It's a long way from Iowa to any place safe for an escaped German POW. Sending them out in small groups to outlying farms, etc, meant each was known by name and noticed.
Posted on 03/10/2018 3:14:49 AM PST by NorseViking
Of the 108,000 soldiers of the Sixth German Army capitulating in the winter of 1943 at Stalingrad, only 6,000 returned home in 1955. What has led to such incredible losses?
he attitude of the German soldiers who fought on the eastern front was unequivocal: "Russians do not take prisoners", they believed. This fear of captivity was the result of Nazi propaganda, which was constantly subjected to soldiers - mostly young people. But maybe it was not just this?
The facts are as follows: from the Wehrmacht soldiers captured in the Soviet captivity, their number is estimated at a minimum of 108 thousand and a maximum of 130 thousand people - only 5 thousand or 6 thousand returned to Germany or Austria alive. Many of them did it only in the mid-50's. Thus, the losses from the total number of prisoners amounted to approximately 95%, which is much larger than in any other battle.
Does this mean that the Red Army really did not take the Germans into captivity? Rüdiger Overmans, a military historian and best specialist in both the narrow field of studying losses in the Second World War and this topic as a whole, writes: "In unprecedented quantitative scales, Soviet soldiers shot German prisoners of war, whether from bitterness and thirst for revenge, reluctance to mess with the transportation of the wounded or from the desire to rid the unnecessarily suffering of the seriously wounded, who could not help one way or another.
(Excerpt) Read more at welt.de ...
Huh?
Regards,
“... nothing compared to what the Japs did.”
I worked for the VA, and got to read hundreds of handwritten accounts of WW2 vets who had been POW’s of the Germans and the Japanese. The accounts by those held by the Japs were horrific. The deliberate starvation, physical and mental torture, and witnessing executions of fellow prisoners. OTOH, those held by the Germans uniformly, said that once they got to an actual prison camp, their treatment was quite good, their biggest complaint is the quality and quantity of food. They did have a tough time if they were flyers who were caught by angry civilians, or if they were captured by the Waffen SS. But, in the camp itself, they received excellent medical care, and weren’t physically or even mentally mistreated.
“” “” Rather, it was the loss of the Rumanian oil fields that did them in.”” “”
True. A lot is said on Stalingrad being of symbolic value for Hitler but it was a transit hub for oil delivery for the Soviets who got their oil from Chechnya and Azerbaijan at the time.
The whole Southern focus of Russian campaign for Hitler was to capture Caucasus and said oil for himself.
He has literally ran out of gas.
“My family had German POWs working on their farmland here in SC during the war.”
German POW’s were working on many America farms/ranches before the War ended.
One of my uncles by marriage was born here on about 1900 and his parents were German immigrants. He fought his former countrymen in WWI and hated them. He had 3 uncles, who came over with his parents, and they were German to the core and were card carrying German Bund members. He hated them and turned them into the FBI after Germany declared war on us after Pearl Harbor. They were arrested and sent to not nice places of hard labor.
He was a cattle rancher, and he spoke excellent German and interviewed our German POW’s to see if they could be trusted to work on ranches and farms. Often, he would have them work on one of his ranches and monitor them. If they showed any sign of being real Nazis, he had them trucked away.
In the summers and weekends, his son, a first cousin of mine, a huge high school kid 6’5” and about 250#’s of muscle would work with the German pow’s. They did not know that he was my uncle’s son.
At night, he would tell his dad, who to send to some American hell hole. The next day, they would be rounded up a little before noon and sent to the hell hole.
My cousin’s aunts by marriage were good people, and they were so called prisoners in a NE Oklahoma former mental hospital. In fact their security guys were German POWs, who probably hated Hitler more than we did.
When the war with the Germans was over, this uncle had his German uncles sent to Germany to live. His aunts stayed over and lived and worked on one of my Uncle’s ranches for the rest of their lives.
His huge son joined the Army shortly after WWII was over and became a MP. He was sent to Germany to find and take care of any surviving SSers and other criminals. When they arrested a suspected SSer, he would have them take off their shirts. Then, he would look for their blood type tattooed in their armpits. If they found that tat, the problem was handled quietly.
They also took care of German Werwolf’s. (google werwolfs).
After about a year, this cousin and some of his toughest and biggest MP’s finished crash study courses in speaking and reading Japanese.
Then, they went to Japan to handle the leftover Japanese bad thugs. They finished out their Army enlistments doing to the bad Japanese what they did to the bad Germans left in Germany after WWII was over.
The POW camp at Algona, Iowa, is well remembered for leaving behind a hand-made Nativity set of 60 half-lifesize figures.
At least one of those POWs remained around Algona, Iowa, after the war. My father, a WW2 Navy vet, knew him well.
Link to the Nativity story:
https://algonanativityscene.omeka.net/
Hmmmm... Maybe that's the reason for the 10's of thousands of rat breeding Muslims they're taking into Germany... Churchill once said the muslim's made amazing soldiers. But he also said they were like a pack of mad dogs.... Or, some such thing.......
Churchill said hey made brave and loyal soldiers to UK Monarchy but what was left out was ...under British leadership. So far Arab armies tend to be pretty incompetent and only brave when they are shooting unarmed civilians.
Have to love them Poles.
One of the Camp Algona satellites was at Eldora, Iowa, and Eldora still has one of the small buildings that housed prisoners... I think it may have originally been a CCC barracks in the 1930s. Some of the POWs got to Camp Algona by being taken in a troop train to Eldora, where they de-trained and were trucked to Algona. Nobody seems to know why this was done when there was rail service to Algona, but the war department moved in mysterious ways.
It's a long way from Iowa to any place safe for an escaped German POW. Sending them out in small groups to outlying farms, etc, meant each was known by name and noticed.
My scoutmaster in the late 1950s had been a bomber pilot who ended up captured on the island of Japan. He endured some horrific things but never brought it all up with us young scouts. Another assistant scout leader was a survivor of the Indianapolis.
My dad was a Battle of the Bulge Master Sgt with a Bronze Star and he was always very respectful of these two guys and what they tried to instill in being prepared and learning discipline.
“An amazing story.”
Yes, an amazing story, but unfortunately, once we all die off, a story which will be completely lost to the ages. The ruling “hate America above all else” class will only teach the young that America was evil. A disgrace to be sure, but unfortunately, we chose to ignore the leftist indoctrination of our young for decades, while today’s “leaders” were being brainwashed. The billionaire “leaders” of Facebook, Amazon, etc. are beyond redemption, and they, unfortunately shall be the arbiters of “truth” for those growing up today.
What you will witness is first hand account from those who survived the slaughter and was the Nazi's official, standard operating procedures throughout ALL of the Slavic/Soviet nations and people's they conquered and occupied. It was and is nothing short of horrific.
The film is "must see" viewing in order to properly understand the Red Army's approach to dealing with their merciless enemy.
I have no doubt that if the leftists were in total power, their opponents (like us) would have a very finite lifespan indeed.
I come to that conclusion from seeing how they have conducted themselves in the past when they achieve total power.
And he was right.
I’m sorry if you’re polish.
Look for and watch the movie "Come and See" free online. Entirely based upon eye witness accounts of the Nazi's SOP in Belarus. After watching, you will unequivocally understand why the German troops had every reason to fear capture and righteous retaliation for the war crimes they so willingly participated in.
Some might argue: "many in the German army didn't participate in these atrocities". While that may be true:
1) Most knew what was going on and said and did nothing to prevent it.
2) ALL of the Nazi troops were involved in attacking, conquering, occupying and subjugating these nations which had been at peace with them and were therefore directly complicit in their comrades in arms wholesale crimes against humanity.
“...Not making a deal with England to form a european power bloc vs the US was a blunder ...” [silverleaf, post 56]
There never was a chance of Nazi Germany and Britain making a pact against the other powers.
Extending back before the year 1600, British strategy was to cooperate with the smaller Continental powers against the dominant power.
Things began to change after 1815, but British strategy stayed the same.
With the formation of its Empire in 1871, Germany became the dominant military and industrial power on the Continent. It continued its rise in the years immediately following; Britain sought out the French and reached an understanding shortly after 1900. Initial British steps were being taken to form an understanding with Imperial Russia when the First World War began.
Same I heard. I had several relatives in WWII. My uncle always said the difference for navy sailors caught on life rafts: the Germans would give them a little food and water and release them; the Japs would blow them out of the water.
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