For You, the War is Over...

U.S. soldier at Camp Remagen guarding thousands of German soldiers captured in the Ruhr area on 25 April 1945.
(Source)

The firing began to slacken as ammunition ran low. Horst stayed in his foxhole, keeping his head down, he was completely out of rounds. He thought about fixing his bayonet, then realized it would probably be better to cut his own throat with it rather than make some futile gesture. The war was over.

The Amis had attacked at dawn, first with a blizzard of artillery fire. As his platoon was well dug in, the artillery hadn't hurt them, much. No doubt the lieutenant's parents would disagree as his position had taken a direct hit. From past experience Horst knew that they'd be lucky to find the young officer's boot heels, let alone an intact body to bury.

When the Amis had advanced into the open across the firebreak from them, the platoon's remaining two MG-42 machine guns had waited until the enemy was halfway across the roughly 20 meter strip of open ground. When there were no more targets to be engaged, the firing stopped.

A single American had lurched to his feet and tried to retreat back to his side of the firebreak, he was cut down immediately by rifle fire. That had been over an hour ago.

That's when the artillery started again.

When the artillery stopped, Horst was deaf, couldn't hear a thing other than a ringing in his ears for a few long minutes. Lifting his head slowly, he peered over the lip of his foxhole. The Amis were being careful this time.

The brush moved on the opposite side of the firebreak, again machine gun fire rang out, but only briefly. Then the gun was silent. Horst guessed that the gunners had fired off their last belt. The Amis came into the firebreak once more, crouched low, darting quickly from cover only to go to ground after a short dash. No machine fire rang out.

Horst's hearing was returning, he heard shouts to his right, he turned to look, one of the machine gun crews was standing, waving a light colored rang, all three men were yelling out, "Nicht schießen!" Don't shoot. Perhaps none of the Americans spoke German, perhaps they just didn't care to accept the surrender of those gunners. They were out of ammunition, the Amis were not.

When the firing stopped, all three German machine gun crewmen were dead, cut down in the act of surrendering. At that point, Horst realized that it was unlikely that he would survive the war. The Amis were in a killing mood.

It was the afternoon of the 17th of April, 1945.

Being a prisoner of war sucks. But as a POW you do have certain rights and protections under the Geneva Convention -

Under the Third Geneva Convention, prisoners of war (POW) must be:

• Treated humanely with respect for their persons and their honor
• Able to inform their next of kin and the International Committee of the Red Cross of their capture
• Allowed to communicate regularly with relatives and receive packages
• Given adequate food, clothing, housing, and medical attention
• Paid for work done and not forced to do work that is dangerous, unhealthy, or degrading
• Released quickly after conflicts end
• Not compelled to give any information except for name, age, rank, and service number

In addition, if wounded or sick on the battlefield, the prisoner will receive help from the International Committee of the Red Cross. 

When a country is responsible for breaches of prisoner of war rights, those accountable will be punished accordingly. An example of this is the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials. German and Japanese military commanders were prosecuted for preparing and initiating a war of aggression, murder, ill treatment, and deportation of individuals, and genocide during World War II. Most were executed or sentenced to life in prison for their crimes. (Source)

But what if a combatant is not a signatory of the Geneva Convention? The Germans argued in World War II that as the Soviet Union had not signed the convention, their captured troops were not protected by the Convention. The number of captured Soviets who were killed out of hand, left to starve to death in open enclosures after capture, or worked to death as slave labor ran into the millions.

An improvised camp for Soviet prisoners of war. August 1942.
(Source)

Notice the similarities between the opening photo and the one of the Soviet POWs?

Near and at the end of World War II the western Allies (the U.S., the U.K., and France) were bringing in prisoners by the thousands, and then by the hundreds of thousands. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians, liberated Allied POWs, liberated concentration camp survivors. Logistically the Allies were already stretched fairly thin, there wasn't much of a chance of being able to take care of all of those people set loose in Europe.

So the western Allies decided that the surrendering Germans would not be classified as POWs They would be designated as Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEF). By doing that, the western Allies "technically" didn't have to abide by the Geneva Convention. A large number of German troops who had surrendered died in the camps set up along the Rhine River, which the Germans called the Rheinwiesenlager, the "Rhine Meadow Camps."

Was this a war crime? Technically yes, I suppose it was. But the thought at the time was that the Germans, having started the war and having caused the problem, should be the least of the Allied powers' worries. Help the innocents, the civilians uprooted by the war first. Let the Germans fend for themselves until the first thing was sorted out.

Oddly enough, the Rheinwiesenlager were run by the Germans themselves. German military police, still armed, were used to police the camps. The camps were mostly shut down by September of 1945. Still, thousands died.

This a story I had never heard of before until reader Stefan pointed it out in a comment the other day here. I'm still pondering the many imponderables (if that's even possible) surrounding the idea of being treated "fairly" after surrendering. In the heat of battle, soldiers who try to surrender are often killed out of hand. In a fast moving combat situation there is often no time to take prisoners, the victorious soldiers have just been through combat, have seen friends killed and wounded. Why take pity on the bastards who decided to quit because they no longer had the advantage?

Why take pity on an aircrew who have been shot down in your midst after bombing and strafing your town, your unit? In the heat of the moment many aircrew have been put to death for simply doing their jobs. But can you blame the people on the ground?

War is brutal, nasty, and horrifying. There is no way to make it less so, not in reality. People in suits can make rules in marble palaces between wars, thinking that war can be made civilized, less terrible. In the heat of combat soldiers will still execute or mistreat prisoners and innocent civilians. That has been the way since Cain slew Abel.

Yes, things aren't quite as brutal now as they were, there are "rules" which many still try to obey. I have no answers, only questions. The only eternal guarantee in war is that the innocent suffer along with the guilty. I don't think that will ever change.

Horst was searched roughly, his helmet, equipment, and personal effects taken from him. His tunic was ripped open and one of the Americans slapped him, hard, before shoving him into a huddle with the other captured Germans.

A big American sergeant walked up to the Germans and fired a burst from his submachine gun, at least two Germans went down. He would have emptied the magazine but his weapon had jammed. This simple mechanical failure saved Horst and the others. For at that moment an American officer showed up. Yelling at his men, the officer had a few Americans with rifles and fixed bayonets start herding Horst and the others to the rear.

One American shoved Horst into a line with the other Germans, looking Horst directly in the eye and saying, "Für Sie ist der Krieg vorbei..."

For you, the war is over.



Other Sources:

• Prisoners of War (POW)
• Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEF)
• German deaths in Western POW camps
• Rheinwiesenlager
• German POWs in the USSR
• Soviet POWs held by the Germans