Hitler's Last Army - German POWs in Britain

After the Second World War, 400,000 German servicemen were imprisoned on British soil, some remaining until 1948. These defeated men in their tattered uniforms were, in every sense, Hitler’s Last Army. Britain used the prisoners as an essential labour force, especially in agriculture, and in the devastating winter of 1947 the Germans helped avert a national disaster by clearing snow and stemming floods, working shoulder to shoulder with Allied troops.

Slowly, friendships were forged between former enemies. Some POWs fell in love with British women, though such relationships were often frowned upon: ‘Falling pregnant outside marriage was bad enough – but with a German POW …!’ Using exclusive interviews with former prisoners, as well as extensive archive material, this book looks at the Second World War from a fresh perspective – that of Britain’s German prisoners, from the shock of being captured to their final release long after the war had ended.

Having collected and read numerous books on German POWs in the UK, I can say this is probably the best book on the topic published in the last 20 years. If this is an area of interest, I strongly recommend Robin Quinn's title.
You can find out more and read extracts at http://www.robin-quinn.co.uk/

Available from:
The History Press

400,000 GERMAN TROOPS ON BRITISH SOIL! In 1940, when Adolf Hitler planned to invade Britain, his greatest wish was to read a headline like this. Yet, five years later, there really were 400,000 German servicemen in the UK – not as conquerors but as prisoners of war. They were, in every sense, Hitler’s Last Army. Using exclusive interviews with former prisoners, as well as extensive archive material, this book looks at the Second World War from a fresh perspective – that of Britain’s German prisoners: from the shock of being captured to their final release long after the war had ended. ‘Being taken prisoner was for the other side, not us,’ one man remembers. ‘A strange new existence was about to begin,’ another says. ‘We were in a kind of limbo, a vacuum between the old life and whatever the future held.’ Britain used the prisoners to provide essential labour, especially on farms. In time, friendships were forged between former enemies. ‘We met the farmers, we met English people and liked them as human beings,’ says one German ex-soldier. ‘We didn’t want to let the farmers down so we worked hard.’ Some POWs fell in love with British women, although such relationships were often condemned: ‘Falling pregnant outside marriage was bad enough – but with a German POW!’ - See more at: http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/index.php/military-history-books/world-war-2-books/hitler-s-last-army-24711.html#sthash.w6vqEpj2.dpuf

400,000 GERMAN TROOPS ON BRITISH SOIL! In 1940, when Adolf Hitler planned to invade Britain, his greatest wish was to read a headline like this. Yet, five years later, there really were 400,000 German servicemen in the UK – not as conquerors but as prisoners of war. They were, in every sense, Hitler’s Last Army. Using exclusive interviews with former prisoners, as well as extensive archive material, this book looks at the Second World War from a fresh perspective – that of Britain’s German prisoners: from the shock of being captured to their final release long after the war had ended. ‘Being taken prisoner was for the other side, not us,’ one man remembers. ‘A strange new existence was about to begin,’ another says. ‘We were in a kind of limbo, a vacuum between the old life and whatever the future held.’ Britain used the prisoners to provide essential labour, especially on farms. In time, friendships were forged between former enemies. ‘We met the farmers, we met English people and liked them as human beings,’ says one German ex-soldier. ‘We didn’t want to let the farmers down so we worked hard.’ Some POWs fell in love with British women, although such relationships were often condemned: ‘Falling pregnant outside marriage was bad enough – but with a German POW!’ - See more at: http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/index.php/military-history-books/world-war-2-books/hitler-s-last-army-24711.html#sthash.w6vqEpj2.dpuf

400,000 GERMAN TROOPS ON BRITISH SOIL! In 1940, when Adolf Hitler planned to invade Britain, his greatest wish was to read a headline like this. Yet, five years later, there really were 400,000 German servicemen in the UK – not as conquerors but as prisoners of war. They were, in every sense, Hitler’s Last Army. Using exclusive interviews with former prisoners, as well as extensive archive material, this book looks at the Second World War from a fresh perspective – that of Britain’s German prisoners: from the shock of being captured to their final release long after the war had ended. ‘Being taken prisoner was for the other side, not us,’ one man remembers. ‘A strange new existence was about to begin,’ another says. ‘We were in a kind of limbo, a vacuum between the old life and whatever the future held.’ Britain used the prisoners to provide essential labour, especially on farms. In time, friendships were forged between former enemies. ‘We met the farmers, we met English people and liked them as human beings,’ says one German ex-soldier. ‘We didn’t want to let the farmers down so we worked hard.’ Some POWs fell in love with British women, although such relationships were often condemned: ‘Falling pregnant outside marriage was bad enough – but with a German POW!’ - See more at: http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/index.php/military-history-books/world-war-2-books/hitler-s-last-army-24711.html#sthash.w6vqEpj2.dp

400,000 GERMAN TROOPS ON BRITISH SOIL! In 1940, when Adolf Hitler planned to invade Britain, his greatest wish was to read a headline like this. Yet, five years later, there really were 400,000 German servicemen in the UK – not as conquerors but as prisoners of war. They were, in every sense, Hitler’s Last Army. Using exclusive interviews with former prisoners, as well as extensive archive material, this book looks at the Second World War from a fresh perspective – that of Britain’s German prisoners: from the shock of being captured to their final release long after the war had ended. ‘Being taken prisoner was for the other side, not us,’ one man remembers. ‘A strange new existence was about to begin,’ another says. ‘We were in a kind of limbo, a vacuum between the old life and whatever the future held.’ Britain used the prisoners to provide essential labour, especially on farms. In time, friendships were forged between former enemies. ‘We met the farmers, we met English people and liked them as human beings,’ says one German ex-soldier. ‘We didn’t want to let the farmers down so we worked hard.’ Some POWs fell in love with British women, although such relationships were often condemned: ‘Falling pregnant outside marriage was bad enough – but with a German POW!’ - See more at: http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/index.php/military-history-books/world-war-2-books/hitler-s-last-army-24711.html#sthash.w6vqEpj2.dpuf

400,000 GERMAN TROOPS ON BRITISH SOIL! In 1940, when Adolf Hitler planned to invade Britain, his greatest wish was to read a headline like this. Yet, five years later, there really were 400,000 German servicemen in the UK – not as conquerors but as prisoners of war. They were, in every sense, Hitler’s Last Army. Using exclusive interviews with former prisoners, as well as extensive archive material, this book looks at the Second World War from a fresh perspective – that of Britain’s German prisoners: from the shock of being captured to their final release long after the war had ended. ‘Being taken prisoner was for the other side, not us,’ one man remembers. ‘A strange new existence was about to begin,’ another says. ‘We were in a kind of limbo, a vacuum between the old life and whatever the future held.’ Britain used the prisoners to provide essential labour, especially on farms. In time, friendships were forged between former enemies. ‘We met the farmers, we met English people and liked them as human beings,’ says one German ex-soldier. ‘We didn’t want to let the farmers down so we worked hard.’ Some POWs fell in love with British women, although such relationships were often condemned: ‘Falling pregnant outside marriage was bad enough – but with a German POW!’ - See more at: http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/index.php/military-history-books/world-war-2-books/hitler-s-last-army-24711.html#sthash.w6vqEpj2.dpuf

400,000 GERMAN TROOPS ON BRITISH SOIL! In 1940, when Adolf Hitler planned to invade Britain, his greatest wish was to read a headline like this. Yet, five years later, there really were 400,000 German servicemen in the UK – not as conquerors but as prisoners of war. They were, in every sense, Hitler’s Last Army. Using exclusive interviews with former prisoners, as well as extensive archive material, this book looks at the Second World War from a fresh perspective – that of Britain’s German prisoners: from the shock of being captured to their final release long after the war had ended. ‘Being taken prisoner was for the other side, not us,’ one man remembers. ‘A strange new existence was about to begin,’ another says. ‘We were in a kind of limbo, a vacuum between the old life and whatever the future held.’ Britain used the prisoners to provide essential labour, especially on farms. In time, friendships were forged between former enemies. ‘We met the farmers, we met English people and liked them as human beings,’ says one German ex-soldier. ‘We didn’t want to let the farmers down so we worked hard.’ Some POWs fell in love with British women, although such relationships were often condemned: ‘Falling pregnant outside marriage was bad enough – but with a German POW!’ - See more at: http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/index.php/military-history-books/world-war-2-books/hitler-s-last-army-24711.html#sthash.w6vqEpj2.dpuf

Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing and Dying - The Secret Second World War Tapes of German POWs

In November 2001, as the world still reeled from the attack on the Twin Towers, German historian Sonke Neitzel discovered an extraordinary cache of documents from the Second World War in the British National Archives, held at Kew.

The documents were the transcripts of German prisoners of war talking among themselves in prisoner of war camps, and secretly recorded by the allies. In these apparently private conversations the soldiers talked freely and openly about their hopes and fears, their concerns and their day-to-day lives. With a banality and ease which to the modern reader can appear shocking, they also talked about the horrors of war -- about rape, death and killing.

Sonke Neitzel shared the material with renowned and bestselling psychologist Harald Wezler and they set about trying to make sense of the vast piles of documents, the hours of transcripts. The result is Soldaten, a landmark book which will change the way we look at soldiers and war, and is as relevant to our modern conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as it was to the soldiers of the German Army in 1945. Published to huge acclaim and controversy in Germany it was a number one bestseller there and reignited the debate about the banality of evil under the Nazi regime.

The authors will be discussing the book at Waterstones Piccadilly (London) on the 25th September 2012. See the Waterstones website for more details.

Available from:
Simon & Schuster

Another Bloody Mountain: Prisoner of War and Escape in Italy 1943

Another Bloody Mountain: Prisoner of War and Escape in Italy 1943 is a son’s account of his father’s period as a POW in Italy, and subsequent escape in September 1943.

The story traces the father’s 274 mile walk in 30 days through the Apennine mountains to reach the British front line. The personal story is firmly located in the context of contemporaneous historical events. As well as telling the father’s story, the book recounts the son’s journey to visit the site of the camp, and then retrace the father’s trek through the mountains. As such it is also a travelogue, generously illustrated with 61 colour photos of both the prison camp and the beautiful scenery of the mountains in the Marche and Abruzzo regions of Italy.

Available from:
Iron City Publications

The Fatal Flag - The Top Brass in Captivity

This is the true story of English POW Brigadier Claude Richards, which adds a missing dimension to the many accounts of this period in Japanese WWII history. It concentrates on the plight of high-ranking officers whose experiences as a group have largely been ignored.

Made possible by his copious yet covertly written notes, Claude's legacy also presented an opportunity to write a partial biography of his interesting family at a time when the misfortunes of war kept it apart. Deprived of any letters from his wife for the majority of his imprisonment, Claude still generated vital psychological support from the connection he maintained by writing notional letters to her. His conversational narrative also contains frequent appraisals of his fellow officers - not always complimentary!

From the malarious tropics of Formosa to the freezing gales of Manchuria, ageing men endured physical and mental abuse, the torment of starvation and the attrition of disease, but it was a consolation 'to the wretched to have companions in misery' and most survived. A combination of literature, cards, rumour and humour, or the stimulation of latent wanderlust in some cases, helped relieve the ennui and frustration of those wasted years.

Available from:
Troubador Publishing

Long Hard Road - American POWs during World War II

Between 1941 and 1945 more than 110,000 American marines, soldiers, airmen, and sailors were taken prisoner by German, Italian, and Japanese forces. Most who fought overseas during World War II weren’t prepared for capture, or for the life-altering experiences of incarceration, torture, and camaraderie bred of hardship that followed. Their harrowing story—often overlooked in Greatest Generation narratives—is told here by the POWs themselves.

Long hours of inactivity followed by moments of sheer terror. Slave labor, death marches, the infamous hell ships. Historian Thomas Saylor pieces together the stories of nearly one hundred World War II POWs to explore what it was like to be the “guest” of the Axis Powers and to reveal how these men managed to survive. Gunner Bob Michelsen bailed out of his wounded B-29 near Tokyo, only to endure days of interrogation and beatings and months as a “special prisoner” in a tiny cell home to seventeen other Americans. Medic Richard Ritchie spent long moments of terror locked with dozens of others in an unmarked boxcar that was repeatedly strafed by Allied forces. In the closing chapter to this moving narrative, the men speak of their difficult transition to life back home, where many sought—not always successfully—to put their experience behind them.

Available from:
Minnesota Historical Society

The Best Day Of My Life:: Memoirs of an Italian-American who spent World War II as a prisoner of the English

The Best Day of My Life is the memoir of Frank Andreani, an Italian-American who was a victim of circumstance during the Second World War.

Born in Pennsylvania in 1919, Frank returned to his parent's home country when he was a youth. There, the family lost their money, and he ended up having to strike out on his own. Frank experienced harsh employers and a non-benevolent priest, but ultimately found a good job in Rome and settled into a comfortable life with his fiance.

This abruptly ended with his conscription into the Italian Army. Sent to North Africa, Frank fought and was captured at Tobruk, which lead to years in British POW camps in Eygpt, India and Australia.

Available from:
Booksurge Publishing

In the Prison of His Days: The Memoirs of a Captured World War Two Gunner

When Gunner George Norman Davison returned to his hometown of Sheffield, England, upon the conclusion of the Second World War, he used the diary he had carried with him to write a vivid first-hand account of his experiences.

These included the former insurance clerk's initial training in the UK and posting to North Africa; his immediate separation from Irene, his newlywed wife; his subsequent capture and imprisonment in the desert camps of Libya; the seemingly endless, lonely and hungry minutes dreaming of food and home; his re-transportation to Italy; the cruelty and kindness of his captors there; and - finally - his escape with the aid of the Italian resistance across the border on Lake Como into Switzerland.

Job done, Davison then put his remarkable story to one side before typing it up in manuscript form shortly before his death in 1986, whereupon it was rediscovered in a dusty attic by his only son, John. Alongside it was a battered old suitcase which contained yet more fascinating items, including each and every letter that Norman and Irene Davison had written to one another in those dark days from 1939 to 1946.

Published by Scratching Shed Publishing.

Available from:
Amazon

Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell?

Horace 'Jim' Greasley was twenty years of age in the spring of 1939 when Adolf Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and latterly Poland. There had been whispers and murmurs of discontent from certain quarters and the British government began to prepare for the inevitable war.
After seven weeks training with the 2nd / 5th Battalion Leicester’s, he found himself facing the might of the German army in a muddy field south of Cherbourg, in Northern France, with just thirty rounds of ammunition in his weapon pouch.

Horace’s war didn’t last long. He was taken prisoner on 25th May 1940 and forced to endure a ten week march across France and Belgium en-route to Holland. Horace survived… barely… food was scarce, he took nourishment from dandelion leaves, small insects and occasionally a secret food package from a sympathetic villager, and drank rain water from ditches. Many of his fellow comrades were not so fortunate. Falling by the side of the road through sheer exhaustion and malnourishment meant a bullet through the back of the head and the corpse left to rot.
After a three day train journey without food and water, Horace found himself incarcerated in a prison camp in Poland.

It was there he embarked on an incredible love affair with a German girl interpreting for his captors. He experienced the sweet taste of freedom each time he escaped to see her, yet incredibly he made his way back into the camp each time, sometimes two, three times every week. Horace broke out of the camp then crept back in again under the cover of darkness after his natural urges were fulfilled. He brought food back to his fellow prisoners to supplement their meagre rations. He broke out of the camp over two hundred times and towards the end of the war even managed to bring radio parts back in. The BBC news would be delivered daily to over 3000 prisoners.

The official website of Do Birds Still Sing in Hell?

Obituary: Horace Greasley (Daily Telegraph 12th February 2010)

Available from:
Libros International

Prisoner of the Rising Sun

This is the story of Stanley Wort, a young man thrust into the Royal Navy in distant Hong Kong. He relates some of the humorous situations in which he found himself and provides a realistic account of what life was like for servicemen in pre war Hong Kong.

It describes the prelude to war from his point of view and his part in the Battle for Hong Kong. There follows the story of what happened to him when taken prisoner and life and death in prison camps in Hong Kong and Japan. It tells what it was like to be shipped to Japan in the hold of Japanese merchantmen with constant fear of being torpedoed.

In Japan itself he and his fellow prisoners were used as slave labour. Treatment was harsh and brutal and although many of them died the Japanese never broke the spirit of the survivors.

The author explains how it felt to be a prisoner working in a Japanese factory when a major earthquake struck. He also relates what it was like to be on the receiving end of a B29 fire raid and what the Japanese did to downed American airmen. In August 1945 he saw the Japanese bow before loudspeakers and although he did not realize it then, heard the Japanese Emperor announce the surrender of Japan. The book contains a tribute to the efficiency and kindness of the American forces that got him out and on his way home.

Available from:
Pen & Sword

The Missing Years: A POW's Story from Changi to Hellfire Pass

The Missing Years is the story of Captain Hugh Pilkington's disastrous Malaya campaign in which he was shot by a Japanese sniper, became a PoW while hospitalised in Singapore, then— with only one good arm — was packed off to work on the Thai-Burma Death Railway.

This account has two unique elements which make it standout - Pilkington survived the infamous Alexandra Hospital Massacre of February 1942 and his memoirs were completed in October 1945 while on a POW repatriation ship, hence providing a raw, unfiltered, surprisingly dispassionate voice, undistorted by time.

Travel writer Stu Lloyd (who has spent 13 years in Southeast Asia) retraces the captain's steps with Pilkington's son Paul, to uncover Pilkington's past as a rubber planter and soldier, and find out— with often surprising results— what the locals today make of that period they know largely as 'Japan time'.

Captain Hugh Pilkington was born in India, 1904 and worked as a rubber planter in Malaya from 1922-37 before joining the Royal Norfolk Regiment in 1939. His knowledge of the tropics, landscape and language proved invaluable to the Allies. He died in 1982. Paul Pilkington was born in 1941 and was nearly five before he met his father, back from war.

Available from:
Rosenberg Publishing

After the Battle issue 144

The latest issue of the excellent After the Battle magazine has just come out. Issue 144 contains articles on the Battle of El Guettar in Tunisia in 1943 between the US 1st Armored, 1st Infantry and 9th Infantry Divisions and seasoned Axis troops; the story of POW Camp No. 13 at Murchison in Australia - home to 2,100 Italian, 1,300 German and 185 Japanese prisoners from April 1941 to January 1947; Putting a Name to a Face - the story of how American researcher Norman S. Lichtenfeld identified an unknown GI featured in photographs of captured POWs in Jean Paul Pallud's book Battle of the Bulge Then and Now, traced him to New Jersey and put a name to his face: George E. Shomo; and lastly the always interesting From the Editor section - Readers' letters and follow-up stories on previous issues. Highly recommended.

Available in some newsagents in the UK and directly from the publishers After the Battle.

New & Notable - 12th May

Saipan: Oral Histories of the Pacific War
by Bruce M. Petty

The battle for Saipan is remembered as one of the bloodiest battles fought in the Pacific during World War II, and was a turning point on the road to the defeat of Japan. In this work, the survivors—including Pacific Islanders on whose land the Americans and Japanese fought their war—have the opportunity to tell their stories in their own words. The author offers an introduction to the volume and arranges the oral histories by location—Saipan, Yap and Tinian, Rota, Palau Islands, and Guam—in the first half, and by branch of service (Marines, Army, Navy, Airforce & Home Front) in the second half.

Available from:
McFarland



The Bamboo Cage
The POW Diary of Flight Lieutenant Robert Wyse 1942-43
Edited by Jonathon F. Vance

Robert Wyse enlisted in the RAF in the late 1930s. Too old to be trained as a pilot, he became a flight controller and served throughout the Battle of Britain. In late 1941, his squadron was despatched to the Far East. The Japanese soon invaded, and Robert Wyse, along with tens of thousands of his comrades, became a prisoner of war. Shortly after arriving in his first prison camp, Wyse returned to keeping the diary he had begun en route to the Far East. Although P.O.W.s were forbidden to keep diaries, Wyse persevered and hid his journal, usually in a bamboo pole beside his bed. Over two years, he kept a detailed record of life in various camps in Sumatra, only ending in December of 1943 when it became too dangerous. He buried his notes, intending to return to claim them after the war.

The diary is a remarkably detailed and frank portrayal of life as a prisoner. Wyse was sharply critical of some of his fellow P.O.W.s, either for botching the defence of Java and Sumatra or for failing to provide the proper leadership in captivity. Nor did he hesitate to describe the savage conduct of his captors, although sometimes clearly struggling to find the words to adequately describe the brutalities he had witnessed.

Wyse spent over three years in enemy hands (the first two of which are described in this diary) before being liberated in the late summer of 1945. He was hospitalized for some time and didn’t return home until late 1946, his health ruined by the privations of his imprisonment. He died in 1967 at the age of 67.

Available from:
Goose Lane Editions

Always Tomorrow - Sempre Domani

Alfred Nisbett's book, Always Tomorrow - Sempre Domani, is his memoir of his wartime experiences in North Africa and Italy. It is not however a tale of combat, as shortly after joining the Royal Engineers in North Africa, Alfred found himself captured by a German panzer unit during the retreat from Benghazi in 1941. Shipped off to Italy, he soon busied himself with attempts to escape. First held at Sulmona (Campo 78), then moved to a smaller camp near L'Aquila (Campo 102). When the Italian Army surrendered in 1943, Alfred took advantage of the chaotic situation to take his leave and slipped away into the surrounding countryside. Unlike Charles Mayhead (see 'Rumours: A Memoir of a British POW'), Alfred was successful in his escape, and by the time the Germans had stepped in to manage the camps, he was hiding out in the mountains, befriended and looked after by Italian villagers. Moving frequently, he managed to avoid recapture due to the care and selflessness of the local people, who were under the constant threat of reprisals from German troops should Alfred, or any of the numerous ex-POWs in the area, be discovered. In July 1944, he encountered an advance party of British soldiers, and his adventure 'on the run' was over.

The story of the escaped Allied POWs in Italy is not particularly well known compared to that of POWs in German and Japanese hands (although I am rapidly discovering a number of books on the subject!). Alfred Nisbett introduces a number of fascinating characters in his story - the Marchetti and Morelli families who hid and fed him and fellow POWs; a Scottish-Italian caught visiting relatives in Italy at the outbreak of the war who ended up being a camp translator; a German deserter who was on the run alongside British POWs; a South African who was carrying out propaganda broadcasts for the Fascists in Rome; and it is the human aspect of his story that is the strongest. Alfred witnessed many acts of kindness and compassion from the people who he'd believed were the enemy - often at great danger to themselves - and through this friendships were made that have lasted over 60 years. While the book would benefit from the addition of some maps to trace Alfred's route and clarification of dates, it is a very well written story which I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anyone who'd like to learn about this unusual aspect of the war in Italy.

Available from:
Athena Press

Similar title(s):
Rumours: A Memoir of a British POW