German POWs and the Art of Survival

By Simon Rees | Military History  | 4 comments  | Print This Post  | Email This Post

In October 1945, a Russian major at the hospital told Lorman his group was to be repatriated. The major then asked coolly whether he should allow the SS men among the group to return. “Why not?” replied Lorman. “They also have homes to go to.” The major knew well enough Lorman had been SS and was just toying with him. On October 13, 1945, he was given his discharge papers.

Traveling with a friend, Lorman headed west, hoping to reach his family’s last known address, a house in the Austrian province of Steiermark. On October 18, the two arrived in the ravaged remains of Berlin and headed for the French sector. Lorman’s friend was a French national from Alsace-Lorraine, and to continue on their journey, they would need proper documentation. They headed to a French military police station to file the necessary paperwork. Instead, both men were handcuffed and detained.

On discovering their detainees were former Waffen SS soldiers, the French authorities threw Lorman into solitary confinement in Tegel Prison while taking the man from Alsace-Lorraine for questioning elsewhere.

Stuck in a cell measuring 6 by 12 feet, Lorman now had to contend with loneliness and lack of exercise. “I didn’t have any contact with the occupant of the neighboring cell,” he said. “All I did see day after endless day was the same cramped cell.”

“The food we were given was not quite enough for survival, only for gradual dying,” said Lorman. “But to be fair, few people outside the prison gates were eating much better. By the end of the first nine months of this existence my weight was down to 103 pounds (I was 6 feet tall), and my morale was lower than the proverbial snake’s belly.”

In desperation, Lorman hatched a plan to gain his warders’ attention. Complaining of sporadic headaches, he managed to hoard about a dozen aspirin, which he hid in his cell. When they found his stash during the next cell inspection, the guards asked Lorman for an explanation. “I intend to kill myself,” he cried out. “Just look at me!”

The ploy worked, and the French authorities granted Lorman contact with other prisoners and even a job in the cookhouse. “Even though after each day’s work I still had to return to my single cell,” he said, “both my spirit and my body soon recovered.”

Lorman was finally released on February 19, 1947, when he was 23. “I was set free into the chaotic postwar world to fend for myself,” he recalled. But it would be years before Lorman and his family would be reunited.

Rudi Janssen experienced detention at the hands of the British. A country lad, he volunteered for service a year early at 17 in the first months of 1943 and was later called up to the Waffen SS. Trained as a signalman, he eventually arrived on the Eastern Front with a panzer unit in 1944. In early 1945 the Red Army started its drive into Nazi territory. One branch of its offensive swung north and cut off some German units in the east—including Janssen’s—from the rest of the Reich.

Pushed back to positions near the Bay of Danzig, Janssen and his comrades endured a heavy artillery barrage that lasted several days while higher command attempted to evacuate the unit. “Now there was a real feeling of defeat,” he said, “a resignation that it was the end.”

Those lucky enough to be evacuated were taken to positions on a nearby peninsula, though still within range of the Red Army guns. Wounded in the leg by shrapnel during the bombardment, Janssen was later evacuated to Rostock by fast boat.

“After a few days convalescing, a doctor came round to our ward and told those of us who were ‘walking wounded’ that the Russians would be arriving soon,” he recalled. “And that those who wanted to move out should do so now.”

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Tags: Historical Conflicts, People, Politics, Social History, World War II