Overview

Between 1939 and 1945 almost 200,000 British and Commonwealth Servicemen were held as Prisoners of War in Germany. All those under the rank of sergeant were eligible for work and during those six years few enjoyed the rosy PoW life that is forever engraved in the imagination of the British public. In this mythologised version of events the camps are perceived as institutions whose atmosphere and conditions were a mixture between a severe boarding school and a strict holiday camp. There were tales of heroism, evasion and escape, of tunnels, forgers and masters of disguise. The image was fostered of resolutely middle-class officers staging escapes with 'devil- may-care' bravery, anxious to get home ready for another 'crack at the Hun'. However as Sean Longden shows in Hitler's British Slaves the reality was chillingly different. Instead, most endured a daily fight for survival - the tunnels they dug were deep underground in German coalmines, not a route to escape. They worked 12 hour shifts, six days a week - cutting timber, quarrying stone, harvesting crops, laying railway lines, cutting ice from frozen rivers and clearing bombsites. They toiled alongside concentration camp inmates, ate starvation rations, faced disease and daily attacks by their guards. Here are the details of what sort of work they undertook, their living conditions, their relationships with civilian workers, foreign labourers and concentration camp inmates. Many of the working prisoners starved to death, others died for lack of medical care, were killed in accidents at work, or were murdered by their guards. Yet the appalling treatment of these men has been forgotten and, to date, no ex-PoW who slaved in German industry has received a penny in compensation. Sean Longden has brought the stories of their harsh experiences and their years of privation into the light by trawling the archives and, above all, from speaking to the forgotten veterans and hearing their stories.

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9781844370603

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Sean Longden is the author of the highly acclaimed 'To the Victor the Spoils'

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