Axis Pows in Allied hands...and other stuff.

[M.H.]

Sure there is Sid...till now there are lots of still missing relatives (even in my own family)

[phylo_roadking]

Sid, the "beef" is very simple - as they are "missing" we can't say where they are - or where they are NOT.

[lwd]

However the tone of this thread has been that the allies were responisble for the missing. Note that there are still a fair number of missing from allied militaries as well.

[phylo_roadking]

LWD, in the thousands at most, but not in the millions. And there's a lot more information available about WHERE they went missing - even down to paybooks being returned to families with the last posting listed.

The one thing being said here is NOT that the Allies were responsible - that was Bacque's hypothesis. What IS being said is noone knows as yet WHO...as the where of last postings and service etc has never been collated in full for German service personnel. But as we can't say who or when - we also can't say who wasn't.

Remember, the thread itself grew out of the issue of known and recorded instances of "take no prisoners" orders being given to Allied troops. It DID happen - and is as much a breach of the Hague and Geneva Conventions as when given to or applied by Axis troops.

[sid guttridge]

Hi Phylo,

So Alien Abduction is also a possibility?

Cheers,

Sid

[phylo_roadking]

Going by the recorded dimensions and "miniature aeroplane" sightings, the average WWII-era "foo fighter" would only have carried approximately 0.45 of a person. Slow work.

[pzrmeyer2]

However the tone of this thread has been that the allies were responisble for the missing. Note that there are still a fair number of missing from allied militaries as well.

the tone of this thread? uh, yeah, thats what it is partially about: missing Germans after the war.

As far as a "fair number" of Allied missing, what is a fair number? how many of these were while in German captivity?

[sid guttridge]

Hi Pzrmeyer,

One wouldn't expect to find "Missing" in German captivity. "Missing" is another form of categorising battlefield loss, along with dead, wounded, prisoner, etc.

There are therefore vanishingly few Western Allies "Missing" in German captivity as German treatment and record keeping was generally good for them.

Furthermore, in the "individualistic" liberal democracies, the fate of the individual is more important than in the "collective" USSR. Besides, Western casualties were many times fewer and more accountable.

However, the standards maintained by both sides on the Eastern Front were rather different, as neither adhered to the Geneva Conventions and widely ignored their obligations under the earlier Hague Conventions. Thus there is far more scope for millions of "missing" there.

Cheers,

Sid.

[phylo_roadking]

Sid, this conscientiousness ONLY applied prior to the reclassification of POWs as DEPs in 1945; the reason for the accurate documentation and recordkeeping BEFORE that was adherence to the Geneva Convention on the treatment of POWs. At the end of the war Disarmed Enemy were processed by the hundreds of thousand with minimal or no processing.

[lwd]

LWD, in the thousands at most, but not in the millions. And there's a lot more information available about WHERE they went missing - even down to paybooks being returned to families with the last posting listed.

That's understandable given the chaotic nature of things especially on the eastern front at the end of the war

The one thing being said here is NOT that the Allies were responsible - that was Bacque's hypothesis.

I thought his hypothesis was that the West had large numbers of prisoners who dissapeared. That's a bit different from having large numbers of missing.

.
Remember, the thread itself grew out of the issue of known and recorded instances of "take no prisoners" orders being given to Allied troops...

But this shouldn't be a source of MIAs any more than normal combat was.

[sid guttridge]

Hi Phylo,

DEPs were still "processed", as your internally contradictory post indicates.

How many there were and where they were was known. They were not "missing".

The problem with DEPs was that, a bit like the legal status of the "Illegal Enemy Combatant" inmates of Guantanamo Bay today, legal sleight of hand was used to invent a category of prisoner not specifically covered by international legislation and whose treatment could therefore fall below that. The difference is that the DEP situation was soon regularised, whereas the Camp X-ray situation is enduring.

As things stand no evidence has been brought that there were approaching a million German POWs missing in the West. Nor is it likely that a major proportion of Gerrman "missing" occurred there due to the different nature of the behaviour of all combatants compared with the Eastern Front.

Cheers,

Sid.

[lwd]

....
As far as a "fair number" of Allied missing, what is a fair number?

Looks like the US number is ~75,000 at least according to:
http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/WWII_MIA/INDEX.HTM

how many of these were while in German captivity?

I assume a very small number. How many Germans went missing while in US or British custody?

[statemachine]

Oops.

[statemachine]

Hi Phylo,

I can buy most of that.

At present there is no evidence that up to a million German POWs went missing in Western Allied hands. No list of a million missing names, no million graves and no millions of aggrieved relatives.

It is, as things stand, a largely invented accusation that, in the absence of any significant evidence being brought by its proposers, doesn't need rebuttal.

What is needed is some evidence before it can even be debated.

As the saying goes "Where's the beef?"

Cheers,

Sid.

Possibly that Englishman who was administering the POW camps out of the Asmara HQ would know?