The March (1945)
"
The March" refers to a series of death marches during the final stages of the Second World War in Europe. Over 80,000 Allied POWs were forced to march westward across
Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany in appalling winter conditions, lasting about four months from January to April 1945 (a total of 257,000 British and American prisoners of war were in German prisons). The series of events has been called various names: "
The Great March West", "
The Long March", "
The Long Walk", "
The Long Trek", "
The Black March", "
The Bread March", but most survivors just called it "
The March". From
Stalag Luft IV at
Gross Tychow in Pomerania the prisoners faced a 500 mile trek in blizzard conditions across
Germany in which hundreds died. One of the marches from
Stalag VIII-B was called "
The Lamsdorf Death March"" and it came very close to the
Bataan Death March in percentage of mortality rates.
OverviewAs the Soviet army was advancing on Poland, the Nazis made the decision to evacuate the PoW camps to prevent the liberation of the prisoners by the Russians. During this period, also hundreds of thousands of German civilians, most of them women and children, as well as civilians of other nationalities, were making their way westward in the snow and freezing weather and many died.
Motives
German leader, Adolf HitlerOn 19 July 1944 Hitler issued an order from his headquarter Wolfsschanze, some 100 miles west of
Stalag Luft VI "
concerning preparations for the defense of the Reich". It put the German civilian population on a total war footing and issued instructions for preparations for evacuations of '
foreign labor' (slave labor) and civilians away from the advancing Soviet army in the east. Item 6(a) called for "
preparations for moving prisoners of war to the rear" which was a crucial instruction that was to prolong the war for hundreds of thousands of allied soldiers and airmen, forcing them into misery, starvation and, in many cases, death. In the later stages of the war there were great concerns over the motives for moving the prisoners westwards. Rumors abounded that they would be held hostage to help with a peace deal with the Allies or that they were being moved towards concentration camps such as
Bergen Belsen to be exterminated in revenge for the bombing of German cities such as
Berlin and
Dresden - (the German name for the Allied airmen was "
terrorfliers"). There were also claims that they were being forced marched to their deaths, that there were plans for the SS to murder them and claims that
Hitler was planning to stage a '
last redoubt' by moving 35,000 hostages to the
Bavarian mountains to make a last stand. This claim was backed up by
Gottlob Berger, the SS general that
Himmler had placed in command of the POW camps in the autumn of 1944. In 1948 he informed an American judge in Nuremberg concerning Hitler's plans for the 35,000 prisoners saying that if a peace deal failed
Hitler had given the order for them to be executed.
Himmler was also planning peace deals with the Allies and he had set up a new headquarters in a castle on
the Bay of Lübeck on the north German coast and there were rumors that parts of the German army would make a last stand here. Thus there were great concerns that the prisoners were being marched towards Bergen Belsen in the north and then some onto Himmler's '
last redoubt' on the Baltic coast and towards
Stalag VII-A at Moosburg in Bavaria near Hitler's '
last redoubt' in the south.
SS-leader Heinrich HimmlerMain Allied POW evacuation routes to the westThere were three main Allied POW evacuation routes to the west, which included:-
The northern route starting from
Stalag Luft VI at
Heydekrug in East Prussia, via
Stalag Luft IV at
Gross Tychow, Pomerania via
Stettin to
Stalag XI-B and
Stalag 357 at
Fallingbostel. Some prisoners were marched from here at the end of the war towards
Lübeck.
The central route started from
Stalag Luft 7 at
Bankau, near Kreuzburg in Silesia (now Poland), via
Stalag 344 at
Lamsdorf, to
Stalag VIII-A Görlitz, then ending at
Stalag III-A at
Luckenwalde, 30 km south of
Berlin.
The southern route started at Stalag VIII-B (formerly Stalag VIII-D) at Teschen (not far from Auschwitz) which led through Czechoslovakia, towards Stalag XIII-D at Nuremberg and then onto Stalag VII-A at Moosburg in Bavaria.
The first Allied POW camp evacuation began in July 1944 from
Stalag Luft VI at
Heydekrug, when thousands of British and American POWs were force marched either to
Stalag Luft IV at
Gross Tychow (involving a 60hr journey by ship) to
Swinemunde), or by force march and cattle train to
Stalag XX-A at
Thorn in Poland.
The MarchJanuary and February 1945 were among the coldest winter months of the twentieth century, with blizzards and temperatures as low as –25 °C (–13 °F), and even until the middle of March, temperatures were well below 0 °C (32 °F). Most of the PoWs were ill-prepared for the evacuation, having suffered years of poor rations and wearing clothing ill-suited to the appalling winter conditions.
In most camps, the PoWs were broken up in groups of 250 to 300 men and because of the inadequate roads and the flow of battle, not all the prisoners followed the same route. The groups would march 20 to 40 kilometers a day - resting in factories, churches, barns and even in the open. Soon long columns of PoWs were wandering over
the northern part of Germany with little or nothing in the way of food, clothing, shelter or medical care.
Prisoners from different camps had different experiences: sometimes
the Germans provided farm wagons for those unable to walk. There seldom were horses available, so teams of PoWs pulled the wagons through the snow.
Sometimes the guards and prisoners became dependent on each other, other times the guards became increasingly hostile. Passing through some villages, the residents would throw bricks and stones,
and in others, the residents would share their last food. Some groups of prisoners were joined by German civilians who were also fleeing from the Russians.
Some who tried to escape or could not go on were shot by guards.
With so little food they were reduced to scavenging to survive. Some were reduced to eating dogs and cats—and even rats and grass—anything they could lay their hands on. Already underweight from years of prison rations, some were at half their prewar body weight by the end.
Because of the unsanitary conditions and a near starvation diet, hundreds of PoWs died along the way from exhaustion as well as pneumonia, diphtheria, pellagra, and other diseases.
Typhus was spread by body lice. Sleeping outside on frozen ground resulted in
frostbite that in many cases required the amputation of extremities. In addition to these conditions were the dangers from air attack by Allied forces mistaking the POWs for retreating columns of German troops. At a village called Gresse, 60 Allied POWs died in a "
friendly-fire" situation when strafed by a flight of
RAF Typhoons.
As winter drew to a close, suffering from the cold abated and some of the German guards became less harsh in their treatment of PoWs. As the columns reached the western side of Germany they ran into the advancing British and American armies. For some, this brought liberation. Others were not so lucky. They were marched towards the Baltic Sea, where Nazis were said to be using PoWs as human shields and hostages.
It was later estimated that a large number of PoWs had marched over five hundred miles by the time they were liberated, and some had walked nearly a thousand miles.
Norman Jardine explained how, once liberated, his group of POWs were given a revolver by a U.S. Army officer and told to shoot any guards who had treated them '
unfairly'. He stated that "
We did!"
On 4 May 1945 RAF Bomber Command implemented Operation Exodus, and the first prisoners of war were repatriated by air in aircraft. Bomber Command flew 2,900 sorties over the next 23 days, carrying 72,500 prisoners of war.
Total number of British and American POW deathsThe total number of American POWs in Germany was in the region of 93,000-94,000 and American sources stated that 1,121 died. The equivalent British and Commonwealth total was close to 180,000 and whilst no accurate records exist, historians claim that if a similar casualty rate is assumed then the number who died would be around 2,200, so
a total figure would be approaching 3,500 American and British POWs who died in German custody. Some of these would have been before the death marches, but the marches would have claimed a significant proportion. Other estimates vary greatly, with one magazine for former POWs putting the number of deaths from the Gross Tychow march alone at 1,500. A senior YMCA official closely involved with the POW camps put the number of British and American POW deaths at 8,348 between September 1944 and May 1945.
Blame for the Marches
SS general, Generalleutnant Gottlob BergerSS general, Generalleutnant
Gottlob Berger, who was put in charge of the POW camps in 1944 until the end of the war was arrested and put on trial in the Ministries Trial in 1947. In 1949 there was an attempt to assign blame for the marches against Berger and the indictment read:
"
that between September 1944 and May 1945, hundreds of thousands of American and Allied prisons of war were compelled to undertake forced marches in severe weather without adequate rest, shelter, food, clothing and medical supplies; and that such forced marches, conducted under the authority of the defendant Berger, chief of Prisoner-of-War Affairs, resulted in great privation and deaths to many thousands of prisoners."
Berger claimed that it was in fact the Germans' duty under the
Geneva Convention to remove POWs from a potential combat zone, as long as it did not put their lives in even greater danger. He also claimed that the rapid advance of the Red Army had surprised the Germans, who had planned to transport the POWs by train. He claimed that he had protested about the decision, made by
Hitler, according to him, but he was "
without power or authority to countermand or avoid the order". The case failed due to these claims and the lack of eyewitness evidence - most ex-POWs were completely unaware of the trial taking place.
However in 1949 Berger was convicted for his role in the genocide of European Jews and sentenced to 25 years in prison. The sentence was reduced to 10 years in 1951 because of his refusal to kill the Prominente in
Oflag IV-C at
Colditz Castle, despite direct orders from
Adolf Hitler. He had helped these prisoners escape by moving them to
Bavaria and then onto
Austria where he met up with them twice before they were returned to American forces. He claimed that he had saved the Prominente from the head of the
Gestapo,
Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who had sent a group of extremists to try and kill them.
Gestapo leader, Ernst Kaltenbrunner
After the war Berger claimed that Hitler had wanted more shootings of prisoners and more punishments, but that he had resisted this. In 1948 Berger gave details to an American judge in Nuremberg of Hitler's plans to hold 35,000 Allied prisoners hostage in a '
last redoubt' in the Bavarian mountains. If a peace deal was not forthcoming, Hitler had ordered that the hostages were to be executed. Berger claimed that on 22 April 1945 Hitler had signed orders to this effect and these were passed to him by Eva Braun but he decided to stall and not carry out the order. He also claimed that he had opposed a plan, proposed by the Luftwaffe and approved by Hitler to set up special POW camps for British and American airmen in the center of large German cities to act as human shields against Allied bombing raids. Berger realized that this would contravene the Geneva Convention and argued that there was not enough barbed wire - as a result this plan was not implemented. Berger was released from jail in 1951 and died in 1975.
