Harry J. Collins - Humanitarian

Humanitarian

At war’s end, Collins was assigned the US Military Governorship of Austria. The Prisoner of War (POW) camp at Mauerkirchen, Austria also fell under the control of Collins and the 42nd Infantry Division.

This camp housed German POWs – 30,000 women and 130,000 men. The German soldiers came largely from the Eastern Front, including the 1st Mountain Division, and some from the remnants of the German Balkan Army. The many women in the camp came from supply and communications units, as well as nursing units.

In early May 1945, Collins flew over the camp in his Piper Cub liaison plane, and told the POWs via loudspeaker that he would discharge them as soon as he could find newsprint to print discharge papers. He also told them that he had no food to feed them and that discharge would depend on their good behavior. Collins managed to keep the camp in good order without barbed wire and without guards. His promise of an early release if the POWs kept within the limits of the camp was enough to make things work.

After ten days in camp, Collins began to process POWs out, as per the Geneva Convention. Collins had discharged 30,000 women, and perhaps 30,000 men, when U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower intervened, and ordered Collins to hand the remaining 100,000 POWs to the Soviets.

In 1955, German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer went to Moscow, to buy back the survivors of the camps in the Soviet Union. Ninety-five percent of the German POWs that Collins was forced to turn over to the Soviets did not survive those ten years in captivity. Without Collins’ intervention ten years earlier, 60,000 additional POWs may have met this same fate.