German Atrocities: An Official Investigation

by J. H. Morgan

X

DEPOSITIONS RELATIVE TO THE EMPLOYMENT BY THE GERMAN TROOPS OF RUSSIAN PRISONERS ON THE WESTERN FRONT[97]

(a) Statement of a German Prisoner (Translation) Captured in Northern France.

I, the undersigned Stephan Grzegoroski, a recruit in the 6th Co. (5th Section) 2nd Batt. No. 143 Infantry Regiment, XV. German Army Corps, hereby declare on oath that in the course of the month of October, I have frequently seen Russian prisoners of war in Russian uniform employed upon the construction of the third line trenches of my regiment.

There were some 150 to 200 Russians altogether so employed. During the course of their work they occasionally came under fire. Two were killed and four wounded. Seven Russians tried to escape—two succeeded: one was shot dead, and four were retaken.

The men were guarded by soldiers of my regiment.

I spoke personally with some of the Russian prisoners, and they complained that they had much work to do, but only very little to eat.

(b) Statement of Two Russian Soldiers (Translation) taken down in November, 1915, at British Headquarters in France.

Michael Klokoff, Russian soldier, private in the Novo Skolsky Regiment; taken prisoner by the Germans on the Bzura on December 26th, 1914 / January 8th, 1915; and Andrei Slizkin, Russian soldier, private in the 41st Siberian Regiment, taken prisoner by the Germans near Prasnysz on January 29th/February 11th, 1915, declare that: we were interned as prisoners of war at Strzalkowo until October 7th/20th, 1915. We then came with 2,000 other Russian prisoners to Belgium. Some of the prisoners were taken to build railways; others, among them ourselves, were employed to dig trenches. During our work we came under shell fire and sustained casualties.

We escaped on October 31st, and reached the British lines on November 2nd. We were promised pay, but did not receive any.

(c) Statement of Two Russian Soldiers (Translation) taken down in December 1915, at British Headquarters in Northern France.

Anastasius Nietzvetznie, 231 Dragoon (Infantry) Regiment, and Nicholas Nevaskov, 210 Infantry Regiment, declare: When we were prisoners with the Germans we worked at digging trenches. Each day we were under English artillery fire. We received 30 pfennigs per day, and we worked against our will. When we refused to work, we got twenty-five strokes with an iron rod, and were tied up with our hands behind our backs in a cold room with windows open and nothing to eat.

(Signed) Anastasius Nietzvetznie,[98]
231 Dragoon Regiment.
(Signed) Nicholas Mikhailovitch Nevaskov,[98]
210 Infantry Regiment.

A REVIEW OF
GERMAN ATROCITIES
BY
THE RT. HON. VISCOUNT BRYCE
Published in The Westminster Gazette, London,
March 20, 1916

A FRESH EXAMINATION OF GERMAN WAR METHODS[99]

Professor Morgan, whose bright little book, called “Sketches From the Front,” has given to us some of the most fresh and vivid pictures of the actualities of warfare in France, presents in the present volume the evidence he has been busy in collecting regarding the behaviour of the German troops in the western theatre of war. Some of this has already been made known to the public by what he published in the Nineteenth Century and After in June, 1915, and also by the depositions which he obtained under the instructions of the Home Office and submitted to the British Committee on Alleged German Outrages. (Many of these were published in the Appendix to their Report last May.) Since that time he has spent four or five months in collecting further important data and still more months in collating the results of the facts he has collected, having been granted by the British Headquarters Staff in France those facilities for moving to and fro along the front and getting into touch with eye-witnesses which were essential for arriving directly at the facts. The evidence thus obtained is supplemented by several diaries of German soldiers never before published in England, and by some extracts from documents issued by the Russian Government describing cruelties committed by the Germans in the fighting on the Eastern front. As respects the data he has himself collected, Professor Morgan explains, in his introduction, the methods he has followed in taking evidence and testing its value, showing himself sensible, as a lawyer ought to be, of the need for care and caution in such a matter. The large experience which his months of work at the front have given him adds weight to his assurance that what he submits is worthy of all credence as well as to the conclusions at which he has arrived. But before adverting to these conclusions a preliminary question deserves to be considered.

It has been asked—and it is natural that it should he asked—“What is the use of multiplying tales of horror?” “Why do anything that can aggravate the bitterness of feeling, already lamentably acute, between the belligerent nations? All war is horrible; why add fresh items to the list of offences which are making us think worse of human nature than we supposed two years ago we ever could think?”

These questions need an answer. Such a painful record as the present book contains, such a record as can be found in the reports already officially published by the Belgian, French, and British Governments, might, perhaps, have been better left unpublished if it did not serve some definite tangible aim, looking to some permanent good for mankind.

Now such a definite, tangible, practical aim does exist, and seems to justify, and, indeed, to require, the publication of the facts contained in this book and also in the reports which have been published by the Belgian, French, and British Governments. It is an aim which can be stated quite shortly; and the need for pursuing it is shown by what has happened during the last twenty months.

In most parts of the ancient world, and among the semi-civilised peoples of Asia till very recent times, wars were waged against combatants and non-combatants alike. Even in the European Middle Ages indiscriminate slaughter of combatants and non-combatants alike sometimes occurred, especially where, as in the case of the Albigenses, religious passion intensified hatred. As late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there were campaigns in which frightful license was allowed to soldiery, private property was pillaged or ruthlessly destroyed, and women were habitually outraged.

A reaction of sentiment caused by the horror of the Thirty Years’ War, coupled with a general softening of manners, brought about a change. During the last two centuries, though every war was marked by shocking incidents, there was a growing feeling that non-combatants should be protected, and a serious purpose to restrain the excesses of troops invading a hostile country. The wars of the eighteenth century were less cruel and destructive than those of the seventeenth, and the wars of the nineteenth showed some improvement on those of the eighteenth. The war of 1870-71, if those of us in Britain who remember it can trust our recollection, seemed better in both the above-named respects than had been the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars between 1793 and 1814. Till the outbreak of the present conflict men who sought for signs of the progress of mankind were cheered by the hope that war would hereafter be waged only between regular disciplined forces on each side; that these forces would abstain from needless cruelty, that women would be protected from lust, and that the lives of non-combatants would not be endangered. There was even a prospect that private property would not be destroyed except in so far as a definite military aim made its destruction unavoidable, as when a hostile force had to be shelled out of its shelter in a village. The Hague Convention had passed rules which ameliorated the practices of war as regards the combatant forces and had solemnly proclaimed the duty of respecting the lives and property of non-combatant civilians.

The present war has, however, brought a rude awakening. The proofs are now overwhelming that in Belgium and Northern France—as to other regions the evidence is not fully before us—non-combatants have been slaughtered without mercy by the orders of the German military authorities, while the mitigations of war usages as regards combatants have been openly and constantly disregarded. Private property has been constantly destroyed where no specific military reason existed, but only for the sake of terrorising the civil population, or perhaps out of sheer malice. A license has been practised by, and in many cases obviously permitted to, the soldiers which has led to acts of wanton cruelty. Outrages upon women have been far more numerous than in any war between civilised nations during the last hundred years. One crime deserves special condemnation, because it is done deliberately and is justified by its perpetrators. This is the practice of seizing innocent non-combatants, usually the leading inhabitants of a town or village, calling them hostages and executing them in cold blood if the population of the town or village whom “the hostages” cannot control, fail to obey the commands of the invaders. Civilians who fire upon invading troops without observing the requirements which the Hague Convention prescribes may, no doubt, be shot according to the customs of war; but there must be some proof that these particular civilians have done so. To put to death a quarter or more of the adult male inhabitants of a village because some shots have been fired, or are supposed by an excited soldiery to have been fired, out of its houses, is mere murder. All the paragraphs in the Manual of War issued by the German Staff cannot make it anything else.

Though we may hope, and indeed must hope, that the horror caused by this war may lead to measures which will diminish the risks of war in the future, he must be indeed a sanguine man who can think that war, the oldest of the curses that have afflicted mankind, is likely to be eradicated within this century. It is therefore an urgent duty to do all that can be done for a regulation of the methods of war and a mitigation of the sufferings that it causes.

Now the cruelties that have been perpetrated on land, no less than the ruthless murder of innocent passengers on unarmed vessels at sea, are an aggravation of those sufferings. They are a reversion to the ancient methods of savagery, a challenge to civilised mankind, to neutral nations as well as to the now belligerent States. Neutral nations ought to be fully informed of the facts of these methods, for they are themselves concerned. The same methods may be used against them if they are attacked by Germany or by some other nation which sees that Germany has used them with impunity. If the public opinion of the world does not condemn these methods, war will become an even greater curse than it has been heretofore. Unless an effort is made as soon as ever the present conflict ends to regulate the conduct of hostilities between combatant forces, and, which is of even greater importance, to provide more effective safeguards for non-combatants, there may be a terrible relapse towards barbarism everywhere.

The Allied belligerent nations who are now fighting in the cause of humanity are called upon to take up this matter and deal with it effectively. So are neutral nations. It is a pity that they did not protest long ago. But a word may be said regarding the German people also. Professor Morgan thinks that they share in all the guilt of their Government, but the reasons he gives for this belief do not warrant so melancholy a conclusion. The behaviour of the mobs that were wont to insult and ill-treat the prisoners of war led through the streets of German towns, and the ferocious language of creatures like Von Reventlow and some other writers in the German Press, shocking as they are, cannot be taken as evidence of the sentiments of a whole people. Neither can we suppose that the declarations of professors, victims of a doctrine and a practice which compels them to approve every act of the State are more to be accepted as expressing what may be felt by the less vocal Germans. We must remember how severe is the German censorship, how accustomed the Germans are to believe what their Government tells them, how habitually mendacious the military authorities have been in the accounts they supply of the conduct of the Allied Powers and their troops. The German mind has had little but falsehood to feed upon ever since the outbreak of the war, and it now believes, absurd as the belief is, that it is the innocent victim of an unprovoked aggression. When any voice is raised in Germany to proclaim even a part of the truth and to plead for humanity and good feeling, that voice is instantly silenced. Silence will doubtless be enforced as long as the war lasts. But we may well venture to hope that when, after the war, the facts hitherto concealed from the people have become known and can be reflected on with calmness, there will be a condemnation of the practices I have described, and that in Germany and Austria, as well as in all neutral countries, there will be a wish to join in the efforts which both the Allies and the leading neutral Powers are sure to make to regulate and mitigate the conduct of war. In order to call forth these efforts by showing how great is the need for strengthening the existing rules of war, and providing more effective means of securing their observance, it is essential that the facts should be made known and studied, and that the world should see how the present rules, imperfect as they are, have been trampled under foot by the German authorities. This is what makes it right and necessary to publish the data contained in the Reports already referred to, and those data also which have been gathered by Professor Morgan with such earnest labour.

So much for the justification—an ample justification—which exists for publishing the horrible record which this book contains. I need not here analyse it or quote from it or comment upon it. The facts speak for themselves. Professor Morgan’s general conclusions as to the behaviour of the German troops in France seem to be borne out by the facts which he adduces. They are further supported by the facts set forth in the Belgian, French, and British Reports. This accumulation of testimony is convincing, and it becomes even abundantly more convincing when one remembers that the German Government has scarcely attempted to deny the contents of those reports. To the French report, strengthened as it is by numerous extracts from the diaries of German soldiers (translated by M. Joseph Bédier), in which they describe, sometimes with shame, sometimes with satisfaction, the conduct of their comrades, no answer seems to have been made, although a few trivial objections were raised to the translations. Neither has the German Government ventured to meet the British report, except by a vaguely worded general contradiction in a semi-official newspaper. As regards the Belgian reports, no more to them than to the others has any examination and specific contradiction been vouchsafed. But a White Book has been published which tries to turn the tables by accusing Belgian civilians generally of firing on German troops and committing outrages upon them. Professor Morgan, in one of the most illuminative parts of his book, subjects this White Book to a critical analysis, exposes its hollowness, and shows conclusively that while it does not prove the German case against the civilian population and the Government of Belgium, it virtually admits, in its attempts to justify, the shocking cruelties perpetrated by the German Army upon that population. As the lawyers say, habemus confitentem reum.

Let me add that he who wishes to understand German military ideas and military methods, ought to read along with this book (and the reports already referred to) another book, the German “Manual of the Usages of War on Land,” of which Professor Morgan has published a translation, under the title of “The German War Book.” Each of these is a complement to the other. The “War Book” sets forth the principles: this book and the Reports display the practices. The practice shocks us more, because concrete cases of cruelty rouse a livelier indignation; but the principles are a more melancholy proof of the extent to which minds of able men may be so perverted by false ideals and national vanity as to lose the common human sense of right and wrong.