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

[BY PROFESSOR J. H. MORGAN.]

A German military writer (von der Goltz) of great authority predicted some years ago that the next war would be one of inconceivable violence. The prophecy appears only too true as regards the conduct of German troops in the field; it has rarely been distinguished by that chivalry which is supposed to characterise the freemasonry of arms. One of our most distinguished Staff officers remarked to me that the Germans have no sense of honour in the field, and the almost uniform testimony of our officers and men induces me to believe that the remark is only too true.

Abuse of the white flag has been very frequent, especially in the earlier stages of the campaign on the Aisne, when our officers, not having been disillusioned by bitter experience, acted on the assumption that they had to deal with an honourable opponent. Again and again the white flag was put up, and when a company of ours advanced unsuspectingly and without supports to take prisoners, the Germans who had exhibited the token of surrender parted their ranks to make room for a murderous fire from machine-guns concealed behind them. Or, again, the flag was exhibited in order to give time for supports to come up. It not infrequently happened that our company officers, advancing unarmed to confer with the German company commander in such cases, were shot down as they approached. The Camerons, the West Yorks, the Coldstreams, the East Lancs, the Wiltshires, the South Wales Borderers, in particular, suffered heavily in these ways. In all these cases they were the victims of organised German units, i.e., companies or battalions, acting under the orders of responsible officers.

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.

A less conclusive passage, but a none the less suspicious one, is to be found in a diary now in my possession. It is the diary of an Unteroffizier, named Ragge, of the 158th Regiment, and contains (under date October 21) the following:--

We pursued the enemy as far as we saw him. We "knocked out" many English. The English lay on the ground as if sown there. Those of the Englishmen who were still alive in the trenches were stuck or shot. Our company made 61 prisoners.

_=Damning Brigade Order.=_--So far I have only dealt with the acts of small German units--_i.e._, companies of infantry. I now come to the most damning proofs of a policy of cold-blooded murder of wounded and prisoners, initiated and carried out by a whole brigade under the orders of a Brigadier-General. This particular investigation took me a long time, but the results are, I think, conclusive. It may be remembered that some months ago the French military authorities published in the French newspapers what purported to be the text of an order issued by a German Brigadier-General, named Stenger, commanding the 58th Brigade, in which he ordered his troops to take no prisoners and to put to death without mercy every one who fell into their hands, whether wounded and defenceless or not. The German Government immediately denounced the alleged order as a forgery. I determined to see whether I could establish its authenticity, and in February last I obtained a copy of the original from M. Mollard, of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who is a member of the Commission appointed by the French Government to inquire into the alleged German atrocities. The text of that order was as follows:--

Army Order of 26 Aug., 1914, about 4 p.m., such as was given to his troops as a Brigade or Army Order by the leader of the 7th Company of the 112th Regiment of Infantry at Thionville, at the entrance of the wood of Saint Barbe.

To date from this day no prisoners will be made any longer. All the prisoners will be executed. The wounded, whether armed or defenceless, will be executed. Prisoners, even in large and compact formations, will be executed. Not a man will be left alive behind us.

Taking this alleged order as my starting-point, I began to make inquiries at British Headquarters as to the existence of any information about the doings of the 112th Regiment. I soon found that there was good reason to suspect it. Our Intelligence Department placed in my hands the records of the examination of two men of this regiment who had been captured by us. One of them volunteered a statement to one of our Intelligence Officers on the 23rd of November to the effect that his regiment had orders to treat Indians well, but were allowed to treat British prisoners as they pleased. This man's testimony appeared to be reliable, as statements he made on other points, i.e., as to the German formations, were subsequently found to be true, and his information as to discrimination in the treatment of Indians entirely bore out the conclusions I had already arrived at on that particular point. The German witness in question further stated that 65 out of 150 British prisoners were killed in cold blood by their escort on or about the 23rd of October on the road to Lille, and that the escort were praised for their conduct. Other German prisoners have, I may add, also made statements that they had orders to kill all the English who fell into their hands....

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[1], 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):

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....