German POWs and the Geneva Conventions

One of the more insightful blogs that routinely covers the abuse and torture of detainees in US military facilities and our outsourcing partners is AndrewSullivan.com.   I have often thought about  the difference between the abusive treatment these detainess from our War on Terror and how Japanese and German POWs were treated during WWII.  Sullivan recently posted an e-mail from one of his readers on this very topic:

the fact that the the US stuck to the Geneva rules in its treatment of Japanese POWs, despite the fact that Imperial Japan not only refused to reciprocate but treated our POWs in the vilest ways imaginable. There would, no doubt, have been widespread public support among the American people for reciprocal mistreatment of Japanese POWs - but the Roosevelt Administration refused to do so for one simple reason: we wanted Japan afterwards to be a peaceful, non-occupied nation, and mistreating their POWs was not the way to accomplish this.

With respect to German POWs there was also the fact that many of them were held in camps in the United States and the prisoners were to some extent integrated into the local communities, performing useful labor on farms, quarries, and factories.  In the current war, an archipelago of  camps have been established in remote locations around the world, far from the eyes of civilians.

The Bush Administration calls these detainees "enemy combatants" - a legal category that differs from Prisoner of War - so they are not subject to the rules of the Geneva Conventions.  As long as the enemy is not holding American troops as prisoners, it is easy to for the US to abandon the Geneva Conventions. 

In WWII, it also made sense for the US to abide by the Geneva Conventions as long as Americans were being held in POW camps by  the German Wehrmacht.  The Geneva Convention, though, calls for prisoners to be returned to their home country within months after the cessation of combat.  But that didn't happen.  The Allied powers had decided at the highest level (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) to repudiate the Geneva Conventions, especially after the extinction of a German government able to negotiate with the Red Cross. (The Soviet Union, of course, had never signed the Geneva Conventions in the first place.) There were somewhere between 3.5 and 5 million Germans POWs that fell into American hands in 1945, and Eisenhower changed their status to Disarmed Enemy Forces, a category not covered by the Conventions.  These DEFs were held in deplorable conditions and tens of thousands died, many from starvation. This fact contradicts the benign image of the US cultivated later by the Marshall Plan and the Berlin Airlift.  The plight of these German prisoners was investigated by the late historian Steven Ambrose and his associate Gunter Bischof in their study Eisenhower and the German Pows: Facts Against Falsehood (Eisenhower Center Studies on War and Peace). Ambrose concludes that there was a massive shortage of food in Europe in 1945, and the German prisoners suffered the same fate as most of the civilian population.  But what about the German DEFs held in the US? There is some evidence that - for a period of time, at least - these prisoners were subjected to punative treatment, including the withholding of food.  I found this fascinating letter from a German prisoner in Camp Clinton (Mississippi) - Gerneral Hermann Bernard Ramcke -to an official in Washington DC, complaining about conditions in the camp on Christmas day, 1945:

After the collapse of Germany, the prisoners of war were officially informed that they would continue to be regarded as such and treated accordingly. However, a few days later, in the beginning of May 1945, the following severe measures were announced:  

(a) A cut in food rations during the months May - October 1945 to an extent that, on the average, ail the prisoners lost 25-41 1bs in weight and can scarcely stand on their legs while working hard on the Mississippi project. Those Generals who are  more advanced in age have become mere skeletons. The little meat supplied consists of waste only. The negro-drivers who bring in these supplies say it is a shame that such waste meat is offered to prisonersof war in the rich America. It is only before the visit announced by representatives of the International Red Cross for the beginning of   November that conditions improved.

(b) Complete deprivation of tobacco and cigarettes from
        May to June, and the cutting of tobacco rations from then until December to 2 ozs. a week.

(c) Deprivation of all luxuries and objects or daily use, as well as of refreshments, whose lack was particularly felt in the hot Summertime and in a climate to which the prisoners ar not used.

(d) Prohibition of all sports and games for a period of 4 weeks.

The following question arises:-

Are all these events and measures an  adequate means to make the 440,000 prisoners of war become supporters of the democratic principles, whose apostles they are Intended to be on their return to Germany from the free America, the land in which         Democracy was born ?" <>

The contrary is being achieved.

Some tantalizng questions remain from this letter,  What was the "Mississippi Project" and what was the role of German prisoners in completing the project?  Who ordered that the prisoners receive starvation rations?  Fortunately, the policies of the US did change, and the DEF designation was removed (the same cannot be said for France and the Soviet Union).  But today we have to ask ourselves: is the policy of abuse and permanent detention serving our stated purpose of changing hearts and minds thoughout the Middle East?  To quote again General Ramcke: "The contrary is being achieved."

 

Comments

[Kuch]

David
Very interesting post. I would wonder though, how did Ramcke have access to the several senate speeches that he references in his letter? Also, do (or did) un-uniformed civilians have Geneva Convention protections? I'm not sure if deprivation of tobacco and sporting activities constitutes abuse.

[David]

Kuch - Ramcke obviously had an excellent command of English and was likely given access to American newspapers, which would have printed speeches from members of congress. Ramcke was also familiar with the Morgenthau Plan, which advocated rations of no more than 1,000 calories per day for the German population (the body needs 1,500 a day to survive). It would appear that for a time elements of the Morgenthau Plans were implemented for German detainees in US camps. It would be useful to know what the orders were (between May1945 - October 1945) and who in the chain of command issued them.
-David

[Kuch]

David
I saw this webpage last weekend, and remembered your post. Thought you might find it interesting. I found the interviews with the former POW's very interesting. Many made reference to the reduction of food portions near the end of their stay, but most describe fair treatment overall.

[Kuch]

David
I saw this webpage last weekend, and remembered your post. Thought you might find it interesting. I found the interviews with the former POW's very interesting. Many made reference to the reduction of food portions near the end of their stay, but most describe fair treatment overall. http://www.pwcamp.algona.org/

[Kuch]

David
I saw this webpage last weekend, and remembered your post. Thought you might find it interesting. I found the interviews with the former POW's very interesting. Many made reference to the reduction of food portions near the end of their stay, but most describe fair treatment overall. http://www.pwcamp.algona.org/

[Aaron Carine]

I'm afraid Sullivan is wrong about how humane American soldiers were to the Japanese. Japanese prisoners and wounded were killed and a number of Japanese in lifeboats were machine-gunned. Among other sources,check out John Dower's War Without Mercy.