[Newsbot]

Title: Dig resurrects history of Manitoba's Nazi PoW camp
Category: History
Posted By: wildrosegirl
Date: 2011-08-07 08:19:14
Canadian

[Benn]

Good sotry find. I bet many don't realize, when they are out in Riding Mountain, who helped build it.

[martin14]

Would have been nice if our guys had had the same treatment.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Yep, the German POW's had it pretty good in Canada and the US. IIRC, the overall mortality rate for German POWs in British, Canadian and American camps was something like less than 1%.

Some of the accounts are similar to stories I've heard about the POW camps in Ontario. Fresh fish, roast beef, and even lobster on occasion for meals. Along with a nice supply of fresh fruits and vegetables. One camp at least even had an outdoor skating rink for the prisoners in the winter.

[ShepherdsDog]

There was another lesser known camp for enemy POWs in what is now Duck Mountain Prov. Park. It was just across the road from the convenience/tackle shop at East Blue lake. There wasn't too much left of the camp in '84, so anything of interest now would have to be dug up.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

That would actually be a great heritage project. Doing digs of POW camps.

[martin14]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

That would actually be a great heritage project. Doing digs of POW camps.

If it I had the time, I'd be up for some of that.

[GreenTiger]

Yes they Germans POWs did have it well, the were exempt from rationing that (at least the Americans) had to live with, so they could eat as much as they wanted.

Both Canada and the US treated them well as it is in our nature, I agree with an earlier comment from Martin that it would have been nice if our guys were given the same treatment.

[Regina]

They got paid .50 cents a day?? Canadian Combat pay was around $1.10 per day at that time!!!

[GreenTiger]

Regina Regina:

They got paid .50 cents a day?? Canadian Combat pay was around $1.10 per day at that time!!!

My meaning was if the Germans treated our folks the same way.

[bootlegga]

Sounds like German POWs were treated better than Japanese Canadians were!

I have to agree that it would have been nice if Germany had treated our POWs better, but they could have been treated much worse (compare POW treatment in Germany with that in Japan).

[ShepherdsDog]

Some German and Italian civilians and the rare soldier(Wehrmacht, not SS) tried to help Allied POWs. at the very least it likely got them late night visits and full body massages from the SS and or Gestapo. Some likely were taken on trips out to the woods late at night too. Part of it, is that the rationing they had in canada pales beside what the Europeans went througfh during the war. There just wasn't much extra food for ANYBODY.

My grandmother said there were shortages of certain store bought products, but they had plenty to eat always. My grandfather's four youner brothers were gone so that left him and a few hired men to run an operation that covered four sections(a large farm in the 40s). They had a dairy, hogs, chickens, beef, beehives and grain. Even though my grandmother nursed full time they had a huge garden, and she canned fruit and made jams and jellies. The government took a big chunk(of the livestock, dairy, and grain) but they had plenty to eat. Coffee was scarce, tea was scarce as was sugar and gas.
It's interesting that he actually met a few RAF fellows who were stationed near Dauphin, . They got to talking because they shared the same surname and it turned out that they were from the same town in Lancashire(about halfway between Preston and Blackpool) that his father left(with his family and the families of two uncles)as a young boy. Turned out that they were second or third cousins.

[martin14]

ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:

My grandmother said there were shortages of certain store bought products, but they had plenty to eat always. My grandfather's four youner brothers were gone so that left him and a few hired men to run an operation that covered four sections(a large farm in the 40s). They had a dairy, hogs, chickens, beef, beehives and grain. Even though my grandmother nursed full time they had a huge garden, and she canned fruit and made jams and jellies. The government took a big chunk(of the livestock, dairy, and grain) but they had plenty to eat. Coffee was scarce, tea was scarce as was sugar and gas.

Whereas my parents, born in '39 and '41, were eating tulip bulbs, and both
had terrible teeth due to no milk when they were young.
The Germans took everything the Dutch had.

[GreenTiger]

bootlegga bootlegga:

Sounds like German POWs were treated better than Japanese Canadians were!

I have to agree that it would have been nice if Germany had treated our POWs better, but they could have been treated much worse (compare POW treatment in Germany with that in Japan).

Oh yes, one of my Mothers Uncles was a B-17 Pilot shot down during a mission and spent a year and a half as a guest of Herman Goering in Stagluft Eines (one) on the Baltic. While it was not exactly Hogan's Heroes it was infinity better than the was the Japanese treated Allied prisoners.

The treatment of the German prisons was still far better some of the German solders later commented that they were treated better by their captors than their officers treated them before they were captured.

[BartSimpson]

A few notes:

It was not a 'Nazi' PoW camp. It was a Canadian PoW camp and the prisoners were German soldiers. The majority of Wehrmacht soldiers were not party members.

I can't speak for Canada, but the US under General Marshall had a general policy of treating German and Japanese prisoners somewhat better than anyone expected and this was principally for propaganda reasons. It was funny that the strategy paid off post-war when Germans were repatriated to the Soviet zones and they noted that they got better treatment as prisoners of the Americans than they did as citizens of the socialist states.

Another benefit of cushy PoW camps is that they were far easier to guard given that most soldiers with any sense preferred to stay where they were treated well as opposed to returning to combat.

Japanese prisoners tended to be utterly befuddled when they were treated well and even up to the end of the war many of them were convinced that they were being subjected to some sort of brainwashing. Post-war they often felt doubly guilty for attacking America when Americans would capture them and then treat them with near-Japanese levels of hospitality Americans in the same circumstance were horribly abused.