prisoners, and to have done whatever in them lay to make their lot endurable and even comfortable.[1] On the farms and similar places, the relations between prisoners and their employers were frequently, as in Great Britain, even cordial, and more than one repatriated British prisoner has spoken warmly of the kindness and consideration with which he was treated, though such cases were, of course, not common.
The impression produced by the study of all the available material is that there was neither in the main nor the working camps in Germany any officially recognized ill-treatment of prisoners; that there was, nevertheless, in many cases much cruelty by individuals, and that when as occasionally, but far too infrequently, happened, a prisoner could bring home to the authorities that some individual had exceeded his powers and acted outside the regulations, the offender was punished, sometimes by being sent away to the front, sometimes by a sentence to a term of imprisonment. On the other hand, it is also clear that in some cases the prisoners were treated, not only with humanity, but with kindness.
The reason for these contrasts is to be found in two things. First, the personal character of the man in charge, and, second, the independence of the army corps commanders, and even to some extent of the camp commandants, who not only placed their own interpretation on the regulations, but sometimes acted in deliberate defiance of them.
Men in the Occupied Districts.—While the above represents the considered opinion which results from the study of the very voluminous material available with regard to the camps in the interior in Germany, the same conclusion cannot be reached when the evidence dealing with the camps in the occupied districts is examined.
The cruelties inflicted on the prisoners in these places had their origin, and from the German point of view, their justification, as reprisals for alleged ill-treatment of Germans in British hands. It is not proposed to give here an account of the reprisals enforced on one side or the other, more than to allude to the severe conditions under which the first captured German submarine officers were interned in Great Britain, which resulted in the German Government retaliating by selecting from among the officers in their hands who bore well-known names (including among them the son of the former British ambassador to Berlin) and imprisoning them under exceptionally rigorous conditions. Most of the reprisals, while unpleasant enough for the victims, were not such as to amount to real cruelty.
But it is not too much to say that the treatment of the prisoners of war on the eastern and western fronts must, so long as the terrible story is remembered, bring indelible disgrace on the German nation, and on those responsible for the appalling cruelty inflicted on defenceless men. It was quite deliberate, as the following facts will show.
Eastern Front.—In the spring of 1916, German prisoners of war were sent to work at Rouen and Havre, and in May the German Government informed the British Government that it had in consequence decided to send 2,000 British prisoners to the occupied Russian territory to work under similar conditions to those existing at Havre and Rouen. They were accordingly sent, divided into four companies of 500 each, to four main camps, from which they were sent in smaller parties to work on numerous farms and in road-making and tree-felling. There is no serious complaint to make of the central camps, but at the others the conditions were very hard, the accommodation bad, and the unter-offiziers rough.
On Feb. 7 1917, the British Government received a German note verbale in which complaint was made that a considerable number of Germans were detained behind the British front in France, where it was alleged the “prisoners suffered from inadequate food, defective accommodation . . . as well as being subjected to hard work and irregularities in the matter of mails,” and that they were exposed to German gunfire which “has resulted in several of them being killed.” The Germans required that their men should be removed to a distance of at least 30 km. behind the firing-lines and “provided there with accommodation in accordance with the season of the year and hygienic needs.” In default of the British Government notifying their compliance with these demands by Feb. 1 (the note verbale was dated Jan. 24 and received on Feb. 7), “a number of British prisoners will be transferred from camps in Germany to the area of operations in the western theatre of war where, in respect of employment, accommodation, food, and the question of mails, they will be treated in a manner corresponding to the practice of the British military authorities”—which means, of course, the practice alleged by the Germans, i.e. insufficient food, defective accommodation (only tents), hard work and irregular mails.
The British Government, in a note verbale for transmission to the German Government, dated Feb. 8 1917, gave the explicit assurance that the prisoners received the same food as the British troops, that 75% were in huts, the remainder being like many British troops in specially warmed tents with floor boards, that strict orders had been given against their being employed within the range of German gunfire though it was regretted that one man had been wounded by a shell which must have been fired at exceptionally long range, this being the only casualty which had occurred.
Within ten days of the date of the British reply, 500 men were sent, not to the western but to the eastern front, and they were “officially informed” that they would be sent to the trenches between Riga and Mitau and remain within the artillery zone by way of reprisal. On Feb. 25 these 500 men were forced to march 35 km. up the frozen river Aa, often through snow-drifts knee deep. Sledges followed to pick up the men who broke down from exhaustion, while the escort of Uhlans drove the stragglers on with lances and whips. Those who fell were robbed of their kit and property. Of the 500 who started, between 120 and 130 are said to have collapsed on the march. “They were brought in by transport later, but through their lying in the snow they were frost-bitten in the hands and feet.”
Arrived at their destination, the men were kept waiting outside a “cavalry tent built on the ice of (marsh by) the river. It had wire beds on three racks, the bottom one being about one foot from the ground, so that the weight of a man's body weighed it down till he was lying on the snow or the ice.”
The next morning they were paraded, and a notice was read out giving the reasons why they were there. The substance of this notice is given by one of the British prisoners who heard it, as follows:—
“You are here on a reprisal because the English have German prisoners working in the firing-line in France. They have bad accommodation, bad food, bad treatment; they are under fire and 36 men have lost their lives. In return, you are to work here in the firing-line and will get bad treatment, bad food, bad accommodation, and 36 of you have got to die.”
The way in which it corresponds with the substance of the note verbale of Jan. 24, already quoted, which the soldier who gave the evidence could not possibly have heard of, cannot escape notice, any more than the fact that the accommodation provided corresponds with the complaint that some of the Germans at Havre and Rouen were lodged in tents.[2]
The threats contained in the notice were carried out to the letter. The accommodation was bad, the treatment was bad, the food was bad, and numbers of men died, while more lost toes, fingers or hand through frost-bite.
The tent was a large cavalry tent pitched on the frozen marsh, with a foot or more of snow and ice inside and frequently under shell-fire. There were some small stoves, but no fuel or entirely inadequate fuel was provided. The “revier Stube” was a wretched peasant's cottage (in which the guard also was quartered) in charge of a brutal Sanitäter. Men in the last stages of illness were sent by sledge to Mitau. When the thaw
- ↑ In some places the prisoners were even taken periodically to the local cinema, not always at their own expense.
- ↑ When the men had been in this place for a week the “German Government informed the Netherlands minister at Berlin, in a note verbale dated March 5, that British prisoners of war had not yet been sent quite close to the German firing-line on the Russian front.”
