Germany's Dishonoured Army: Additional records of German atrocities in France

by J. H. Morgan

There can, moreover, be no doubt that the respect of the German troops for the Geneva Convention is but intermittent. Cases of deliberate firing on stretcher-bearers are, according to the universal testimony of our officers and men, of frequent occurrence. It is almost certain death to attempt to convey wounded men from the trenches over open ground except under cover of night.

Killing the Defenceless Wounded.—A much more serious offence, however, is the deliberate killing of the wounded as they lie helpless and defenceless on the field of battle. This is so grave a charge that were it not substantiated by the considered statements of officers, non-commissioned officers, and men, one would hesitate to believe it. But even after rejecting, as one is bound to do, cases which may be explained by accident, mistake, or the excitement of action, there remains a large residuum of cases which can only be explained by deliberate malice. No other explanation is possible when, as has not infrequently happened, men who have been wounded by rifle fire in an advance, and have had to be left during a retirement for reinforcements, are discovered, in our subsequent advance, with nine or ten bayonet wounds or with their heads beaten in by the butt-ends of rifles. Such cases could not have occurred, the enemy being present in force, without the knowledge of superior officers. Indeed, I have before me evidence which goes to show that German officers have themselves acted in similar fashion.

Some of the cases reveal a leisurely barbarity which proves great deliberation; cases such as the discovery of bodies of despatch-riders burnt with petrol or "pegged out" with lances or of soldiers with their faces stamped upon by the heel of a boot, or of a guardsman found with numerous bayonet wounds evidently inflicted as he was in the act of applying a field dressing to a bullet wound. There also seems no reason to doubt the independent statements of men of the Loyal North Lancs, whom I interrogated on different occasions, that the men of one of their companies were killed on the 20th of December after they had surrendered and laid down their arms. To what extent prisoners have been treated in this manner it is impossible to say—dead men tell no tales—but an exceptionally able Intelligence Officer at the headquarters of the Cavalry Corps informed me that it is believed that when British prisoners are taken in small parties they are put to death in cold blood. Certain it is that our men when captured are kicked, robbed of all they possess, threatened with death if they will not give information, and in some cases forced to dig trenches....

THE PROOFS OF POLICY.

The question as to how far these outrages are attributable to policy and superior orders becomes imperative. It was at first difficult to answer. For a long time I did not find, nor did I expect to find, any documentary orders to that effect. Such orders, if given at all, were much more likely to be verbal, for it is extremely improbable that the German authorities would be so unwise as to commit them to writing. But the outrages upon combatants were so numerous and so collective in character that I began to suspect policy at a very early stage in my investigations....

Frenzy against British Troops.—On the 3rd of May I visited the Ministry of War in Paris at the invitation of the French military authorities, and was received by M. le Capitaine René Petit, Chef de Service du Contentieux, who conducted me to the department where the diaries of German prisoners were kept. I made a brief preliminary examination of them, and discovered the following passage (which I had photographed) in the diary of a German N.C.O., Göttsche, of the 85th Infantry Regiment (the IXth Corps), fourth company detached for service, under date "Okt. 6, 1914, bei Antwerpen":—

The Captain called us to him and said: "In the fortress [i.e. Antwerp] which we have to take there are in all probability Englishmen. But I do not want to see any Englishmen prisoners in the hands of this company." A general "Bravo" of assent was the answer.

This malignant frenzy against British troops, so carefully instilled, is borne out by a passage in another diary, now in the possession of the French Ministry of War, which was found on the 22nd of April on the body of Richard Gerhold, of the 71st Regiment of Infantry of the Reserve, Fourth Army Corps, who was killed in September at Nouvron:—

Here also things occur which should not be. Great atrocities are of course committed upon Englishmen and Belgians; every one of them is now knocked on the head without mercy. But woe to the poor German who falls into their hands.

As regards the last sentence in this diary, which is one long chapter of horrors and betrays a ferocious credulity, it is worthy of remark that I have seen at the French Ministry of War the diary of a German N.C.O. named Schulze, who, judging by internal evidence, was a man of exceptional intelligence, in which the writer refers to tales of French and Belgian atrocities circulated among the men by his superior officers. He shrewdly adds that he believes the officers invented these stories in order to prevent him and his comrades from surrendering.