History

German Prisoners-of-War (1944-48)

There are well-known images of the Liberation of Paris and the German prisoners-of-war: the joy of victory, and the mask of defeat, violence here and scuffles there. These are familiar. But there are other follow-on images which we do not know so well, those of German prison camps in France in 1945, men minesweeping the beaches, others clearing away debris, and rebuilding houses, and one figure engraved in these final images: 750,000 German prisoners were in France in 1945. Returning 50 years later, in 1995, a Channel 4 program revealed, thanks to a journalist, that the French had violated the Geneva conventions, exterminated German prisoners, had their beaches mineswept by the prisoners and mistreated the former soldiers in camps. France is in the dock at the court of history: was she as barbaric as the Nazis when treating her German prisoners?