ORIGINAL: pzpat
On 6-22-09 IronDuke wrote "As for the Americans, I'd cetainly be interested in any evidence you have of mistreatment." A little late I found a passage in "Tigers in the Mud," a memoir by Otto Carius, in which he states at pp. 226-227 (Stackpole edition), "A few days later, by order of the Americans, the first inmates of the hospitalwere evacuated to a prison camp. . . . We were rounded up by the thousands on a playing field. That meant that hardly anyone had the opportunity to stretch out. There were no rations, even though our units had brought fully loaded trucks along. These were pushed over and the food burned! Even worse, not a drop of water was brought. . . . . A few days later, the recently amputated were brought to us, because the entire hospital had been ordered to be evacuated. Dressings were not furnished. We cut up our blankets to help our comrades as best we could. They died truly wretched deaths, and we had to watch them die without being able to help.
He then writes about seeing the Americans shoot and kill three prisoners who were just trying to go to the bathroom. After giving a cursory description of what the American guards did to their German prisoners after the war was over, he ends the subject by writing, "What actually happened in Remagen, Kreuznacht, Landau or even in the SS-camps or during the infamous Malmedy trials could give a few concentration camp guards some good tips." Hyperbole, I know.
And then Panzer Meyer writes in his memoir (Stackpole edition, p. 233) that the Germans had proof that the Canadians in Normandy had been ordered not to take prisoners, especially if they were "hindering operations." Nobody is clean. Just thought you might like to know that evidence is out there.
Many thanks, I was genuinely interested in seeing what was out there. The phrase SS Camps suggests that he was imprisoned in an SS only (or mainly) POW camp. Is this the case? Carius and Meyer would need verifying as part of the post war Waffen SS = clean publicity campaign. I'm not exactly sure what would constitute "proof" in Meyer's situation, although again, it sounds as if the Canadians were being told to shoot men trying to surrender. This has been a battlefield problem since the dawn of time. How do you surrender to men whose blood lust is up, whose adrenalin is pumping, and whose best friend you just shot through the heart. It is some way from interrogating them and then executing them.
I suspect one of the problems that the SS had in the aftermath of the war was that everyone was hearing or seeing about what had been found at the newly liberated death camps staffed by SS Guards. This isn't offered as an excuse, merely a context.
Regards,
ID