The Rhine Meadows Camps - What Really Happened?

[Music] a story has been circulating since 1989 regarding a terrible american atrocity that if true would have been one of the worst war crimes of the 20th century the story states that following the german surrender in may 1945 millions of german servicemen were herded into 19 squalid camps and were denied prisoner of war status and protection on the express order of general dwight d eisenhower the supreme allied commander over a period of four months the americans starved up to one million of these germans to death the story has become known by the collective name for the camps rhine meadows and it is all over the internet however this theory will not be found in many history books and here's why as i said this amazing claim only surfaced in 1989 44 years after the events and originated from one source and only one source a canadian novelist note i say novelist and not historian by the name of james back in early 1945 about half of all germans who surrendered in the west did so to us forces the other half surrendered to the british and the french in late march 1945 during the breakout into the centre of germany the numbers of german prisoners increased to the point that the british stopped accepting new pows into their camps which were full and the british whose resources were much less than the americans were struggling to feed and house them eisenhower had no choice but to accept these excess prisoners into u.s captivity leading to the creation of the so-called reinvester or rhine meadows camps interestingly the rhine meadows camps were run by german troops apart from a small u.s staff even the armed sentries were provided by german army military police the fel chum damari which was the last part of the wartime german army kept under arms until june 1946 so back stated that over 1 million german pows held by the us were starved to death he made this claim in his book other losses his argument was at war's end the u.s held 2.87 million german pows later us documents state that they actually held 1.8 million and reported that 900 000 fewer daily rations would be needed from this discrepancy back asserted that the u.s had starved almost a million to death and then covered this fact up however back had simply misinterpreted the real figures how the figures were arrived at caused some confusion german pows were held in the u.s rear area designated the communication zone or an american the comm z the correct figures can easily be found as com z transferred prisoners between the occupying powers in total the us britain and france held 3.1 million germans in order to explain the nearly 1 million deaths back claimed that the americans invented the term disarmed enemy forces def a category that placed german pows outside of the hague conventions on the treatment of prisoners and was in effect an illegal move by the us the category def was used at war zen by the allies for several reasons many germans actually surrendered just after the war had officially ended and therefore could not be called prisoners of war at that time the german government had ceased to exist there was at this stage no government which represented the german people the allies had assumed that position prisoner captures and imprisonment could no longer be reported through the international red cross to the german government as had been the case during the war the category def included large numbers of volksderm home guards and hitler youths normally these militia troops were simply disarmed and sent home rather than being imprisoned for long periods back later admitted to adding the one million folk sturm released without formal discharge accounting for his assertion that the u.s murdered nearly one million german soldiers the meal 900.000 mentioned earlier was because vogsderm were not to be held as pows but released as civilians but the allies faced real problems in administering such a huge collection of prisoners at a time when most of europe lay in ruins the transportation network was lying in a shattered mess after years of intense allied aerial bombing hunger destitution and disease was rampant across europe and germany was particularly hard hit millions were homeless or displaced and huge refugee camps were filled with desperate civilians who had lost everything added to these problems was the lack of sympathy for the germans among allied soldiers who had been fighting them for years and had seen the results of nazi racial policies in the huge numbers of concentration and labor camps they had liberated during the advance into germany the international red cross was very concerned about the rhine meadows camps as the change in designation from pows to defs meant they didn't come under the remit of the protecting organization the only visits the americans permitted were near the end of the camp's existence red cross inspectors were horrified by the basic and squalid conditions they discovered most historians agree today that the u.s treated german prisoners very harshly in the first months after the surrender having little sympathy for germans generally and german soldiers in particular the rhine meadows camps only existed for a short period april to september 1945 in 1969 20 years before bach's sensational book the u.s army medical department conducted an investigation from the angle of preventing disease amongst prisoners of war in the future far from discovering a deliberate policy of mass murder their report highlighted several points including having too many pows to deal with insufficient food and water supplies in april and may 1945. the former causing malnutrition and leading to some 3053 deaths that remains the u.s figure today in 1972 the west german federal ministry of displaced persons refugees and war victims launched its own investigation of the rhine meadows camps led by eric mashka a former nazi and a prisoner of war in soviet captivity and an historian his research discovered plenty of atrocities committed by allied troops against german prisoners but in regards to the rhine meadows camps in 1974 his commission came up with a figure of 4750 deaths most due to malnutrition disease and war wounds this figure came from documents interviews with locals and former camp inmates either way out of nearly two million german soldiers held in these camps these figures are very low death rates even though the allies faced a food crisis in april and may 1945 when rations for german prisoners were reduced to 1500 calories a day a level close to malnutrition the allies stated they planned to feed the germans 2 600 calories per day but this proved to be logistically impossible eisenhower had foreseen these problems on the 14th of february 1945 he had contacted the allied governments saying that he feared a severe shortage of food throughout europe when the war ended he even talked about a famine eisenhower stated that he had no food reserves with which to feed the germans displaced persons and the allied civilian populations of countries liberated from german occupation he made an urgent request for immediate food supplies from britain a nation already struggling under severe food rationing for years it is interesting to note that the camps were run and administered by german soldiers under allied supervision with typical german efficiency though food was initially in short supply these problems were resolved and huge numbers of men were processed and released into civilian life clearing over 2 million prisoners by september 1945. so let's look at these releases in more detail though the camps remained in use for about five months hundreds of thousands of prisoners as i said were released why because there was huge demand for certain trades and professions desperately needed to help rebuild germany for example three of the camps including one at reymargan was closed in june 1945 as all their prisoners had been released also in june two of the camps were transferred to british control as they were located in the new british occupation zone of germany a deal was then made with the french government to stop releasing german prisoners and instead force them to labor in france assisting with reconstruction just over 182 000 remaining pows in the camps were then handed over to the french one camp remained open at wetzenheim until 1948 used as a transit camp for german prisoners returning from forced labor in france since the u.s army commission and the west german commission to examine the numbers of deaths in the rhine meadows camps other commissions have also examined these figures and also james back's figure interestingly the west german mashka commission concluded also that many of the thousands of german pows apparently missing from the records either died in combat on the eastern front where fighting continued for many days after the end of the war or died in soviet captivity modern german historians who have studied the rhine meadows camps controversy have come up with mortality figures of up to 22 000 dead which still falls very far below james back's figure of almost a million backs figures the documents and methodologies he used was studied by a panel of u.s and german historians including stephen e ambrose of band of brothers fame who was director of the eisenhower center the conference concluded that back had misunderstood misinterpreted or ignored relevant documents and his figures were actually impossible what we can conclude about the ryan meadows issue is obvious the us army did not deliberately maltreat and murder almost a million german prisoners no evidence for this has been found by several different groups that have investigated and back's claims are not taken seriously by anyone in the field of world war ii prisoners of war it is a revisionist theory that has gained popularity on the internet alongside many other world war ii fairy tales that are at variance with documentary evidence and often common sense but we can say that the camps were harsh places and not america's finest moment in world war ii or thereafter a combination of logistics problems mixed with official neglect and hatred that ended up killing several thousand german prisoners anywhere between just over three thousand and twenty two thousand died but we have to pose the question what choice did eisenhower have in dealing with such volumes of prisoners they couldn't be sent to britain the allies couldn't initially feed them properly due to their own very successful bombing of the transportation infrastructure and they considered helping allied nations liberated from the germans to be a higher priority under those circumstances it is actually surprising that more germans didn't actually die thanks for watching please subscribe and share and also visit my audiobook channel war stories with mark felton you can also help to support both of my channels at paypal and patreon details in the description box below

Channel: Mark Felton Productions

Views: 1,055,851

Rating: 4.8416376 out of 5

Keywords: Mark Felton, Rhine Meadows, Prisoners of War, General Eisenhower

Id: icFKdMw7nT8

Length: 12min 53sec (773 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/lolwut_17]

Does any YouTube video count as a documentary now? The narrator even states in the first moments of this video the claims first appear 40 some years after the war ended, and by a Canadian novelist, not a historian.

I’m all for facts, but this seems like far more conjecture than factual history.