4 - From discipline to retribution: violence in German prisoner of war labour companies in 1918

Summary

Into sheds capable of accommodating at the utmost 450 men, over 1,000 men were crowded. The sanitary and washing arrangements were so primitive as to be practically non-existent. The provision of food and medical attention was wholly insufficient and no parcels or letters reached the camp. In a very short time the men were starving, verminous and in a filthy condition with the inevitable consequence that dysentery appeared almost at once and men began to die with appalling rapidity. In spite of the terrible condition of the men they were forced to engage in heavy work behind the lines at long distances from the camp and practically no excuse of weakness or sickness was accepted as relieving them from work. Men in the last stages of dysentery were driven out to work and fell and died by the road.

Report on conditions at Flavy-le-Martel camp in occupied France, from the British summary of the case against Emil Müller at the Leipzig War Crimes Trials, 1921, based on testimony from twenty-seven former British prisoners.

Introduction

By 1918, a mass forced labour system had developed on the western front, as the British, French and German armies retained captured prisoners to work indefinitely in their prisoner of war labour companies. This was a military incarceratory system that was now almost entirely separate to that which existed on the home front, with its much better-resourced camps. Conditions were worst, however, for those prisoners who were working in labour companies for the German army.