Hitler's British Slaves (25 page)

It was not just the populations of the defeated nations who involved themselves in this trade. As soon as the Red Cross parcels began to arrive prisoners began to use them to curry favour with the guards. Working at a copper mine Alec Reynolds used what few Red Cross provisions he received to trade. He swapped his cigarettes for chocolate then used the chocolate to bribe guards to take him out of camp. In this way he was able to visit the local dentist for treatment, his offer of chocolate for the dentist to take home to his children ensuring he received a good standard of treatment. Such
attempts at bribery were most successful at the work camps where the prisoners and their guards lived almost side by side. Collections were made among the working prisoners to ensure that their guards treated them fairly. At some factories guards began to look so favourably upon the prisoners that little work was done. The guards simply looked the other way as the POWs skived their way through the week and although such arrangements suited the immediate desires of the working prisoners they were of little benefit in the long run. As soon as levels of output fell to an obvious extent the employers had to take action. Since the employers were paying for the labour they expected to get the requisite hours of work. Soon the offending guards were replaced by men thought to be less corruptible. Such bribery could have other effects. At some camps attempts to corrupt the guards led to a clamp-down in which prisoners were forbidden to have uncontrolled access to their food parcels. Instead commandants insisted on them being given just enough for each day – making sure the allowance of foodstuffs was removed from the packaging to prevent them using the contents in illegal trade.

For men on work details the illegal trade in goods meant they could buy overalls with which to cover their increasingly threadbare uniforms, or buy items they could never purchase with their comical
lagergeld
. A vast black market grew to replace the legal trade of the pre-war years, until by 1945 money had no value and all that mattered were the goods available for barter. High on the shopping lists of the prisoners were fresh fruit, vegetables and meat. They wanted ‘real’ food rather than tinned and yearned for a taste of home. They also wanted foods that could be easily smuggled back into their camps and which could be cooked simply and quickly. Long loaves of bread were slipped down inside trouser legs, thus hidden from the view of guards. One ingenious
man even broke eggs into condoms then tied them around his waist, beneath his clothing. When the guard frisked him the soft contents of the condoms were not noticed and his eggs passed safely into the compound. Others used even simpler methods. When searches were made the prisoners raised their arms high above their heads so the guard could frisk them. As the guards patted them down they were blissfully unaware the prisoners were sometimes clutching eggs in their raised hands. Such was the level of exchange at one work camp that the commandant was shocked when he opened a cupboard only for a live goose to walk out into the room. Some didn’t wait for the return to camp to have their fill of black market food. Those working in factories found there were plenty of places where food could be cooked. Blacksmith’s forges could be used for cooking potatoes, meat could be cooked on the hot metal of factory machinery and pots of water could be boiled wherever heat was available.

Gordon Barber recalled the trade situation in the small East Prussian village that was his home for over three years:

We had a bit of trouble with the Poles. It was a nice little village. The blacksmith’s wife fancied me I think, but she wouldn’t give anything. She was frightened. ’Cause if they got caught they had ‘the camps’ – we hadn’t heard of Auschwitz or that – but they talked about these camps you could get sent to. There was a lot of rivalry between us and the Poles, because we had things and we could barter for them. There was a bloke in the village he was like Fagin. If you had anything to swap or wanted anything you went to him. But I used to cut out the middle man and go directly to people. I wasn’t going to give up two fags to him on each deal.

However, although such deals were welcomed by both sides
they could lead to conflict between the two erstwhile allies, as Barber soon found out:

I said to the smith, ‘I’ve got some fags, I want some eggs’. He said he’d get me some. That night the lads were playing football and I went to get my eggs. I went upstairs to his house which was above our billet, I think it used to be a Hitler Youth Summer Camp. I said ‘Where are my eggs?’ and this fucking Pole said ‘I haven’t got them’. I said ‘Give us my bleedin’ fags back’. No, he said he’ll get the eggs next week. So we started having a go. He was a pretty strong lad and we finished up on the floor fighting. Then this other Pole – a horseman – he came in and he was wearing these clogs. He kicked me in the fucking head – bang! With that I was half out and they threw me down the stairs. Our cook was there, he said ‘Hang on Nobby, I’ll get the lads’. I said ‘I’ll wait till the morning, I’ll get him’. So next day I got up nice and early ’cause the horseman has to go out early to feed and clean the horses. But I hadn’t worked out a plan. I didn’t think about what he might have in his hand. I hit him but not hard enough. He went out of the door and I went out after him. But he had a ‘curry comb’ – a horse brush in his hand. I had my hands up to protect my face, it cut my hands open – I’ve still got the scars. He was ripping me with it. That wasn’t pleasant, there was blood everywhere. Then three of our blokes came out. One threw me a billet of wood, from the foreman’s woodpile. I grabbed it and I fucking really laid into this Pole. I whacked him all over the bleedin’ show. But he was clever he kept taking it, all the time his whip was cracking but I was only worried about the curry comb. Then the guard came and sorted it out but they didn’t do anything to me. After that the Poles were against me for a little while.
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Though Barber escaped punishment others were not so lucky, with some conflicts between prisoners and their guards or civilian overseers resulting in serious repercussions. At some work camps punishments were not just meted out to the prisoner responsible. When one of 80 POWs from Stalag XXa on detachment to a stove factory punched a civilian all of his comrades were punished. All had their midday soup ration halved to show them the price of defiance. One working party was forced to stand naked on a snow-covered parade ground as their clothes and possessions were searched for a stolen spanner. Another group of men caught slacking whilst clearing snow were forced to stand for an hour holding shovels in their outstretched arms. Tensions between the captors and the captive sometimes spilled over into open disobedience and even violence. Two men working at an iron ore mine playfully attacked a guard and stuffed snow down his shirt. For their crimes they were both given prison sentences, one receiving 18 months the other two years. Others found guilty of offences faced all manner of punishments. Bernard Smith, at a working party attached to a farm, received a 15-year sentence for ‘laying out’ a guard. Serious offenders, such as Smith, were sentenced by military courts and sent to military prisons where they served their sentences alongside offenders from the Wehrmacht. For some among them their sentences were spent in solitary confinement, with prisoners often found to be suffering from the ill effects of the poor diet and gruelling conditions. One man serving a four-year sentence was described by Red Cross inspectors as ‘Weak and destitute’.
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For less serious offenders their punishments took place on site – either in the ‘coolers’ of the Stalags or in punishment cells at work camps. Punishments for POWs varied from camp to camp. In one camp the offenders were simply given
odd jobs to do around the camp and then made to do one hour’s gruelling pack-drill four times a day. In the words of the German authorities this was ‘re-education’ rather than punishment. For the prisoners in question they must have wondered what value a 25lb pack could possibly have for their military education. At Arbeitskommando 7008, supplied by Stalag XIIIc, the Australian prisoners who offended were punished by being locked into a pitch-black cellar. For the duration of their sentence they were forced to stand in water four inches deep. The cold, damp liquid seeped into their boots, soaking the leather then softening their feet and exposing them to trench foot and other infections. Similarly, at a punishment camp in Chelms 150 POWs were housed in earth roofed wooden huts sunk one-and-a-half metres beneath the ground. Their punishment also included receiving no Red Cross parcels for 11 weeks.

Not all of the punishments were officially sanctioned. In some cases guards showed vindictiveness towards individual prisoners, carrying out personal vendettas against men who showed any defiance towards their captors. Powerless to react the prisoners could do little but watch helplessly as guards dished out discriminating and humiliating treatment to their mates. They could complain to the Red Cross, a process that did occasionally see guards transferred, but few dared risk the wrath of an accused guard. Most were left to accept their punishment. At one agricultural work detail prisoners were forced to pull their guard behind them in a handcart, as they made the 5-mile round trip to deliver hot coffee to various groups of men on the farm. Gordon Barber, who came into conflict with both civilians and guards, fell foul of oneparticular guard. On the morning following a brutal beating by the guard he and a friend were singled out for punishment:

We used to have to get our water from down in the village, from a farm. It was carried back in churns. Normally they got horses to drag it up. That day they made us do it. I got half way up the hill and I put it down. I said ‘Fuck you mate, I’m not going any further. I’m worn out, I’m not carrying it.’ And he kicked me right in the bottom of the spine. It was the only time I’ve ever been knocked out in my life. They dragged me back. You know what they made me do then? Our toilets were a plank over a wooden trough. They used to get the horses to pull it out and dump it on the fields. That morning they made me and Jock pull it out. That wasn’t a pleasant sight.
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Barber, who eventually lost three teeth after a guard hit him in the face with a pistol, didn’t forget his treatment and vowed to get his revenge. He waited for months before the opportunity arose whilst working in the farm store:

In the corner I saw all these red cabbages. I put them in a basket and I was going to take them out and put them in a sack. I heard him coming down the stairs and I thought ‘Sod it’. I kicked the basket into the corner hoping they’d fall out, but they didn’t. He saw the cabbages and he laid into me with this little cane – like Charlie Chaplin’s one – that he carried. He was trying to hit me in the face. I thought ‘Enough is enough’. I grabbed him and held him against the wall, showed him my fist and said ‘You hit me once more, you’re gonna cop this!’ He tried again so I whacked him and he cried out. Then the village smith and another bloke came and got me. I was sent back to Marienburg. I got 28 days in the cooler, just sitting on my own. Bread and water. There’s not much you can think about except ‘I hope I get out of here quick’.
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He was not alone in facing the violent attentions of the Germans. Many working prisoners reported how local Nazi Party officials interfered at work camps to deliberately make their lives miserable. Prisoners at numerous work details used the visits by Red Cross representatives to report the abuse they faced. In a single monthly report on Arbeitskommandos dependent on Stalag VIIIb three camps came in for criticism. At E198 men complained they had been beaten by their guards and at E159 it was reported that one prisoner, John Gee, had been killed by a guard for no apparent reason. The worst of all was E51 which was closed down by the commandant of Stalag VIIIb after it was discovered that both guards and civilian workers had been beating the prisoners with knotted clubs. At AK7023, attached to Stalag III, the local Burgomeister paid visits to the camp to hit the working prisoners, whilst in Hanover overseers from the Todt organization used rubber truncheons on prisoners as well as slave labourers. The intervention of civilians did not only affect the POWs. Working at a benzene factory, prisoner Stuart Silcock noted how the Geneva Convention was ‘flagrantly ignored’ by the foremen and gangleaders, who were: ‘entirely responsible for bad treatment, threatening German guards if they did not maintain forced work on the minimum food provided’.
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As a nation the Germans may have had a reputation for sticking to the rules but for many prisoners rules were constantly breached. Officially the commandants of the Stalags only loaned the POWs to civilian contractors, yet in some cases the civilians seemed to hold the real power. POW miners at Klausberg found that Herr Müller, the director of Abwehr Grube Klausberg, seemed to be able to override the military authorities and make life difficult for the prisoners. When prisoners complained to their guards they refused to help, telling them they had no power to act since the civilians
were in charge. Some among the prisoners deliberately took note of the names of the offenders, hoping they might one day find a chance to ensure the man was punished. In a postwar report one prisoner noted the activities of Stabsfeldwebel Brandt, a middle-aged soldier from Magdeburg, who was: ‘the cause of all the suffering which went on at Camp 340 where 50 per cent had malnutrition and quarter of the camp went to work half naked’.
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Of course not all relationships between prisoners and the guards and civilians were hostile. In many cases the prisoners were treated fairly by the men keeping them captive. At one work camp only the intervention of civilian workers saved the POWs from a particularly hostile guard. On three separate occasions the civilian workers intervened to take away the guard’s rifle after he threatened to shoot the working prisoners. At other camps it was the guards who saved the men from violent civilians. At a quarry in Mittelangenau the owner ordered the guards to strike the prisoners and stab them with bayonets. When Gunner Clarence Scott was injured in a rockfall he laughed at him and said he should have been killed. Few realized how serious he was until he then ordered a guard to shoot the injured Scott. Fortunately for the prisoner the guard refused. Once recovered and transferred to a farm Scott again found himself with a violent boss. The farm owner, Richard Kuhne, ordered guards to beat Scott to death. Once more he was only saved by the refusal of the guards to carry out the order.