After the Second World War had come to an end in Europe, there were whole cities that
needed rebuilding.
The German occupation of certain countries had led to thousands of people being displaced
and deported, and thousands more who had been executed and killed.
World War 2 was the deadliest conflict in History, and it’s impact on civilians was
huge as many struggled to return to their pre-war lives, and many had lost family members.
Whole communities were wiped out, but for the Allies the task was to help rebuild, but
also contain and deal with the huge swathes of German prisoners of war that they now had
to deal with.
A de-nazification program was rolled out to assess each German to see how much of a virulent
nazi they were, and then programmes went ahead to try and deal with their ideology.
Some were incredibly staunch in their worship of Hitler and the Nazis, but others seemingly
abandoned this as soon as the war was over.
But there were a network of 19 huge prisoner of war camps built in the allied occupied
Germany by the American Army.
These were known as the Rhine Meadows Camps, and throughout the decades there have been
accusations that these were not fit for purpose, and almost like concentration camps these
held prisoners in tough conditions.
But what is the true story of the Rhine Meadows camps?
Join us today as find out, and to support our channel please make sure to subscribe.
At the beginning of 1945, around half of all German soldiers who were taken prisoner were
held by the Americans, and the other half were then held under British custody.
But as the Allies pushed into the heart of Germany as they crossed the line, the sheer
number of German prisoners caused an issue.
The British were running out of space in their camps, and they could not take any more.
This left the Americans to pick up the pieces, and they then established the Rhine Meadows
camps in the west part of Germany.
These camps were made, and prisoners deemed as Disarmed Enemy Forces would go into them.
The captured soldiers did not have the rights as Prisoners of War either as they belonged
to the state of Nazi Germany, which the Geneva Convention said ceased to exist.
The camps also were made to try and limit any further German and Nazi resistance after
the surrender of Nazi Germany on the 8th May 1945, as many were worried about attacks in
the wake of them losing the war.
The Allies were concerned that virulent Nazi groups may get together, and launch guerrilla
campaigns against them even during the occupation, and the Rhine Meadows Camps were seen as a
good way of preventing this sort of activity.
There were plans to move the prisoners to Britain where they would remain, but this
was not possible due to the large numbers.
Following the German failing of the Ardennes offensive, 250,000 German soldiers waved the
white flag and surrendered.
After the battles of the Ruhr pocket, 325,000 were taken prisoner and in total around 3.4
million German soldiers were being held in custody.
Because there we so many, it made sense to hold them in Germany and to save a huge amount
of money and effort transporting them.
Moving this amount of prisoners would ultimately result in a number of escapes, so the Allies
believed containing them in these camps was better.
The camps were operational from April to September 1945, and they were on open farmland close
to a village which had a railroad line.
They were enclosed with barbed wire, and were divided into between 10 and 20 camps, housing
between 5,000 and 10,000 soldiers.
There were other buildings which services the camps such as admin buildings, hospitals,
kitchens and barracks for the guards.
When they arrived, the German prisoners had to give over their equipment, and they would
then have to dig a hole in the earth by hand to sleep in.
This was expected to have been their bed, but quickly as more troops surrendered the
camps became overcrowded massively.
Overcrowding was a huge problem, inside the Nazi concentration camps it caused disease
and illness to spread very quickly, and coupled with a lack of food people died.
To almost bypass international laws about the handling of prisoners of war, the inmates
were not treated as POWs but as mentioned Disarmed Enemy Forces.
The inmates would do administration roles, and work as cooks and doctors, and some of
the armed guards were even former Wehrmacht members.
These were given extra rations if they helped to stop escapes and kept order.
Some prisoners were released early, and those who were members of the Hitler Youth were
let go first, along with women who were seen to have had no link to the Nazis.
Then farmers and miners were released, as they were needed to rebuild Germany which
was in ruins.
On the 12th June 1945, the British took over control of two camps, and then the French
would take control of the camps in July after a deal was made to provide prisoners of war
for forced labour to rebuild France.
The camps closed by the end of September 1945, but one did remain open for three years, however
the conditions there have been subject to a lot of controversy.
But some of the most interesting accounts of the Rhine Meadows camps comes from guards
and inmates who worked there.
One man who spoke out was Martin Brech, who was drafted into the US Army.
He saw service at the end of the war, however was then sent to guard a Prisoner of War came
near Andernach along the Rhine.
He could speak German and could converse with them, but this was banned, and he would work
as an intepreter searching for members of the SS.
In Andernach around 50,000 prisoners were held in an open field surrounded by barbed
wire, Brech said, ‘the women were kept in a separate enclosure that I did not see until
later.
The men I guarded had no shelter, and no blankets.
They had no coats.
The slept in the mud, wet and cat, with inadequate slit trenches for excrement.
It was a cold wet spring, and their misery from exposure alone was evident.
What was even more shocking was to see prisoners throwing grass and weeds into a tin can containing
thick soup.
They told me they did this to ease their hunger pains.
Quickly they grew emaciated.
Dysentry raged, and soon they were sleeping in their own excrement, too weak, and crowded
to reach the slit trenches.
Many were begging for food, sickening and dying before out eyes.
We had ample food and supplies, but did nothing to help them, including giving no medical
assistance.
Outraged I protested to my officers and was met with hostility or bland indifference.
When pressed they explained they were under strict orders from higher up.
No officer would dare do this to 50,000 men if he felt that it was out of line, leaving
him open to charges.
Realising my protests were useless, I asked a friend working in the kitchen if he could
slip me some extra food for the prisoners.
He too said they were under strict orders to severley ration the prisoners food, and
that these orders came from higher up.
But he said they had more food than they knew what do to with, and would sneak me some.
When I threw this food over the barbed wire, I was caught ant threatened with imprisonment.
I repeated the offence, and one officer angrily threatened to shoot me.
I assumed this was a bluff until I encountered a captain on a hill above the Rhine, shooting
down at a group of German Civilian women with his 45 calibre pistol.
When I asked why, he mumbled ‘target practice,’ and fired his pistol until it was empty.
I saw the women running for cover, but at that distance I couldn’t tell if any had
been hit.
This is when I realised I was dealing with cold blooded killers, filled with moralistic
hatred.
They considered the Germans subhuman and worthy of extermination, another expression of the
downward spiral of racism.
Articles in the GI newspaper, Stars and Stripes played up the German concentration camps,
complete with photos of emaciated bodies.
This amplified out self righteous cruelty, and made it easier to imitate behaviour we
were supposed to oppose.
Also I think soldiers not exposed to combat were trying to prove how tough they were by
taking it out on the prisoners and civilians.’
In the summer of 1945, the International Committee of the Red Cross was stopped from visiting
prisoners inside the Rhine Meadows Camps, but later during the meetings they would see
that the German Prisoners of War were often held in applying conditions.
One report would compare the camps to Andersonville Prison in 1864, which was rife with diseases
such as scurvy which led to the deaths of thousands.
However Official American statistics would state that inside the camp there were over
3000 deaths, and the Germans would say this was higher and around 4500.
Shockingly one Canadian writer claimed that the figure was actually as high as 1 million,
however this has been rejected by other leading historians.
It was said that, ‘The German prisoners were treated badly in the months immediately
after the war that is beyond dispute.’
However when you compare the Rhine Meadows Camps to other prisoner of war camps holding
German soldiers, you can see that actually the numbers were not very high at all, and
they were some of the lowest death rates experienced.
The Soviets had a colossal death rate of German Prisoners of War, as they were sent to the
Gulags, and the Rhine Meadows Camps were nowhere near this deadly.
A detailed report would be released on the camps, and it was said that they did have
a number of issues and problems.
It would found that the 1200 to 1500 calorie ration that prisoners were being given was
not enough, that the lack of food led to dangerous malnutrition, that the organisation of the
camp was left to the prisoners and was not consistant, and that a number of prisoners
had been lost by the Americans and the Americans did not 100% know who was inside of their
camps.
It was also said that the number of prisoners exceeded the predictions and expectations,
and that issues came from here.
It was claimed that the Allies did violate international war, and did commit a war crime
in relation to the feeding of the German prisoners inside of the camps, and also of civilians.
This resulted in a large number of civilian and prisoner deaths in occupied Germany which
could have prevented, and it was believed that this was motivated by vengeance, and
the Allies’ need to get back at their enemy.
The Rhine Meadows camps ultimately were a series of overcrowded, poorly staffed and
monitored prisoner of war camps, and they were where a number of thousand of people
died inside the barbed wire fences.
The prisoners were not given sufficient clothing, blankets and supplies and with this they were
often suffering greatly from exposure.
They were incredibly tough, and more possibly should have been done to give the prisoners
a better standard of care.
But the Allies may have been motivated by what they saw in the Nazi concentration camps
once these were liberated, and may have believed the enemy they were dealing with deserved
a tough ordeal too.
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