The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945

by Nicholas Stargardt

For years, labour details of concentration camp prisoners had been an increasingly common sight in German town and cities; now the evacuation marches tore the last veil of secrecy away from their treatment. Many onlookers were shocked by the emaciated, shambling figures and the brutality of their guards, and recoiled behind closed doors in quiet horror. But feelings of compassion and guilt were less prevalent than fear. Even the prisoners’ suffering damned them. Germans told themselves, ‘What crimes they must have committed to be treated so cruelly!’ When the prisoners from Auschwitz were marched through Polish towns in Silesia in January, they were sometimes hidden and often given food and drink by sympathetic locals; but as the exhausted columns wound their way through German towns and villages in the spring of 1945, the general reaction was revulsion and fear. More people jeered, spat and threw stones at them than offered assistance.