I think this topic goes unnoticed, apart from the Jap atrocities. So how were the American POWs treated in WWII, especially in the European theatre?
My country, Slovakia (Axis nation) didn't have a direct frontline with American forces, Americans just bombed strategic targets multiple times. However, a decent amount of American bombers/fighters were shot down either by AA or in dogfights and 2 small camps were built for American pilots.
I know this might sound like Auschwitz swimming pool tier, but it's true. Both of the camps were of minimal security (one was nearby the capital), they were basically bigger houses built by contractors without any barbed wire and I am not even aware if there were any guards, as the Americans were able to go to the city for cigs, food, etc. Wives of president's assistant and prime minister collected English books from citizens of the capital for the prisoners. 3 or 4 Slovak-American bomber crew members were captured. The state decided to organize a tour for them and their American friends around the country and showed them nature, historical sites, new infrastructure and villages of their ancestors. This was done mainly because everyone knew the country is going to get overrun by the Soviets so the American POWs that would get back to their country would remember Slovakia and give in a good word for it.
Probably kinda shitty in most places, idk If Slovakia story is true but in Germany or France they’d be interrogated and sent to camps. Not Jap tier, everyone’s huwite so maybe after they beat the shit out of you for info, and just before they send you to a camp, one of the guys dragging you bums you a smoke.
William King
My only real source is my dad's father during WW2. He was a paratrooper during the Invasion of Normandy. He was captured and held in the basement of a French house for about a month where he lived off potatoes. The Germans were't cruel, but they obviously lacked the facilities at the time to properly house prisoners as the Western allies were advancing. Whether that's normal or not is hard to say, given the situation both he and the Germans found themselves in. Other Germans might have easily been assholes, but these Germans might have realized they were fucked and thought it would be better if the Allies found them with living prisoners rather than out back with a bullet in their head.
The thing is Slovakia was a really really small state, 30k km2, 2 mils of citizens so they had to comply a lot with what the Germans said but still remained semi-independent through bamboozling Germs on official levels. However, at the end of the war, there was a big pressure to give these American POWs to Germany. I am not sure they were sent or not, but I read memoirs of one Slovak politician that met one of these POWs in America and they had a good talk, so I guess some of them survived German captivity too.
Jonathan Bennett
That's actually not bad, your grandpa kind of lucked out. Did he tell you any other interesting stories?
From everything I've heard, air force POWs were generally treated the best across Europe. This was one of the reasons why Hogan's Heroes was set in an air force POW camp, because they were better places in reality.
Kevin Rogers
Unfortunately, no. He died while I was still young, and only ever shared the more boring or tame stories. Stuff like how he used to vomit in his helmet all the time because he would get sick in the air, or how he only became a paratrooper because it paid more. He also took an obnoxious, almost comical, amount of photos before, during, and after battles.
Isaac Sanders
I wonder why is it like that when everyone hated the artillerymen
Brandon Mitchell
They get raped in the ass
>For instance, the American airman Sergeant Daniel L. Culler was one of the first USAAF airmen and was sent to Wauwilermoos in June 1944. His B-24 was piloted by Lt. George B. Telford and landed at the Dübendorf airfield on 18 March 1944. On 12 May of that year Culler, the B-24's tail gunner Howard Melson and the British soldier Matthew Thirlaway had slipped away from Adelboden, where they were interned >Culler's good clothes were confiscated by Béguin in return to "old dirty rags." Sent to barracks 9, Culler was repeatedly raped by internees from Eastern Europe. He reported to the camp commandant André Béguin and some of the guards, who laughed and sent him back.
>Fifteen other American bombers landed safely or crash-landed in Switzerland that day. Some of them had been fired on by Swiss pilots and flak gunners. This was not unusual. By the end of the summer of 1944, over a thousand Americans would be in Swiss hands, held under military guard and forbidden from leaving the country for the duration of the war.
>In the last two years of the war, the “benevolent hosts” of the American airmen threw 187 of them into one of the most abhorrent prison compounds in Europe, a punishment camp run by a sadistic Nazi. One of these unfortunates was Daniel Culler. Culler was never told why he was sent to Straflager Wauwilermoos, or for how long. As he passed through the gates of the prison, his military guard whispered to him. “I’m sorry to bring you to this hellhole. Watch your every step. There are some awful men in here, and you are so young.”
>“What happened to me that night, and many more to follow, was the worst hell any person ever had to endure,” Culler wrote in his searing prison memoir. A group of Russian prisoners held him down, stuffed straw in his mouth, and sodomized him repeatedly. “Coming from a small farming community, I never heard of men doing to me what they did. I... hadn’t even been with a girl, except to hold her hand and give her a light kiss on her cheek or mouth. I was bleeding from all the openings of my body, and I prayed to God to take my life from me.”
Evan Collins
>He was raped again the next morning and forced to have oral sex with several of his assailants, who stuck sticks in his mouth to pry it open. After being knocked unconscious, he awoke to find blood running down his throat. Too weak to move, and with his hands tied behind his back, he was thrown into the waste ditch outside the barracks. “When I finally came to my senses, I crawled from the ditch and tried to wipe myself with straw. I noticed something was hanging from my rectum, and realizing it was skin from the inside, I tried to push it back in.”
>Within days Culler’s entire body was covered with boils from the lice and rats in the feces-contaminated straw. The rapes continued and became more violent. He began to vomit blood and an unknown yellow substance, and he developed chronic, bloody diarrhea.
>When Culler was finally taken from Wauwilermoos and given his day in court, he discovered that Swiss justice was a mockery. The military court proceeding was conducted entirely in German, and when it was over, Culler was handed an English translation of the transcript. He would be sent back to Wauwilermoos without medical treatment and for an unstated period of time. The transcript did not contain a single word of his oral testimony describing his rape and the conditions inside the prison. The final indignity was a bill Culler received for 18 francs—compensation for the court’s time and trouble.
>Back in prison, Culler was tormented by a loud ringing in his ears—the result of beatings suffered at the hands of the Russians. They had been transferred, but sitting alone in a corner of the barracks, wrapped in a thin blanket, Dan Culler felt he was losing his mind. “The last I remember at Wauwilermoos, I was acting like a madman, trying to stuff straw down my throat so I could not breathe. After that everything went black.”
Isaac Diaz
>Swiss Oh fuck no, we should have invaded that fucking shithole. >inb4 militia That only works when the invader gives a shit about civilians, see the Warsaw Uprising.
James Rivera
Holy shit, seems like the Germans were right in separating russian prisoners from others.
Connor Gutierrez
Literally fucking commies. I bet those prisoners were from a penal unit and the USSR dumped their garbage from one prison to another.
Austin King
>He also took an obnoxious, almost comical, amount of photos before, during, and after battles. I know this might sound like a huge pain in the ass to do, but you really should put them all on a flatbed scanner and scan them all and then upload them to my Flickr group. Stuff like this is important. Every photo is historically significant, I have rescued photos like this from the landfill because some folks just don't seem to care.
Jordan Flores
Not him but you're doing god's work with that. My grandfather had a lot of photos from the Pacific theater that we've somehow lost; none of us threw them out but they were misplaced when my family all moved to different places at the same time. Nobody's really sure who has them but I wish I'd digitized them beforehand. Whenever they turn up again that's going to be my top priority.
Ryder Davis
Until they started sending some of them to concentration camps.
a family friend of ours was captured. He was captured after his jump into normandy, he got lost and was eventually found by some germans who made him a pet or something, then they traded him to some waffen ss guys.
>make jump before dday >loses every thing and pretty much lands with nothing >can't find anybody not even a german >spends the rest of the night just kinda sneaking around because what else can he do >eventually swipes some hand gun from a table in a very small empty village >looking around for more stuff and eventually a half track appears and hes hiding in the top floor of this house >thinks about jumping out the window on the other side but doesn't want to risk breaking a leg because he's already useless as is . >the germans enter the house hes in, must have been some base or maybe they were taking a quick rest or something >him and some german just quietly stare at one another for a bit and then the german tells him hands up, in english >they throw him in the back of the half track with a can of chocolate >he pretty much becomes a pack mule for the guys >after about a week of this hes handed off to some waffen ss guys >same thing, pack mule. >nobody really knows what to do with him >after another two weeks of this the germans get orders to fallback and just leave him in some town they were at >americans pull up and ask what the fuck hes doing >he think he surrendered at had been giving them information >he has no idea >he has no clue >all he knows is that they gave him some candy and sometimes let him play cards
Nathaniel Morgan
Depends on where and when. Germans generally adhered to Geneva and put them in okish camps. Usually they were fed and not too many stories of abuse. That being said pilots had a weird time of it. Basic survival tells them to ditch uniform and hide but doing so makes you no longer a professional soldier and the conventions don't cover you. If they caught you it'd be off to Gestapo hose beating time. The Japanese basically holocausted any POWs they got. Terrible conditions, lots of abuse, starvation's and beheadings common
Ethan Johnson
>>all he knows is that they gave him some candy and sometimes let him play cards Top fucking lol. I'd take that anytime to living in a legitimate POW camp.
Evan Perry
I remember reading about an Australian POW who claimed that he was treated worse by the other prisoners than the prison guards. I don't remember if they were Kapos jews or Soviets.
