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Full text of "Protecting Powers: International Law
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This article was downloaded by: [York University Libraries]
On: 21 November 2014, At: 17:59
Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number:
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The International History
Review
Publication details, including instructions for
authors and subscription information:
http:// www.tandfonline.com/loi/ rinh20
The Shackling Crisis: A Case-
Study in the Dynamics of
Prisoner-of-War Diplomacy in
the Second World War
S. P. Mackenzie °
* University of South Carolina
Published online: 01 Dec 2010.
To cite this article: S. PR. Mackenzie (1995) The Shackling Crisis: A Case-Study
in the Dynamics of Prisoner-of-War Diplomacy in the Second World War, The
International History Review, 17:1, 78-98, DOI: 10.1080/ 07075332.1995. 9640702
To link to this article: http:// dx.doi.org/ 10. 1080/ 07075332.1995.9640702
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S. P. MACKENZIE
The Shackling Crisis: A Case-Study in the
Dynamics of Prisoner-of-War Diplomacy
in the Second World War
N THEORY, THE treatment of prisoners of war during the Second
World War should have been governed by international law. As
far back as the Hague Convention of 1907, all the states involved
had agreed that prisoners of war ‘must be humanely treated’,! and
most had gone on to ratify the Geneva Convention of 1929, which
laid out in more detail what was expected of the captor state. Seriously
sick and wounded prisoners along with non-combatant personnel
were to be repatriated; high standards had to be maintained regarding
food, shelter, hygiene, and working conditions for POWs; and Red
Cross food parcels, as well as letters to and from prisoners, allowed to
flow between states at war with one another.
In order to ensure that this was, in fact, what happened in the event
of war, the Geneva Convention included a set of rules, a de facto diplo-
matic framework, allowing for each side to learn what was occurring
in the enemy’s prisoner-of-war camps and, when necessary, engage in
indirect negotiations. Under the terms of the Geneva Convention, the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and a designated
protecting power — a neutral state — were guaranteed access to camps
to make sure provisions were being observed, privately listen to any
complaints the prisoners might have, and pass reports to the other side.
If there were perceived problems in the treatment of prisoners of war,
the protecting power and the International Red Cross could serve as
go-betweens and mediators between the two parties, thus allowing for
a form of diplomacy even in the midst of war.?
I thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding the research
for this article.
1 Hague Convention with regard to Laws and Customs of War on Land, 18 Oct. 1907, quoted in
Documents on Prisoners of War: Naval War College International Law Studies, ed. Howard S. Levie
(Newport, RI, 1979), lx. 77.
2 See Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, 27 July 1929, in Levie,
Documents, Ix. 176-7; André Durand, From Sarajevo to Hiroshima: History of the International
Committee of the Red Cross (Geneva, 1984), pp. 252-8. The articles of the Geneva Convention
The International History Review, xvut, 1, February 1995, pp. 1-220.
CN ISSN 0707-5332 © The Intemational History Review. All Rights Reserved
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The Shackling Crisis 79
Moreover, in the struggle between the western allies and the
European Axis powers, the treatment of prisoners of war in practice
tended to approximate theory. Both the International Red Cross and
the protecting power (most often Switzerland) were allowed to inspect
camps and make recommendations which were usually acted upon,
and diplomatic negotiation through the Swiss and the ICRC led to
four separate exchanges involving a total of over 32,000 seriously ill
and wounded prisoners between 1942 and 1944.! The result was that
prisoners of war in the West, though rarely happy with their
condition, were at least reasonably sure of surviving until the end of
hostilities.
Conditions did vary, of course, depending on the place of captivity
and the period of the war. In terms of food and creature comforts, for
example, Axis prisoners held in the United States (the belligerent with
the highest wartime living standards) were best off.2 Yet even among
British prisoners of war in Germany, where Red Cross food parcels
were an essential supplement to the generally inadequate rations pro-
vided by a food-starved captor state, and where the period of captivity
could be up to five years, the death rate totalled only 5.1%.*
There was, however, nothing pre-ordained about this compara-
tively satisfactory state of affairs: in the Russo-German and the Pacific
Wars, observing the conventions was the exception rather than the
rule. Of the Soviet prisoners taken by the Wehrmacht, approximately
3,300,000 died in captivity — about 57.5% of the total number.* Of the
roughly three million German prisoners taken by the Red Army,
around one million died.* Similarly, of the Allied prisoners of war. in
Japanese hands, 24.8% of the British and 41.6% of the American
prisoners did not return at the end of the war.® The camp conditions
took account of the experience gained in the First World War, in which ad hoc diplomacy and
agreements between belligerents had helped defuse potential crises: Richard B. Speed III,
Prisoners, Diplomats, and the Great War: A Study in the Diplomacy of Captivity (New York, 1990).
1 International Committee of the Red Cross, Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross
on Its Activities during the Second World War (September 1, 1939—June 30, 1947): Vol. 1: General
Activities [hereafter ICRC] (Geneva, 1948), ch. 9.
2 See Arnold Krammer, Nazi Prisoners of War in America (New York, 1979); L. E. Keefer, Italian
Prisoners of War in America, 1942-1946 (New York, 1992).
3 The death rate, used to compare conditions in German and Japanese camps, is taken from The
Tokyo War Crimes Trial, comp. John R. Pritchard and Sonia Zaide (New York, 198t), vi. 12,868.
4 Theo J. Schulte, The German Army and Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia (New York, 1989), p. 1.
5 Werna Ratza, ‘Anzahl und Arbeitsleistungen der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen’, Zur Geschichte
der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkriegs: Band XV: Eine Zusammenfassung, ed. Eric
Maschke (Munich, 1974), pp. 207, 224.
6 E. Bartlett Kerr, Surrender and Survival: The Experience of American POWs in the Pacific, 1941-1945
(New York, 1985), appendix C; Tokyo War Crimes, vi. 12,868.
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80 S. P. MacKenzie
that bred such statistics — acute hunger, disease, lack of adequate
shelter and warmth, coupled with extreme brutality on the part of
guards and denial of Red Cross intervention — were, of course, in
flagrant contravention of both the Geneva and Hague conventions.!
International law as such, then, does not explain why prisoners in
the West were treated relatively well. Why, if the conventions could
be so easily discarded as rules for the treatment of prisoners of war
elsewhere, did they continue to operate in the western war theatres?
The aim of this article is to explore this question through the medium
of the shackling affair, an international crisis over the treatment of
prisoners of war in 1942-3 which might have — but, significantly, did
not — result in the breakdown of diplomatic relations and relatively
humane treatment of prisoners.
*
When the war began in September 1939, the International Red Cross
requested assurances from the belligerent states that they intended to
abide by the terms of the Geneva Convention. All replied in the
affirmative and, in the early months of the war, both sides were careful
to avoid blatant infringements as far as they were able.” Each possessed
the basic physical means to live up to Geneva standards in terms of
food and shelter. Even more important, all the nations concerned —
though to varying degrees — accepted the basic philosophical
assumption underlying the conventions: that captured enemy soldiers,
or one’s own personnel who fell into enemy hands, were no longer
combatants but simply fellow human beings who deserved to be
treated as such.
Indeed, it was precisely because this assumption was rejected by
both sides on the eastern front and especially by the Japanese in the
Pacific War, coupled with logistical problems, that prisoners of war
were treated so badly. In ideological terms, the peoples of the Soviet
Union were seen by the Nazis as racial inferiors, Untermenschen. Worse
yet, they adhered to a basically antithetical political ideology —
Bolshevism. Neither Hitler nor the Wehrmacht considered the conduct
of war in the West similar to the nature of operations in the East. The
former was a war between states fought for political ends; the latter
was nothing less than an ideological cum racial crusade.2 The Germans
1 Neither the Soviet Union nor Japan had ratified the Geneva Convention; but both were
theoretically still bound by the more general humanitarian provisions of the Hague Convention.
2 Durand, From Sarajevo to Hiroshima, pp. 401-4.
3 See Omer Bartov, Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (New York, 1991);
J. Forster, ‘Das Unternehem “Barbarossa” als Oroberungs- und Vernichtungskrieg’, Das Deutsche
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The Shackling Crisis 81
were portrayed by the Soviets in a similarly dehumanizing manner (a
task made easier by the atrocious behaviour of German personnel
towards both soldiers and civilians in occupied Russia). As one Red
Army propaganda leaflet put it: ‘The officers and men in the green
coats are not humans but wild animals,’ the kind of ‘mad dogs’ who
deserved extermination rather than compassion.’ Neither Hitler nor
Stalin, furthermore, displayed any sympathy for their own soldiers
who had failed to fight to the death in a struggle which knew no
limits.?
The Japanese also rejected from the start the assumption that a
captured soldier was a fellow human being with whom his captor
could empathize. By the end of the 1930s, the Imperial Japanese Army
had been inculcated with the idea that to surrender was a grave dis-
honour to both family and Emperor: ‘Never live to experience shame
as a prisoner,’ as the 1940 Army Field Service Code put it.> This
meant that the over 200,000 Allied prisoners of war who surrendered
in the early months of 1942, when their situation seemed hopeless,
were regarded with contempt by their Japanese captors and treated
accordingly.*
The ideological situation was, of course, different in the West. Yet
though the struggle might be initially more restrained, there appeared
no guarantee that it would remain so under the stresses of an ex-
panding conflict. The Second World War was, after all, a struggle in
which every resource eventually came to be harnessed to the war
effort and every possible means of vanquishing the enemy contem-
plated; and thus over time, even in the West, grew increasingly
antithetical in nature to a code of conduct implying restraint.
As the war in the West expanded in scope and intensity, friction
over the treatment of prisoners of war grew apace. Almost from the
beginning, incidents involving poor judgement on the part of guards
had resulted in inquiries and protests through the protecting power.
Reich und der Zweiten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 1983), iv. 416-7, 446; Keitel testimony, International
Military Tribunal, Trial of the German Major War Criminals (London, 1949), xi. 33.
1 Red Army leaflets (translated), P[olitisches] A[rchiv des Auswartigen Amtes}, Vr.Kr. 81/5.
2 For German treatment of Soviet POWs see, e.g., Christian Streit, Keine Kamaraden: Die
Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen, 1941-1945 (Stuttgart, 1978). For Soviet treatment of
German prisoners, see Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieg, bands I-
VIII, ed. Eric Maschke (Munich, 1965-73). In response to inquiries from the ICRC, both sides
claimed a willingness to treat prisoners humanely. It quickly became evident, however, that no
such willingness existed. See ICRC, ch. 11.
3 Quoted in Charlotte Cart-Gregg, Japanese Prisoners of War in Revolt (St. Lucia, Queensland,
1978), p. 25.
4 See Kerr, Surrender and Survival; W. Wynne Mason, Prisoners of War (Wellington, 1954), chs. 5,
8, 12.
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82 S. P. MacKenzie
Many such cases had been dealt with successfully through the
mechanisms set in place by the Geneva code, but as the total number
mounted and the war became more of a life or death struggle — with
Britain in the air and Germany under the sea attempting to target the
capacity and will of the enemy civilian population to resist — the
mutual trust in the other side’s basic intentions regarding prisoners
necessary for the convention to function effectively began to erode.!
The first signs that the system might be cracking under the strain
came in the wake of the hard-fought battle for control of Crete in
May 1941, the British and German governments each bitterly accusing
the other’s armed forces of having shot prisoners of war.” For the first
time, and despite the fact that Article Two of the Geneva Convention
specifically forbade reprisals against prisoners, a number of British
prisoners were confined in two gloomy and dank underground forts ~
essentially dungeons — in Silesia in retaliation for the confinement of
German prisoners in Fort Henry, Canada. This particular incident was
solved once the prisoners had been removed from Fort Henry and the
German authorities had been given proof that the nineteenth-century
fortress was not a medieval hell-hole.> Still, a line had been crossed
once, and might be again.
In the autumn of 1941 came a further set-back. Since July 1940, the
British and German governments had been negotiating the terms of an’
exchange of sick, wounded, and non-combatant armed forces per-
sonnel through the ICRC and Switzerland. The need to communicate
through third parties, and divergences of opinion over the best way of
transporting the prisoners across the Channel, prolonged discussions,
but by the late summer of 1941 all seemed set for an exchange
proportionate to the number of prisoners held by each side. As a result
of German military success in the first two years of the war, the
number of British Commonwealth prisoners of war in the Reich was
many times greater than the total number of German personnel held
in camps throughout the British Empire. A proportionate exchange,
therefore, would involve over 1,200 British prisoners returning home
as against about 150 German. This had been accepted by both sides;
but at the last moment, even as the selected prisoners were being
1 See Enemy Breaches of the Rules of Warfare, 3 Nov. 1942 [Public Record Office] CAB
66/30, WP (42)508; Imperial War Museum, Enemy Documents Series G1, MI/14/669, British
Violations of International Law, 1939-1942.
2 See [Public Record Office] FO 371/28885, W8788/297/49, W91613/297/49; Mason, Prisoners
of War, pp. 61, 101; Alfred M. de Zayas, The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945 (Lincoln,
NB, 1989), ch. 15, n. 16. :
3 [Public Record Office] WO 366/26, f. 65.
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The Shackling Crisis 83
transported to their embarkation points on 1 October 1941, the
German government — apparently on orders from the Fiihrer —
suddenly announced that an equal number of prisoners must be
retured by both sides. Having made news of the impending exchange
public, the British government was infuriated by what it perceived to
be a policy of negotiating in bad faith in order to embarrass its
adversary. Negotiations broke off amid mutual recrimination.!
Then, in late May 1942, during the battle of Gazala in Libya, the
Afrika Korps captured an order issued to the 4th Armoured Brigade
instructing guards to deny Axis prisoners food, water, and sleep until
they had been interrogated by intelligence officers. This was contrary
to the terms of the Geneva Convention, and the German High
Command (OKW) publicly announced that, as of noon on 6 June
1942, British troops captured at Gazala would be deprived of food and
drink unless the order was immediately cancelled. A crisis was avoided
when the German authorities were informed promptly via the
protecting power, Switzerland, that the offending order had not been
authorized by higher command and would be withdrawn at once.?
Though successfully resolved, the incident increased suspicions.
Worse yet, the incident was followed in a matter of months by
even more provocative actions. During the disastrous Anglo-Canadian
raid on the French port of Dieppe in August 1942, the hands of Ger-
man prisoners had been tied together in order to prevent their escape
and blindfolds had been used; what was more, the order specifying
such treatment fell into German hands. Whether or not tying
prisoners’ hands in the battle zone was contrary to the Geneva Con-
vention was, unfortunately, unclear: much depended on how the
relevant articles were interpreted. From the German perspective, how-
ever, it was unacceptably ignominious and, on 2 September 1942,
OKW publicly announced that all British and Canadian prisoners
taken at Dieppe would be shackled unless a full apology was forth-
coming from the British government. The immediate response was a
note through the Swiss government questioning the existence of an
order to tie up prisoners, while stating that, if true, ‘any such order is
to be immediately cancelled’ and categorically denying — without time
for investigation ~ that German prisoners had been tied.?
1 ICRC, pp. 374-5; British message to German government, through Swiss, 8 Oct. 1941, PA,
Vr.Kr. 94/1.
2 Thid.
3 Swiss legation note to German foreign office, 3 Sept. 1942, PA, Vr.Kr. 82/1; 2 Sept. entry in
Official Statements by His Majesty’s Government on Shackling of Prisoners of War, Dec. 1942,
CAB 66/30; encl. 22A, WO 32/10719.
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84 S. P. MacKenzie
The revelation that, in fact, prisoners had been tied up and that the
force commander, with the approval of Combined Operations Head-
quarters, did issue orders to do so was embarrassing; but matters might
have ended there if tensions had been allowed to dissipate over time.
Within a matter of weeks, however, further instances of ill-treatment
were discovered.
By August 1942, word had reached Berlin of the conditions
German officer prisoners aboard the SS Pasteur had been forced to
endure while en route from Egypt to South Africa earlier in the year.
The lieutenant-colonel in charge, apparently on the verge of a nervous
breakdown, had suspected that the prisoners were about to stage a
mutiny. He had therefore ordered a thorough search of all clothing
and personal items to uncover plans and weapons. In the process, the
prisoners, including two generals, had been forced to give up their
clothing, razors, and other personal items — many of which were
stolen or misplaced by the South African soldiers going through
them.!
Worse yet, during a British commando raid on the Channel Island
of Sark on the night of 3 October, prisoners had been taken and their
hands tied together to prevent them from destroying their papers.
Some had tried to make a run for it, and had been shot — leaving
bodies with their hands tied together and bullet holes in the back to be
found by the garrison authorities after the commandos had departed.?
Coming on top of earlier friction, these incidents proved to be
decisive. Even before the Channel Island raid, British officers confined
at Oflag IXA at Spanenberg had been stripped of soap, razors, and
other personal items in response to the Pasteur incident, pending a
British apology and reparations to the prisoners concerned.? The
events on Sark drew an even stronger response, being seen by both
Hitler and senior members of OKW as a flagrant example of British
duplicity and underhandedness. On 7 October, Hitler issued a highly
secret order that flew in the face of international law: in future,
captured commandos — though legally combatants by virtue of the
British uniforms they wore — were to be ‘slaughtered ruthlessly’. At
the same time, OKW publicly renewed its threat to shackle all the
prisoners taken at Dieppe unless the British government made an open
1 See B[undes]a[rchiv]-M[ilitar]a[rchiv], OKW/153; Report by Maj.-Gen. Schmitt on events
aboard the Pasteur, 28 Mar. 1943, Imperial War Museum, enemy documents collection, 1/965-
1/971 and Declaration of the German Supreme Command concerning the measures taken at
Oflag LXA Spanenberg, 30 Sept. 1942, Casdagli MSS; WO 366/26, f. 65; FO 370/3748, f. 16.
2 Encl. 22A, para. 5, WO 32/10719.
3 Declaration of the German Supreme Command, Casdagli MSS.
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The Shackling Crisis 85
admission of guilt and apologized unreservedly within twenty-four
hours.1
Previous German accusations had, as shown, generally been met
with protestations of innocence and efforts to appease on the part of
the British. Owing to the number of incidents during the previous
year, however, the willingness of British authorities to back down in
the face of enemy threats had diminished considerably. For the first
time, moreover, the danger of retaliation appeared so great — given the
impossible time limit and the demand for a public apology — that the
war cabinet became directly involved in prisoner-of-war diplomacy.
Meeting on 8 October to agree on the best response, the. war
cabinet found itself confronted with the belligerence of its chairman,
the prime minister, Winston Churchill. From his quite compelling
perspective, the commandos had done nothing for which an apology
should be made. The prisoners they had taken had been legitimately
fired on whilst trying to make a run for it; reprisals such as the
Germans threatened, however, were specifically banned in the Geneva
Convention. Taking a fighting stance, Churchill was able to convince
his colleagues that the German demand was nothing but an attempt to
assume a spurious position of moral superiority in the eyes of the
German populace and the international community.
A reply was therefore drawn up which stated that the British
government ‘will not countenance any orders for the tying of the
hands of prisoners of war taken in the- field’, but which also contained
the following warning: ‘should the German Government persist in
their intention, His Majesty’s Government will be compelled, in order
to protect their own prisoners of war, to take similar measures upon
an equal number of enemy prisoners of war in their hands.’>
The following day, the German authorities announced that 1,376
Canadian and British prisoners were now wearing manacles, and stated
that if any action was taken against German prisoners, three times this
number would be shackled on 10 October. Having issued their threat,
the war cabinet felt compelled to shackle an equal number of German
prisoners. The enemy responded predictably and, by 10 October, over
1 Warlimont testimony, Nuernberg Military Tribunal, Trials of War Criminals before the Nuemberg
Military Tribunals (Washington, 1946-9), xi. 127; encl. 22A, para. 5, WO 32/10719; Keitel and
Jodl testimony, Trial of the German Major War Criminals, xi. 25, xv. 404-5. For the highly negative
German public reaction to the news of Canadian troops shackling German prisoners at Dieppe,
see Marlis G. Steinert, Hitler’s War and the Germans: Public Mood and Attitude during the Second
World War, trans. Thomas E. J. de Witt (Athens, OH, 1977), p. 164.
2 Under ordinary circumstances, POW affairs were handled by the foreign office in conjunction
with the Imperial Prisoners of War Committee in the war office.
38 Oct. 1942, CAB 65/28, 126(42)2.
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86 S. P. MacKenzie
5,§00 Canadian, British, and German prisoners of war were wearing
real or substitute manacles.!
The stage now seemed set for another round of reprisal and
counter-reprisal. Though the war cabinet as a whole was betraying
signs of uncertainty, Churchill himself, according to the diary of the
permanent under-secretary at the foreign office, Sir Alexander
Cadogan, was still in ‘a silly fighting mood’. When the adjutant-
general, Sir Ronald Adam, tried to convince the prime minister to
reverse the policy, he met with a frosty response — ‘I left hurriedly.”
In Germany, meanwhile, an equally combative stance was being taken
in light of what appeared to be British duplicity in denying that
Wehrmacht personnel had been mistreated. ‘Our policy’, the state
secretary, Ernst von Weizsacker, wrote, ‘is a gamble on the weakness
of nerves of the other side.’* When Switzerland (the protecting power
for both Britain and Germany) and the ICRC, both by now
thoroughly alarmed, offered to mediate the dispute, neither side
appeared willing to make the first move.
Over the next few weeks, however, the potential consequences of
further escalation began to impinge on official thinking in both
London and Berlin: whatever the rights or wrongs of the case,
prisoners of war in enemy hands would continue to be helpless pawns
in retaliatory moves, pawns who ultimately might begin to suffer very
seriously indeed. A similar crisis over the treatment of captured U-
boat crews during the First- World War, after all, had come
dangerously close to escalating out of control and had caused consider-
able discomfort for groups of prisoners on both sides.° More recently,
unconfirmed reports in June 1940 of surrendering German airmen and
paratroopers being shot had prompted Hitler to threaten to shoot
between five and ten French prisoners for every German killed: a
threat which likely would have been carried out and which would
19 Oct. 1942, CAB 137(42). Given the numbers involved, both sides initially had some difficulty
in finding enough handcuffs and chain to go round and made do for a time with rope and twine.
See, e.g., In Enemy Hands: Canadian Prisoners of War, 1939-45, ed. Daniel G. Dancocks
(Edmonton, 1983), pp. 44-5; Werner Rings, Advokaten des Feindes: Das Abenteuer der politischen
Neutralitat (Dusseldorf, 1966), pp. 99-100.
2 Entry for 12 Oct. 1942, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 1938-1945, ed. David Dilks
(London, 1971), p. 483.
3 [Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives,] Adam MSS, viii. ch. 9, p. 4.
4 Letter, 11 Oct. 1942, Die Weizsdcker-Papiere, 1933-1950, ed. Leonadis E. Hill (Frankfurt, 1974),
Pp. 304-5.
5 Encls. 33A, 51A, WO 32/10719; ICRC, pp. 368-9; telegram 189, 9 Oct. 1942, PA, Vr.Kr. 82/1
and Ritter note, 12 Oct. 1942, PA, St.S., Krieigsgefangenfragen, bd. 1.
6 James F. Willis, Prologue to Nuremberg: The Politics and Diplomacy of Punishing War Criminals of the
First World War (Westport, CT, 1982), pp. 17 ff
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The Shackling Crisis 87
have generated reciprocal action had not the French been on the
verge of defeat (and therefore hesitant to respond at once) and if the
ICRC had not been able to show that German prisoners of war were,
in fact, being treated well.! For those concerned about where the
shackling crisis might be going, the harsh logic of such episodes served
as a sobering reminder of what might happen to those in enemy
hands. Concern and growing doubts in official circles, moreover, were
heavily reinforced by the unwillingness of allies to support further
action.
In London, it quickly became evident that the Dominion govern-~
ments were worried that the crisis might escalate to the point where it
would adversely affect more and more prisoners and, within days of
the first round of shackling, were informing London of their strong
desire for a negotiated solution.2 The Canadian government was
particularly concerned. In order to live up to its threat to match the
first German reprisal, the British government on 8 October had asked
that prisoners of war held in Canada be shackled. As London had
already made its warning public, Ottawa acceded to the British
request; but over the following days made it clear that it was not at all
happy with how the crisis was being handled.
The majority of prisoners in chains in Germany were, after all,
Canadians; and fears concerning their welfare were only heightened
when a riot broke out in a camp near Bowmanville, Ontario, after
guards attempted to shackle the German inmates. ‘The British’, the
prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, confided in his diary
on 10 October, ‘have bungled the business terribly.’> Official com-
munications were more polite but adamant in refusing Churchill’s
wish to match the number of prisoners the Germans had now
shackled.4
The Dominions had at least made known their objections privately.
The United States was less discreet. Though Washington had not been
approached to provide support, there was concern in the White
House that the shackling crisis might place future American prisoners
of war in jeopardy. In press conferences, the president, Franklin D.
Roosevelt, and the secretary of state, Cordell Hull, made it clear that
1 Marcel Junod, Warrior without Weapons (London, 19st), pp. 156 ff; FO 371/25164,
W7843/ 424/49.
2 Canada to D[ominions] O[ffice], 9 Oct. 1942, CAB 66/50, f. 148; encl. 29A, Gov’t of South
Africa to Union High Commissioner (London), 10 Oct. 1942, Australia to DO, 11 Oct. 1942,
New Zealand to DO, 12 Oct. 1942: WO 32/10719.
3 10 Oct. 1942 [Public Archives of Canada], King Diary.
4 Ibid., 12 Oct. 1942; Massey to Attlee, 10 Oct. 1942, CAB 66/30; Vincent Massey, What’s Past
is Prologue (New York, 1964), pp. 324-5.
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88 S. P. MacKenzie
the government of the United States would abide by the letter of the
Geneva Convention and not involve itself in reprisals.!
In Germany, meanwhile, the foreign minister, Joachim von
Ribbentrop, was discovering that the major Axis partners were equally
disinclined to support further action. In the second week in October,
Ribbentrop had contacted the German ambassador at Rome about the
possibility of a joint Axis policy on the shackling issue. The idea was
to make the British concede defeat when faced with a general threat
to prisoners of war in Axis hands and allow Germany to declare a
moral victory. Unfortunately, the Italian government saw things
differently. With 260,000 Italians prisoner in British hands, as against
far fewer British prisoners in Italian hands, Italy would be at a
disadvantage if it got involved in reprisals. Specifically, Mussolini was
worried about the effect of reprisals on the morale on the home front,
and the German ambassador was informed that Italy in effect would be
able to do nothing.?
Ribbentrop had greater hopes for co-operation with Japan. Unlike
the Italians, the Japanese held well over 200,000 Allied prisoners of
war, while the Allies held only a handful of Japanese. Yet the Japanese,
as the German ambassador at Tokyo reported, were clearly not
interested in getting involved in an escalating cycle of reprisals —
especially once it was clear that Italy would stay out. Though treating
its own prisoners with contempt, and quite willing to overlook the
welfare of Japanese prisoners in enemy hands, the Japanese govern-
ment was nevertheless concerned that adopting publicized reprisals
(unlike the brutal treatment of prisoners of war in Japanese camps
from which the ICRC and protecting powers were barred and which
therefore remained only rumoured for many months) would place the
large number of Japanese civilians interned in North America at risk.
Officially, Berlin was informed that reprisals would be ‘contrary to the
Bushido spirit’.°
Beyond loose agreements to present a united propaganda front to
the world — and even this did not hold true for the United States —
neither Britain nor Germany had gained any tangible support from its
major partners. Meanwhile, pressure was being exerted to pursue some
form of mutually acceptable climb-down.
* ok Ok
1 Halifax to FO, 28 Oct. 1942, CAB 122/232.
2 Mackensen to Weizsacker, 14 Oct. 1942, PA, St.S., Kriegsgefangenfragen, bd. 1.
3 Affidavit of Alfred E. Kretschmer (German military attaché, Tokyo), Trial of the German Major
War Criminals, xi. Defense Document 1,520, p. 27,436; Ribbentrop to Ort, 16 Oct. 1942, Ott to
Ribbentrop, 19, 20, 23, 24, 26 Oct. 1942, PA, St.S., Kriegsgefangenfragen, bd. 1.
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The Shackling Crisis 89
In London, the Canadian high commissioner, Vincent Massey, and his
personal assistant, George Ignatieff, continued to press the war cabinet
to avoid provocative actions and pursue a negotiated solution. Senior
military officers such as Ronald Adam remained ambivalent at best,
while reports from the home intelligence section of the ministry of
information indicated that the public was growing steadily more
anxious over the fate of prisoners of war.! In Berlin, Helmuth von
Moltke and other humanitarian-minded members of the international
law section of the Abwehr endeavoured to persuade Ribbentrop that
what Germany was doing was probably illegal and certainly counter-
productive in relation to the future welfare of prisoners of war in
enemy hands.”
There were, however, difficulties in bringing about a reversal of
policy. Despite pressure from the Canadian government to break the
impasse through unilateral action — that is, to cease shackling German
prisoners as a means of persuading the German authorities to do
likewise — Churchill was evidently still reluctant to make the first
move.> Ribbentrop, taking his lead from the Fiihrer, continued to
take what a Swiss representative described as an ‘obdurate’ stance.
Despite an apparent willingness to discuss ICRC intervention, Hitler’s
refusal, when doubts were voiced by moderates within OKW, to
modify the secret commando order was a clear indication that he was
still in a vengeful frame of mind.*
By November, however, moves were afoot in London to break the
impasse. Frustrated by Churchill’s resistance, the Canadian govern-
ment decided to take radical action. Like the other Dominions,
Canada had since the beginning of the war agreed that the welfare of
Commonwealth prisoners of war in enemy hands should be overseen
by the foreign office and a branch of the war office in London (the
Imperial Prisoners of War Committee). The shackling crisis, however,
had severely strained Ottawa’s faith in this system — certainly as far as
putting the fate of Canadian prisoners in the hands of a strong-minded
British premier whose judgement was notoriously fickle. With the
strong support of Massey in London, Mackenzie King and his senior
1 Home Intelligence weekly report no. 115, 17 Dec. 1942 [Public Record Office, Ministry of]
INF[ormation] 1/292; Adam MSS, viii. ch. 9, p. 4; Massey, What’s Past, pp. 324-5.
2 Ger van Roon, ‘Graf Moltke als Volkerrechtler im OKW’, Vierteljahrshefte fiir Zeitgeschichte,
xviii (1970), 267; letters 12 Oct., 10 Dec. 1942, Helmuth James von Moltke, Letters to Freya,
1939-1945, ed. and trans. Beate Ruhm von Oppen (New York, 1990), pp. 253, 267, n. 3.
325 Oct. 1942, CAB 65/28, 145(42)4; encl. 106A, Canada to DO, 24 Oct. 1942, WO 32/10719;
113A, 24 Oct. 1942, FWCA/M (42) 12; Massey, What’s Past, pp. 325-6; W[illiam] L[yon]
M[ackenzie] K{ing] report on conversation with Malcolm Macdonald, 6 Nov. 1942, King Diary.
4 Encl. 167A, WO 32/10719; ICRC, p. 369; Tokyo War Crimes, xi. 132-5.
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go S. P. MacKenzie
ministers had decided by the fourth week of the crisis that indepen-
dent action would have to be taken. Canada would unshackle its own
Germans in the hope of generating reciprocal action in the Reich.
‘Churchill will not like this,’ Mackenzie King noted in his diary, ‘but
he is wrong in the point of view he is taking.”!
Announced in a cable dated 2 December, the proposed action had a
salutary effect on war cabinet resolve. Churchill, in the view of at least
one minister, had so far tended to dominate decisions on the shackling
issue by sheer force of personality.2 At a war cabinet meeting on 3
December, however, despite his argument that ‘the action proposed
by the Canadian Government was very unlikely to result in the
German Government unshackling British prisoners,’ the majority of
those present agreed that it would be ‘most unfortunate’ if an open rift
developed — and that therefore Britain ought to follow Canada’s lead.
As a face-saving device, the Swiss should be secretly asked to propose
to both sides that their prisoners should be unshackled on a particular
date — at which point, hopefully, the Germans would follow suit in
retreating from a dangerous position.’
In Germany, meanwhile, there were signs that the doves were
gaining the upper hand. On 28 November, prisoners of war in Oflag
IXA were informed that their personal items would be returned to
them, even though — at least officially — the tone of the British
response and offer of recompense for the Pasteur prisoners was said to
be inadequate.* Even more significant was the decision within OKW
at the start of December to unshackle all prisoners over Christmas.®
The British and Canadian governments made public affirmations of
their acceptance of the (orchestrated) Swiss proposal to each side that
prisoners of war should be unshackled in the middle of December,°
but the German authorities, although paying close attention, remained
non-committal. The foreign office reply, in two notes dated 12
December, stated that a commitment by the British not to tie
prisoners’ hands on the battlefield was a necessary pre-condition to
123 Oct. 1942, King Diary.
2 Report on conversation with Malcolm Macdonald, 6 Nov. 1942, ibid.
33 Dec. 1942, CAB 65/28, 164(42)3; Ottawa to DO, 2 Nov. 1942, Mackenzie King to
Churchill, 3 Nov. 1942, WO 32/107913. :
4 See 28 Nov. 1942, Casdagli MSS; WO 366/26, f. 65; FO 370/3748, f. 16; encl. 319A, foreign
office to Berne legation, 25 Nov. 1942, WO 32/10719.
5 Encl. 224A, Norton to Eden, 4 Dec. 1942, WO 32/10719; Ritter memo, 24 Dec. 1942, PA,
Vr.Kr. 82/1, R 31922.
6 Encl. 264A, London to Berne, 15 Dec. 1942 and 240A, Berne to London, 8 Dec. 1942, WO
32/10719; 7 Dec. 1942, King Diary.
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The Shackling Crisis gI
acceptance of the Swiss proposal.! As if to underline the point, British
and Canadian prisoners were reshackled the day after Christmas
despite Swiss requests that the reprisal be left in abeyance.”
Faced with alarming indications from the Swiss that Germany was
toying with the idea of breaking off formal communications on the
matter, yet still unwilling for military reasons to give a blanket guaran-
tee that prisoners would never be bound on the battlefield, the war
cabinet in London, in consultation with the Canadian government,
spent the first weeks of the new year debating the wording of the
formal British reply to the German statement. There was little hope in
either capital, however, that anything less than total capitulation
before German demands — something even the Canadian government
was unwilling to accept — would end the shackling. If Hitler decided
to renounce the Geneva Convention, then no amount of diplomatic
activity would stop him.?
Like the German statement of 12 December 1942, therefore, the
British response, delivered through Switzerland on 18 February 1943,
was little more than a restatement. Not surprisingly, this was found to
be unsatisfactory in Berlin — matters only being made worse by
outrage over the use of Jews as guards for German prisoners in a camp
in Palestine. Living conditions in the newly established Stalag 319 in
Cholm, Poland, were made very harsh in retaliation,* and in reply to
the latest British statement on the shackling issue, Hitler ordered
Ribbentrop to respond that it merely confirmed ‘that the danger of
German prisoners being shackled by British or Canadian troops will
continue to exist in future’. Ominously, the message ended with a
warning that London and Ottawa ‘alone bear responsibility if measures
of reprisal exercised on the German side against British and Canadian
prisoners of war continue in force’.>
Yet the German position was, in fact, rather more flexible than it
seemed. Now that the enemy had given up shackling, one of the
central reasons for chaining British and Canadian prisoners of war had
disappeared. What was more, between November 1942 and March
1 Berlin to Berne, 10, 12 Dec. 1942 and Ribbentrop to Ritelen, 22 Dec. 1942, tel. no. 3948, PA,
Buro St.S., Kriegsgefangenfragen, bd. 1; 24 Dec. 1942, PA, Vr.Kr. 82/2, zu R 31922.
2 30 Dec. 1942, CAB 65/28, 174(42)3.
3 4 Jan. 1943, CAB 65/33, 1(43)6; 18 Jan. 1943, CAB 10(43)4; 25 Jan. 1943, CAB 16(43)5; 27
Jan. 1943, CAB 18(43)2; 5 Feb. 1943, CAB 24(33)1; 8 Feb. 1943, CAB 26(43)3; encls. 319-3A,
3B, Berne to London, 19 Jan. 1943, WO 32/10719.
4 WO 366/26, f. 65.
5 Encl. 357A, Berne to London, 17 Mar. 1943, WO 32/109719; tel. 568, Berlin to Berne, 10
Mar. 1943, Hewel note for Ribbentrop, 18 Feb. 1943, tel. 383, Berne to Berlin, 18 Feb. 1943,
PA, Buro St.S., Kriegsgefangenfragen, bd. 1, RAM 39/43.
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92 S. P. MacKenzie
1943, the western allies had taken over 100,000 German prisoners in
North Africa, which, among other things, made the number of
captives on each side less uneven than it had been when the crisis
began and probably focused greater attention on the welfare of
captured Germans — particularly the newly incarcerated seriously ill
and wounded. Those within OKW who had doubted the wisdom of
the reprisal policy from the start were able to make a much stronger
case: the successful negotiation of an exchange of prisoners would be
unlikely if Germany continued to shackle enemy prisoners. Even
Ribbentrop, apparently, was won over to the position that the
shackling would have to be abandoned.!
Hitler himself, however, remained obdurate. When OKW sug-
gested in April 1943 that the shackling order be enforced less strictly in
order to facilitate negotiations over the affair and over the exchange of
prisoners, he rejected the idea.” This forced those in favour of ending
the affair to pursue their goal circuitously. From the start, not all camp
commandants had been particularly zealous in carrying out the
shackling order; and, from early in the new year, shackling, in most
cases, was allowed in practice (though not in theory) to become
largely symbolic. Fewer and fewer prisoners were actually being
shackled, and it was known that those who still were had learned to
pick the locks. Significantly, the protecting power and ICRC repres-
entatives were allowed to observe and report these developments to
the authorities in London.?
There were other signs of a desire for compromise. In March 1943,
the German foreign office at last replied in the affirmative to a Swiss
government proposal (made in March 1942 but put on hold in both
London and Berlin in order to deal with the shackling crisis) that
negotiations begin again with a view to an exchange of sick and
wounded British and German prisoners.* Some weeks later, after it
had been ascertained by ICRC delegates that Italian prisoners had
been substituted for Germans in the camp guarded by Jews in
Palestine, the retaliatory camp in Cholm was shut down.>
Within the British foreign office, these moves were perceived as
efforts to defuse the situation quietly, and it was agreed in the war
1 Trial of the German Major War Criminals, xv. 367; encl. 420A, Berne to London, 6 Aug. 1943,
WO 32/10719. ;
2 OKW to foreign office, 21 Apr. 1943, PA, Vr.Kr. 82/3.
3 Encl. 338A, Berne to London, 17 Feb., 345A, same to same, 21 Feb. 1943, WO 32/10719; 22
Feb. 1943, CAB 65/33, 33(43)2; note, 12 Oct. 1943, PA, Botschafter Ritter, 2/7.
4 Berne to Berlin, 26 May 1942, PA, Vr.Kr. 94/2 and Ritelen to Albrecht, 30 Dec. 1942, 94/3;
CAB 65/34, $6(43)8.
5 ICRC, p. 371; WO 366/26, f. 65.
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The Shackling Crisis 93
cabinet in April that this time Britain should agree to an exchange of
sick and wounded prisoners without worrying about numerical
equality among the different types of personnel. The subsequent
negotiations were tedious and time-consuming, but made progress. It
seemed possible that if an exchange could be successfully carried out,
then the shackling — symbolic or otherwise — would finally cease.
Churchill, still annoyed that Hitler had forced the Allies to back
down, in July broached the idea to his war cabinet colleagues of trying
to regain the initiative by warning Berlin that ‘unless within a specified
time the German Government gave satisfactory assurances that the
shackling of British prisoners had been discontinued’, London would
promise to ‘shackle German officers after the war for a corresponding
number of man-hours’. When this plan was formally discussed in the
war cabinet on 2 August, it quickly became evident that Churchill
would receive absolutely no support. It was clear that the Dominions
would be opposed, and both the foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, and
the minister of war, P. J. Grigg, well briefed by their staffs, made the
crucial point that any such démarche would transform symbolic
shackling in German camps into the real thing. Perhaps recalling that
his refusal to reconsider the decision to treat U-boat crews as criminals
in the face of German reprisals against British: prisoners of war had
been one of the secondary issues used by opponents successfully to
demand his removal from the admiralty in May 1916,> Churchill
announced that ‘in view of the doubts which had been expressed, he
would not press his suggestion at the present time.”
By the summer of 1943, from the perspective of the Swiss govern-
ment in its role as protecting power, the time seemed right for a new
initiative to bring the crisis to an end. On 17 August, the Swiss
ambassador at Berlin approached the German foreign office with what
was characterized as an ‘unofficial suggestion’ from the Swiss foreign
minister, Marcel Pilet-Golaz. An end to the shackling would benefit
the treatment of prisoners of war on both sides, and would facilitate
the exchange negotiations. What was more, there need be no formal
declaration implying any loss of face — the Swiss minister could simply
report to London, through Berne, that the shackling had ceased.*
1 Encl. 338A, Berne to London, 17 Feb., 345A, same to same, 21 Feb. 1943, WO 32/10719; 20
Apr. 1943, CAB 65/34, 56(43)8; Swiss embassy to foreign office, 7 May 1943, PA, B.St.S,
Kriegsgefangenfragen, bd. 1, Ua 55 694 and PA, Vr.Kr. 94/2, 94/3.
2 19 July 1943, CAB 65/35, 101(43)2.
3 Willis, Prologue to Nuremberg, pp. 19-21.
4 CAB 109(43)3; encl. 412A, brief by Lt.-Col. H. J. Phillimore, 31 July 1943, WO 32/10719.
5 Steengrecht to Weizsacker, 17 Aug. 1943, PA, B.St.S., Kriegsgefangenfragen, bd. 1, nr. 390.
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94 S. P. MacKenzie
Anxious to expedite the exchange of wounded, Ribbentrop
adopted this idea as his own, his only concern being to make abso-
lutely sure that the British and Canadians had lived up to their
declaration that no German prisoners of war were being tied.! In the
third week of October 1943, after months of negotiation, an exchange
of $,195 British and 5,765 German prisoners took place by ship
through the ports of Gothenberg, Barcelona, and Oran.? By this point,
even Hitler had come to the conclusion that there was nothing further
to be gained through shackling, and that as long as the matter was
handled quietly and informally — without press coverage or an official
renunciation of the German position — then shackling should cease.3
Hence, without any fanfare, orders were issued by OKW to cease all
shackling of British and Canadian prisoners on 22 November. The
ICRC was informed beforehand and, by 4 December, its delegates in
Berlin were able to pass on the news to London that this was, in fact,
the case.* As in Germany, the government made efforts to restrain the
press from playing up the news.°
* kK *
Tacit agreement to let the shackling issue die a natural death did not
mean the end of Anglo-German friction over the treatment of
prisoners of war. As the war grew more intense, so too did the natural
urge to retaliate against enemy captives. The fierce fighting in
Normandy in the summer of 1944, for example, generated charges of
battlefield atrocities against British and Canadian prisoners by Waffen
SS units, while the civilian casualties resulting from RAF area
bombing of German cities in the latter stages of the war generated a
growing reluctance on the part of Nazi Party officials to protect
bomber crews landing by parachute from being torn apart by the mob.
There was, as well, an order from Hitler to shoot the seventy-six
prisoners who broke out of Luft Stalag III near Sagan in March 1944.’
1 Ritter to Albrecht, 30 Aug. 1943, PA, Botschafter Ritter 2/7, nr. 322.
2 ICRC, pp. 379-80; Folke Bernadotte, Instead of Arms (London, 1949), pp. 29-30.
322 Nov. 1943, PA, Botschafter Ritter 2/7, nr. $34.
4 Encl. 433A, Berne to London, 23 Nov., encl. 435A, same to same, 4 Dec. 1943, WO
32/10719.
5 Encl. 450A, Guidance Memorandum for Editors, 16 Dec. 1943, WO 32/10719.
6 Zayas, Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, pp. 116 ff. These killings in turn led to impromptu
battlefield reprisals by individual Canadian soldiers. See Senate of Canada, Proceedings of the
Standing Senate Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs (Ottawa, 1993), 9A: 107-10; 10: 40-1. Such actions
do not appear to have been reported to the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau: Zayas, Wehrmacht
War Crimes Bureau, passim.
7 Brauchitsch testimony, Trial of the German Major War Criminals, ix. 2, xi. 34, 38; Jodl testimony,
Xv. 313; Biichs testimony, xvi. 47-8; Office of the United States Chief Consul for Prosecution of
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The Shackling Crisis 95
In the early months of 1945, Hitler even seriously considered a
proposal from his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, that the
thousands of Allied aircrew currently in prisoner-of-war camps be
executed as a reprisal for the catastrophic effects of the firestorm
bombing of Dresden, and even appeared to be on the brink of
abandoning the Geneva Convention entirely. !
The shackling affair, however, had shown both the British and the
German authorities in concrete terms what hitherto had only been a
theoretical (though likely) scenario: that retaliation directed against
prisoners of war would be reciprocated. In light of this, both sides
took a more cautious line in subsequent potential crises. Though the
Fiihrer and senior Nazi Party figures such as Goebbels and Martin
Bormann were more willing to place German prisoners at risk than
was the war cabinet in London to jeopardize the welfare of British
prisoners, it is highly significant that even the actions mentioned above
did not produce anything resembling the kind of escalatory cycle of
reprisal and counter-reprisal characteristic of the early stages of the
shackling affair.
Recognizing that Hitler was likely to risk more harm to prisoners
than the western allies would be prepared to match, the British
government, careful always to consult the Commonwealth govern-
ments (and, when necessary, Washington) to generate an agreed
response, deliberately avoided provocative action. When evidence of
the shooting of commandos and news of the killing of fifty of the
escapees from Luft Stalag III leaked out, no retaliatory action was
taken beyond public protests and warnings directed at the specific
perpetrators (as opposed to the German government) that their
unlawful actions would not be forgotten.?
The German military authorities, meanwhile, in concert with the
German foreign office, did their best to limit retaliation against Allied
Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (Washington, 1946-8) iv. 1676-PS, pp. 187-8;
Arthur A. Durand, Stalag Luft III: The Secret Story (Baton Rouge, LA, 1988); Steinert, Hitler’s
War, pp. 202 ff. There was, to be sure, a good deal of hypocrisy in Nazi outrage over area
dombing, since it was the Luftwaffe that had first targeted civilians back in 1939-40. The British
authorities had always done their best to protect shot-down German bomber crews from
ipontaneous civilian attacks, and at no time sanctioned lynching (unlike Bormann, who, in a
sircular to senior Nazi Party officials, condoned such action). See Trial of the German Major War
Criminals, xx. 96; Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, iii. 102.
| 8 Mar. 1945 entry, The Goebbels Diaries: The Last Days, ed. Hugh Trevor-Roper (London,
1978), p. 78; Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader, trans. C. Fitzgibbon (London, 1952), p. 437; Trial of
‘he German Major War Criminals, ix. 2, 239, XV. 313, XVi. 47-8, xx. 96, ili. 239; Nazi Conspiracy
and Aggression, 1676-PS, iii. 057-PS, p. 102, iv. 187-9.
» 19 June 1944, CAB 65/42, 80(44)8; P. J. Grigg statement, 404 House of Commons Debates,
‘Deb.) 5s, col. 619; Stimson to Leahy, in Krammer, Nazi Prisoners of War, p. 258.
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96 S. P. MacKenzie
prisoners of war and to ameliorate its effects. Hitler himself wanted to
keep news of his orders to shoot surrendered commandos and the
recaptured Sagan prisoners a secret, presumably to protect Germans in
Allied hands; and though refusing actually to rescind the commando
order, and furious over the bombing of cities and strafing attacks by
Allied fighters, he was eventually dissuaded from renouncing the
Geneva Convention and taking revenge for Dresden by senior military
and foreign office members who stressed that this would undoubtedly
place German prisoners of war in jeopardy. The Allies might not
reciprocate to the same degree, but they might take some less extreme
counter-measure among the hundreds of thousands of German
personnel in prisoner-of-war camps.
Even when Hitler insisted that the Wehrmacht allow German
civilians to beat to death those who parachuted into Germany during
air raids, the armed forces high command could respond with what
the OKW chief of operations staff, Colonel-General Alfred Jodl,
characterized as ‘a sort of passive resistance’ involving burying the
order in red tape and continuing to ship surrendered airmen to the
comparative safety of prisoner-of-war camps.! The only potential crisis
which could not be controlled was the Sagan affair, largely because
Reichsftihrer SS Heinrich Himmler acted on Hitler’s orders before
OKW and the foreign office had a chance to intervene. Even in this
case, the authorities had tried (though with little chance of success
given the number of dead prisoners) to cover up the actions of the
Gestapo so as to avoid retaliation.”
On the single occasion when OKW actively supported retaliatory
action against British prisoners after the shackling affair had ended —
when reports arrived of the spartan living conditions for German
officers in Camp 306 in Egypt led to similar conditions being imposed
on the inmates of Oflag VIIB and Stalag 357 in January 1945 — the
matter was handled without public fanfare and was merely an
1 Jodl testimony, Trial of the German Major War Criminals, xv. 284, 418-20; Jahrreis testimony,
xvi. 47; Winter testimony, xvi. 63; Speer testimony, xvii. 32; Fritzche testimony, xvii. 317, xiii.
274-6; Wagner testimony, xvii. 355-6; Steengrecht testimony, x. 84, iv. 259-60; Teilnahme des
Ob.S.M. an der Fiihrerlage am 19.2.45, 20 Feb. 1945, BA-MA, OKM/g5; Albert Speer, Inside
the Third Reich, trans. R. and C. Wilson (New York, 1970), p. 544. For red tape over the
question of killing Allied airmen, see Terrorflieger items, BA-MA, OK W/962z. It should be noted,
however, that the figures involved in this may well have exaggerated the extent of such
‘resistance’ to Hitler at the Nuremberg Trial.
2 WO 366/26, fF. 68-9; Westhoff testimony, Trial of the German Major War Criminals, xi. 193 ff;
G. M. Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary (New York, 1947), p. 246. In this case, it was Hitler and the
security authorities who orchestrated the cover-up. OKW thought it unlikely to succeed given
the enormity of the crime.
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The Shackling Crisis 97
inconvenience for the prisoners concerned.! The British government
protested through the protecting power yet, despite pressure in
parliament, continued to avoid taking any counter-action against
German prisoners.?
kk O*
The shackling crisis, in short, had forced both sides to consider the
practical consequences of what might be termed the ‘mutual hostage’
factor. Tensions had risen to the point where the future of the Geneva
Convention, and with it the well-being of prisoners of war in enemy
hands, appeared bleak. Having adopted confrontational tactics and
engaged in a cycle of reprisal and counter-reprisal which saw the
shackling of over five thousand British, Canadian, and German
prisoners of war and generated a crisis which threatened to escalate
further — perhaps involving action against prisoners of allied nations
and harsher action — both sides found themselves on the brink of
disaster. As the resolution of the affair in 1943 and the course of
subsequent prisoner-of-war diplomacy shows — including the
successful completion in May and September 1944 of two more major
prisoner exchanges? — the evolution of the shackling crisis
demonstrated beyond a doubt that harsh treatment of prisoners on one
side could and would produce harsh treatment on the other.
The lesson was clear. In a situation in which both sides were
concerned about the welfare of prisoners of war in enemy hands — a
function of viewing the struggle in essentially political rather than
absolute racial cum ideological terms, so that the enemy remained
human (and thus capable of humane conduct) — then, in spite of
related or unrelated provocations, there were limits to the extent to
which the Geneva code could be abandoned with impunity.
In and of itself, an international code of conduct agreed to in
peacetime was a poor defence against the pressures of total war — as
illustrated by the progressive abandonment of limitations on submarine
and aerial warfare. However, assuming that the conflict was still
essentially a political struggle, then concern over the fate of prisoners
of war in enemy hands could and did serve as an essential buttress to
the letter of the law. What the shackling crisis had done was serve as a
warning of what could happen if the mutual-hostage factor was
ignored. The shackling crisis was crucial in reminding both sides of
this likelihood. In the context of the war in the West, therefore, it was
1 Diary of F. J. Stewart, 15 Jan. 1945 and FSS files, H/22/111, annex 1, p. 3: Imperial War
Museum; BA-MA, OKW/143.
2 407 House of Commons (Deb.) $s, col. 2,069; 409, $s, col. 1,667.
3 ICRC, p. 380; PA, Vr.Kr. 94a/2, 94a/3, 94a/4, 94/4, 95/1-2.
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98 S. P. MacKenzie
an important turning-point in the diplomacy surrounding the treat-
ment of prisoners of war. If one can trace a growing impatience and
desire to retaliate in the first years of the war, the realities the shackling
crisis highlighted can be seen to have induced a much more cautious
and flexible approach to prisoner-of-war diplomacy in the latter years
— especially (though by no means exclusively) on the Allied side. By
the end of the war, the International Red Cross had been forced to
conclude that, as its president, Max Huber, put it, ‘practical success
depends not only on legal reciprocity, but also on one national interest
balancing with the other’.!
University of South Carolina
1ICRC, p. 35.