French prisoners of war in World War II
Prisoners from the French colonial empire, however, remained in camps in France with poor living conditions as a result of Nazi racial ideologies.
During negotiations for the Armistice of 22 June 1940, the Vichy French government adopted a policy of collaboration in hopes for German concessions allowing repatriation.
The Germans nevertheless deferred the return of prisoners until the negotiation of a final peace treaty, which never occurred due to the United Kingdom's refusal to surrender and Germany's defeat in the Battle of Britain.
Prisoners who returned to France, either by repatriation or through escaping, generally found themselves stigmatised by the French civilian population and received little official recognition.
German commanders finally met with French officials on 18 June who sought a cessation of hostilities, with the goal being an armistice with Germany.
In particular, a large number of Poles and Spanish republicans, who had emigrated to France, subsequently served in the French army and were captured by the Germans.
[15] As Soviet troops advanced westwards, camps in the east were evacuated and moved on foot, in so-called death marches, away from the front in extremely poor conditions.
[15] Initially most French prisoners were detained in France, but after repeated escapes, the Germans decided to move the vast majority to new camps in Germany and Eastern Europe.
Mostly, this consisted of bringing soldiers of similar backgrounds (Communists, Jews or Bretons) together for administrative purposes and to limit their interaction with other prisoners.
[17] Although this sorting of soldiers generally occurred on a small scale only, a camp was established at Lübeck for French prisoners dubbed "enemies of the Reich", where they could be detained in isolation.
Letters and parcels from home could take months to arrive in camps and be distributed by the Red Cross; consequently, most had little regular contact with their families.
[23] Thanks to the access to books, the historian Fernand Braudel wrote most of his influential work La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II (1949), which established the analytical concept of the longue durée, while in captivity in Germany.
[23] The future French President François Mitterrand delivered a series of lectures on the ancien régime to his fellow prisoners in another camp.
[25] In accordance with the Geneva Conventions, French prisoners elected hommes de confiance (Men of trust) from among their number to represent their interests.
Workers were fed but virtually their entire wages were paid directly to the German army and prisoners were only allowed to retain 70 pfennigs per day.
[28] Work Kommandos were very variable, but those in agriculture were generally considered better than ones in factories or mining, where conditions were worse and prisoners were vulnerable to Allied bombing raids.
[31] Black troops were treated worse than their white compatriots,[33]: 4 and some of them were used for "degrading" anthropological experiments or subjects of medical testing into diseases.
They were held at the POW camp in Fonte d'Amore in Sulmona, along with 600 Greeks and 200 Britons, treated, by all accounts, in accordance with the laws of war.
[36] According to a statement given by Winston Churchill to the House of Commons on 10 November 1942, "upwards of 1,000 prisoners" loyal to Vichy were taken by the British during October in the Madagascar campaign.
[13] Petain tasked Georges Scapini, a World War I veteran and a pro-German member of the Chamber of Deputies, to negotiate the release of hostages.
Scapini initially argued to the Germans that the transfer of prisoners as a goodwill gesture would ensure French public support for the Axis occupation and the Vichy regime.
After the expulsion of 100,000 Jews from Lorraine was ordered by its Gauleiter Josef Bürckel, Hitler would make the concession of allowing France to assume the protecting power for its own prisoners of war.
This was also because the previous protecting power of France, the United States, began to sympathize with Britain and after its diplomatic staff became too small to conduct routine inspections of German prison camps.
[1] From the autumn of 1940, the Germans began to repatriate French reservists whose private occupations were in short supply in Vichy France, such as medical workers like doctors and nurses along with postmen and gendarmes.
[45] The relève (relief) was a policy championed by Pierre Laval in which, in exchange for French workers volunteering to work in Germany, a proportional number of prisoners would be released.
At the request of the Vichy government, Georges Scapini, a deputy and World War I veteran, was appointed to lead a committee to monitor the treatment of French prisoners in Germany.
[64][40] These campaigns were immensely successful, and despite German restrictions on public gatherings, French civilians were able to raise large collections from lotteries and sponsored sports matches.
[67] In order to show solidarity with their relations in France, prisoners also raised funds among themselves to send back to their native regions if they had been targeted by Allied strategic bombing or food shortages.
[71] The prisoners of war also posed a big problem for Vichy's policy of moral rejuvenation summarised in its motto Travail, famille, patrie (Work, family, homeland).
In popular culture, the first major treatment of this was the comedic film La Vache et le prisonnier (1959) directed by Henri Verneuil.
