‘Prisoners of the Peace’: German Prisoners-of-War in Rural France 1944

Abstract

Historians have paid little attention to the over half a million German prisoners-of-war who were deployed for the purposes of reconstruction in France between 1944 and 1948. In an effort to contain the rural labour crisis over half were allocated to agriculture. Despite an initially hostile reception by the French, this article argues that moving the prisoners into farms marked the beginning of a strikingly rapid process of acceptance by these local communities. Farmers led the way to broader acceptance by refusing to enforce the rules and granting prisoners more freedom than the authorities intended. It shows how, despite opposition from some quarters, in a process of growing normalization, rural populations gradually came to identify the Germans less as prisoners and more as foreign workers living amongst them.

Keywords

Agriculture France German prisoners-of-war rural Second World War

The plight of prisoners-of-war during and after the Second World War has only come to the fore of historical attention in the last twenty years. An initial comparative article by S. P. MacKenzie uncovered the essential factors underlying prisoner-of-war treatment.¹ This work was expanded by two path-breaking essay collections.² A growing body of literature relates to the over ten million German prisoners of war who were in Allied hands at the end of the war, particularly in the British and American contexts.³ It has been acknowledged that ‘nowhere in western Europe was the POW question more complex than in France’,⁴ but the experience of close to a million Axis prisoners who were held there from 1944 to 1948 remains under-addressed. Very little work has been published in English, and French scholarly work on the subject has only appeared relatively recently.⁵ Important early research uncovered the concerns of the Allies, notably the British, in relation to the handling of prisoners by the French.⁶ Jacques Bacque’s controversial accusations about the treatment of the mass of Axis soldiers placed in makeshift camps in the Rhine valley and Bavaria awakened historical interest in the predicament of these German POWs.⁷ At first, few were under French management but in late 1944 the French provisional government managed to persuade the Americans of their need for prisoners to be used as vital labour. A total of about 740,000 prisoners were transferred to the country.

The First World War had set a precedent for the mobilization of German prisoners as a workforce and the Allies were keen to repeat it in the interests of post-war reconstruction.⁸ Prisoner labour proved to be more important to the national economy in France than in either the UK or the USA.⁹ Agriculture immediately emerged as a priority for this deployment as it was experiencing an acute labour crisis as a result of the massive rural exodus of labourers into industry.¹⁰ Nearly half the prisoners allocated to labour between 1944 and 1948 were placed there. However, while French researchers have brought to light the diplomatic tensions around the management of the German prisoners and their later repatriation,¹¹ and detailed research has charted the controversial use of German POWs in mine clearance,¹² little attention has been paid to their presence in the rural communities. Unlike the British or the Americans, the French had already been forced to live in close proximity with the Germans as occupiers for four years. Did this previous experience of having Germans in their midst help to ‘humanize’ them now that they were reduced to prisoner status? Or did it provide an opportunity for populations to play out resentments that had built up over those years?

This article argues that despite the ill treatment and neglect in the early management of the German prisoners, and despite the open hostility displayed towards them by French civilians in the months after the Liberation, the movement of prisoners into the agricultural sector marked the beginning of a strikingly rapid process of acceptance. While the military archives demonstrate how the authorities sought to maintain a strictly constrained existence on the captives, regional prefects’ monthly reports along with local press articles highlight a growing refusal by employers to enforce the official directives.¹³ Accounts in the letters sent and received by German prisoners and intercepted by the French authorities confirm the impression that farmers generally treated their prisoner charges with decency and respect.¹⁴ As relationships normalized between employers and prisoners, this in turn brought the POWs widespread acceptance from the rural populations they encountered. By 1947 growing international pressure made it impossible for the French government to keep the prisoners and in an effort to retain their labour it was proposed to formalize their situation by offering them the possibility of becoming civilian workers. In charting this process of change in attitudes and showing how German prisoners were gradually integrated into French rural society, this article illustrates that pragmatic concerns can overcome acrimonious differences. In demonstrating how former enemies can find common ground, it shows how gaining a wider understanding of the German prisoner experience in France can enhance our comprehension of post-conflict societies, an issue of important and pressing contemporary relevance.¹⁵

After first contextualizing the attitudes held by the French towards the Germans in the aftermath of the Liberation, the article moves into an analysis of the evolving relations between prisoners, the authorities and local populations. The primary material collected here is largely drawn from a number of departments in the south where prisoner labour was widely deployed to assure production in a range of agricultural regions. The polycultural farmers around Montauban and Toulouse depended on this labour for all the tasks involved in the raising of crops, fruit and livestock. Farming was still dependent on animal traction and there was little mechanisation, so prisoners were needed for the labour intense tasks of ploughing, sowing crops and harvesting production (digging beetroot and potatoes as well as picking fruit). In the wine-growing regions around Marseille, they also tended the vines and aided grape picking. This evidence, along with material from rural areas elsewhere in the country, indicates a trend of improving relationships between the French rural populations and the German prisoners that falls into three key phases.¹⁶ A first early post-Liberation phase was initially marked by distrust and animosity which was gradually replaced by a growing recognition by agricultural employers of the potential value of their labour. In a second phase of acclimatization from the end of 1945 and throughout 1946, the efforts of the authorities to enforce control of the prisoners were increasingly out of step with the interests of the employers who found it was easier to administer and more likely to produce better results if they allowed their prisoners more freedom than the authorities intended. Finally, from 1947–48, in a period of growing normalization, the local populations identified POWs less as prisoners and more as simply foreign workers living among them. In a bid to preserve some part of this valuable labour force and aware that their captive status could not be prolonged, the authorities abandoned efforts to persuade farmers to police these workers and in recognition of what was already happening on the ground, offered prisoners the chance to become civilian workers.

For their part, French sources show that cultural stereotypes of the German soldier held by many members of the Gallic population in the immediate post-war years were more multi-layered than might at first be imagined. French perceptions of Germans were largely derived from observations of their behaviour as occupiers which varied regionally and over time. While the Germans had an intense presence in some areas, in others they were virtually absent. Similarly, during the Liberation, certain populations witnessed brutal and terrifying atrocities carried out by the Germans, whereas in other areas the Germans put up little opposition to the Allies or the Resistance and surrendered or melted away without incident. Prevailing attitudes to the Germans in 1944–45 were therefore locality specific and largely dependent on each individual’s war-time experiences. The replacement of the Germans by the Allies in some areas further complicated these views. In Cherbourg, for example, American troops appeared to some locals to represent just another army of occupation.¹⁷ During the period between autumn 1944 and December 1948, when all the prisoners were released, French people gradually formulated and adopted views in response to what they saw of the prisoners in their own localities. Other feelings which had been engendered by the events of the war were gradually subsumed in this process.

Putting the Prisoners to Work – A Mixed Reception

The early months after the Liberation, and particularly while the war was ongoing, marked a period of hostility towards the prisoners. The French provisional government often had to battle to persuade employers to embrace the idea of taking on German prisoners, even as labourers. The Americans made six deliveries of German prisoners to France between February 1945 and May 1946.¹⁸ These prisoners, combined with those passed on by the British and those already in French hands, and even allowing for the large number that had to be sent home for health or other reasons, represented a significant labour force which the government wished to see deployed immediately.¹⁹ Axis prisoners had initially grouped together Austrians, Hungarians, Rumanians and Italians, but these other nationalities were all released by the end of 1945 and therefore had little contact with the French population. Responsibility for the coordination of the employment of prisoners fell to a military authority originally created in 1943 in North Africa, the Service des Prisonniers de l’Axe (henceforth the Service) which operated in liaison with the Ministry of Labour.²⁰ In order to facilitate the management and deployment of POWs, the country was divided into regions each with its own commander.²¹ It was their role to respond to requests for labour as well as to oversee their treatment by employers.²² The military authorities set out detailed arrangements for the employment of prisoners. On collection from the large regional depots where the prisoners were held, employers had to take responsibility for transport, recruit a guard and in the event of escape cover the expenses incurred ‘in searching for the prisoner and their capture’.²³ Prisoners were to be paid much the same as equivalent French workers; half the salary was to be given to them directly by the employer, the other half sent to the depot and after deduction of an administrative fee, held until the prisoner’s release.²⁴

Prospective employers and particularly farmers complained about the plethora of conditions that had been laid down.²⁵ Few could afford to house, feed and guard prisoners in the way the authorities envisaged. One farmer in the Bouches-du-Rhône put it thus:

We have asked for prisoners but the conditions for their employment are draconian. They have to be clothed, fed, guarded, collected and returned. They will cost us more money than a civilian labour force. I am sure that the Germans did not embarrass themselves with so many conditions with our prisoners.²⁶

After a slow start, the government redoubled its efforts to encourage employers to request prisoner labour. The Ministry of Labour pressed prefects and their local officials to make demands for prisoner labour in areas where they could see that take-up was low. The regional commissioner for labour in Brittany was told: ‘I am surprised that in this particularly badly hit region a stronger need for POWs has not been expressed’.²⁷ The Director of the Mines also sent out a scolding directive expressing frustration at the lack of requests for prisoner labour and urged local mine directors to rectify the situation indicating that ‘… if the total number of prisoners … is less than 20% … the reasons why it is not possible to employ more will have to be justified with precise and valid reasons’.²⁸

In late 1944, prisoners were gradually allocated to regional depots where those who were fit enough were formed into work commandos. In an effort to avoid outbreaks of violence and to protect them from hostile populations, these commandos comprised about twenty prisoners. Smaller groups were feared to be too vulnerable to aggression.²⁹ Nonetheless, in some areas reactions to their arrival were so violent that they had to be sent away. This was most common in areas where the Germans in occupation had been exacting or where there was lingering resentment about harsh reprisals. In Brittany, which had suffered acutely during the occupation and during the prolonged and difficult battles of Liberation, Fritz Jesse found that farmers were not at all keen to see the Germans back, even as prisoners.³⁰ Guards often found that their role was as much to protect prisoners as to prevent them from escaping.³¹ Prisoners complained about verbal abuse, spitting, stone throwing and even physical attacks. Locals refused to allow them to go to church for mass on Sundays.³² The fact that those employing prisoners were also sometimes targeted doubtless contributed to the widespread reluctance to engage prisoner labour in this early phase.³³ Public hostility was further aggravated by the belief that the Americans, who continued to have responsibility for managing prisoners in certain areas of the country until as late as 1947, were treating them too well.³⁴ The feeling was widespread that prisoners, by dint of their particular status, might be benefiting from better treatment than everyone else.

Paradoxically, in late 1945 allegations regarding the French treatment of the German POWs threatened to undermine the government’s efforts to use the prisoners as labour. Many of the German soldiers who ended up in French camps were in a serious state of ill health. Red Cross reports testify to the appalling conditions which existed, and grim statistics reveal that about 3 per cent of German POWs in French hands died.³⁵ A national press campaign calling for a more sympathetic approach to their treatment raised public awareness of the dire situation some of those being held in the camps were experiencing. The centre-leaning newspaper Le Monde, for example, published an article entitled ‘Don’t imitate them. A German prisoner, even though he is a German is still a human being’.³⁶ Anxious not to be reduced to such comparisons with the German treatment of their detainees in the concentration camps, and despite the fact that the French population was itself suffering from acute shortages, sustained efforts were made to improve conditions and increase supplies to the prison camps.

As the authorities intensified their efforts to deploy prisoner labour, prefects continued to complain about the poor state of health of many of the prisoners who arrived in their areas.³⁷ Keen to avoid situations like the one in Nancy where the lack of responsible guards was having a detrimental impact on the number of prisoners that could be allocated for labour, prefects called for the conditions in place for the management of prisoners to be relaxed.³⁸ In order to allow individual farmers and small-scale artisans to benefit from the prisoner workforce, the authorities reluctantly agreed that the size of work unit could be reduced to 10 and that local councils could be entrusted with the organization and oversight of prisoner groups and contribute to their upkeep.³⁹ Farmers continued to complain about having to return prisoners to centralized overnight accommodation. In the Creuse there were demands that German prisoner workers be allowed to stay on their properties, as happened during the First World War.⁴⁰ The authorities finally conceded, although in practice these directives had already been interpreted with some flexibility depending on the position taken by the regional military commander.⁴¹

In 1945, brochures were circulated urging employers to take on a POW and explaining that the Germans were judged to have collective responsibility for the war and should repair its effects regardless of the nature of their personal allegiances to the regime.⁴² With the war now over and the true state of the labour shortages more apparent, farmers in particular responded positively to the offer of prisoner workers which appeared more feasible under these new arrangements. The Prefect of the Oise noted in July 1945 that the ‘repugnance which existed in agriculture against this labour force … has completely disappeared’.⁴³ The head of the Service in Limoges expressed his delight with the brochure and his confidence that it would help to ‘overcome the reticence of many farmers who … had shown no eagerness to use this labour force …’⁴⁴ By the end of 1946, nearly 70 per cent of prisoners had been put into the hands of employers in both rural and urban areas.⁴⁵ As a result, in some areas there was an extraordinarily high concentration of prisoners. The region of Châlons-sur-Marne, for example, reported the presence of a German POW for every 25 inhabitants, and it was observed that the area was ‘very close to saturation’.⁴⁶

Although the authorities were ambivalent about the idea of billeting prisoners with their employers, it had the advantage that it released them from responsibility for feeding and housing their charges.⁴⁷ The decision to allow the movement of prisoners into the communities and villages was not without anxieties for the military authorities. Colonel Buisson, Director of the Service, envisaged the appropriate way to manage the prisoners thus: ‘The POW is the unhappy soldier of a defeated army who should be treated humanely, fed appropriately for the desired labour, but should not be intimately involved in French life’.⁴⁸ The main fear was that, away from the depots, prisoners would be under less supervision and more easily able to escape. On the other hand, there was also concern that those who were situated in remote areas at a distance from the depots would be more vulnerable to employers who might abuse their position.⁴⁹ The Service therefore saw its role as being to enforce a middle position between ill treatment and over-generosity on the part of employers.

As the prisoners were moved in, across the country prefects reported numerous official representations from unions, particularly the CGT, complaining that POWS were taking French jobs.⁵⁰ This concern is reflected in articles published in the communist newspaper l’Humanité which was particularly negative about the employment of Nazis and ‘boches’, presenting them as a potential fifth column.⁵¹ Under the regulations, employers were not entitled to make profits from the workforce, nor were they supposed to be employing prisoners to do work if French workers were available.⁵² In the Ile-et-Vilaine there were complaints that the employment of prisoners was leading to the dismissal of rural workers, thereby adding to the exodus of workers to the towns.⁵³ Similarly, the agricultural workers federation in the Bouches-du-Rhône complained that ‘this labour force … is in competition with us … Agricultural workers from the locality … have been refused work’.⁵⁴ Concerned to avoid alienating local populations, the authorities took accusations that POWs were taking the jobs of French workers very seriously.⁵⁵ Instructions were reiterated not to allocate POWs to areas where there was unemployment and an active policy was adopted of removing prisoners from areas where unemployment was impacting on French workers.⁵⁶

Growing Acclimatization

This ambivalent attitude towards the employment of German prisoners gradually developed into a second phase of growing acclimatization throughout 1946. However, while farmers grew increasingly tolerant towards their prisoner workers and reluctant to adhere to the rules that the authorities insisted should be enforced, others protested against this approach which was considered unacceptable. In April, the Prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhône wrote to the regional camp commander complaining that ‘Different press articles have attracted my attention to the excessive liberty being allowed to German POWs in certain localities’.⁵⁷ Similarly, throughout the summer of 1946 in the Creuse, employers were repeatedly urged to improve their control over their prisoners. In July, a local newspaper La Vie Rurale published an article entitled, ‘Watch over your prisoners of war’.

In spite of the numerous warnings regarding German POWs, many employers are still granting those in their charge complete freedom. On Sundays, these gentlemen can be seen in groups of four, five or more, happily taking a walk without supervision of any kind. Isn’t that a bit much?⁵⁸

Escapes by POWs were regularly reported in both national and local newspapers as a matter of public interest. Employers were criticized for failing to enforce the requirement that prisoners wear uniforms with the letters PG marked on them and they were frequently seen in civilian attire.⁵⁹ This issue was of particular importance to the authorities, who were keen to maintain military control of the prisoners and the wearing of uniforms was an important and visible manifestation of this. In supplying their charges with civilian clothes, farmers manifestly had no qualms about defying the rules. The repeated warnings reproduced in the press left them undeterred. They systematically ignored directives forbidding them to send or pass on post to the prisoners and failed to lock up their prisoner workers at night or when they were not working. Some even provided prisoners with bicycles so they could get around independently and meet up with one another locally.⁶⁰ Such actions aided prisoners not just to make the contacts necessary for escape, but also provided them with the means to do so. Evidently, rural employers had little interest in sustaining the kind of military control upheld by the authorities, and instead they appear to have been in relative sympathy with the needs and interests of their prisoner workers, even being prepared to risk losing them if they were to escape.

Former French POWs who had recently returned from Germany, often felt particularly strongly about the treatment of the German prisoners whose situation had obvious parallels with their own recent experiences of captivity. They were annoyed about reports that German POWs were being treated leniently and that a large number were escaping. In St Andiol, ex-prisoners threatened to ‘put things into order’ if there was no change in the management of the prisoners.⁶¹ In Arles, former POWs created a Vigilance Committee whose role was to oversee the employment of German prisoners to ensure that they were treated as such and did not benefit from any ‘advantages’.⁶² In the Creuse, a committee of former French POWs vowed ‘to enforce the rules themselves as we believe that Axis prisoners should be considered as enemy prisoners of war and not as voluntary workers to whom we owe a debt of thanks’.⁶³ Across the country, it seemed that farmers were failing to apply the rules, and evidently many even felt obligated to the prisoners who were working for them.

However, if French prisoners were particularly concerned that the formal procedures should be implemented, this did not mean that they wanted to see the German prisoners treated badly. In this they were sometimes ahead of attitudes in the local populations. In Clermont-Ferrand, for example, one prefect had reported in May 1945 that ex-POWs had a more moderate attitude to the prisoners than the rest of the population.⁶⁴ Intercepted letters and reports made by German prisoners on their experiences of captivity in France after returning home frequently remarked on the different treatment they received in cases where camp commanders or employers were themselves former prisoners.⁶⁵ Indeed, French prisoners had been seen as ideal recruits to guard the German prisoners because it was thought that they would treat the prisoners fairly. It would seem, therefore, that Frenchmen who had been held captive in Germany identified strongly with German prisoners and developed a sort of fraternity of interest. This was perhaps because they shared a common experience of being both victims/prisoners and victors and developed a kind of trench solidarity, the bonding born of common experience which operated in important ways.

In early 1947, the Toulouse military commander circulated a reminder that employers would incur penalties if they were found negligent in guarding their prisoners.⁶⁶ In March, this was reinforced nationally when the Minister of the Interior warned prefects and work inspectors that sanctions would be imposed upon employers who did not sufficiently control their POW workers.⁶⁷ POWs would be taken away and not necessarily replaced in cases where it could be proved that employers were allowing their prisoners too much freedom. This was not an empty threat but it did not seem to deter employers.⁶⁸ Farmers had realized early on that their prisoners would be much more productive and reliable workers if they were well fed, well treated and respected. These captive Germans simply had to wait out their time until their release. Theoretically, a prisoner taken during a context of war has an obligation to try and escape as part of his military duty.⁶⁹ Escape from the depots was common, even before prisoners were brought into the communities. Once the hostilities were over, these German soldiers must have felt that the rationale for their continued prisoner status was tenuous and this made escape even more justified. Many had been separated from their families for months and even years, and they were understandably anxious to get back to them. Escapes were particularly numerous from regions near to the German frontier and the department of Moselle was a strategic one for escaping prisoners.⁷⁰ However, Buisson argues that the deployment of prisoners into rural communities did not lead to a corresponding increase in the number of escapes. He claims that escape was much more likely to be related to the treatment of the POWs by employers. Those who were treated well rarely ran away, whereas those who were poorly treated did leave, sometimes only to return to their local depot to demand a different employer.⁷¹ A prisoner who was taken in by a farmer, given some measure of freedom and considered as part of their household, would have more scruples about abandoning them than he would about escaping from a camp where he was no more than a number behind barbed wire.⁷² Intercepted letters show how appreciative some prisoners were of their treatment. They urged their families not to send them food parcels because they had more than enough to eat.⁷³ Some letters spelt out in loving detail the exact content of all their meals to reassure their families, ‘we are fed like princes’, one even claimed ‘We live like Gods in France’.⁷⁴ Mothers appear incredulous at the conditions their sons reported to them:

You write that you even sleep on a bed with white sheets. How is it possible that prisoners have white sheets? I can’t believe that in France you are so well treated, despite the fact that this is what you always say in your letters.⁷⁵

The repeated efforts of the authorities, the warnings and threats of fines had little impact. Farmers had already made the transition into a peacetime society where the constraints required by the military authorities seemed irrelevant. Prisoners were often considered to be very good workers and this superseded the ingrained mistrust of the Germans that many had learnt during the Occupation and helped to overcome other lingering resentments relating to the recent past. Further evidence of the growing value farmers attached to the prisoner labour came in January 1947 when it was reported that fewer farmers than in previous years were returning their prisoners to the depots. They were heeding the advice of camp commanders who had urged farmers to keep prisoners throughout the winter months if they wanted to be sure of their labour for the intense periods of harvest in the following summer.⁷⁶ However, not all farmers could afford to do this. The wine growers of the Pyrénées Orientales and the Aube, for example, returned their prisoners to the camps in November 1947 still hoping to collect them in the spring.⁷⁷ The camp administration for its part, could not justify keeping these returned prisoners, who, in the absence of agricultural work, were in competition with other French workers and therefore had to be sent away. This uncertainty around the availability of POWs further added to recognition of the value of their labour, especially during harvests.

This acceptance in turn promoted a significant change in popular attitudes. Indeed, it is perhaps not coincidental that the institutional language used in the reports produced by the various official authorities as well as the press also gradually changed. Initially, the terminology presented them as ‘enemy POWs’ or ‘axis POWs’ (‘prisonniers de guerre de l’ennemi’ or ‘de l’Axe’) and they were referred to solely in terms of their potential deployment and their utility as units of physical labour. Official reports about POWs originally highlighted the percentage of those who were sick or unfit for work and reported on the categories capable of heavy labour, for example, and provided comments on the attitudes of the public towards the prisoner presence. Subsequently, the reports appear to have adopted a different terminology in line with prisoners’ changed legal status and they became ‘prisoners of war’ (‘les prisonniers de guerre’) or Germans (‘les allemands’) or even quite simply ‘foreign labour’ (‘la main d’oeuvre étrangère’). From the beginning of 1946, reports make little reference to public opinion, which no longer appears to have been a concern for the authorities. This change at both administrative and popular levels appears to reflect a wider process of acceptance of the presence of prisoners as workers.

Towards Normalization

In this third phase, the government was forced to change its approach to prisoner labour. By mid-1947 the clamours from the Americans for the French to start releasing the prisoners had become impossible for the government to ignore.⁷⁸ No longer able to defend the rationale for keeping German prisoners, the process of planning repatriation began. Despite opposition from mayors in certain communes, individual prisoners and units were withdrawn from less urgent occupations including agriculture in preparation for certain categories to be sent home.⁷⁹ However, in spite of offers to replace German prisoner workers with Poles, Italians and North Africans, farmers proved very reluctant to give them up, particularly those they had carefully trained.⁸⁰ The Minister of Agriculture even indulged in special pleading for French ex-prisoner employers. On 29 July 1947, he wrote, ‘it quite simply seems to be in the interests of fairness that farmers who spent long months in captivity working for the German economy should in return benefit for longer than other employers of POWs’.⁸¹ German POWs were making a major contribution to the French economy. They were present in several sectors; in November 1946 they made up 4.8 per cent of the male workforce.⁸² A large part of them working in agriculture, where in some departments they represented 11 per cent of all agricultural labourers.⁸³ A further 10–15 per cent worked in mining, where they helped to win the famous ‘battle for coal’.⁸⁴ The loss of this workforce would have disastrous economic consequences. The need to find a way to prolong the presence of these workers had become urgent.

Paradoxically, it was the very normalization of the situation between employers and prisoners which provided the key. In tacit recognition of what was actually happening on the ground, the government proposed to transform the prisoners into civilian workers. Under this arrangement, they immediately qualified for a salary and other benefits on a par with French workers. Their status was entirely comparable to that of an immigrant worker, with the only added restriction being that their movements were limited within the boundaries of the department where they worked.⁸⁵ Soon after the launch of the initiative, the government expressed delight with the take-up of contracts and heralded the policy as a great success. Le Monde reported on 26 August 1947 ‘Nearly 90,000 German prisoners have already asked to stay in France as free workers’. The difficult conditions in Germany, particularly in areas under Soviet occupation, certainly played a large part in persuading prisoners to transform themselves into free workers. The prospect of secure employment, a decent salary for a year as well as the associated benefits which included a two week holiday, proved attractive. Close family members wrote of the problems at home and urged them to take up the offer of employment in France. Stories told by those who returned from leave confirmed this picture and persuaded many to sign up.⁸⁶ About a third of the pool of remaining prisoners adopted the status, over half in agriculture.⁸⁷ Becoming a civilian worker could bring immediate benefits at a time when the likelihood of liberation was still uncertain.⁸⁸ Once transformed, farmers often regarded the civilian workers somewhat differently. One reported that: ‘In respect of my new status, I have been invited to join my employer and to eat at his table’.⁸⁹ Another wrote home regretting that he did not follow up this opportunity: ‘When I see how free they are and everything they can buy for themselves as free workers, I think I should have opted for it’.⁹⁰ It was now possible for a unit of German workers to consist of some who were still technically POWs and should strictly have been in uniform and others who were civilian workers. To further complicate matters, in some cases, those who took up the contract were not prisoners at all but had responded to the advertising campaigns made by the French in Germany. Unsurprisingly, therefore, local populations made little differentiation between the prisoner and civilian worker. For many, the new status simply formalized social interactions which were already taking place.

In spring 1947, before gaining a free-worker status Henri took him to the dance secretly. He gave him civilian clothes and told him not to say a word. Girls danced with him. Once they became free-workers, Kamp and Dulisch went to the dance quite openly.⁹¹

While local populations appear to have become increasingly accepting of the Germans, both as POWs and as civilian workers, there were limits. Attitudes towards gender relations give us insight into the evolving levels of tolerance the French held towards this German presence. Fraternization between winners and losers in belligerent states has been established as an area of tension and much academic attention has been devoted to the women whose heads were shaved across France at the Liberation as a punishment for their alleged amorous encounters with German soldiers.⁹² The on-going presence of German soldiers on French territory meant that such fraternization could potentially still occur. A number of French women succeeded in tracing the German soldiers they had known during the war who were held captive on French soil.⁹³ In the immediate aftermath of the war, the climate of opinion was extremely hostile to the possibility of a French women being involved with a German prisoner and this may have been one of the reasons why the authorities were so determined to restrict the movements of the prisoners. In June 1946, a disturbance occurred when a German prisoner dressed in civilian clothes was discovered at a municipal ball in Aubagne. The prisoner had been dancing with a young French woman and in order to put a stop to it, another young man, in love with the girl, revealed his status. As a result of the outcry which ensued, the prisoner had to be immediately removed to the police station. He was confiscated from the offending employer who apologized for having allowed his charge so much freedom, and sent back to the local depot.⁹⁴ In a further example, a suspected affair between a German prisoner and a woman who had worked for the Germans during the occupation was reported to the Marseilles police who brought both parties in for questioning and took the case to a tribunal. While no legal punishment was possible, the freedom of action which the prisoner enjoyed and which had made it possible for him to conduct the affair was commented on extremely negatively by the officers involved.⁹⁵ The following newspaper article touches on similar sensitivities.⁹⁶ It discusses POWs enjoying the company of local women in the Creuse:

On Sunday afternoons it is possible to encounter on our roads young women out walking in the gallant company of POWs. Do we have to remind them of the massacre of the peaceful inhabitants of Oradour? Was it for this that our youth in the maquis generously sacrificed their lives? So, ladies, show a bit of dignity. What would your sisters who lost their lives in Ravensbrück have to say about your present attitude? ⁹⁷

Marriage between a French woman and German POW, even if a free worker in civilian clothes, was still not considered acceptable, though it was legal from 1948.⁹⁸ Yet, the French government was not deterred from ignoring public sentiment in its determination to fix the remaining German labour force. To this end, German prisoners who became civilian workers were offered the possibility of acquiring French nationality after five years, and in the spring of 1948 propaganda was even circulated encouraging them to marry French women.⁹⁹ Within the space of a few months, in this third phase, the authorities had completely revised their policy, seeking actively to promote the assimilation of the former prisoners.

However, despite the potential benefits that becoming a civilian worker could offer, understandably most German prisoners were anxious to return home to their wives and families. For them, the propaganda was an irritating distraction while they waited for news of their release. One young prisoner complained ‘How much longer are we going to be held like serfs without any rights?'¹⁰⁰ The camp commander in Toulouse reported in August 1947: ‘They consider that France is not honouring its commitments and have given up hope of being repatriated in the near future’.¹⁰¹ Throughout 1947 there were numerous cases of prisoners leaving farms and returning to their depots in the belief that this might improve their chances of repatriation.¹⁰² By the end of December 1948, in line with international agreements, all prisoners had been repatriated and only free workers remained in the country. After their initial contracts expired, approximately half signed up for a further contractual period for six months or a year.¹⁰³ A number stayed on indefinitely, marrying French women, and there were some who even abandoned families at home. The Red Cross was frequently solicited by German families asking them to seek out their male members still in France.¹⁰⁴ In September 1950, the International Red Cross reported the presence of 35,000 German workers remaining in France under their protection.¹⁰⁵ It was largely to look after their interests that the German labour union (DGB) set up an office in Paris in 1948.¹⁰⁶

Conclusions

The presence of German POWs in France in the immediate post-war years was an important aspect of the country’s transition from wartime to peacetime. Reactions towards the prisoners reflect a process of humanization and an evolution in attitudes especially in rural areas. In the early days when the majority were held in prison camps and armed guards were employed to oversee the commandos, their presence led to an on-going sense of militarization. Prisoners were injected into the highly charged atmosphere of revenge which marked the immediate post-Liberation purges. It was hardly surprising that there were incidents. From May 1945, however, in literal terms they were not prisoners of war, but prisoners of the post-war, or prisoners of the peace, as Bob Moore has put it.¹⁰⁷ Perhaps in recognition of this, there is little evidence of widespread outbreaks of hostility towards them after the end of 1945. If this prisoner presence perpetuated the occupation in a sort of inverse way and at first acted as a permanent reminder of the recent past, French people soon learnt to see these Germans as individual men rather than representatives of an ideology. Prisoners were increasingly noticed only as a valuable labour force. At a time when most French people still viewed Germany with extreme distrust and the official trials against those who were accused of having collaborated with the Germans were still underway, it is perhaps remarkable that the attitudes to the prisoners changed so quickly.

Interestingly, from 1946 there appears to have been little correlation between the treatment of the prisoners in a given area and that area’s wartime experience. The case of Moselle is emblematic. The department suffered German annexation during the war and the Nazification of the area had devastating effects. Despite hesitations on the part of the authorities, who feared a hostile reaction from the population, German POWs were put to work in large numbers. They were perceived by employers as excellent workers, and when it came to their planned repatriation, there was a widespread outcry.¹⁰⁸ POWs chose to stay on in the department as civilian workers in similar numbers to elsewhere in the country.

In rural areas, farmers’ attitudes were often the key to the acceptance of the prisoners by the rest of the community. They had everything to gain from treating the prisoners in a way that would allow them to gain maximum productivity from this labour. They soon realized that this meant keeping them well fed and allowing them considerable freedom. This had the consequence of allowing the captives to interact with locals who then drew their own conclusions. However, prisoners who were placed in rural areas were not universally well treated by employers. Some felt exploited and were shocked by the rudimentary and sometimes impoverished lifestyles they encountered. Farming had changed little since the previous century and small family farmers ranked among the poorest in French society.¹⁰⁹ The long hours and intense labour solicited complaints.¹¹⁰ There were also those who were lonely on farms in remote areas.¹¹¹ Cases of ill-treatment, on the other hand, appear to have been rare and if uncovered by the military authorities or the Red Cross, prisoners were immediately removed.¹¹² Some such employers may have had criminal intent, others believed that the prisoners were there to make good the damage of the occupation and on the farm there was a good deal of work to be done.

More generally, the nature of their interactions with their employers had an important bearing on the German prisoner experience. This varied depending on the sector of work and equally importantly whether they were held in a depot or housed individually with their employer. Those who worked in towns often only had distant interactions with their employers and little contact with the locals by comparison with those in the countryside. Similarly, those who were put to work in mining in the north experienced demanding employers and exhausting and miserable labour, particularly if they had to work underground. Others had to face the dangers of mine clearance which was an equally bleak experience.¹¹³ Those who were deployed away from the large depots and billeted to work on farms had more freedom than those consigned to the municipal work units who were taken back to the depots at the end of every working day. Buisson acknowledges that ‘all the prisoners employed individually, especially in agriculture, rapidly benefitted from an enviable lifestyle even by comparison with those living in the towns’.¹¹⁴ Most were probably materially better off in France than they would have been in Germany. Hans Stempel reported to General Koenig that: ‘There is no doubt that the living and working conditions of the most part of these prisoners is currently better than in their own country, but their situation is not really comparable since they are not free and not with their families’.¹¹⁵ One mother wrote to her son and advised him as follows:

You are probably better there than you would be at home. I have already heard it said several times that prisoners who escaped from France said that if they had known, they would not have run away. Don’t imagine that the picture is rosy here.¹¹⁶

One prisoner who ran away from a depot even returned there after experiencing life in Germany, ‘because of insufficient food and bad treatment by my employer’.¹¹⁷

This remarkable contrast between conditions in France and in Germany must have been an advantage to the French employers and also informed the behaviour of the German prisoners, who often came to appreciate the French and their treatment of them. A group of German prisoners who returned home and were interviewed in 1947 reported a variety of experiences. While some acknowledged that certain employers could be very exacting and they feared being sent to remote locations, nearly half of them described their relations with the French in the workplace as good or very good.¹¹⁸ For those who worked in agriculture, their experience often compared very favourably with what they later found at home. On return to Germany some reflected more positively on their time in French captivity, as did this POW in a letter to his former employer:

… when I was in your house, I often thought, when I will be back home in Germany, I was to live in comfort, but now I work every day… we have lost the war and we are terribly poor. We are living miserably and supplies are very meagre. I often think of my workmates who were not happy with you, but I think they must have changed their minds now.¹¹⁹

Furthermore, German POWs who had been held captive in France doubtless considered themselves lucky when they learnt of the experience of those taken to gulags in Soviet Russia, where of the 3.2 million soldiers who were captured, a third never returned.¹²⁰ When writing of his impending departure, one prisoner explored his feelings towards France: ‘When I leave this country in a few weeks, it will be without any feelings of hatred. Our peoples would understand one another if they could speak directly from one people to another. We can’t do this because of dishonest politics’.¹²¹ These sentiments are echoed in many of the intercepted letters. Claude d’Abzac-Epézy has argued that newspaper reports which fostered an idyllic vision of their period of captivity may have created a memory of French captivity which was more positive than the reality.¹²² It is true that at the time the press in Germany (particularly in the French occupied zone) probably over-emphasised the positive aspects of the conditions of the prisoners in France in an effort to reassure families.¹²³ It may also have been the case that the French military authorities only chose to archive those letters sent or received by German prisoners who made positive comments about their experiences of captivity. Nonetheless, correspondence and witness accounts testify to the lasting relationships former German prisoners maintained with their employers, especially in rural areas, with German ex-prisoners often returning to visit and sometimes even subsequently purchasing properties in the country.¹²⁴

The emergence of such positive and enduring relationships is not peculiar to France. Similar experiences have been documented in both the American and British contexts, although German prisoners worked there for shorter periods and in smaller numbers.¹²⁵ Unlike the British and the Americans, however, from the late 1940s onwards, the French were explicitly called upon to set aside any hostility they still harboured towards their former enemy in the interests of European reconstruction. Positive experiences of the German prisoners probably helped to lay the groundwork for the public acceptance of the ambitions of the policy makers who came to believe that the only way to protect France’s interests was to allow for the economic resurgence of Germany embedded within Europe. Such experiences may also have mitigated the widespread anxieties held by the French regarding German remilitarization and nationalism. Recent scholarship has sought to extend the traditional perception of Franco-German reconciliation beyond its designation as a purely state-to-state policy process.¹²⁶ The role played by both French and German POWs as agents of this rapprochement within civil society appears to have been significant and would merit further research. Former German POWs, many of whom had spent extended periods of time on farms during their captivity, were among the first to spontaneously make contacts and set up agreements which led to numerous town twinning initiatives.¹²⁷ These arrangements gained considerable momentum after the Franco-German treaty of reconciliation in 1963 which formalized and encouraged such connections. These people-to-people initiatives give us good reason to suggest that the stories of emergent respect and cooperation which resulted from interactions between German prisoners, the French farmers who employed them and their local communities later acted as an important conduit for improved Franco-German understanding.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The British Academy funded research in Provence which first awakened my interest in German prisoners-of-war. I would particularly like to thank the editors of the journal, Lucy Riall and Julian Swann, as well as Peter Anderson and the anonymous referees for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Hanna Diamond is a Reader in French History at the University of Bath. She has published widely on France during the Second World War including Women and the Second World War in France 1939–48 (Harlow, 1999) and Fleeing Hitler: France 1940 (Oxford 2007). She is currently working on projects relating to testimony, photography and memory of war.

‘Prisoners of the Peace’: German Prisoners-of-War in Rural France 1944–48