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5. Long-Term POWS Kept in Abeyance
- The University of North Carolina Press
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Long-Term pows Kept in Abeyance 5 discord within whitehall When, in October 1942, the Red Cross asked the British whether they would want to consider a mutual repatriation of pows in long-term captivity , several months passed before London even reacted.∞ The Geneva Convention did not make such an exchange binding,≤ and Whitehall was pressed to first arrive at concrete arrangements for the repatriation of seriously injured and sick pows (which the convention did oblige the two sides to effect).≥ It could also be reasoned that even for those who had fallen into enemy hands almost immediately, two years into the war made it too early to speak of a ‘‘long period of captivity.’’ Certainly for the Americans the question did not come up at this time because the United States had joined the war only in December the year before. Thus, the first serious calls for the repatriation of long-term prisoners, especially older ones, came from the pows themselves. In April 1943, a Major General Fortune, writing from Oflag ix a/h (Spangenberg ), pressed for the return, or at least for the transfer to neutral territory , of those pows who had also been prisoners in World War I. A similar call came from twenty-one officers and ratings who had survived the sinking by the Germans of hms Rawalpindi on 23 November 1939. They pointed out that some of the crew were considerably older than fifty ‘‘and naturally suffer deterioration much more rapidly than younger men.’’∂ The Red Cross joined these calls and encouraged the belligerents to conclude an agreement especially regarding older pows. In early August 1943, Max Huber, president of the icrc, reminded the British of an agreement that the French and Germans had concluded in May 1917 whereby pows over the age of forty-eight who had been in captivity for at least eighteen months had been accommodated in Switzerland if they were of commissioned rank or repatriated outright if of lower rank. Huber suggested that negotiations be initiated toward a similar agreement.∑ In fact, during World War I a first exchange of invalid French and German prisoners had taken place as early as March 1915, and by November 1916 long-term pows 149 more than 10,000 German and French prisoners had been repatriated. In January of that year, both sides had also started transferring pows who were less seriously wounded to neutral Switzerland. In late May, following a British initiative to conclude a similar arrangement with the Germans, the first group of British prisoners arrived in Switzerland. The success of these agreements paved the way for the more comprehensive one mentioned by Huber. A month later, at a conference in The Hague, the British and the Germans agreed, among other things, on the internment of up to 16,000 men in neutral Holland. Finally, between 8 June and 14 July 1918, they agreed that all pows interned in neutral countries could be released there.∏ Huber’s exchange proposal was received sympathetically in London, but there was immediate concern, particularly again within Admiralty circles, about the military implications of returning able-bodied men to Germany. In order to help overcome a crew shortage, Lord Leathers, the minister of war transport, had once before suggested an exchange of merchant seamen .π But the idea had greatly troubled Albert V. Alexander, first lord of the Admiralty, who explained that the Admiralty had always resisted the return of any merchant seamen to Germany on the grounds that they were potential submariners, a policy, he reminded his fellow ministers, that dated from the days when the prime minister himself had been first lord of the Admiralty . The Germans held 833 British merchant marine officers and 1,698 ratings, while 228 German merchant marine officers and 4,546 ratings were in British hands. Although the overall balance of numbers was weighted heavily in the enemy’s favor should it come to an exchange, Alexander recognized that the figure for officers was to Britain’s advantage. Still, he advised Lord Leathers that the proposal would in effect provide the Germans with ‘‘the equivalent of roughly a hundred U-boat crews.’’ Even if not everyone repatriated was suitable for service in U-boats, the very release of captives unfit for submarine duty would free present merchant mariners for combat in U-boats.∫ And it was exactly Britain’s recent successes against U-boats, Alexander reasoned, that had intensified the German navy’s need for...