Disarmed Enemy Forces
[3] Because of the logistical difficulties of feeding all of the nearly two million of surrendered German soldiers at the levels required by the Geneva Convention during the food crisis of 1945,[4] the purpose of the designation, along with the British designation of Surrendered Enemy Personnel (SEP), was to prevent categorization of the prisoners as prisoners of war (POW) under the 1929 Geneva Convention.
[5] A shortage of synthetic fertilizers had developed after nitrogen and phosphate stocks were channeled into ammunition (explosives) production,[5][6] and much of the potato crop was requisitioned to produce ethanol fuel for the military's V-2 arsenal.
[5][7] Allied bombing raids had destroyed thousands of farm buildings, and rendered food processing facilities inoperable.
[5][7] Roving bands of displaced persons and returning soldiers and civilians decimated the hog herds and chicken flocks of German farmers.
[5][7] The destroyed German transportation infrastructure created additional logistical difficulties, with railroad lines, bridges, canals and terminals left in ruins.
"[15] In the spring of 1946 the International Red Cross was finally allowed to provide limited amounts of food aid to prisoners of war in the U.S. occupation zone.
[26] During the EAC debates the Allies determined that they could strip the Germans of all government, including their protection by international law, and be free to punish them without restriction.
[26][28] The Geneva Convention (GC) required SHAEF to feed German POWs a ration equal to its own base soldiers.
[31] As a result, the EAC instruments promised nothing in that regard, employed awkward and tortured language and made plain the premeditated Allied evasion of the Geneva Convention.
This was not deliberate policy, but the result of wartime damage to the infrastructure, which created the difficult problem of feeding the defeated peoples without it.
[33] The CCS then cabled British Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean, suggesting that the same steps be taken regarding the German surrenders in Austria, and then approved Alexander's similar request for a DEF designation, stating "in view of the difficulties regarding food and accommodation, it was so decided.
[34] By June 22, 1945, of the 7,614,914 prisoners (of all designations) held in British and American camps, 4,209,000 were soldiers captured before the German capitulation and considered "POWs".
[23] This leaves approximately 3.4 million DEFs and SEPs, who according to Allied agreements, were supposed to be split between Britain and the United States.
[36][40] The Allied argument for retracting Geneva convention protection from the German soldiers was similar to that of Nazi Germany vis à vis Polish and Yugoslav soldiers; using the "disappearance of the Third Reich to argue that the convention no longer operated-that POW status did not apply to the vast majority who had passed into captivity on and after May 5".
[36] Following the surrender of Italy to the Allies in September 1943, German forces took around one million Italian military personnel prisoner.
[41] Approximately 600,000 of the captured Italians were subsequently transported to Germany and required to work as forced labourers in generally harsh conditions.
