Stalags of WWII

[Denis]

I was looking around at POW stories of WWII and found this website. It's not fancy but has lots of photos from various Stalags through Germany and some stories from POWs who were interned there. Pretty interesting stuff.
http://www.pegasusarchive.org/pow/photos.htm

[Barklessdog]

Found Stalag 13
Not one picture of Hogan & the gang?

[nofi]

this a load of bs. beehives, gardening, athletics...please! maybe for the allies but where are all the happy jews, gypsys and other folks in their camps.  please excuse my bluntness.

[Dave W]

this a load of bs. beehives, gardening, athletics...please! maybe for the allies but where are all the happy jews, gypsys and other folks in their camps.  please excuse my bluntness.

Different clientele, I believe. Weren't the stalags all POW camps?

[nofi]

 if the people in death camps were not  'prisoners of war' what were they.

convenient semantics, me thinks.

[dadagoboi]

if the people in death camps were not  'prisoners of war' what were they.

convenient semantics, me thinks.

Not necessarily.  Can I suggest you do some independent research?

[Denis]

Yes, Dave, I think the Stalags were all POW camps and they were different beasts than concentration camps. As a rule the Western Allies POWs were treated much better than the Russian POWs as is pretty well known. Many of the western allies POWs received Red Cross packages (if you were British, Canadian, American, etc), but of course they were often withheld or otherwise not distributed. I think officers were not made to work as a rule but I think enlisted POWs could be made to work.

"The Colditz Story" is an excellent book detailing life in Oflag IV-C. Oflags were mainly officers camps, while Stalags were generally for enlisted men.

POW camps and concentration camps were different entities. Those unfortunate enough to enter concentration camps (of which there were death camps and labor camps) were simply Jews, gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals or other things and/or were classified as criminals, deviants, undesirables, enemies of the state, etc. These prisoners were much more likely to die because of overwork, malnutrition, abuse, murder, medical experiments, disease etc.

[Dave W]

"Prisoners of war" is commonly understood to mean combatants from an enemy army who have been captured. The Jews, gypsies and other so-called undesirables who were sent to the work/death camps were definitely not captured enemy warriors. Whatever semantics you choose to use is fine with me, but in fact the POW camps and concentration camps were not the same places.

[uwe]

By and large yes. But there was for instance an English POW camp located in one of the Auschwitz canps (I believe Monowitz) and it was a Geneva Convention paradise island in a hell of genocide. The English (non-officer) POWs were supposed to lead concentration camp inmate work units. They even complained to the SS that the inmates were undernourished (and shared their Red Cross parcels with them which the Brits were allowed to receive). And the SS did not have the English POWs shot in consequence, but magically raised the rations of the inmates (for a while at least). The English POWs were, after all, "fellow-Aryans" and treated as such even if they had worn the wrong uniform (Hitler was an unabashed admirer of The British Empire).

And there were instances where even Western Allied POWs were in regular concentration camps in blatant violation of the Geneva Convention. A group of US bomber crews was housed in tents/earth holes in Buchenwald and already pneumonia-ridden until a Luftwaffe delegation found them there and had them immediately treated and then eventually transferred to a regular Stalag. The survivors were eternally grateful to the Luftwaffe guys, but the valor of the US airmen is commendable: One of them walked up in blankets (the US airmen uniforms had been taken away from them) to the Luftwaffe guys and told them who he was before the surrounding SS could even react. The Luftwaffe guys asked for the crew member names and had them jotted down on a piece of paper and then got the bureaucratic mills turning. To separate them visually from the other inmates they received Luftwaffe boiler suits and were moved to empty barracks. The SS grudgingly obliged probably wishing that pneumonia should have set in even earlier with the airmen "to solve the problem".

Nofi, I know where you are coming from, but jews, gipsies and other victims were not POWs. Stating that you are unwittingly playing into the hands of Nazi apologists (who claim Germany was acting in self-defense against the jews as an enemy group) which I know you don't want to do. With POWs, the German Reich at least had a legal basis of keeping them incarcerated until the end of the war. Under international law you are allowed to do that if you are in a state of war, even if you are - like Germany - the bad guy. But Germany was never at war with jews, gypsies or any other ethnic group. They were either Germans or the nationals of countries that had capitulated or inhabitants of regions under German control and occupation. There was no reason on earth to imprison them much less commit genocide on them. Had they been POWs, they would have had at least some protection. Even Russian POWs - grossly maltreated - had a better chance of surviving than jews and gypsies.

Being in a German Stalag as a Western Allied soldier was certainly no piece of cake, but it meant that you would survive unless you were shot while trying to flee. If I'm not mistaken less than one 1 out of a hundred Western Allied POWs died in German captivity.  In my hometown, the French and British POWs (there was an Indian soldier who had lost a leg in combat who was especially liked for his fine manners by the townpeople and his exotic good looks by the German girls!) could walk around free during the day and - it is rumored - spread their DNA among the (man-starved) female populace! (From WW I still there was still a black man in the neighboring town - his father most likely one of the French colonial troops stationed there after WW I - who lived there unharmed during WW II, the Nazi's viewed blacks as inferior, but they did not hate and kill them with a passion like jews and gypsies.)  

So within the constraints of the vilest regime as such there was a little light among a lot of pitch-black shade. There is plenty to despise The Third Reich for, but Western POW treatment, even if far removed from Hogan's Heroes comedy, wasn't perhaps quite it. There is a difference between the group of French POWs from my hometown



and this group of Russian POWs (who were often in concentration camps as were these unfortunate men here):



I definitely feel more ashamed for the latter. And it's perverse that both existed side by side.

Uwe

[nofi]

i know the definition of pow, i just think it could be made more inclusive. no one, i mean no one could call me a nazi apoligist. the mere thought is disgusting and vile. dadagoboi, no 'independent research' needed, thank you.

[uwe]

I did not call you a Nazi apologetic - far from it, I know how you think -, but stated that the perception that The Third Reich was somehow "at war" with ethnic groups (and hence allowed to treat them a little harsher in self-defense) opens a whole can of brown worms. You probably meant to say war victims, but even that is not true, because you can wage war and still not create unspeakable things such as Auschwitz or Treblinka. Anti-semitism was independent of Hitler's war drive and the mass genocide just coincided with the war for convenience's sake (that sounds horrible, but it is true, it was "convenient" to murder jews while the world was at war and busy with other things), it was neither a prerequisite nor a logical consequence of the war.

[dadagoboi]

dadagoboi, no 'independent research' needed, thank you.

I implied you were oversimplifying something that has been studied extensively and for which there is much information available.  If you wish to lump it all together that's your choice.