The Marches
January and February 1945 were among the coldest winter months of the 20th century in Europe, with blizzards and temperatures as low as –25 °C (–13 °F), and even until the middle of March, temperatures were well below 0 °C (32 °F). Most of the POWs were ill-prepared for the evacuation, having suffered years of poor rations and wearing clothing ill-suited to the appalling winter conditions.
In most camps, the POWs were broken up in groups of 250 to 300 men and because of the inadequate roads and the flow of battle, not all the prisoners followed the same route. The groups would march 20 to 40 kilometers a day - resting in factories, churches, barns and even in the open. Soon long columns of POWs were wandering over the northern part of Germany with little or nothing in the way of food, clothing, shelter or medical care.
Prisoners from different camps had different experiences: sometimes the Germans provided farm wagons for those unable to walk. There seldom were horses available, so teams of POWs pulled the wagons through the snow. Sometimes the guards and prisoners became dependent on each other, other times the guards became increasingly hostile. Passing through some villages, the residents would throw bricks and stones, and in others, the residents would share their last food. Some groups of prisoners were joined by German civilians who were also fleeing from the Russians. Some who tried to escape or could not go on were shot by guards.
With so little food they were reduced to scavenging to survive. Some were reduced to eating dogs and cats—and even rats and grass—anything they could lay their hands on. Already underweight from years of prison rations, some were at half their pre-war body weight by the end. Because of the unsanitary conditions and a near starvation diet, hundreds of POWs died along the way from exhaustion as well as pneumonia, diphtheria, pellagra, and other diseases. Typhus was spread by body lice. Sleeping outside on frozen ground resulted in frostbite that in many cases required the amputation of extremities. In addition to these conditions were the dangers from air attack by Allied forces mistaking the POWs for retreating columns of German troops. On April 19, 1945, at a village called Gresse, 30 Allied POWs died and 30 were seriously injured (possibly fatally) in a "friendly-fire" situation when strafed by a flight of RAF Typhoons.
As winter drew to a close, suffering from the cold abated and some of the German guards became less harsh in their treatment of POWs. As the columns reached the western side of Germany they ran into the advancing western Allied armies. For some, this brought liberation. Others were not so lucky. They were marched towards the Baltic Sea, where Nazis were said to be using POWs as human shields and hostages. It was later estimated that a large number of POWs had marched over five hundred miles by the time they were liberated, and some had walked nearly a thousand miles.
New Zealander Norman Jardine explained how, once liberated, his group of POWs were given a revolver by a U.S. Army officer and told to shoot any guards who had treated them unfairly. He stated that "We did!"
On 4 May 1945 RAF Bomber Command implemented Operation Exodus, and the first prisoners of war were repatriated by air. Bomber Command flew 2,900 sorties over the next 23 days, carrying 72,500 prisoners of war.
Read more about this topic: The March (1945)