One Million German POWs killed by US/UK?

[Marcus Wendel]

The above three posts were moved here from the "How many SS troops survived the war?" thread as they focus on the claims in "Other losses".

/Marcus

[LWD]

... The difficulty with hard evidence for this porition of the war is that DEF's were stripped of identification, and records of specific deaths were not recorded, bodies are in areas where they cannot be identified by other means (DNA/Dental records) which makes proving mass extermination of SS troops following their surrender hard to prove without question, which is the entire point of the DEF designation and why things were done in the fashion that they were. ....

The stated reason for the DEF designation was I believe the food requirement. POW's were required by the convention to recieve food on a par with the capturing nations soldiers. DEF's were not and the allied postion was that DEF's shouldn't recieve more food than the local civilians. There was a general lack of food in much of Europe at the time.

If you have documentation or sources that indicate otherwise PLS present them. Otherwise we just have your opinion on this topic.

[Larry D.]

Must we really be subjected to the preceding babble? This particular thread seems to attract extremists, loons and trouble-making teens like you-know-what attracts flies. Maybe it's time to close it to further commentary as most factual information on the subject has already been posted.

FWIW,

L.

[UMachine]

[Merged from viewtopic.php?f=6&t=162299]


I think the key thing to remember is that even thought a lot of SS troops survived the war itself, most met their death after surrendering. In the East, all SS men were simply executed or starved to death in hard labor camps. In the West, many were handed over to the Russians for execution. However, those that remained were mostly murdered in Allied POW camps or, in most cases, they were designated as "Disarmed Enemy Forces". At that point, those designated as DEF's, were stripped of all identification (military and civilian) and shipped to special camps where were denied food and forced to run daily, until they all died. These camps were completely shut-off from the outside world. No Red Cross or external access was allowed. They were not allowed to write letters to their families. Once dead, some were designated as "Other Losses" and buried in unmarked graves so that nobody would know their fate, or be able to track it back via a paper trail. It is estimated that more than 2 million men, mostly SS volunteers, from countries like Germany, France, Belgium, Poland, Norway, Finland, Italy, Prussia, ect, were designated as DEF's and subsequently killed.

It is noteworthy that German citizens are forbidden by law to search for bodies in the areas of these suspected mass grave sites exist.

See my thread Nigerian POW Camp for an example of a wss man being removed to a remote camp.

viewtopic.php?f=117&t=177696

[john h]

The German annual death rates in us hands 1% and French hands 2.6% were a whole order of magnitude less than for US pows in Japanese hands 27% German pows in Soviet hands 35-50% or worst of all Soviet pows in german hands 60-80% they were comparable to but probably higher than the annual death rate of US pows in german hands 1%

1 year after the last acknowledged German pow was released by the Soviets 1956 the West German government set up the Scientific Commission for the History of German Prisoners of War they spent the next 16 years tracking the fate of German pows in various countries publishing their results in 22 books they noted Western mistreatment of German pows in 1945 but studying the 6 worst camps that held 560-000 pows estimated deaths from 3000-9000 in the range of 1%

The German Red Cross in 1974 reported 41000 missing who were last known on the western front even if you assume they all died in USpows camps and add the 15000 pow dead listed by the US provost marshal that yields a maximum of 56000 1.1% of the peak number of pows held by the US


there is no doubt that America and France have questions to answer about their treatment of german pows even senior leaders like Eisenhower and Clay thought the Germans deserved an experience of the hunger they had imposed on everyone else

I feel that the Germans should suffer from hunger and from cold as i believe such suffering is necessary to make them realise the consequences of a war which they caused
Lucius D Clay to John J McCloy June 29 1945
Source Gunter Bischof and Stephen Ambrose Eisenhower and the German pows Facts Against Falsehood Louisiana State University Press Baton Rouge and London 1992

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Ghost-of-War,

It is untrue that "most (Waffen-SS) met their death after surrendering.".

Firstly, virtually 100% of Waffen-SS men surrendered at some stage. However, the overall fatality rate of Waffen-SS men was a little over 30%. Thus, even if not a single W-SS man had died in combat, no more than a third could possibly have "met their death after surrendering.".

Furthermore, even after being accepted as a prisoner on the Eastern Front, a W-SS man was little more likely to die in captivity than an Army man. Indeed, because a high proportion of Austrians were captured early at Stalingrad, they were more likely to die in Soviet captivity than W-SS men, who were mostly late war captives.

Finally, because almost all Reich-raised divisions were mechanized from the start, they were much more able to avoid having to surrender in the first place than the bulk of the Army, which was mostly on foot and horsedrawn. If you avoid getting captured in the first place, you can't "meet your death after surrendering".

It seems, in fact, that Waffen-SS men were no more likely to die in the war than Army men in comparable combat units.