Tag: prisoners

One aspect of the Nazi treatment of people from their conquered territories might well have attracted more attention, had it not been overshadowed by more sinister discoveries as the war drew to a close. Suddenly as the Allied armies moved into the heart of Germany they discovered the true meaning and scale of the Nazi enslavement of Europe.

Peter White was an officer with the Kings Own Scottish Borderers. On the 6th April 1945 they were ordered to forward in motor transport, making a rapid advance to catch up with the 7th Armoured Division that had driven a wedge deep into Germany. The progress was slowed by the volume of traffic coming the other way:

Here at last were some positive clues for us to add to our deductions and rumours as to the military positions. As soon as we got on to this road we began to meet among traffic coming in the opposite direction, waves of motley, liberated personnel.

They came, drunk from the joy of it… and sometimes just plain drunk… on foot, in looted cars and carts or by pushbike, cheering and saluting, Russian, Polish and French Displaced persons and Russian POWs.

For the next 50 to 100 miles this tide of fugitive humanity grew steadily into a torrent. They became the tenor and in many cases the means of the sudden demise of wayside farmers and members of their families on whom they descended at nightfall for food, plunder and often rape.

The squarely built Russian soldiers, as heavy in their appearance as they seemed in their wits, saluted every Allied object that moved, apparently without fail, on roads nose to tail with army transport.

See Peter White: With the Jocks: A Soldier’s Struggle for Europe 1944-45

Journalist Alan Moorehead was also making his way east, just behind the advancing troops:

As soon as we crossed the Rhine we were confronted by a problem almost as big as Germany herself; the millions upon millions of semi-slave workers.

With every mile we went into Germany they grew more numerous on the roads: little groups of Frenchmen, then Dutch, then Belgians and Czechs and Poles and Italians, and finally, in overwhelming majority, the Russians in their bright green uniforms with ‘SU’— Soviet Union – painted in white on their backs.

Half the nationalities of Europe were on the march, all moving blindly westward along the roads, feeling their way by some common instinct towards the British and American lines in the hope of finding food and shelter and transportation there.

These millions lived a vagabond existence. At every bend of the road you came on another group, bundles on their shoulders, trudging along the ditches in order to avoid the passing military traffic.

The Germans were terrified of the Russians. Again and again women ran out to us to cry: ‘Can’t you leave a guard with us? The Russians have taken everything. The next lot will smash up the place if they find nothing.’ More than that the German women feared for themselves. Cases of rape increased. The looting increased. And still that vast moving human frieze kept pouring down the roads, constantly augmenting its numbers with every new town that was captured.

One began to get a new picture of Nazi Germany. VVhat we were seeing was something from the dark ages, the breaking up of a medieval slave state. All the Nazi flags and parades and con- quests in the end were based on this one thing — slave labour. There was something monstrous about the wired-in worker’s compounds and sentry boxes round each factory, something that was in defiance of all accepted ideas of civilization.

As yet, in early April, we had only begun to glimpse the extent and depth of the Nazi terror system, but already one sensed the utter disregard of the value of human life in Germany. And now the Reich was collapsing at its roots because the slaves were melting away.

One saw mostly women in the country towns and in the farms as we passed on; nearly all the German men were either at the front or prisoners or dead. And the slaves were on the road. There was no longer anyone to sow the crop, no one to reap the harvest later on.

Here and there a foreigner chose to remain with his German master. Indeed, on the whole the country labourers got sufficient food and they looked healthy enough. But nothing on earth would have kept the industrial workers in the factories and the mines once the Germans had gone. First they rushed out into the streets to loot. Then they took the road to the west until they drifted into hastily made British and American camps where some attempt was made to sort them out and send them home.

See Alan Moorehead: Eclipse

If the situation in Germany was confusing to the senior German commanders it was no less so on the ground, where the front line was continually moving. Simultaneously there were shifting loyalties amongst the German troops, with many trying to find the right opportunity to surrender.

The Reverend Terence Quinlan, Senior Brigade Chaplain and R.C. Chaplain to the 1st Commando Brigade describes the situation around the German town of Osnabruck, which was occupied by the British on 5th April:

At a fork in the road to Osnabruck I took the wrong turning. I was in my jeep with my driver. The first we knew anything was wrong was a sniper’s bullet. It was a rotten shot and missed us by miles. We decided it was just an odd sniper, and pushed on, but 100 yards down the road a fusillade broke out from all sides. The hail of bullets shot the tires to pieces and we had to stop. We baled out pretty promptly and crouched down behind the jeep looking for cover. Then I was hit in the back of the leg and bled profusely.

I made a dash for a house by the road, but the door was locked. I hammered on the door with my stick, and a woman opened it. She looked alarmed, but I limped in and my driver joined me. The Jerries must have been rotten shots, or we should have been cut to pieces. While my wound was being attended to, ten or fifteen Germans walked into the basement. They let my driver finish dressing the wound, then told us to get outside. It was then I noticed a row of the German field grey hats poking up behind a hedge.

We were led across country, through gardens and over railway embankments. They were a most disorderly crowd. There were at least 100 of them, and they just straggled along. I told them they were completely surrounded and they might just as well give up. Some were muttering among themselves and appeared quite willing, but two N.C.O.s ordered them on. They told me their officers had left them the day before.

I had walked about a mile when my leg began to bleed again, so an escort of two Germans was left to guard my driver and me. We entered the south of Osnabruck. We were the first British to enter that part of the town, and I asked the escort if there was a church nearby. He pointed to one, and I sat on the steps to rest my leg. Immediately a large crows of foreign workers gathered, attracted by British soldiers with green berets. I asked one of the workers to fetch a priest, who offered me the hospitality of his house. He gave us lunch – my escort as well – and told me he could be shot for harbouring British soldiers.

I then turned to the two German soldiers and asked them: “Are we with you, or you with us?” and they replied: “With you.” They threw away their ammunition and rifles and became our prisoners. It was then reported that some British troops with guns were in the south of the town, so I asked them to send for a doctor and ambulance. The doctor arrived, patched me up, and drove me and my prisoners to the centre of the town to meet up with my Commandos who were in the north-west of Osnabruck.

We began to walk through Osnabruck, and the populace gazed in wonderment, for we were the first British troops in that part. We met my Commandos and handed over our prisoners. The next day I saw a number of other prisoners brought in and I recognized many of them who had been among my captors the previous day.

This account first appeared in ‘The War Illustrated’ magazine May 25, 1945. The British Army would maintain a large garrison in Osnabruck until 2008.

Across the territory occupied by the Japanese in the Far East, tens of thousands of Allied men continued to toil in the Prisoner of War camps. From China to Malaya, Thailand and Korea, right across to Japan itself, they were now aware of the changing fortunes of war through the increased activity of Allied aircraft. The effects of of the high level B-29 raids were everywhere, as well as the marauding P-38 Lightnings. Such raids put some POWs at risk but they were welcomed as great morale boosters.

John McEwan had endured the years of captivity since been taken prisoner in Singapore in 1942. He was a veteran of several Japanese POW camps including the notorious Kinkaseki mine on Taiwan. Kinkaseki closed in early March and they were transferred to another camp on Taiwan, but their sufferings were far from over:

The punishing labour went on as we tried to avoid Tashi’s beatings by stretching our wills to breaking point, a task made the more difficult by his resentment at the regular appearance in the skies of the twin-fuselage aircraft bearing the white star of the USA. He sank to lower depths of depravity, as the US warplanes bombed at will with never a Japanese Zero in the air to challenge them.

But as they had an effect upon him so too did they affect us. They provided the stimulus to keep going and their daily visits were a tonic to us, setting morale upon an upward spiral again. In contrast, Tashi would fall into a cowardly rage that made him even more bestial than before.

Occasionally, some of us allowed our approval of the actions of our US friends to show and even this mild show of resistance was dealt with severely. The offenders were made to kneel on the ground while a piece of wood was placed at the back of their knees. They were made to sit back causing intense pressure in this area and an effective blockage in the blood supply. After a short time the legs were left bereft of feeling.

Tashi then commanded them to stand and maintain an impossible upright stance, impossible because of the numbness of the already weakened limbs. When they fell he would batter them with his rod across legs and buttocks, shoulders and head. And he would laugh his evil laugh as his poor, painwracked victim cowered before him, trembling, attempting to maintain an erect position on incapacitated legs but usually unable to do so.

His underlings would attempt to ingratiate themselves with him by laughing and jeering. Watching one of these sessions, Dempsey was unable to contain himself. ‘Bloody Japanese bastards’ he swore quietly as a young Englishman was trying to stifle uncontrollable sobbing against a background of the barbarian contempt of the Japanese.

Tashi heard the forbidden words and went raving mad, ranting and swearing in abusive Nipponese and glaring at Dempsey. While the japs converged upon Dempsey, the young Englishman was left alone and began to compose himself. Dempsey, on the other hand, knew he had blundered and knew what was to follow but, though as weakened as the rest of us, he retained a spark of wild and irrational defiance, which did not allow him to do other than stand his ground. Tashi whacked him on the head.

The mad—eyed japanese screamed insanely, ‘Bastardo – no okay. Dammi – dammi. Bastardo dammio — Bagerro, dammi — dammi’ and with each cry he bounced his rod off Dempsey. Dempsey still refused to give ground and Tashi became ever more incensed and enraged as Dempsey refused to fall and as he saw the contempt in Dempsey’s eyes.

Like the rest of the squad, I could do nothing but watch as the mad NCO waded in with stick and fists. I willed Dempsey to swallow his pride and go down. At last one of the henchmen succeeded where Tashi had failed. He kicked furiously at the back of Dempsey’s legs, making him fall to the ground in a crumpled heap but still allowing him to contain the agony of his beating. He refused to show the usual tears of humiliation and this defiance was unbearable to Tashi, who was unable to comprehend the fact that one of the cowed and beaten men, calloused by years of starvation and humiliation, would refuse to beg for mercy under this demeaning abuse.

Tashi changed tack. He watched two of his lackeys kick Dempsey repeatedly. He then announced that another POW had to take part in the humiliation. This was a common depravity among them. They would make two prisoners face each other and swing punches until one of them fell.

I wondered who would be chosen and fervently hoped it would not be me. I could not have punched my friend in these circumstances. Tashi, however, strode to where Taffy Morgan was and jabbed him with the bamboo rod. ‘Yosh — anatowa’ he snarled at Taffy pointing to Dempsey and indicating the odious task in hand.

Taffy had still not recovered fully from his beating at Changi and was in a semi-stupor. His face was expressionless as he followed Tashi to the spot where his friend Dempsey stood, swaying weakly on quivering legs. Taffy took a long lingering look at the vicious Jap Corporal, who urged him on, bellowing the usual gutturals.

Tashi jabbed a finger at Dempsey and, at last, Taffy squared up to his mate. Dempsey raised his head, blood washing down his face, and nodded to Taffy to ‘Get on with it!’ He well understood the situation. Taffy met his friend’s eye and wasted no further time. He raised his calloused right hand and thumped Dempsey with all the strength he could muster in his own weakened state. Dempsey dropped like a stone.

It was obvious to all who watched that Dempsey would not rise for a while after being hit so hard and Tashi and his gloating serfs were convulsed with laughter and clapped their hands crying ‘Joto — Joto’ (Good, Good).

Taffy looked at me. As our eyes met I saw a glimmer there that had been absent for too long. His look clearly said that he had done what had to be done under the circumstances. Dempsey was having enforced rest, Tashi had been deprived of further depraved entertainment and Dempsey had surrendered to a British hand rather than a Japanese.

See John McEwan: Out of the Depths of Hell: A Soldier’s Story of Life and Death in Japanese Hands

Following the failed bomb plot against Hitler in July 1944 the SS had gone to great lengths to track down all of those who were suspected of involvement. The hunt extended not just to those directly participating in the plot but to all those who were sympathetic to the cause. The widespread use of torture meant that the Nazis soon had many names to investigate. And the net encompassed not only the suspects but their families as well.

Fey Von Hassel was the daughter of the German ambassador to Italy who had been arrested for his anti Nazi views. She had been arrested and sent first to Stutthof concentration camp in Poland. Her two young sons had been taken taken from her, destined, like many other children of Nazi prisoners, to be given new identities and adopted by ‘good Aryan’ families. Now along with millions of others, they were travelling west to escape the advance of the Red Army.

As a ‘special’ category of German prisoner, the group that von Hassell was travelling with, which included elderly relatives of von Stauffenberg, enjoyed better conditions than most other prisoners. It turned out that they were better treated than many other Germans who were not prisoners, at least they were on a train, sheltered from the winter weather:

This time we had more space, for the Hungarians were put in a separate wagon. We made everything as bearable as we could — thick straw on the floor and the stove in the middle. The train remained stuck at Lauenburg station all that night, but early the following morning it began to trundle forward. It was a fine day, so we rolled along with the doors open. I sat perched on the steps, gazing out at the passing countryside, fighting off unsettling thoughts about my children.

At the curves I could see that the train was extraordinarily long and seemed to be carrying everything: prisoners, troops, refugees, and even cattle, which I could hear mooing at the far end. We took advantage of the frequent stops for obvious reasons. But because the train would always start again without warning, I was terrified of being left behind or having to jump into a wagon filled with strange people.

The idea of using these opportunities to escape did not occur to me, nor, I think, to anyone. The thought of being alone in that frozen countryside, without papers, money, or food, was enough to put one off the idea immediately.

When night fell, the doors of the wagon were kept shut. It never took long to fall asleep, since we were always tired due to the lack of food. If any of us needed to relieve ourselves, we would delicately approach an old tar can propped up in one of the corners for that purpose. When the can was used, everyone, as if on order, turned their heads to the wall. Embarrassing moments, but sometimes rather funny!

Time after time on this journey we would leave a town just before it was occupied or a station just before it was blown up. But the train continued on its way, untouched.

At one stop some of the men went with the guard Kupfer to one of the genuine cattle cars at the back of the train. They brought back about twenty liters of fresh milk. The taste was heaven, and the cows were no doubt happy to be relieved of their burden.

Trainloads of refugees passed us, but many more people trudged along the rails on foot, begging desperately for a place in the wagons. The weeping of the old, the wailing of babies, and the whistling of bombs were ever present.

At one point, at a small country station where we halted due to an air raid, a Wehrmacht officer knocked on the door and yelled up impatiently:

“Open up immediately! Some more people must be put in this wagon.”

Papke answered, “Impossible. I have orders to let no one inside!”

“That is idiotic,” shouted back the officer. “There are women and children out here half-frozen to death. They must find shelter!”

“We are traveling with the prisoners of kin under the special protection of the Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler,” barked back Papke.

“Oh, my God, that Heini!” exclaimed the officer angrily. “I’ve had it up to here with that pig!“ Obviously experienced in the ways of the SS, the officer laughed bitterly and gave up arguing. Papke sat silent inside.

Instead, we were tremendously encouraged by the soldier’s disrespect for Himmler and began to laugh and tell jokes about our little Reichsfuhrer. For once Papke did not dare react. It was dark inside, and there were many more of us.

It is astonishing that in the midst of that seeming chaos, with refugees everywhere and constant bombing, soldiers were still being sent to the front, others were taking leave, and rail lines were being repaired. Our SS guards were still following their instructions to the letter. Little though we realized it, another two months would pass before the Nazi war machine would finally break down.

See Fey Von Hassel: Hostage of the Third Reich: The Story of My Imprisonment and Rescue from the SS

It must have seemed that nothing could get worse for the PoWs who were prisoners of the Japanese on Borneo. In 1942 about 3,500 men, British and Australian, had been brought to Sandakan camp to build an airfield for the Japanese. At the beginning of 1945 2,434 men survived, the death rate having increased dramatically at the end of 1944 when the meagre food allowance was cut again.

As the area started to suffer from Allied bombing raids, the Japanese decided to march the PoWs 164 miles into the jungle interior to Ranau. It was a decision at first welcomed by the PoWs who had suffered fatalities from the bombing themselves. They could not have been more wrong.

None of the approximately 800 British PoWs would survive the ordeal of the march and accompanying massacres and atrocities. And only six Australians were alive at the end of the war. Two of those survivors:

If blokes just couldn’t go on, we shook hands with them, and said, you know, hope everything’s all right. But they knew what was going to happen. There was nothing you could do. You just had to keep yourself going. More or less survival of the fittest.

Nelson Short

It was a oneway trip when we started to hear shots, and you felt there was no hope for anyone who fell out.

Dick Braithwaite

The following account summarises what is known of the circumstances of the marches:

On 28 January 1945, the first of 455 PoWs, in nine groups, set off from Sandakan to march to Ranau on the 164-mile trek through the jungle and swamps. The emaciated prisoners, in ragged clothes, many with bare feet and the remainder in disintegrating boots, suffering from malnutrition, disease and tropical sores, started out on the first of three marches that became known as the Death Marches.

The PoWs carried all the food including that for the guards. The route of the Death March, climbing up to 1,000 metres in some places, was along jungle tracks some of which the prisoners had to hack through thick jungle. The route crossed and re-crossed rivers which, as it was the monsoon season, were full in full flow.

Humidity was extreme. There were no medical kits for the PoWs and drinking water was direct from the streams, rivers, swamps or puddles. It was a case of march or die, which developed into march to die. Any prisoner that stopped was shot, bayoneted or clubbed to death; there were also occasional strangulations.

It was reported that there were instances of crucifixion and cases of cannibalism of PoWs – the prisoners being shot, butchered and then eaten by the Japanese.

There were also stories of strips of flesh being cut from living PoWs, the prisoners being regarded as “walking larders”, so that “fresh meat” could flavour the rice for the Formosan and Korean guards. There were local reports of two PoWs who, having been killed by the Kempeitai, had their limbs removed and the torsos taken down stream to a large Japanese camp. The news of this atrocity travelled far and wide without alteration to the account.

The local Sabahans also explained that the Japanese were short of food and were culling PoWs to boost their meagre rations. There were further instances of cannibalism of Kadazan, Dusan and Murut tribesmen by the Japanese.

The first, and subsequent marches, were horrific beyond description, undertaken by undernourished and sick men suffering from dehydration, salt deprivation, and dysentery, bloated by beriberi, meningitis, malaria and other jungle-related illnesses and sores. In many cases, bones could be seen through the suppurating fly-blown open wounds. Their bodies were quite simply rotting.

Leaches, tics, mosquitoes, fire ants, hornets and the cuts, stings and abrasions from the clinging undergrowth only added to their parlous condition. Those too sick to undertake the march were either later massacred at Sandakan or were sent by ship to other PoW camps where most met a similar fate.

Against all the odds, by mid-February 1945, some PoWs (all Australians) were still arriving at Ranau. Many had died en route, whilst others succumbed after they arrived. A mix of both Australian and British prisoners arrived at Paginantan, twenty-six miles short of Ranau, again many dying on the way. Rice carrying details started out from Ranau to Paginantan, a forced march of three days, carrying rice. Unencumbered, the return took two days.

Parties of men each carried 44lb sacks of rice; anyone who failed to keep up was either shot or executed by other means, their loads being redistributed amongst the survivors to carry. The Formosan and Korean guards were allegedly the worst and took great delight in their tasks. The first PoW to die on the rice march had travelled barely half a mile along the route. One PoW committed suicide as he could not face returning to Ranau.

See Command Post Media, an account of a commemoration march conducted by the Royal Artillery in 2011.

A more detailed report on the whole history of the men who were sent to Sandakan was written by Lt. Col. H. W. S. Jackson after the war:

23. The first P.O.Ws. began to fall out from the march after four days which was near the Tankual Crossing, on the Maunad River, a rest post about 40 miles from Sandakan and in a portion of the track that was knee deep, in mud. The ones who fell out were kept under guard until the main party had disappeared from view and then they were shot and their bodies thrown into the jungle, at the side of the track. The P.O.Ws. could hear the shots and so knew what would happen if they fell out. P.O.W. “Fall Outs” would give away their personal belongings to their mates when they realized they could no longer continue. Those lucky enough to still possess leather boots would enquire of foot sizes before giving them away and would pass on messages of farewell for their mothers, wives and families.

24. N0.1 Party reached Ranau on the 12th. of February 1945 having lost thirteen of their men en route, a further two died on the day they reached Ranau. No. 2 Party reached Ranau on the the 15th. of February, No. 3 on the 16th., No. 4 on the 18th. and No. 5 on the 19th. Nos 6, 7, 8 and 9 parties reached Paginatan (26 miles west of Ranau) around the 20th. of February, where they rested, the original 195 had been reduced to 160. The 260 P.O.Ws. of parties Nos 1-5 had arrived at Ranau with only 150 survivors. Yamamoto realized that they would never survive the trip to Tuaran, over even more mountainous country that they had already traversed.

25. After a month the 160 men who had reached Paginatan had been reduced to 60 only 30 of whom were fit to continue to Ranau. The death rate at Ranau was equally as high, the strain of the march seemed to cause a rapid deterioration to their health.

Lt. Col. H. W. S. Jackson : A Report On The Borneo Death Marches

On the Eastern Front much of the fighting had now descended into unbelievable savagery, with no quarter given. Many members of the Red Army had reason to seek vengeance on the Germans. The rape and murder of German civilians was to become commonplace. As the German soldiers became aware of this there was little incentive to allow any of their prisoners to live.

Yet the tide of war had turned decisively against the Germans and they faced defeat after defeat, retreat after retreat. For the captured German soldier, especially if they belonged to the SS, the fate was in many cases even worse. Some accounts refer to them being “given a beating” but others are more explicit. One female Red Army soldier recalled that any captured German soldiers:

… were not shot dead – that would have been too easy for them, we stabbed them like pigs with spears, chopped them to pieces. I saw it with my own eyes. I waited for the moment when their eyes bulged with pain.

She felt no mercy “They burned my mother and my young sister at the stake in the middle of the village”.

German soldiers were under few illusions about their potential fate and many saved the last bullet for themselves. Others made desperate attempts to escape to the west. Paul Arnhold was a Pioneer officer who had been on the run after his Panzer Corps had fallen apart. With three others he crossed Poland on foot, much of the journey across country, trying to evade the pursuing Russians.

Late in January they found a remote peasant hut and forced the elderly Polish occupants to supply them with food. At first they were offered potato stew but they suspected something better was available. They threatened the old couple until bread and salted meat were produced:

We could not contain ourselves and attacked it like wild animals. We paid the price for doing so; a short time later we brought it all back up again. Our weak stomachs could not cope with something like that any more.

The cottage gave them a brief opportunity to rest – but they were in poor state:

We carefully removed our boots and shoes, What was left of our socks and foot-cloths had gone hard from dried blood and pus. My soles were just pus-filled flesh, but the worst pain came from inside. As I’d been running for three weeks on soles which were bumed and warped, my metatarsal was horribly inflamed. When I stood up, the pain coming from it was unbearable.

In addition, my ankles had swollen badly where the top edge of my boots rubbed with every step. Our feet were a pathetic sight. In normal times, no one would have believed it possible that we could run even one more step.

Three weeks by day and night in snow and ice, hungry and hunted like wild animals. None of us had washed or shaved for three weeks. We had not changed our clothes for three weeks. We had worn our uniforms for three weeks.

During the ‘bathe’ in the Pilica they had been soaked. Then they had frozen solid in the icy storm, and then we’d been hunted and harried in our wet gear.

We huffed and puffed for three long weeks through undergrowth covered in snow and over vast expanses of snow. The uniforms were torn a thousand times by the brittle frozen branches and thorns. Ten days after our swim in the Pilica, our clothes were still damp.

My beard, with its many silvery-grey streaks, had grown so thick that my hands could reach into it.

We’d not been able to wipe our arses for three weeks. But what’s the use of telling this to someone who hasn’t experienced it? That little scrap of Pravda was more important for our [Russian] Machorka cigarettes than a civilisation which wouldn’t have suited us anyway.

For three weeks we’d been living like creatures in the jungle, ready to kill anyone who stood in the way of our progress, and ready to kill anyone who refused to give us food. Our mindset had become so primitive that we could no longer think of anything other than food and getting to the Oder.

There were only three of us left now. Never did we want to raise our hands in the air! Never! If we’d fired the last round and thrown the last hand-grenade, then we would have smashed the enemy’s face in with our bare rifles!

These accounts appear in Richard Hargreaves: HITLER’S FINAL FORTRESS – BRESLAU 1945. Hargreaves has used many original German and Soviet accounts, few of which are available in English, to tell the story of the savage fight for the capital of Silesia, the city of Breslau which Hitler had now declared to be “Fortress Breslau”. It would be defended “to the last man” in a battle that would continue through to the end of the war.

The easternmost Prisoner of War camps were already being evacuated and the prisoners forced out onto the roads for the march westwards. Further west there were more groups of camps waiting for the Germans to make a decision as to whether or when they should be evacuated. But the rapid advance of the Red Army was causing great uncertainty.

In Stalag Luft III, site of the ‘Great Escape’, Canadian Flight Lieutenant Robert Buckham, artist and camp forger, was busily preparing to depart. He had been a prisoner since being shot down in April 1943. They were all suffering from hunger as the food situation got much worse. The only thing keeping many men going were the Red Cross parcels, the relatively high calorie food provided in these was going to prove a life saver for many men over the next few months:

25 January 1945

The camp is tense tonight. The Russians are but forty-six miles distant at Steinau, west of the Oder River. This morning a long low rumble lasting for a half-minute was identified as gunfire.

Our most recent news broadcast at 4 pm today is likely twelve hours old, and the Russian pace is fast. Tomorrow could be our day. We are prepared to pack immediately. Backsacks and packboards are in major production throughout the camp, the latter being supervised by ex-mountie Rod Ball, who became thoroughly familiar with them in the Arctic.

Iron ration is being prepared as well. This is a ‘dry’ cake, made with finely ground pilot biscuits, chocolate powder, raisins, prunes (pitted), and black-bread crumbs. These ingredients are mixed with warm margarine which hardens as it cools. The finished product not only has the appearance of chewing tobacco but resembles it in other ways also.

We ate potato peelings for lunch, once again, although the selection has narrowed considerably, after which we received a further bread ration. This is considered to be significant. Apart from the tension, our energies have been spent by trudging seven circuits. Twice around is considered to be about a mile.

A near-panic was caused tonight by an unconfirmed rumour that the goons were actually pulling out and leaving us behind. There are an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Allied Airforce POWs in the several compounds in this area and some conjecture has arisen that the Russians will arm us and order a common advance against the Germans. As Eliza said, ‘Not bloody likely!’

…

27 January

It is 1:30 pm. We have been waiting to leave camp for over two hours. A breathless runner read the German order to us at 8:30 pm. We were to be ready to march in one hour. A moment of disbelief was immediately followed by a reaction verging on panic. Lockers were stripped. Duffle bags were stuffed to the overflow, impacked, and packed again.

At 9:30 a runner announced a delay of half an hour… Two hours later the room is a shambles. Torn bedding, broken glass, splintered bunks, discarded clothing and boots, overturned stools, chairs, and table…

See Robert Buckham: Forced March to Freedom

The Daily Telegraph has an obituary of Robert Buckham.

The Soviet offensive into eastern Germany was making good progress. The ordinary soldiers of the Red Army now discovered what Germany was like and they were amazed at how rich it was compared to most of the Soviet territories. A frequent question was – What had Germany sought to gain by invading an impoverished country like Russia, when the Germans were evidently so much richer? It was just one more factor that enraged an army that was already ready for vengeance.

There might hardly seem to be any reason to exaggerate the threat to Germany that the Soviets posed. But the Nazis sought to portray the Russians as a utterly uncivilised hordes who would destroy Germany and do terrible things to her people. It was all designed to motivate the German soldier to fight to the last in defence of the Fatherland.

Soviet officer Boris Gorbachevsky was with the first wave of troops to attack and then enter the city of Treuburg. Treuburg (“Loyal Castle”) had been named as such in 1928, because the district had voted to stay in East Prussia. It is now the city of Olecko in Poland:

Then the order was issued to attack. Intense fighting for Treuburg continued for four days; several times the city changed hands, until at last the German units became exhausted and retreated. We couldn’t understand why the adversary had defended Treuburg so stubbornly.

The city didn’t have any strategic significance, and yet the Germans paid such a high price for their recklessness — several hundred killed and wounded, many burned out tanks, and a devastated city. We thought perhaps it was because not far away, in the Romintensky Forest, lay Hermann Goring’s hunting lodge and castle.

The solution to this riddle quickly emerged. It turned out that the Germans had “prepared” for the city’s surrender. Almost immediately after the fighting ended, a few officers in the Political Department and I entered the city and walked along its streets.

At almost every intersection, large posts bore signs that read: “Pay close attention to what the Bolsheviks have done to the first city taken by them in East Prussia. This is how they will treat all the cities and villages of your beloved Homeland, and all of us Germans. Defend your Great Reich from the Red barbarians!”

In reality, as we later learned from the testimony of prisoners, on one of the first days of the fighting, when we were still struggling with the enemy on the approaches to the city, the Germans themselves, by order of Joseph Goebbels [Nazi Germany’s minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda], forcibly expelled the citizens and then blew up and burned the finest buildings in the city: the church, the water works, the movie theater and bank, the sports halls, and the main street, where stores and a high school were located.

Over the next several hours, they trucked in people from nearby districts, and brought in film crews and journalists to record on film and print the city ruins, and the fear and grief of the sham residents. Even the park and its beautiful swans were destroyed: almost all the trees were burned, the swans were shot, and it was announced that the “Asiatic hordes” had killed them and eaten them.

The city was empty as our regimental column marched along its main boulevard. Not a single soul was visible. Cows were bellowing in a heartrending fashion, and we could hear the barking of dogs.

Gorbachevsky continues the same passage to describe why the Germans had real reason to fear the Red Army:

Then unexpectedly a tall, hale old man hopped out of a partially destroyed building, holding some sort of booklet in his outstretched hand, and with joyful exclamations, he rushed to meet our column.

One of the Red Army soldiers, who didn’t understand German words, without pausing to try to figure out what the German was saying, stepped out of the column and with all his might, smashed the German’s head with his rifle butt. Bleeding heavily, the old man fell to the cobblestone pavement.

As the column marched past the prostrate man, more soldiers joined to taunt him as much as possible and to finish him off – they kicked him with their boots, stabbed him with their bayonets, and then spat upon the corpse. A politruk stopped by the dead man’s mutilated body. He lifted the blood-soaked booklet of a member of the Communist Party of Germany, wiped off the cover, and hid it in his map case. Saying not a word, he set off to catch up to his place in the column.

I witnessed this scene. It was the first death of a German civilian that I saw in Germany. Catching up to the man who had crushed the German’s skull with his rifle butt, I asked him: “Why did you kill him? He plainly was not a soldier, and there was no way he could have harmed us. An old man, a communist, it is possible he spent time in prison for his political allegiance to the German Communist Party. Just think, for many years he kept his Party card at the risk of his life.”

The soldier gruffly answered: “To me, Comrade Senior Lieutenant, they are all the same – just scum. I won’t find any peace until I kill a hundred of them. You’d better ask yourself how you wound up so alone in your opinion.”

It was not difficult to understand either his hatred or that of the soldiers who had spat on the German. But how many more Germans would they have to kill, humiliate, and tear to pieces in order to sooth their grief, dull their hatred, thaw their icy souls, and find inner peace?

See Boris Gorbachevsky: Through the Maelstrom

With the new Soviet offensive under way the German pretence that the Eastern front could be held quickly evaporated. After all the years of tyranny and murder, from the first Jewish ghettoes in 1940 through to the wanton destruction of the city following the 1944 Uprising, the Germans finally left Warsaw without a fight on the 15th January. One of the few men left in the city to greet the Soviets was Wladyslaw Szpilman who had miraculously survived alone in a wrecked building.

Suddenly hundreds of thousands of people, and very soon, millions of people were on the move. After denying the situation for so long the Nazis finally began to evacuate westward. Nazi propaganda had painted a fearful picture of how the Red Army would treat civilians, so almost anyone with German connections joined the retreat. Alongside them were the inmates of concentration camps, where the merciless ‘death marches’ would prove to be a new method of mass murder. In scarcely better circumstances thousands of prisoners of war also began the trek westward.

Henry Owens had been captured in France in 1940 after the Highland Division was forced to surrender at St Valery. A new ordeal now began for him as he began the ‘1000 Mile’ forced march to the west:

In early January 1945, as the Russians made advances from the Vistula, the Germans decided to withdraw the POWs from the camps. The allies were destroying communications, and the Germans decided to force us out on the march again.

It was pitch dark when we assembled outside the gas works at Elbing, after our guard had warned us that “You are now back in the Front Line, any attempt to escape and you will be shot!” Snow had been falling all day; it must have been at least six inches deep. It was still snowing, and there was a bitterly cold wind, the temperature was well below freezing, around minus 30 degrees Celsius.

Over the years as POWs, we had accumulated extra clothing etc. from parcels sent to us through the Red Cross. We had hurriedly to decide what to leave and what to take, as everything had to be carried by hand. Preference was of course given to the small, built up stock of tinned food and powdered milk. I still had my army kitbag, so I put as much in this as I could carry. As we entered the main road in Elbing, there was evidence of the Russians‟ penetration, bodies lay about in the snow, and German troops dressed in all-white uniforms and heavily armed were moving east past us. It would appear that the Russians had attacked under cover of darkness, shot up the town, and retreated again.

We rendezvoused with other British POWs who had been in prison camps in the Elbing area, and were marched out, apparently making for the Baltic Coast. After marching for some time, we came across a long column of civilian refugees, who had been travelling in high-sided horse drawn wagons loaded with all theirworldly possessions. The column was at a standstill. Apparently they were held up because the crossing over the river Vistula was for the use of military traffic only. How long they had been there I do not know, but many had frozen to death still in their wagons, other bodies lay at the side of the road. They looked like wax dummies. We helped ourselves to any food we could find in these wagons, and marched on and crossed the Vistula towards Danzig.

It was on this section of the march that I faltered. I felt terribly tired, with a sinking feeling, as if the cold had affected my stomach. I sat on one of the abandoned carts and rested. Darky Bryant and other comrades pleaded with me to carry on, otherwise I would freeze to death or be shot. After a short while I recovered my strength, and from that moment, I did not falter for the rest of the march.

We marched nearly all of the first night, eventually stopping at a barn, where we lit fires and melted snow in our dixies, adding milk (klim) to provide a hot drink (no rations were provided by the Germans). The next day we marched on again, with the sound of Russian artillery in the background. As the packs on our backs were too heavy, most of us used makeshift sledges to pull our possessions along. As the days went by we got weaker; the built-up stock of food reserves had gone, we were plagued with lice and dysentery, and frostbitten limbs turned gangrenous. We were sometimes bundled into barns at night, but on at least one occasion we spent the night in an open field with no food at all.

It was not only British POWs on the march. It seemed that the whole of the civilian population of the Baltic States and East Prussia were fleeing from the Russians, some no doubt collaborators who feared for their lives. There were also Russian, French, and POWs of other nationalities. This all added to the food problem. Rationing had obviously broken down, and the Germans could not provide for themselves, even less for the refugees and POWs, these were low priorities. It was tragic to see POWs who had survived the horrific march into captivity from Dunkirk and St. Valery four and a half years previously, going down with dysentery, gangrene, and frostbite, and having to be left behind to die or be shot. There was no backup transport to take away the sick; you just left them behind, hoping they would survive, perhaps in a Russian hospital.

We marched twenty to thirty kilometres a day, with the sound of Russian artillery to our rear. Sometimes we rested for a whole day, and tried to tend our feet and other problems, but there was no remedy for worn out boots. Many carried on the march with rags bound around their feet, and my pal Darky ended the march with a pair of rope sandals.

When we rested for the night in barns etc., we never took off our boots, because we would get them stolen, or our feet would have swollen that much, we would not get them on again.

As far as food went, we only received one hot meal in the four months of our journey. That was beans, which gave most of us the runs. The Germans did, infrequently, give us some black bread and ersatz coffee, but most of the time we lived off our wits, stealing from farms, begging, or offering to supply a note saying that the donor had helped an allied POW with food so that the Russians would not harm them. It worked sometimes.

Read the whole of Henry Owens account of life as a POW at 51st Highland Division. Members of the same Scottish regiments were now fully engaged in the bitter cold of the Battle of the Bulge.