted.
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.
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 to right: 1945 German POWs at their new home in Verdun, France; POWs captured in
France; 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.Captured
POWs being abused by mob; Poison bread fed to POWs wire photo (click)
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.
A few weeks after the war officially ended, on July 16, 1945, a US military freight train at Assling,
near Munich which was carrying tanks "accidentally" crashed into the rear of a train carrying German
prisoners of war which had stopped due to an engine breakdown and the US train carrying the tanks
had been given a signal by the American signalman to proceed despite the track ahead being blocked.
On the POW train, 96 German soldiers were killed and six others were killed on the US train.
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. 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. There were other incidents of lawlessness and outright murder.
Many German soldiers at the end of the fighting desperately tried to get to a place where they could
be taken captive by the Americans rather than the Russians. Some swan, ran or crawled to safety.
Others resorted to stealing US jeeps or donning US uniforms to accomplish this and when caught
were usually treated as spies and executed.
In one case, 3,000 loaves of poisoned bread were fed to German prisoners in one camp. There are
differing accounts of the story, one coming from a man who claimed in a 1998 book to have
masterminded the scheme as part of a larger terrorist plot to murder millions of German civilians by
poisoning water supplies. However, the official American version was that a bakery worker who
supplied bread to American prison camps claimed he received arsenic in bottles from Paris and
poisoned 3,000 loaves of bread. In any case, it was took sophisticated planning and a knowledge of
chemistry to accomplish the act and the death toll was anywhere from 200 to 700 German veterans.
The New York Times (April 23, 1946) stated: "POISON PLOT TOLL OF NAZIS AT 2,283;
Arsenic Bottles Found by U.S. Agents in Nuremberg Bakery That Served Prison Camp". It reported:
"NUREMBERG, Germany, April 22 (AP) U S Army authorities said tonight that additional German
prisoners of war have been stricken with arsenic poisoning, bringing to 2,283 the number taken ill in
a mysterious plot against 15,000 former Nazi Elite Guard men confined in a camp near Nuremberg"
(end). The outcome of this cowardly act is unknown, however, the self-confessed poisoner who
boasted of the murder was never prosecuted.
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.
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 to right: 1945 German POWs at their new home in Verdun, France; POWs captured in
France; 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.Captured
POWs being abused by mob; Poison bread fed to POWs wire photo (click)
