Disarmed Enemy Forces
Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEF), and—less commonly—Surrendered Enemy Forces, was a U.S. designation, both for soldiers who surrendered to an adversary after hostilities ended, and for those previously surrendered POWs who were held in camps in occupied German territory at that time. It is mainly referenced to Dwight D. Eisenhower's designation of German prisoners in post World War II occupied Germany. Because of the logistical impossibility of feeding millions of surrendered German soldiers at the levels required by the Geneva Convention during the food crisis of 1945, the purpose of the designation—along with the British designation of Surrendered Enemy Personnel (SEP)—was to prevent categorization of the prisoners as Prisoners of War (POW) under the 1929 Geneva Convention.
Read more about Disarmed Enemy Forces: Germany At The End of The War, Massive Prisoner Surrenders, Early Considerations of DEF Designations, DEF and SEP Designations, Aftermath, Controversy, Historical Precedents
Famous quotes containing the words enemy and/or forces:
“The enemy are no match for us in a fair fight.... The young men ... of the upper class are kind-hearted, good-natured fellows, who are unfit as possible for the business they are in. They have courage but no endurance, enterprise, or energy. The lower class are cowardly, cunning, and lazy. The height of their ambition is to shoot a Yankee from some place of safety.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“I’ve learned one thing about life. We’re a good deal like that ball, dancing on the fountain. We know as little about the forces that move us, and move the world around us, as that empty ball does.”
—Ardel Wray, Edward Dien, and Jacques Tourneur. Dr. Galbraith(James Bell)