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March 2002 Volume 10 Number 7 Published by The WW II History Roundtable Edited by Jim and Jon Gerber Welcome to the March meeting of the Dr. Harold C. Deutsch World War Two History Roundtable. Tonight’s program is about escape and evasion behind enemy lines. What must it have been like, fleeing for your life and not knowing who you could trust, if anyone. There was a story that was told by one of the POW’s who was at the air show booth for POW’s sponsored by the Roundtable. This gentleman was captured in Italy and after some time, he and a buddy managed to escape and were on the run for two months. Unfortunately, they were recaptured but released at the end of the war. When he went to collect his back pay, he found that the Army had docked him two month’s pay. When he questioned this, he was told that for those two months that he was on the run, he was neither a POW nor fighting in the Army, therefore, he lost two months pay. This same veteran told another story which may have to be taken with a grain of salt, but is yet worthy of telling. It seems that he and his buddy heard that Rome was an open city, so they headed for Rome hoping to have a little more freedom. When they got there they found the city to be full of Germans. As they were walking down a street, they saw some Germans coming toward them and they split up. The vet that I spoke with ran down a small street and as he passed a group of nuns, a rather large nun said, “Here son, get under my habit.” He did so and heard the boots of the soldiers going by. After a few minutes the nun told him that he could come out as it was now safe. He thanked the sister and said, “By the way sister, you’ve got pretty hairy legs for a woman.” Whereupon she told him that she was not a nun but another escaped prisoner. Prisoners of War On September 21, 1945, Georg Gaetner, a German POW, escaped from Deming Army Air Force Base in New Mexico, apparently to avoid being sent back to Germany after the War. Although the FBI stopped looking for him in 1963, he remained at large until the late 1980’s, when, having quietly lived and raised a family, he voluntarily surrendered. Gaetner received an instant pardon and afterward wrote a moderately successful book about his adventures and even visited Germany again. Gaetner was one of millions who found themselves to be unwilling guests of the enemy. It appears that at least 8 million men were captured during the war exclusive of hordes of Japanese and German troops that surrendered at the end of the war. The treatment of the prisoners varied greatly. The United States and Great Britain accorded the prisoners their rights under the Geneva Convention, but this was not a common practice. The records of Axis treatment ranged from poor to criminal. While, with some exceptions, Germany respected the rights of US and British POW’s, they treated the Russians and other prisoners brutally, causing millions to die from starvation, exposure and deliberate murder. The Soviets reciprocated in kind. Japanese treatment of prisoners was deplorable and the death rate among US and British prisoners ran abut 30%, more than three times than those who were in German hands. This was still better than the treatment generally accorded Asian troops captured by the Japanese. As the word spread of the Japanese attitude toward prisoners of war, it became rather difficult for Japanese troops to surrender in the unlikely event that they wanted to surrender. As a result, only a handful of Japanese troops became prisoners although the number increased as their morale worsened toward the end of the war. German troops, especially SS men, faced a similar problem after the Malmedy massacre, where on December 17, 1944, on the second day of the Battle of the Bulge, many American prisoners of war were slaughtered by troops of the 1st SS Panzer Division. The SS troops also had similar problems with Canadian units because of Malmedy-like atrocities months earlier in Norway. About 425,000 German and 53,000 Italian prisoners of war were transported to the US for incarceration during the war. Most of these men were housed in camps only a little more heavily guarded than regular army posts. In general, they were well treated. Many of the German POW’s came back to the United States and settled here and became citizens. Why? In her old age Erika Waag Canaris, widow of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, wartime chief of German military intelligence and a prime mover in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler in July 1944, was supported by an American pension apparently arranged by Allen Dulles, who for many years was the head of the CIA. First Things First On the eve of the D-Day landings in Normandy, the OSS and SOE stepped up their infiltration of agents into occupied France. Many of these men and women had exciting experiences. But few must have been as unusual as that of a French agent who parachuted into Brittany shortly before the invasion to help the Resistance. The fellow came down in a field at night and quickly began to dig a hole to bury his parachute. As he did so, he saw a figure approaching and gave the indicated call sign. Upon getting the correct countersign, he resumed burying his chute. Suddenly a rather attractive woman knelt by his side and began digging up the parachute. “What are you doing? Orders are to bury parachutes!” Without looking up, the young woman replied, “Who cares, I haven’t seen silk this good since before the war.” Surprise! Adolf Hitler’s elation upon receiving word of the successful Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor soon turned to anger when he discovered that not one of his senior military advisors knew where the place was. Psychological Warfare One of the many secret projects undertaken by the US during WW II was a psychological warfare proposal to strike a blow at Japanese morale by painting Mount Fuji red. This project was abandoned only after someone calculated how much paint and how many aircraft would be required for the project. More Reading On Tonight’s Topic: Rosa’s Miracle Mouse by Agnes Willard Daluge Author’s Direct Books Chanhassen, MN 1999 For sale tonight. Mission Failure and Survival by Charles C. McBride Sunflower University Press Manhatten, Kansas 1989 In the Shadow of the Rising Sun by Judy Hyland Augsburg Publishing House Minneapolis, MN 1984 For sale tonight. Silent Heroes: Downed Airmen and the French Underground by Sherri Greene Ottis University Press of Kentucky Lexington, Kentucky 2001 Courage and Air Warfare by Mark Wells F. Cass Portland, Oregon 1995 Home From Siberia: The Secret Odysseys of Interned American Airmen in WW II by Otis Hayes Texas A & M Press College Station, TX 1990 Agents for Escape: Inside the French Resistance by Andre Rougeyron Louisiana State University Press Baton Rouge, LA 1996 Zemke’s Stalag: the Final Days of WW II by Hubert Zemke and Roger Freeman Smithsonian Institution Press Washington, D.C. 1991 See you next month