|
"The March" refers to a series of forced marches during the final stages of the Second World War in Europe. From a total of 257,000 western Allied prisoners of war held in German military prison camps, over 80,000 POWs were forced to march westward across Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany in extreme winter conditions, over about four months between January and April 1945. This series of events has been called various names: "The Great March West", "The Long March", "The Long Walk", "The Long Trek", "The Black March", "The Bread March", and "Death March Across Germany", but most survivors just called it "The March". As the Soviet Army was advancing, German authorities decided to evacuate POW camps, to delay liberation of the prisoners. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of German civilian refugees, most of them women and children, as well as civilians of other nationalities, were also making their way westward on foot, in hazardous weather conditions. Notorious examples include: *from Stalag Luft IV at Gross Tychow in Pomerania the prisoners faced a trek in blizzard conditions across Germany, during which hundreds died, and; *a march from Stalag VIII-B, known as the "Lamsdorf Death March",〔("Lamsdorf Death March 1945", RAF Warrant Officer Joseph Fusniak, BEM (compiled by Richard Fusniak) )〕 which was similar to the better-known Bataan Death March (1942) in terms of mortality rates.〔Chris Christiansen - Seven Years amongst Prisoners of War, trans. Egede Winther, Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1994.〕 *from Stalag Luft III in Silesia to Bavaria ==Motives== On 19 July 1944, Adolf Hitler issued an order from his headquarters, Wolfsschanze, west of Stalag Luft VI, "concerning preparations for the defense of the Reich". It put the German civilian population on a total war footing and issued instructions for preparations for evacuations of 'foreign labor' (slave labor) and civilians away from the advancing Soviet Army in the east. Item 6(a) called for "preparations for moving prisoners of war to the rear". This prolonged the war for hundreds of thousands of Allied personnel, as well as causing them severe hardship, starvation, injuries and/or death. In the later stages of the war there were great concerns among POWs over the motives for moving them westward. Many different and conflicting rumors abounded, including suggestions that: * They were being moved towards concentration camps to be killed, in revenge for Allied commanders' deliberate targeting of civilians, in cities such as Dresden. These events were also the origin of one of the German terms for Allied bomber crews: ''terrorflieger'' ("terror aviators"). * POWs would be force-marched until their deaths from exhaustion, a practise that had already been made notorious by the Japanese military (see, for instance: Bataan Death March). * They would be held hostage to leverage peace deals, including claims that they would be held at a national redoubt in the Alps. This claim was backed up by SS General Gottlob Berger, who was appointed general commander of POW camps during 1944. Berger stated during his trial for war crimes (1948), that Hitler had considered a threat to execute 35,000 POWs, unless the Allies agreed to a peace deal. Similarly, SS chief Heinrich Himmler had made similar plans, centred on the Baltic coastal region and set up a new headquarters in a castle on the Bay of Lübeck.〔(The Last Escape - John Nichol, Tony Rennell - 2002 Penguin UK )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The March (1945)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|