What Happened to German Soldiers After WW2? | Animated History

[Music] the german soldier's shovel pierces the soft loam for the last year he has worked on a farm in the southern united states transferred to a labor detail after several months in a detention center he and his fellows have spent their time laboring in the fields watching american films and thinking about what they'll do once the war is over the americans work their charges hard but they are fed well and are treated better than the black sharecroppers who labor alongside them perhaps our soldier thinks he will have a new trade to practice when he returns home [Music] the german soldier's shovel strains against the frozen earth for the last year he has worked in a graveyard in the soviet union transferred to a labor detail after several months in a detention center he and his fellows have spent their time shunting frozen corpses languishing in spartan barracks and fighting desperately to survive the soviets work their charges hard but the privations of war mean the communists can barely feed themselves much less prisoners of war perhaps our soldier thinks he will soon join his former comrades who stare blankly at him from the pit hi i'm griffin johnson the armchair historian when ve day was declared in 1945 the allied powers held roughly 11 million german soldiers as prisoners of war the vast majority of these close to 8 million had been captured by the western allies while the remaining 3 million were in the custody of the soviet union with europe liberated from nazi aggression the allied powers were left with a critical question what to do with their 11 million pows the issue was a divisive one to say the least as while the western allies were signatories to the geneva convention which very clearly demanded the release of prisoners the moment the war ended the soviets had notably abstained from signing the international agreement this meant that a captured german soldier's fate was ostensibly decided by whose hands they fell into but war is a brutal business and sometimes even international law is just ink on a piece of paper in today's episode we will examine the various ends a german soldier could meet after 1945 as well as the fates of some of germany's war criminals if you hadn't guessed already war can be a stressful business soldiers on an extended tour of duty have to face many hardships but there is one that rarely gets the consideration it deserves male pattern baldness unfortunately for the soldiers of the second world war the internet wouldn't be invented for another 50 years so they had no way to know about today's sponsor keeps keeps is a subscription service focused on making it easy for men seeking treatment for baldness online with a variety of treatment options using affordable versions of fda approved medications for hair loss keeps offers an accessible service and helps you stay safe at home with 24 7 access to an online keeps doctor to monitor your progress and answer any questions you might have with more 5 star 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included conscripting pows for forced labor a practice stalin and his advisors thought necessary and roosevelt and churchill regarded with tacit acceptance but more on that later [Music] during the war years german soldiers were imprisoned in roughly 20 countries around the world including in the continental united states while stateside many german prisoners were leased out to farms or factories to serve as laborers providing additional hands to make up for the workers lost to the draft a hotbed of this leasing activity was the southern us where german pows befriended american citizens and watched hollywood films during their off hours overall pows sent to the us were treated humanely and deaths of germans in american custody were low at 491. things were different in the internment camps in europe where american estimates for pows who died in custody lie in the low thousands while german tallies claim up to 40 000 fatalities in american custody the americans early release of many prisoners complicates attaining an exact number for their part the british empire managed the fate of up to 2.5 million german pows by the war's end germans kept in great britain could be housed in anything from tents set up in a pastoral field to elegant manor houses repurposed as surprisingly posh prisons similar to their comrades in the u.s german pows in britain enjoyed a cordial relationship with british civilians who gave them money and foods that they were not usually fed germans in britain could also be put onto a labor detail for which they were paid a respectable two shillings per day of work the number of german pows who died in british custody was 1254. british soldiers as well as american were also reported to have engaged in torture when interrogating germans suspected of committing war crimes often leading to confessions extracted under duress but this was far from the worst a german captured on the western front could expect that dubious dishonor lies with france german soldiers captured during the liberation of france as well as a number relocated there from american custody faced abysmal conditions and vengeful civilians french citizens would verbally harass or assault german prisoners stoning or beating them sometimes to death some pew camps seemed designed for extermination rather than detention a french camp in the saat gave its inmates only 900 calories worth of rations per day for comparison a jew living in the early days of the warsaw ghetto was on paper at least allotted just over 1 000 calories of rations by the nazis an average of 12 pows died daily at the assat camp and shortly after ve day the red cross reported that almost 200 000 german soldiers in french custody faced imminent starvation the united states was forced to halt any further shipments of pows to france and mandate their adherence to the geneva convention an act that in practice was largely symbolic the end of the war meant according to international law repatriation but for the western allies the end of the war largely seemed to mean reparation the us and britain leased roughly one million german pows to the french to rebuild their country while 64 000 went to belgium 10 000 to the netherlands and 5 000 to luxembourg germans on the continent would assist in reconstruction building roads or working in sawmills and quarries some in france and the netherlands were made to clear minefields two thousand pows were killed or maimed each month doing this conscripting the workers this way was a clear violation of the geneva convention but the western allies claimed that since the german government technically did not exist their charges were not prisoners of war and therefore were not entitled to the protections afforded to pows [Music] the soviets had suffered greatly in their war against fascism and they did not want a pound of flesh for their trouble they wanted tons soviet plans for post-war reconstruction included the use of german pows as forced labor as early as 1944. ivan maisky soviet ambassador to the british empire called for the germans to be given as reparations to the soviet union for a lengthy period which he ultimately defined as 10 years maeske would refine his proposal for the yalta conference and provided stalin with a full-scale plan to get the ussr a supply of 5 million german pows to be used as forced labor for a decade after victory was achieved with this mass conscription and the planned seizure of german land and wealth the soviets hoped they could keep the german people from ever fighting against the ussr again with the war's end and the carving of germany into occupation zones the soviet plans were put into effect soviet authorities began identifying their new charges with ethnic germans in soviet territory investigated to determine if they had served in the war any who had verifiable vermont service were ordered to soviet pow camps to be prepared for forced labor the soviets would organize their new workers into battalions of three to five thousand men divided into one thousand man companies they were primarily used for construction and heavy industry with a laser focus on rebuilding the utterly devastated soviet union three million germans would be drafted into the soviet labor companies a full third would die there it should be noted however that this may not have been the result of direct soviet action or negligence theirs was a war of annihilation where both german and soviet gave no quarter and expected none consequently a number of the men forced into these labor companies were pows captured by the soviets directly and due to the horrible conditions of the eastern front came into soviet custody malnourished sick utterly exhausted or some combination of the three but it would not have been pragmatic for the soviets to intentionally slaughter their newly acquired labor pool so shortly after a war that devastated their working population from 1945 to 1946 many pows who were too sick to work were simply released by the soviets rather than be worked to death a bad harvest and endemic corruption and mismanagement seemed to be behind the travails of german forest laborers in the early post-war years however as time wore on the german laborers began to prove more trouble than their soviet masters thought them worth pow labor was a surprisingly expensive enterprise and had to constantly be subsidized by the main soviet economy the germans contributed roughly 5 of the soviet union's total national income a far cry from the grand reparation envisioned by maeske and his 10 years of servitude in a surprisingly capitalist move soviet industrial leaders began to see their german workers as unprofitable and began to skimp on their responsibilities to feed and care for them after all why waste good money and materiel on what they saw as fascist parasites as their industrial managers began to sour on the concept soviet leaders began making moves toward repatriation in 1947 the foreign ministers of the allied powers agreed that they would repatriate all german pows by 1948. the soviet effort would last well into 1950 with roughly 26 000 german pows who had been convicted of war crimes by soviet courts not sent back to germany as late as 1956 overall germans in the soviet union after the war were faced with mandatory hard labor under challenging conditions but the majority were repatriated long before the initial plan of 10 years but one of germany's soldiers who had been discharged before the war's end or who had deserted their fuhrer's crusade against the rest of the world or who simply had been far enough away from the front lines that they were not captured those germans who escaped capture and who were in the western occupation zones found themselves cast adrift in a new germany the allies were keen to strip germany of any martial will and to this end of militarism of any military-inclined organization or club this meant that german veterans of the second world war unlike their former foes had no support system to help them transition back into civilian life these suddenly demobilized soldiers found themselves in a country gripped by denotification as the western allies sought to purge the influence of hitler and goebbel's propaganda machine and eliminate all traces of nazi ideology and war mongering to this end former soldiers were ordered to present themselves to allied tribunals for summary judgment originally run by the occupying forces before being handed off to german authorities in 1946 these tribunals would take stock of the defendant's military and civilian activities during the war the court would then categorize the defendant as a major offender offender lesser offender follower or give them a full exoneration by and large rank and file members of the vermost were categorized as lesser offenders and sentenced to a three-year period of probation during this time they were prohibited from holding public office or running their own businesses as more and more defendants were found or presented themselves the tribunal system began to buckle under an ever-growing caseload and judges began finding or making a multitude of exceptions to speed the process up disabled veterans were often exempted from judgment along with those who could prove that they were impoverished during the war years or were born after 1919 while this system succeeded in streamlining the process of former vermont personnel it allowed those with real nazi sympathies to slip through the cracks denotification was abandoned in the 1950s as its inefficiencies became more apparent and the german public began pushing back on the idea of individual culpability why reckon with your part in crimes against humanity when you can simply pin it all on a dead austrian painter and move on with your life in one of history's moments of irony many former vermont personnel judged by the allies for their service would soon find themselves right back in uniform with the growing threat of the soviets to the east the allied powers realized that a militarized germany would prove a keen ally should the world descend into another global conflict the bundeswehr was established in november of 1955 and many former vermont soldiers could be found in its ranks sometimes wielding the same weapons they used to fight against the allies the war criminals of nazi germany from the highest echelons of military and civilian leadership to rank-and-file guards were arraigned on charges of crimes against humanity and prosecuted at a series of trials most famously at nuremberg prosecutors from all allied nations presented a preponderance of evidence ranging from private diaries to ledgers of concentration camps to military dispatches the prosecution's point was clear the military was equally responsible for hitler's horrors as the ss and civilian leadership there was no distinction to be drawn between the independent and politically minded ss and the duly enlisted soldiers of the vermost while separate these two cogs in hitler's machine of annihilation would often work in sinister concert the vermont would take an area and the ss would purge it of undesirables military officers such as kaidel and high ministers like ribentrop were hanged while others were sentenced to prison terms ranging from life to time served others such as hermann goering took their own lives rather than face the hangman there were even a few female defendants such as the sadistic hyena of auschwitz emma creza kreza was ultimately hanged for her brutal treatment of concentration camp inmates unusual for a time when executing women was a stark rarity but these people were still allowed a defense and theirs was simple we were just following orders the thrust of these arguments was that any nazi soldier officer official or minister accused of crimes against humanity was simply following a directive from a higher authority some in fact falsified orders to show that they had no choice in the matter creating false paper trails to justify their own malice and cruelty toward jews roma lgbtq people and others the nazi party declared undesirable many of these false stories were pushed by the defendant's families who were tired of the war tired of the reckoning and just wanted their sons daughters husbands or wives home whether they were a monster or not this attitude began to pervade german public consciousness with unfortunate results in 1949 the federal republic of germany was founded a new german state for a new german people the first chancellor of this new germany conrad adenauer opened his tenure by announcing plans for a general amnesty for war criminals who had been sentenced by the occupying powers the desire for germany to be an ally against possible soviet aggression trumped the desire for justice and spring of 1950 saw the advisory board on clemency for war criminals established to review cases for leniency 105 cases were brought to the advisory board in august of 1950 as family and friends of convicted war criminals as well as representatives of the new german government presented all manner of mitigating evidence from medical history to the newly birthed clean vermont myth which stated emphatically that all nazi crimes were the fault of the ss and hitler's inner circle proponents of the clean vermont myth argue to this day that the common soldier of nazi germany was an honorable chivalrous man fighting for home and hearth untainted by the atrocities of his peers and the hateful rhetoric of his leaders 84 of the 105 cases heard by the advisory board were dramatically lessened or outright commuted and the fairy tale myth of the claim vermont spread through the german populace generations of germans believed in a sharp divide between their ancestors who fought for hitler and his crimes eager to compartmentalize the shame of their nation's atrocities and their own family histories war like history is never simple nor clean the soldiers of germany captured on the battlefield rightfully expected to be treated in accordance with the geneva convention and in many cases they were until the war's end the pragmatic and vindictive moves by the allies to force german pows into rebuilding europe do not excuse the crimes of nazi germany just as nazi atrocities do not excuse allied violations of the geneva convention it is imperative that we remember history is not entirely black and white but rather painted shades of grey with definite areas of clear morality and humanity to simplify history into west versus east good versus evil or any dichotomy is to ignore the true lessons our history has to teach us and the most profound lessons are often to be learned in its darkest chapters [Music] you

Channel: The Armchair Historian

Views: 3,666,241

Keywords: Germany post-war, second world war german soldiers, Nuremberg trials, German warcrimes, The german perspective world war two, cold war germany, what happened to germany after ww2?, German prisoners in russia, german prisoners in the united states, ww2 pows, history of the german soldier after ww2, what happened to germans after the second world war?, german prison camps

Id: WrDtRvkGyjY

Length: 22min 39sec (1359 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 05 2021