Quote:
Originally Posted by RT
At what time exactly they returned home ??
Always amazed to see that by the americans or frenchs some returned only in 1946, when they returned ..
Rémi
|
The allies had a sytem of categorising the German prisoners by colour:
White = those who were not indoctrinated into the Nazi system, and therefore needed little in the way of 'teaching' them about the evil of what the Third Reich had done;
Grey = those who may be considered to have been sway by the Nazi doctrine to some degree, and needed to 'dis-indoctrinated' (for want of a better word) regarding the Third Reich; and
Black = those the allies definitely believed were Nazis. Those in this category went through a programme which totally exposed for them all the horrors of what the Third Reich had done. I believe this 'course' took several months.
The 'White's were the first batch to be repatriated, followed by the 'Grey's, and lastly the 'Black's. The timing of repatriation was not only therefore driven by these categories, but also by the capability of the allies to get the pows back to Germany and discharge them in the proper way, as well as those already held on mainland Europe at the end of the war. It was a massive undertaking, as can be imagined. And once discharged, they were on their own - the infrastructure of Germany was shot at war's end. George Jakstadt (pilot, 9./ZG 26) told me that when he was discharged in Hamburg, he then walked the 250 kilometres to his home, and said it was a common sight to see returning servicement on the roads walking home.
There was an excellent documentary on TV here several years ago about this very subject of how the pow situation was handled, and it was most interesting.
Hope this helps.