It’s September, 1943 and you’re a private in the US Army invading Italy*. You’re sent out on patrol only to bump into ze Germans, who ambush you in greater numbers and shout “Hände hoch!” For you, ze var is over.
in a wacky sitcom scenario your brain and the brain of a US private have swapped through space and time, ensuring hilarious hi-jinks. So it’s you as you not you as raised in the Depression. How has this happened? Shut up, that’s how.
You’re transported back to the Reich as a Prisoner of War and thrown into a PoW camp. Do you bother trying to escape from your predicament, or are you content not to risk it and ride out the war until liberated?
Terminology wise, “working your ticket” is feigning madness in order to be repatriated by the Germans on compassionate grounds. A date to remember is March 1944, the date of the Great Escape when 50 escaped prisoners were caught again and shot, a clear violation of the Geneva Convention. The Germans then posted “Escape is no longer a sport!” posters. Towards the end of the war, things get worse with forced marches and little food.
According to the Geneva Convention, if you aren’t in uniform you can be executed as a spy. If you aren’t in uniform - improvised German uniform or civvie garb, the chance of escape is obviously higher but so is the risk if you are recaptured.
Meant to add, made the poll multiple choice on whether or not you’d feign madness as well as escaping (and the timeline of escaping, as noted it gets significantly more risky after the Germans tear up the Geneva Convention in Stalag Luft III).
But do you speak German? Such a talent would greatly increase your chance of escape.
Also a chance to link to the story of Mikhail Devyatayev. No matter how great your escape, you won’t match this guy who stole a German plane. So incredible was his escape that the Soviets upon his return did not believe his story and suspected him of being a spy.
I’d wait to be repatriated. I’ve done my duty by facing combat and serving my country. I’d feel no obligation to risk getting killed to escape from a POW camp. Theres really no where to go outside the camp. I’d have no id, no local money, and no food. I’d get recaptured within a day. No thanks. I’m staying put.
My predominant personality traits, if I’m being honest, are arrogance and a free spirit.
Therefore: I try to escape in civvies, figuring I’ll do fine, because I think of myself as smarter than most people I meet. (And I am objectively good with languages.)
Whether that works out for me or not is up to the one postulating the situation in the OP.
Had some [modern] psychology classes, know a fair amount of history, know a fair amount of German and fluent French. I decide to work my ticket, I am pretty certain that I can gently go nuts. With a fairly obscene chronic and acute pain tolerance, I can even withstand some of the more annoying treatments offered to the nutty [especially the <shudder> cold water baths and wrapping in ice cold wet sheets] though I would miraculously get better if I heard Holzloehner and Rascher mentioned! And if a hint of Lebensunwertes Leben or Action T4 popped into earshot, I would do my damnedest to go over the wire as fast as possible, and head towards the nearest border, north to scandanavia might be the best idea, they were fairly sympathetic to escapees.
When I watch “The Great Escape” (and I once read the book) I cannot think about how arrogant the POW leaders were. Here they were in what really was a model POW camp. They had food, sports, and cultural activities. It really was stupid for them to risk lives in an escape attempt. Many of the tunnel diggers had close calls from cave ins and they should have known that a pissed off, losing enemy would most likely shoot any escapees. Furthermore they knew their side was winning and the war would be over soon.
German. However there are Red Cross parcels that will keep you alive.
In defence of the lads, there are a few reasons why they did think escaping was a good idea. The Germans had - by and large - adhered to the Geneva Convention for Brits prior to the mass breakout, if they’d know summary execution awaited them they might well have reconsidered. There was also a psychological reason, in that it kept minds occupied and focused on a task rather than going stir-crazy. Militarily they saw it as their duty to make life as difficult for the Germans as possible by trying to escape, as it tied up enemy resources. Plus some of them had been in the bag for four long years, and they had a paucity of information on how the war was going (remember, D-Day hadn’t even happened yet).
I voted “Something else” because your only “stay in the camp” option was insulting to my personal courage. I’d stay in the camp, but not because escape is dangerous. I’d stay because I’m a pacifist and have no desire to return to any fight the US Army may want to put me in.
Some relevance in the above-quoted, to my response here. I’m no hero, and would not be hell-bent on escaping, to get back into the meat-grinder. However; in the OP’s scenario, I’m a private. My understanding of WWII POWs’ situation, is basically from sources by British guys who were thus situated; have no reason, though, to think that it would have been very different for US personnel. Per the rules for these things, officer POWs were not obliged to work, and were confined in idleness which they had to fill, by whatever means they found. Lower ranks could be – and were – compelled to do work for their captors: often long hours of hard, dull, physically exhausting labour.
I’m a very lazy individual, and would hate to be thus put to work. However; I gather from POW memoirs, that some officers who were active types, found that their enforced idleness (as per bolded above, “stir-crazy” even with escape attempts to get into) bade fair to drive them insane. Germany held such huge numbers of POWs, with consequent keeping-track difficulties, that a certain amount of “gaming the system” could be done: it was fairly easy, and quite often happened, for prisoners to “swap identities” – including, officer vis-a-vis lower rank. So long as the Germans had the right number of bodies, they were usually happy…
There were a fair few cases of an officer POW swapping identities with an “other-ranks” ditto: the officer being so made, that enforced idleness drove him round the bend – he’d prefer exhausting “grunt work”; plus, that situation offered in some ways, better opportunities for escaping and / or engaging in sabotage. Bone-lazy me, would keep eyes open for the chance of taking part in such an identity-exchange; and so sitting out the rest of the war in an officers’ camp, in blissful idleness.
(In the poll, I took the “something else” option.)
If the Gestapo was willing to murder 50 POWs in violation of basic human rights, the lesson I’d take away is that they could murder me as a POW for whatever reason they may find convenient. Hell, yes, I would try to escape.
Those were their sentiments, I understand, about all Soviet military personnel taken prisoner by the Germans – credible or otherwise, was hardly relevant. It was not far from automatic for all those who survived and got back to the USSR, to get a long forced-labour-camp sentence – similar in duration for those who had stuck it out; to that meted out to those Soviet military who were captured by the Germans and subsequently volunteered to fight on their side, and finally ended up in Soviet hands. Stalin was funny, that way… Mr. Devyatayev was relatively fortunate in what happened to him.
