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Uh Vic...

24.128.190.210

Posted by Joe S on April 18, 2000 at 13:26:19

In Reply to: Stalag 17 - The swrongest contestand for the worse, the most offensive, the most brainless piece of shit that I have seen in decades posted by Victor Khomenko on April 18, 2000 at 07:28:08:

..I'll be the first to admit that it has its hollywood moments but this depiction isn't as far off as you suggest. The conditions for Western (read American & British) POWs were actually quite good compared to those of Russian POWs who were rather routinely sent to forced labor or concentration camps if not simply shot on the spot.

Not all POW camps were created equal by the way. I believe the camp in the movie was for US airmen was it not? US & British airmen were enterred by the Luftwaffe rather than the SS. Why? Well I guess having an air force look after members of another air force seemed logical to the Germans though it seems quite odd in retrospect. So while concentration camps were run by the notoriuosly heartless SS, most US & British POWs (who were mostly airmen since the war on the western front was waged primarily from the air until the D Day landing in 1944) were held in camps run by the German air force. The result? General adherance to the Geneva convention for those prisoners.

In fact, until the last few years of the war when the US & British bombing campaign began to tell on Germany itself, the POWs and Luftwaffe camps in which allied airmen were kept had a rather open one upmanship game of escape & recapture going in which many airmen escaped from the camps with fake papers & civilian clothes only to be recapured as many as 3 or 4 times! More than a few actually made it back to England with the help of the French resistance to rejoin the war. As the air war dragged on and civilian casualties mounted and German hatred of the aircrews grew, this policy turned to one of intolerance & retribution - but still not piles of bones & dentures, ovens and mass graves for Western prisoners. I know that compared to the experience of Soviet soldiers captured by the Germans this might all seem a bit idealistically surreal - it is none the less true. And please dont get me wrong - I'm no Hitler apologist - I am well aware of the millions of jews and Russians the Third Reich put to death mercilessly. The historical fact however is that the German treatment of American & British POWs held fairly well to the standards of the Geneva Convention while their barbaric behavior towards other combatants and many Jews and Poles did not.

For whatever set of reasons, the Germans never waged the war of extermination towards its enemies to the West that it did those towards the East (or towards those members of its own society it deemed undesireable).

joe

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