[John Vasco]

To put things in proper perspective from the UK/USA viewpoint, the following is what actually happened.

1. It is a 'given' that at the end of the war, Germany was in a state of chaos. It did not make sense to simply ship all German PoWs straight back into Germany, thereby compounding the already chaotic situation there.

2. The Allies had to set about sorting out the infrastructure of the country. One German pilot shot down during the Battle of Britain and a PoW in Canada during the war, Georg Jakstadt of 9./ZG 26, told me that upon return to Germany a couple of years after the war, he was given his discharge papers in Hamburg, and then walked the 250 kilometres home. He said it was a common sight to see PoWs on the roads heading home for quite some time.

3. Staying with Georg Jakstadt, once returned to England, but prior to being shipped back to Germany, he, and all the others, were given the option of either sitting on their arses until they went back to Germany, or doing work. Most chose work, so Georg and others went off to work each day on a farm. He had fond memories of his time working on a farm in England, and when he visited here once Germany was re-unified (he had lived in the old East), I and another researcher were able to take him back to the farm where he had worked in the 1940s - a very moving occasion. Also, the German PoWs were offered work while in Canada (since technically, once the war ceased, they were no longer 'prisoners' in the true sense of the word, but simply awaiting repatriation). So Otto Hintze, Staka of 3./Erpr. Gr. 210 during the BoB spent just over a year as a lumberjack in Canada, something he told me that he thoroughly enjoyed.

4. Another thing that happened at war's end was that the Allies graded their prisoners into three categories: White, grey and black. White were considered to be those who had no Nazi party ties or affiliation whatsoever, and they were repatriated first. greys were those whom the Allies thought needed a certain level of work done on them to remove their possible indoctrinated views re the Third Reich, and they were held back until the 'Whites' had been returned. The 'Black' category were those the Allies believed were fully indoctrinated with the Nazi ideology, and need thorough work to show them that they had fought for was thoroughly rotten. They went through a very carefully prepared programme of de-indoctrination before they were finally returned to German society, the last batch of the three.

So what Remi says here: "...also those who stayed in anglo-americano-franco ++ hands hv to wait sometimes quite a long before returning , when they are still alive, home, is some basic rights rather unobserved there ???..." is a load of crap. No basic rights were infringed whatsoever. It was a case of the Allies having to get Germany on its feet and up and running again on social and economic levels (not least because of the 'Cold War' scenario) and having to reintegrate many, many, thousands of Germans back into a society that was totally different to what they had left. THAT is the reality the Allies faced...