Why couldn't the Nazis keep the 100s of 1000s of POWs properly fed during the end of WW2?

Question

such as at Dachau,,etc...how come they just let them starve to death?

how many died of starvation? and were these mostly Russian, Polish POWS or Jews? and why dont hear much about the Russian and Polish POWS dying at end of WW2..but hear about 6 millions Jews dying ?

Answer 1

The Bolshevists had canceled all signatures of the former Tsarist government under international treaties and laws of war. The La Hague convention of Land warfare and the first Geneva convention were not signed by the new rulers. With less comfortable treatment states want to force opponents to sign those international conventions to oblige them to treat their POWs according to them.



The POWs captured by the Germans, including Jewish POWs, were treated according to the Geneva conventions. From the 232.000 POWs of the Western allies, 8.348 died in captivity. Those include POWs being seriously injured at capture.



Especially remarkable was the treatment of captured Air Force personnel, because the Stalag Luft's were under the command of the Luftwaffe. The German Luftwaffe interrogator Hans Scharff was the most famous. He had never even raised the voice against POWs. However he received every information he wanted to have. After the war he gave lectures in the USAF about interrogation techniques.



Nutrition was according the ratios being accessible to the German population, sometimes even better based on Red Cross relief packages. The situation worsened when at the end of war the German infrastructure collapsed.





The treatment of German POWs in Allied hands however is a dark chapter.



Eisenhower renamed them "DEF" (Disarmed Enemy Forces) to come around the Geneva conventions. The International Red Cross was not allowed to visit US POW camps in Germany until February 1946. The ICRC writes:



The ICRC made approaches to the authorities of the four occupation zones and, in the autumn of 1945, it received authorization to send both relief and delegates into the French and British zones. On 4 February 1946, the ICRC was allowed to send relief into the American zone, and on 13 April 1946 it obtained permission to extend this activity to the Soviet zone.



The quantities received by the ICRC for these captives remained very small, however. During their visits, the delegates observed that German prisoners of war were often detained in appalling conditions. They drew the attention of the authorities to this fact, and gradually succeeded in getting some improvements made.



That is hard stuff in the diplomatic language of the ICRC.More clearly conditions are described in another report:



It is estimated that 700,000 to a million men may have died within the period they spent incarcerated in American and French camps alone from 1945 to 1948. There are much higher estimates, however, and attempts to uncover the truth regarding these camps in modern times, as well as excavation of reported mass grave sites, have been vigilantly thwarted by, among others, the German government.



It is unknown how many perished under British captors but recently declassified documents indicate widespread torture and abuse. Under all of them, many of the prisoners were used to do dangerous work such as working with hazardous materials and mine sweeping in complete disregard of the law.



PS: I never was and never will be anti semitic. However the comment above made me for a short time reconsider my standpoint.

Answer 2

Short answer: because they didn't want to. They were notoriously cruel towards captured Russians and Poles even in the beginning of the war, so why waste good supplies on prisoners at the end of the war when resources are being stretched and German soldiers are in need? They did at least treat Western allied POW's well.



About 5 million non-Jews died in the camps from starvation. This number includes Russians, Poles, disabled people and homosexuals.

Answer 3

The end of World war 2 , which I take it you mean from January to May1945 , saw the virtual collapse of all infrastructure within Germany , mainly due to the free ranging Allied airforces shooting up anything that resembled a target , in particular , the railways , whenever the weather and daylight let them fly .



Because you just fly down the tracks and quite soon there is something to shoot at .



This meant that what remained available to be moved had to do so at night , and with fewer wagons and engines remaining , and food for P O W's being low down on the list of priorities , food and all other supplies for the camps reduced to a trickle .

The Medical and sanitary supply service to the camps also broke down , with the results recorded on film at Belsen - heaps of bodies of prisoner victims dead from starvation , Typhus ( caused by lice ) , Dysentery from poor hygiene , Typhoid from bad water .

Ann Frank and her relations were not gassed , they died during this time from the epidemics of diseases .



The Allies soon realised that their efforts to bring Germany to it's knees had hit their own prisoner countrymen , and the populations of the camps disproportionally severely , and indeed a significant proportion of the Nazis incarcerated victims died during this four month period .

The Allies could not of course admit that their strategies had in fact made the prisoners lot far worse , principally because you couldn't realistically have done other than what was done during the last months of the war .

Answer 4

They couldn't keep their own people fed, either.



With so many personnel tied up in the war effort, agricultural production plummeted.



Imported foods fell to virtually zero.



More important than either; the utter collapse of the transport system meant that what food was grown simply couldn't be properly distributed.



Many German civilians died of starvation.



And when food supplies were short, those in camps (PoW or otherwise) were not exactly top priority.

Answer 5

The Jews were killed in gas chambers. That's the 6 million.

If Germany had problems feeding POWS, it was because they had enough problems on the homefront.

Answer 6

You have to bear in mind that by the end of WW2 the germans could barely feed their own population so they weren't going to waste valuable food by feeding their enemies even if they were legally under their care.

Answer 7

The nazis totally ignored the geneva convention,prisoners of all nationalities starved ,were tortured and were murdered not just jews.You really should read up on this subject it was truly horrific.

Answer 8

1st- a lot

2nd- not just polish, anyone they could get there hands on

3rd- it was mostly jews that died, that was their main goal

Answer 9

The Germans like the rest of us to believe they are organised and efficient.



Well they are not and instead they make all kinds of excuses for the lack of things.



Frankly I hate their guts, especially since work making railway carriages was given to them by our own government in the face of mass unemployment here in UK in the very same industry.



Think Cameron and co must be Nazis or Nazi sympathisers.



I would not piss on a German if he was on bleeding fire.

Answer 10

Because they regarded all those others as sub-human.

Answer 11

Hitler began a campaign to destroy Russia and remove the Jews to Madagascar on 1st September 1939 but was thwarted by Jewish influence from the West as we allied ourselves to Russia on 3rd September 1939 even as Stalin also invaded Poland on 17th September 1939.



The Royal Navy blockaded any ability to remove German and Polish Jews to Madagascar.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar



Hitler aimed his forces East but within 3 days in September 1939 he found himself in a war on 2 fronts which he was incapable of resolving.

He hoped Britain would sue for peace.

He gambled with a direct attack on Russia before he secured the Western front.Hitler had to expand to meet his economic needs but failed to secure any of his goals so could not feed his own people and was on a slow decline to defeat.WW2 was a fight between the Left and the Right.The Right were totally annihilated by the allies and have no say in modern PC politics.

In the West, prisoners were generally fed and housed by both sides. In the USSR both sides killed their prisoners by forced labour, malnutrition and unattended disease.



You are talking of a time of starvation and murder(mostly by Stalin)of milions,not hundreds of thousands.

The best that most historians have been able to do in telling the tale of war on the Eastern front has been to simply say that the level of mass barbarity was indescribable but 22 million people died in the Russian/German conflict.

The Wests campaign was a sideshow in comparison.

Resources fast ran out in Germany as they were crushed on 3 fronts.



The Jews suffered greatly in a war that gave them final victory and a home state of Israel but millions of Russians,Ukrainians and Jews were killed and starved to death by Hitler and Stalin.

Jewish victors wrote the history and have taken all the high ground.