POW status of merchant seamen...

[phylo_roadking]

Just watching "The Battle of the River Plate" brought a question to mind - what was the actual "POW" status of MERCHANT seamen? I.E. what rights under law had the KM to imprison merchat seamen after rescue?

I know they were obligated to release the prisoners aboard the Graf Spee in Montevideo...but what was the LEGAL of the "rating" prisoners aboard the Altmark???

P.S. I KNOW this should prbably be in the Kriegsmarine Section....but during the war, the majority of merchant seama prisners would at a guess have been Allied!

[seewolf]

Hi,phylo.

Since merchant ships were confirmed as military targets at the Nueremberg trial, according to that I would assume merchant seamen were regular POW, same as soldiers. But I am not sure if this is so in the pre war conventions.

seewolf

[phylo_roadking]

Hmm, potentially this POST-war convention makes sense - because in sheer numbers of vessels sunk rather than gross tonnage - the ALLIES must take the trophy for that...courtesy of the RAF in the Med, off the coast of Norway, French coastal waters etc. I KNOW as of WWII ideally a naval captain was obliged to identify a merchantman'screw and afford them time to abandon ship; obviously with the advent of full submarine warfare that stopped...and an attacking AIRCRAFT can't exactly do that LMAO So the IMT judgement rationalises everything that had been happening for the last six years!

But being a RETRO-active decision - does anyone now what the Hague Conventions and various Maritime conferences stated at the time?

[redcoat]

Merchant seamen were classed as civilians, non-combatants. They could be captured and then interned, but they were not given POW status, they were held in seperate civilian internment camps