WWII POW like-for-like guards and POWs

Major Eazy

Major Eazy

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Been trying to find out about it all over Google, but it's not much of a help, keeps displaying wrong results or does not provided the answer I'm looking for.

Figure to ask any of you, considered some of you may be history buff.

Is there a reason why do the German guards and the Allied Prisoners-of-War have to be in a similar services?

Why is it that it had to be the Luftwaffe that runs a POW camp for captured RAF and USAAF pilots? Why is it that it had to be the Heer (German Army) that runs POW camp for captured Allied soldiers? Kriegsmarine (German Navy) for captured Royal Navy, US Navy, any other sailors? Army for Army, Air Force for Air Force, etc., why not just put any and mixed captured Allied POWs into any camps?

I'm aware that sometimes a captured Allied POW may be put into the wrong camp (for example, a captured RAF pilot put into an Army POW camp, or naval officer in air force prisoner camp), but that was mainly just temporary until the prisoner can be transferred to the correct camp. But can't find explanation for why do they do it on a like-for-like bias.
 
Only reason I can think is German organisation. All that went out of the window by the time the PoWs got to Colditz anyway!
 
It’s neater that way ;), but I agree probably just a sense of order.
 
I wonder if it originated in WW1 when flying was a novelty and probably captured aircrew a rarity and therefore ‘entertained’ by the air forces of the opposing sides?
 
I would ask my long departed dad if I could .. but thats impossible .. I do know from growing up though he was in the R.A and was in the latter part of the war in charge of a P.O.W camp for Italians in the orkney isles .. I grew up with lots of toys made by the p.o.w's wooden destroyers , planes made from perspex etc . I do know that coming home on leave he used to bring trays of fresh eggs and slices of steak ( apparently they supplemented the food supply by shooting a odd cow while on night watch ) which was much sought after in war time London
 
My dad was captured when Crete was taken (1940?) , as far as I recall of him talking (of the little he did say) about his PoW experiences. The camp(s) he was in had German army guards.....he was an R.A. bren gunner.
 
Perhaps you should look at the Geneva Convention and see if it has anything to say.

I have a suspicion the Japanese didn’t worry about this sort of thing :mad:.
 
sphexx said:
Perhaps you should look at the Geneva Convention and see if it has anything to say.

I have a suspicion the Japanese didn’t worry about this sort of thing :mad:.
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Tried, but as far as I can tell, it only talks about treat POWs with respect, officers and enlisted separate camps, enlisted men may be used to do labour but as long as it is not to help with the war effort, and so on. Nothing about which military service guards which military service.

And beside, as far as I know to the best of my knowledge, the British, Australians, Americans, Japanese, Italians, etc., all did not use specific branch of military to guard the same specific branch of military. For example, we used army to guard German aircrew, in the US, they used army to guard any branch of the German military. It was not like USAAF guarding Luftwaffe POWs, it was more like US Army guarding Luftwaffe or Heer or Kriegsmarine. It seems only the Germans mostly use the same branch of services to guard the same sort of services, army guard army, air force guard air force.

Maybe @Nod is right, maybe it's just the way the Germans were.
 
I have no knowledge, but did listen to an interview once where one of our intelligence chiefs during WW2 said that all German aircrew were housed in a special camp (at least for a while) to gain intelligence. Apparently all rooms were bugged and all conversations recorded, and these conversations often yielded very useful intelligence.

It's very possible that the German military did the same, and if so it would make sense for the guards to have the same technical background as the prisoners - translating say from English to German must be much easier than trying to understand technical terminology and service slang.
 
Garry Edwards said:
I have no knowledge, but did listen to an interview once where one of our intelligence chiefs during WW2 said that all German aircrew were housed in a special camp (at least for a while) to gain intelligence. Apparently all rooms were bugged and all conversations recorded, and these conversations often yielded very useful intelligence.

It's very possible that the German military did the same, and if so it would make sense for the guards to have the same technical background as the prisoners - translating say from English to German must be much easier than trying to understand technical terminology and service slang.
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And of course the Germans did do some recruiting among POWs, with some success. That would make it more likely you’d use people with similar experience etc.
 
Garry Edwards said:
I have no knowledge, but did listen to an interview once where one of our intelligence chiefs during WW2 said that all German aircrew were housed in a special camp (at least for a while) to gain intelligence. Apparently all rooms were bugged and all conversations recorded, and these conversations often yielded very useful intelligence.

It's very possible that the German military did the same, and if so it would make sense for the guards to have the same technical background as the prisoners - translating say from English to German must be much easier than trying to understand technical terminology and service slang.
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I see your point (and I like the theory) but I'm not sure about it.

First of all, on our side, we would house captured German military personal somewhere, and would just use any army intelligence officers or even MI5 to gain the information, even if our boys have no technical understanding of how planes or submarines work. All we do is just record then pass on the details to the boffins and ask "What is that?" and they would explain to us "Oh, they're talking about some kind of a pilotless flying bomb."

After that, we send those Germans to a POW camp that are guarded mainly by the army, regardless of what branch of services the Germans are.

I would have assumed on the Germans' side, they're doing the same thing. Using the Gestapo to interview captured Allied personnel, just pass the details to their own boffins and ask "Was ist das?" and their boffins would explain that it's some kind of a bomb shaped like a bowling ball that you skim over the water.

After that, they send our navy boys to a POW camp ran by their navy, our air force boys to a camp ran by their air force, and so on.

You would have to assume that by the time the prisoners are sent to POW camps, there's no point in trying to gain any more intelligence because any further intelligence would be outdated. Even if a Luftwaffe guard overheard a RAF POW, talking using technical words and slangs about the .303 machine guns and pass on the details, by the time the Luftwaffe HQ gets the information, our Hurricanes and our Spitfires would have been upgraded to use the 20mm cannons. For all the good it does, they may as well have used army guards who don't understand air force technical terminology.

Maybe you do have a point there.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
An interesting piece of information I found in Wikipedia about German POWs in allied hands: being held by the British was by far the best option for them. See the table on deaths in custody here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_prisoners_of_war_in_the_United_Kingdom#Welfare
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That was a really interesting read. Apart from British-run POW camps in Belgium, mentioned in that article , I think we can be proud of how we treated German and Italian POWs. I can’t find anything about the British camp(s) in Belgium. Tillieur, I think. I wonder if it was because those guarding the German POWs in Belgium had seen what the SS, and Wehrmacht had done whereas, in the UK those guarding the prisoners wouldn’t be aware..they’d be aware of the bombings,though.

I think you’ll find this account interesting too

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-untold-story-of-britain-s-pow-camps-1.3169823

A long read but interesting. Pity the lettering is so small at normal page size.

http://www.radiomarconi.com/marconi/monumento/pow/pows.html
 
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