Motives
On 19 July 1944, Adolf Hitler issued an order from his headquarters, Wolfsschanze, 100 miles west of Stalag Luft VI, "concerning preparations for the defense of the Reich". It put the German civilian population on a total war footing and issued instructions for preparations for evacuations of 'foreign labor' (slave labor) and civilians away from the advancing Soviet Army in the east. Item 6(a) called for "preparations for moving prisoners of war to the rear". This prolonged the war for hundreds of thousands of Allied personnel, as well as causing them severe hardship, starvation, injuries and/or death.
In the later stages of the war there were great concerns among POWs over the motives for moving them westward. Many different and conflicting rumors abounded, including suggestions that:
- They were being moved towards concentration camps to be killed, in revenge for Allied commanders' deliberate targeting of civilians, in cities such as Dresden. These events were also the origin of one of the German terms for Allied bomber crews: terrorflieger ("terror aviators").
- POWs would be force-marched until their deaths from exhaustion, a practise that had already been made notorious by the Japanese military (see, for instance: Bataan Death March).
- They would be held hostage to leverage peace deals, including claims that they would be held at a national redoubt in the Alps. This claim was backed up by SS General Gottlob Berger, who was appointed general commander of POW camps during 1944. Berger stated during his trial for war crimes (1948), that Hitler had considered a threat to execute 35,000 POWs, unless the Allies agreed to a peace deal. Similarly, SS chief Heinrich Himmler had made similar plans, centred on the Baltic coastal region and set up a new headquarters in a castle on the Bay of Lübeck.
Read more about this topic: The March (1945)
Famous quotes containing the word motives:
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