German Atrocities: An Official Investigation

by J. H. Morgan

The evidence of this man of the 112th Regiment was as explicit and assured as it could be. But the matter did not stop there. At a later date an officer of the same regiment fell into our hands, in whose field note-book we found the memorandum “Keine Gefangene” (“No prisoners”). He was immediately cross-examined as to the meaning of this passage, but he had a plausible explanation ready. It was to the effect that his men were not to make the capture of prisoners a pretext for retiring with them to the rear; but, having disarmed them, were to leave them to be taken back by the supports.

But at the end of April—too late, unfortunately, for use by Lord Bryce’s Committee—one of our Intelligence Officers placed before me the following entry in the field note-book of a German prisoner, Reinhart Brenneisen,[87] reservist, belonging to the 4th Company, 112th Regiment, and dated in August (the same month as appears on the face of the order in question):

“Auch kam Brigadebefehl sämtliche Franzosen ob verwundet oder nicht, die uns in die Hände fielen, sollten erschossen werden. Es dürfte keine Gefangenen gemacht werden.”

(“Then came a brigade order that all French, whether wounded or not, who fell into our hands, were to be shot. No prisoners were to be made.”)

This, I think, may be said to put the reality of the brigade order in question beyond doubt.

The cumulative effect of this evidence, coupled with the statements of so many of our men who claim to have been eye-witnesses of wholesale bayoneting of the wounded, certainly confirms suspicions of the gravest kind as to such acts having been done by authority. Neither the temperament of the German soldier nor the character of German discipline (furchtbar streng—“frightfully strict”—as a German prisoner put it to me) makes it probable that the German soldiers acted on their own initiative. It would, in any case, be incredible that so many cases of outrage could be sufficiently explained by any law of averages, or by the idiosyncrasies of the “bad characters” present in every large congregation of men.

Treatment of Civil Population.

The subject-matter of the inquiry may be classified according as it relates to: (1) ill-treatment of the civil population, and (2) breaches of the laws of war in the field. As regards the first it is not too much to say that the Germans pay little respect to life and none to property. I say nothing of the monstrous policy of vicarious responsibility laid down by them in the Proclamations as to the treatment of hostages which I forwarded to the Committee and which I left to the Committee to examine; I confine myself to the practices which have come under my observation.[88] Here it is clear that the treatment of civilians is regulated by no more rational or humane policy than that of intimidation or, even worse, of sullen vindictiveness. As the German troops passed through the communes and towns of the arrondissements of Ypres, Hazebrouck, Bethune, and Lille, they shot indiscriminately at the innocent spectators of their march; the peasant tilling his fields, the refugee tramping the roads, and the workman returning to his home. To be seen was often dangerous, to attempt to escape being seen was invariably fatal. Old men and boys and even women and young girls were shot like rabbits. The slightest failure to comply with the peremptory demands of the invader has been punished with instant death. The curé of Pradelle, having failed to find the key of the church tower, was put against the wall and shot; a shepherd at a lonely farmhouse near Rebais who failed to produce bread for the German troops had his head blown off by a rifle; a baker at Moorslede who attempted to escape was suffocated by German soldiers with his own scarf; a young mother at Bailleul who was unable to produce sufficient coffee to satisfy the demands of twenty-three German soldiers had her baby seized by one of the latter and its head dipped in scalding water; an old man of seventy-seven years of age at La Ferté Gaucher who attempted to protect two women in his house from outrage was killed with a rifle shot.

I select these instances from my notes at random—they could be multiplied many times—as indications of the temper of the German troops. They might, perhaps, be dismissed as the unauthorised acts of small patrols were it not that there is only too much evidence to show that the soldiers are taught by their superiors to set no value upon human life, and things have been done which could not have been done without superior orders. For example, at Bailleul,[89] La Gorgue, and Doulieu, where no resistance of any kind was offered to the German troops, and where the latter were present in force under the command of commissioned officers, civilians were taken in groups, and after being forced to dig their own graves were shot by firing parties in the presence of an officer. At Doulieu,[90] which is a small village, eleven civilians were shot in this way; they were strangers to the place, and it was only by subsequent examination of the papers found on their bodies that some of them were identified as inhabitants of neighbouring villages. If these men had been guilty of any act of hostility it is not clear why they were not shot at once in their own villages, and inquiries at some of the villages from which they were taken have revealed no knowledge of any act of the kind. It is, however, a common practice for the German troops to seize the male inhabitants (especially those of military age) of the places they occupy and take them away on their retreat. Twenty-five were so taken from Bailleul and nothing has been heard of them since. There is only too much reason to suppose that the same fate has overtaken them as that which befell the unhappy men executed at Doulieu. I believe the explanation of these sinister proceedings to be that the men were compelled to dig trenches for the enemy, to give information as to the movement of their own troops, and to act as guides (all clearly practices which are a breach of the laws of war and of the Hague Regulations), and then, their presence being inconvenient and their knowledge of the enemy’s positions and movements compromising, they were put to death. This is not a mere surmise. The male inhabitants of Warneton were forced to dig trenches for the enemy, and an inhabitant of Merris was compelled to go with the German troops and act as a guide; it is notorious that the official manual of the German General Staff, Kriegsbrauch in Landskriege, condones, and indeed indoctrinates, such breaches of the laws of war. British soldiers who were taken prisoners by the Germans and subsequently escaped were compelled by their captors to dig trenches, and in a field note-book found on a soldier of the 100th Saxon Body Grenadiers (XIIth Corps) occurs the following significant passage:

“My two prisoners worked hard at digging trenches. At midday I got the order to rejoin at village with my prisoners. I was very glad, as I had been ordered to shoot them both as the French attacked. Thank God it was not necessary.”

In this connexion it is important to observe that the German policy of holding a whole town or village responsible for the acts of isolated individuals, whether by the killing of hostages or by decimation or by a wholesale battue of the inhabitants, has undoubtedly resulted in the grossest and most irrelevant cruelties. A single shot fired in or near a place occupied by the Germans—it may be a shot from a French patrol or a German rifle let off by accident or mistake or in a drunken affray—at once places the whole community in peril, and it seems to be at once assumed that the civil inhabitants are guilty unless they can prove themselves innocent. This was clearly the case at Armentières. Frequently, as the field note-book of a Saxon officer testifies, they are not allowed the opportunity. Indeed there seems some reason to suppose that the German troops hold the civil inhabitants responsible even for the acts of lawful belligerents, and, as my inquiries at Merris and Messines go to show, a French patrol cannot operate in the vicinity of a French or Belgian village without exposing the inhabitants to sanguinary punishment or predatory fines. There is not the slightest evidence to show that French civilians have fired upon German troops, and in spite of the difficulty of proving a negative there is a good deal of reason to reject such a supposition. Throughout the communes of the region of Northern France which I have investigated notices were posted up at the mairie requiring all the inhabitants to deposit any arms in their possession with the civil authorities, and the orders appear to have been complied with, as they were very strictly enforced.