The March (1945)
"The March" refers to a series of forced marches during the final stages of the
As the
Notorious examples include:
- from Stalag Luft IV at Gross Tychow in Pomerania the prisoners faced an 800 km (500 mi) trek in blizzard conditions across Germany, during which hundreds died, and;
- a march from Stalag VIII-B, known as the "Lamsdorf Death March",[2] which was similar to the better-known Bataan Death March (1942) in terms of mortality rates.[3]
- from Stalag Luft III in Silesia to Bavaria
Motives
On 19 July 1944,
In the later stages of the war there were great concerns among POWs over the motives for moving them westward. Many different and conflicting rumours abounded, including suggestions that:
- They were being moved towards deliberate targeting of civilians in cities such as Dresden.
- POWs would be force-marched until their deaths from exhaustion, a practice that had already been made notorious by the Japanese military (see, for instance: Bataan Death March).
- They would be held hostage to leverage peace deals, including claims that they would be held at a trial for war crimes (1948), that Hitler had considered a threat to execute 35,000 POWs, unless the Allies agreed to a peace deal. Similarly, SS chief Heinrich Himmler had made similar plans, centred on the Baltic coastal region and set up a new headquarters in a castle on the Bay of Lübeck.[4]
Main evacuation routes to the west
Robert Schirmer was the
- The "northern route", included POWs from Danzig (Gdansk): so the reality was much less organised than it might first appear.[4]
- A "central route", started at Stalag Luft 7 at Bankau, near Kreuzburg in Silesia (now Poland), via Stalag 344 (formerly and usually known as Stalag VIII-B) at Lamsdorf, to Stalag VIII-A at Görlitz, then ending at Stalag III-A at Luckenwalde, 30 kilometres (19 mi) south of Berlin.
- The "southern route", from Stalag VIII-B (formerly Moosburg in Bavaria.
The direction of travel was not consistent. An individual group would sometimes travel in circles and end up at a previous stopping point; it often zig-zagged. Charles Waite describes his route as: Marienburg (Stalag XX-B), Neustettin, Nuebrandenburg, Schwerin, heading for Lübeck but diverting south to Wittenberge, Stendal (after crossing the frozen Elbe), Magdeburg, Halle (just north of Leipzig), Luckenwalde, Belzig, Brandenburg, eastwards towards Potsdam and then in the direction of Berlin. Waite estimated the distance covered as 1,600 kilometres (990 mi).[5] Comparison of this route with Schirmer's description of the three lines of march may suggest to the reader that his group started on the northern line of march and finished on the central one.
According to Nichol and Rennell, the forced march of thousands of western Allied POWs from
The marches
January and February 1945 were among the coldest winter months of the 20th century in Europe, with blizzards and temperatures as low as –25 °C (–13 °F), and even until the middle of March, temperatures were well below 0 °C (32 °F).[citation needed] Most of the POWs were ill-prepared for the evacuation, having suffered years of poor rations and wearing clothing ill-suited to the appalling winter conditions.
In most camps, the POWs were broken up in groups of 250 to 300 men and because of the inadequate roads and the flow of battle, not all the prisoners followed the same route. The groups would march 20–40 km (12–25 mi) a day, resting in factories, churches, barns and even in the open. Soon long columns of POWs were wandering over the northern part of Germany with little or nothing in the way of food, clothing, shelter or medical care.
Prisoners from different camps had different experiences: sometimes the Germans provided farm wagons for those unable to walk. There seldom were horses available, so teams of POWs pulled the wagons through the snow. Sometimes the guards and prisoners became dependent on each other, other times the guards became increasingly hostile. Passing through some villages, the residents would throw bricks and stones, and in others, the residents would share their last food. Some groups of prisoners were joined by German civilians who were also fleeing from the Russians. Some who tried to escape or could not go on were shot by guards.
Those with intact boots had the dilemma of whether to remove them at night - if they left them on, trench foot could result; if they removed them, they may not get their swollen feet back into their boots in the morning or get frostbite. Worse still, the boots could freeze or be stolen.[4][5]
With so little food they were reduced to scavenging to survive. Some were reduced to eating dogs and cats — and even rats[citation needed] and grass—anything they could obtain. Already underweight from years of prison rations, some were at half their pre-war body weight by the end.
Because of the unsanitary conditions and a near starvation diet, hundreds of POWs died of disease along the way and many more were ill.
In addition to these conditions were the dangers from air attack by Allied forces mistaking the POWs for retreating columns of German troops. On April 19, 1945, at a village called Gresse, 30 Allied POWs died and 30 were seriously injured (possibly fatally) when strafed by a flight of RAF Typhoons.[7][8][9]
As winter drew to a close, suffering from the cold abated and some of the German guards became less harsh in their treatment of POWs. But the thaw rendered useless the sledges made by many POWs to carry spare clothing, carefully preserved food supplies and other items. So, the route became littered with items that could not be carried. Some even discarded their greatcoats, hoping that the weather did not turn cold again.[6] As the columns reached the western side of Germany they ran into the advancing western Allied armies. For some, this brought liberation. Others were not so lucky. They were marched towards the Baltic Sea, where Nazis were rumoured to be using POWs as human shields and hostages. It was later estimated that a large number of POWs had marched over 800 km (500 mi) by the time they were liberated, and some had walked nearly 1,500 km (930 mi).
New Zealander Norman Jardine[10] explained how, once liberated, his group of POWs were given a revolver by a U.S. Army officer and told to shoot any guards who had treated them unfairly. He stated that "We did!"
On 4 May 1945 RAF Bomber Command implemented Operation Exodus, and the first prisoners of war were repatriated by air. Bomber Command flew 2,900 sorties over the next 23 days, carrying 72,500 prisoners of war.
Total number of deaths
The total number of US POWs in Germany was in the region of 93,000-94,000 and official sources claim that 1,121 died. The British Commonwealth total was close to 180,000 and while no accurate records exist, if a similar casualty rate is assumed, the number who died would be around 2,200. Therefore, according to a report by the US Department of Veterans Affairs, almost 3,500 US and Commonwealth POWs died as a result of the marches.[11] It is possible that some of these deaths occurred before the death marches, but the marches would have claimed the vast majority.
Nichol and Rennell, after detailed enquiries with the British authorities, concluded that no consolidated figures for deaths of British and Commonwealth POWs was kept. They are only able to put forward a "guess" of between 2,500 and 3,500 American, British and Commonwealth POW deaths on the marches.[4]: 403
Other estimates vary greatly, with one magazine for former POWs putting the number of deaths from the Gross Tychow march alone at 1,500.[12] A senior YMCA official closely involved with the POW camps put the number of Commonwealth and American POW deaths at 8,348 between September 1944 and May 1945.[3]
It is possible to get an impression of the casualty rate among Commonwealth POWs from the
Blame for the marches
SS Generalleutnant Gottlob Berger, who was put in charge of POW camps in 1944, was arrested and put on trial in the Ministries Trial in 1947. In 1949 there was an attempt to assign blame for the marches against Berger and the indictment read:
that between September 1944 and May 1945, hundreds of thousands of American and Allied prisoners of war were compelled to undertake forced marches in severe weather without adequate rest, shelter, food, clothing and medical supplies; and that such forced marches, conducted under the authority of the defendant Berger, chief of Prisoner-of-War Affairs, resulted in great privation and deaths to many thousands of prisoners.[16]
Berger argued that it was in fact the Germans' duty under the
However, in 1949, Berger was convicted for his role in the genocide of European Jews and sentenced to 25 years in prison. The sentence was reduced to 10 years in 1951 because of his refusal to kill the "Prominentes" (famous or high-ranking Allied officers), who were held at Oflag IV-C (Colditz Castle), despite direct orders from Hitler. He had helped these prisoners escape by moving them to Bavaria and then to Austria where he met with them twice before they were returned to American forces. Berger claimed that he had saved the Prominente from Gestapo head Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who had sent agents to kill them.[citation needed]
Berger was released from prison in 1951 and died in 1975.[citation needed]
Timeline of POW evacuations
- 13 July 1944 – -evacuation of Swinemünde, or by force march and cattle train to Stalag XX-Aat Thorn in Poland.
- 24 December 1944 – POW work camps near Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) are evacuated.
- 27 December 1944 to April 1945 – POWs at Stalag VIII-B (formerly Moosburg in Bavaria.
- 12 January 1945 – Red Army launched offensive in Poland and East Prussia.
- 19 January 1945 – evacuation from Stalag Luft 7 at Bankau, near Kreuzberg, Poland, begins in blizzard conditions – 1,500 prisoners were force marched then loaded onto cattle trucks and taken to Stalag III-A at Luckenwalde, south of Berlin. Evacuation of work party 344 at (Piaski), part of Stalag VIIB, prisoners commenced march on foot.
- 20 January 1945 – Stalag XX-A at Thorn, Poland, started evacuation.
- 22 January 1945 – Stalag 344 at Lamsdorf, Silesia was evacuated.
- 23 January 1945 – Evacuation began at Danzig.
- 27 January 1945 to February 1945 – evacuation began at Moosburg, Bavaria.
- 29 January 1945 - Stalag IID Stargard (now Stargard Szczeciński, Poland) was evacuated. Almost a thousand men struggled into formation. There were about five-hundred Russians, two-hundred Frenchmen, one-hundred Americans and twenty-five Canadians in the march. The POWs were put on a forced march along a northern route in blizzard conditions via Settin (Szczecin) to arrive at Stalag II-A, Neubrandenburg on February 7, 1945.
- 6 February 1945 to March 1945 – Evacuation from Fallingbostel. Many prisoners were then marched from here at the end of the war towards Lübeck.
- 8 February 1945 – Stalag VIII-C at Sagan was evacuated. The POWs marched across Germany to Stalag IX-B near Bad Orb, and arrive there 16 March.
- 10 February 1945 – Stalag VIII-A at Görlitz was evacuated.
- 14 February 1945 – Commonwealth and US bomber squadrons attacked Dresden.
- 19 March 1945 – Hitler issued the Nero Decree.
- 3 April 1945 – Stalag XIII-D at Nuremberg was evacuated.
- 6 April 1945 – Fallingbostelwere evacuated.
- 16 April 1945 – Oflag IV-C, (Colditz Castle), was liberated.
- 16 April 1945 – POWs left behind at British Second Army.
- 17 April 1945 – Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated.
- 19 April 1945 – POW column was attacked by allied aircraft at Gresse resulting in 60 fatalities.
- 22 April 1945 – Stalag III-A at Luckenwalde was liberated by Soviet forces.
- 27 April 1945 – US and Soviet forces met at the River Elbe.
- 29 April 1945 – Third United States Army.
- 30 April 1945 – Berlin falls to the Red Army and Hitler commits suicide.
- 4 May 1945 – German forces surrendered on Lüneburg Heath.
- 10 May 1945 – The last POWs evacuated from Stalag 357 / Stalag XI-Bat Fallingbostel are liberated.
- 12 May 1945 – The Red Army releases Commonwealth and US POWs at Stalag III-A, Luckenwalde.
See also
- Sandakan Death Marches
- James "Dixie" Deans
- Bataan Death March
- Death marches (Holocaust)
- Phil Lamason
- List of German World War II POW camps
- Prisoner of war
- Prisoner-of-war camp
Notes
References
- ISBN 9781536110357. Archived from the original(PDF) on 26 June 2015.
- ^ "Lamsdorf Death March 1945". Retrieved 6 May 2016.
- ^ ISBN 0-8214-1069-5.
- ^ a b c d e f g h The Last Escape - John Nichol, Tony Rennell - 2002 Penguin UK Archived 2014-02-20 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7524-7752-7.
- ^ a b "Henry Owens, Long (Baltic) March, 1945 - 51st Highland Division". Retrieved 6 May 2016.
- ^ World War II forum discussion mentioning Gresse friendly-fire incident & sources
- ^ Victor F. Gammon. Not All Glory: True Accounts of RAF Airmen Taken Prisoner in Europe, 1939-45.
- ^ "List of British personnel killed by low flying a/c at Gresse, on April 19th, 1945. Interred at Gresse churchyard on April 19th and 20th, 1945" and "List of men taken to hospital with injuries following a/c attack at Gresse" from the Canadian Department of National Defence's Directorate of Military History
- ^ "Forced marches - Prisoners of War - NZHistory, New Zealand history online". Retrieved 6 May 2016.
- ^ Annual report of the DVA Advisory Committee on Former Prisoners of War, in cooperation with the Department of Defense, 1999.
- ^ John Frisbee & George Guderley, "Lest We Forget", Air Force Magazine, September 1997.
- ^ Reading Room Manchester. "Homepage". Retrieved 6 May 2016.
- ^ For example: Berlin War Cemetery and Durnbach War Cemetery
- ^ Reading Room Manchester. "Cemetery Details". Retrieved 6 May 2016.
- ^ Trials of War criminals before the Nuernberg [sic] Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No 10, Vol. XIII (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1952
Bibliography
- Goodman, W.E. "Bill" (2013). Of Stirlings and Stalags: An air-gunner's tale. PublishNation.
- Kydd, Sam (1974). For You The War Is Over Futura.
- Morrison, Charles (1989). We've Been A Long Time Coming Boys. Albyn Press. ISBN 0-284-98840-5
- MacMahon, John (1995). Almost a Lifetime. Shamrock Publications, Salt Spring Island BC ISBN 978-0-9684454-0-2
- Nichol and Rennell (2003). The Last Escape. Viking, New York.
- The Long March to Freedom (The Long March to Freedom at IMDb)- 3-part video documentary, dir. Stephen Saunders - ASA, Stafford, 2011.
External links
- http://www.lamsdorf.com/the-long-march.html
- Lamsdorf Death March 1945 An account by RAF Warrant Officer Joseph Fusniak, BEM (still alive Sept 2010)
- Stalag VIII-B Discussion Board
- Lamsdorf Remembered
- Norman Jardine's Diary of a Forced March of POWs, January-May 1945
- B24.net
- Evacuation of Fallinbostel POW camp - April 1945
- catwalkchatt.com
- stalag-viiib.com
- Ersatz Krieg: A True Story of Men Captured, But Not Conquered Account by Alban Snape of his time in a sugar factory and following long march of Jan-May 1945
- WWII Memories featuring the account of Danny Dorlin's Death March, along with others and personal PoW accounts
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/categories/c55391/
- http://www.lamsdorf.com/the-long-march.html