I started wondering this today after reading something about POWs (Prisoners of War).
I know there were various international agreements during World War II on how POW’s could legally be treated. Generally speaking, to my understanding, they could not be arbitrarily shot out of hand. I realize there were times when that happened anyway but presumedly if the shooter was German or Japanese they were subject themselves to punishment after the war. And I suppose if they were American or Soviet or British, they probably got away with it if they killed a POW.
But my question is, was it possible to have a legal defense for shooting a POW? If a German guard was being tried by an Allied tribunal after the war for killing a prisoner, could he have said, “Yes, I saw him climbing over the fence in an attempt to escape, so I shot him” and have the judge say “Fair’s fair, we’d have done the same if a German tried to escape from one of our camps. Not guilty.”
Or suppose one POW murdered another. Could the camp administration have set up a trial, called witnesses, had somebody act as the defense lawyer, maybe formed a jury of guards (or even other POWs), and found the prisoner guilty of murder and sentenced him to death? After all, the American Army executed American soldiers for committing murder, obviously the German Army wasn’t going to let an American soldier get away with it. But would the German officer who ordered the firing squad have himself been charged with murder in 1946?
And I realize the obvious; this topic is subject to abuse. I really am interested in World War II POW policy. This is not an attempt to start a back-door discussion or a Great Debates flamefest on any current issues involving POWs so please don’t start.
My father-in-law (now deceased) was a POW in Germany. From what little he would talk about it, the Germans pretty much left the POWs to themselves. At Dad’s funeral, one of the other POWs told us about how they always gave the food to Dad to divide up, because he was always fair.
The USSR was not a signatory to the geneva convention, so the Germans didn’t give captured Russian soldiers POW treatment. And after the war, Stalin figured that any Russian soldier who survived being captured by the Germans must be a traitor, so he sent all returning POWs to the gulags.
This link may help to answer some questions. I studied the Stoerpenberg Camp case many years ago, although in a different context and not for the class that has posted it on the web.
Sadly, this is the only place I can find it out there on the web, but I might be able to help a little with the rest. As you can see from the link, the POWs had set up their own little society inside the prison camp, with laws and so on. What the link does not go on to say is what happened next to make this case notable. If memory serves, the rest of the document deals with one of the POWs who is accused of hoarding food, and his trial before the ad hoc court the rest of the POWs establish to figure out if he was indeed guilty, and if so, what to do about it.
I wish I had a more complete answer to your second question. But at least there is some answer to it–that in at least one instance, rules governing POW society were established (beyond those established by their captors), and trials constituted and staffed by other POWs could enforce those rules within their society.
I was taught at USAF Survival School that if you become a POW you have an obligation to try to escape. That doesn’t mean that you do something stupid like defy the orders of your captors by trying to walk out the front gate, it means that if you are given the appropriate circumstances you go.
Once you’re out of imprisonment you cannot kill anybody to facilitate your escape. As a POW you are officially a noncombatant until you get home and are repatriated. If you kill someone while escaping you can legally be charged with murder and executed if you are caught.
There’s lots of gray area in the Geneva Conventions. If they killed you they could say that you were trying to escape, because they are not obligated to bring you back in one piece. Once you’re out the gate you’re fair game.
Trying to escape warrants the shooting of a prisoner.
However, the trials after WWII weren’t “justice” in the normal sense of the word.
For example, the trial of Kurt Mayer, which had him put to death, only to be later commuted, was, according to the presiding judge years later, a kangaroo court. Which was from the book “meeting the Generals”.
So yes, a prisoner trying to escape warrrants the shooting of him, however, “war crime trials” are not “justice” in the way that they are portrayed as.
I remember there was a controversy back in the early nineties about some former East Germans border guards who had shot some people trying to escape into West Berlin. Some people were arguing they should be tried for the shootings. As I recall, a German court decided that while they didn’t agree with the concept of the Berlin Wall, that was immaterial. The guards had been acting in accordance with East German laws when they shot those people so they were not criminally liable.
Not so. That was certainly argued by the defence and sometimes accepted by courts of first instance. but higher courts decided on appeal (and ultimately the constitutional court decided) that the relevant East German laws violated basic human rights (abstract of decision). The border guards in question were convicted of manslaughter.
Yes, but when the Germans captured French, British, American, and Commonwealth soldiers they WERE treated under the Geneva conventions, and we did the same with captured German and Italian soldiers. However, this wasn’t the case on the eastern front…both the Russians and the Germans regularly executed, tortured, raped and starved captured soldiers.
Of course Nazi racial ideology played a part in the treatment of Soviet soldiers, but the Geneva conventions were ignored by the Russians as well. So the Geneva conventions were upheld by both sides on the western front, and ignored by both sides on the eastern front.
And also the vast majority of people killed in the death camps weren’t soldiers, but civilians, German citizens, Polish citizens or Soviet citizens.
I recall reading something (I think here on the board) about another POW aspect of capture. The poster referenced the scene in “Saving Private Ryan” where the Americans let a German they’d captured in the field go.
This was because they could not spare someone to escort him back tot heir lines. The question was would they have been justified in shoorting him instead?
I’m not 100% sure of the answer, and I haven’t found it in a brief search here, but I will try again later and also try Google to see if I can come up with something for you on this situation…
(I THINK the answer was that they were correct in stripping him of his weapon(s) and letting him; shooting him would not have been legal)
I agree that it would be illegal, but I have two citeless examples.
One of my Step Fathers, now deceased was an infantryman in Europe in WWII.
He explained that your sergeant would order you, “Private Plant, take these five German prisoners back six miles to headquarters for interrogation.”
Private Plant, scared out of his wits, having no idea where headquarters was, or whether any German partrols were nearby, would take the Germans out of sight and shoot them. Returning to his sergeant, “Those Krauts tried to escape and I shot them.”
“Too bad, Private. Here, have a cigarette.”
I met a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge when I worked at the public library. His unit was having a reunion. He was getting books on the Bulge and Belgium. He was captured and had no idea where he was. The German officer who was in charge of the POWs was retreating from the Allies, knew they had lost and was letting prisoners slip away on any excuse, like relieving themselves.
When rescued by an American unit, two POWs explained how one of the Germans was a particularly viscous bastard. Their liberators gave them weapons, and they took the guy out of sight and killed him.
I’ve read Paul Brickhill’s The Great Escape a zillion times. What I got out of it (and other WWII POW things I’ve read)was that the Germans were generally careful in their observation of the protocols of the Geneva Convention, giving prisoners fair and equal treatment, letting Red Cross packages and personal letters through, giving medical car, and even repatriating the badly wounded. They weren’t above petty infractions (bringout out the good blankets only when the “Geneva Man” was there), but they kept to the rules.
That didn’t inc;ude not shooting people in the legitimate role of guard – prisoners were shot while trying to escape. If you stuck your nose over the Warning Wire that ran around the periphery of the camp inside the barbed wire fence, the guards on the towers would definitely fire in your direction. Everyone knew this, and I don’t think anyone was ever prosecuted after the war for such things.
The mass shooting of the recapturedc escapees after The Great Escape, however, was a violation of the Convention. It was on the explicit orders of Hitler himself, and it shocked even many of the German officers. The commandant of Stalag Luft III, Von Lindeiner, apologozed to the senior British POW when he heard about it. Those responsible for this were prosecuterd after the war, something the last chapters of Brickhill’s book deal with. There weasn’y much about it in the theatrical film, but the TV movie starring Christopher Reeve that was also adapted from the book dealt with it at length.