Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEF, less commonly,Note: it is said for German troops in Northern Italy, not to be confused with its British equivalent, "Surrendered Enemy Personnel". Surrendered Enemy Forces) is a US designation for soldiers who surrender to an adversary after hostilities end, and for those POWs who had already surrendered and were held in camps in occupied German territory at the time.In April, the War Department approved treating all members of the German armed forces captured after the declaration of ECLIPSE conditions or the cessation of hostilities, and all prisoners of war not evacuated from Germany immediately after the conclusion of hostilities, as "disarmed enemy forces", and specified that such captives would be responsible for feeding and maintaining themselves. The ruling did not apply to war criminals, wanted individuals, and security suspects, who were to be imprisoned, fed, and controlled by Allied forces. The War Department further directed that no public declaration was to be made on the status of the German armed forces. (Smith p. 93) It was General Dwight D. Eisenhower's designation of German prisoners in post–World War II occupied Germany.ICRC Commentaries on the Convention (III) relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War Article 5 "One category of military personnel which was refused the advantages of the Convention in the course of the Second World War comprised German and Japanese troops who fell into enemy hands on the capitulation of their countries in 1945 (6). The German capitulation was both political, involving the dissolution of the Government, and military whereas the Japanese capitulation was only military. Moreover, the situation was different since Germany was a party to the 1929 Convention and Japan was not. Nevertheless, the German and Japanese troops were considered as surrendered enemy personnel and were deprived of the protection provided by the 1929 Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. The Allied authorities took the view that unconditional surrender amounted to giving a free hand to the Detaining Powers as to the treatment they might give to military personnel who fell into their hands following the capitulation. In fact, these men were frequently in a very different situation from that of their comrades who had been taken prisoner during the hostilities, since very often they had not even gone into [p.76] action against the enemy. Although on the whole the treatment given to surrendered enemy personnel was fairly favourable, it presented certain disadvantages: prisoners in this category had their personal property impounded without any receipt being given; they had no spokesman to represent them before the Detaining Power; officers received no pay and other ranks, although compelled to work, got no wages; in any penal proceedings they had the benefit of none of the guarantees provided by the Convention. Most important of all, these men had no legal status and were at the entire mercy of the victor. Fortunately, they were well treated but this is no reason to overlook the fact that they were deprived of any status and all guarantees."
Because of the logistical difficulties of feeding all of the nearly two million of surrendered German soldiers at the levels required by the Geneva Convention during the food crisis of 1945, the purpose of the designation, along with the British designation of Surrendered Enemy Personnel (SEP), was to prevent categorization of the prisoners as prisoners of war (POW) under the 1929 Geneva Convention.
Germany at the end of the war Food and agriculture in Nazi Germany had declined greatly in 1944 and 1945. Germany had mobilized for total war, and food for the troops and war workers was vital to the war. A shortage of synthetic fertilizers had developed after nitrogen and phosphate stocks were channeled into ammunition (explosives) production, and much of the potato crop was requisitioned to produce ethanol fuel for the military's V-2 arsenal. Consequently, crop levels had fallen by 20% to 30% at the end of the war. Allied bombing raids had destroyed thousands of farm buildings, and rendered food processing facilities inoperable. Lack of farm machinery, spare parts, and fertilizer caused an almost total disruption of agriculture when the war was over. After the release of Ostarbeiters, slave laborers that were Soviet POWs and Eastern Europeans, extreme agriculture labor shortages existed that could be relieved only by German DEFs and SEPs. Roving bands of displaced persons and returning soldiers and civilians decimated the hog herds and chicken flocks of German farmers.
The destroyed German transportation infrastructure created additional logistical difficulties, with railroad lines, bridges, canals and terminals left in ruins. The turnaround time for railroad wagons was five times higher than the prewar average. Of the 15,600 German locomotives, 38.6% were no longer operating and 31% were damaged. Only 1,000 of the 13,000 kilometers of track in the British zone were operable. Urban centers often had to be supplied with horse-drawn carriages and wheeled carts.
By May 8, 1945, the Allies had become responsible for the health and wellbeing of 7 million displaced persons in Germany and 1.6 million in Austria, including slave laborers from all over Europe. Soon thereafter, German populations had swollen by 12 to 14.5 million ethnic Germans expelled from Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union. Bavarian villages in the American zone faced 15% to 25% population increases from displaced persons, with Munich alone having to deal with 75,000 displaced persons.
The worst dislocation of agriculture was caused by the German zonal partitions, which cut off Western Germany from its "breadbasket" of farm lands east of the Oder-Neisse line that had accounted for 35% of Germany's prewar food production, and which the Yalta Conference had given to Poland to compensate for lands of Eastern Poland. The Soviet Union, with millions of its own starving citizens at home, was not willing to distribute this production to the population in western Germany. In January 1945, the basic German ration was 1,625 calories/day, and that was further reduced to 1,100 calories by the end of the war in the British zone, and remained at that level into the summer, with levels varying from 840 calories/day in the Ruhr to 1,340 calories/day in Hamburg. The situation was no better in the American zones of Germany and Austria.
These problems combined to create severe shortages across Germany. One summary report estimated that just prior to Victory in Europe (V-E) Day, German consumer daily caloric intake was only 1,050, and that after V-E Day it dropped to 860 calories per day, though actual estimates are confusing because of the wide variation by location and because unofficial estimates were usually higher. It was clear by any measure that, by the spring of 1945, the German population was existing on rations that would not sustain life in the long term. A July 1945 CCAC report stated that "the food situation in western Germany is perhaps the most serious problem of the occupation. Average consumption is now about one third below the general accepted subsistence level of 2000 calories per day."
In the spring of 1946 the International Red Cross was finally allowed to provide limited amounts of food aid to prisoners of war in the U.S. occupation zone.ICRC in WW II: German prisoners of war in Allied hands International Red Cross 2 February 2005 By June 1948, DEF rations had been increased to 1990 calories and in December 1949 rationing was effectively discontinued and the food crisis was over.
Number of surrenders in World War II
Approximately 35 million POWs were taken in World War II, 11 million of them Germans. In addition to 20 million dislocated citizens, the U.S. Army had to cope with most of the surrendered German military forces. While the Allies had anticipated 3 million surrendering Germans, the actual total was as many as 5 million in American hands by June 1945 out of 7.6 million in northwestern Europe alone, not counting the 1.4 million in Allied hands in Italy. Approximately 1 million were Wehrmacht soldiers fleeing west to avoid capture by the Red Army.
The number of Germans surrendering to U.S. forces shot up from 313,000 by the end of the first quarter of 1945, to 2.6 million by April 1945, and more than 5 million in May. By April 1945, entire German Army groups were surrendering, which overwhelmed Allied shipping such that German prisoners could no longer be sent to POW camps in America after March 1945. According to a June 22, 1945, announcement by the Allies, a total of 7,614,914 prisoners (of all designations) were held in French, British and American camps.
Although the British and Americans agreed to split the western Germans who surrendered, the British recanted arguing that they "did not have places to keep them or men to guard them on the continent, and that moving them to England would arouse public resentment and adversely affect British morale." By June 1, 1945, Eisenhower reported to the War Office that this refusal produced shortages in the 25 million prisoner-day rations which were growing at the rate of 900,000 prisoner-day rations. Feeding this number of people became a logistical nightmare for SHAEF, which frequently had to resort to improvisation.
Early considerations of DEF designations Regarding the adherence to the Geneva Convention for vanquished Germans, Churchill at the Casablanca Conference in 1943 summed up the Allies’ "unconditional surrender" policy with "If we are bound, we are bound by our consciences to civilization." In prosecuting the war, SHAEF carried out the decisions of the Combined (Anglo-American) Chiefs of Staff (CCS). They had to execute the directives of the European Advisory Commission (EAC), which included the Soviet Union. The CCS and EAC directives implemented policies of the heads of government who decided the most important questions of Allied occupation policy. After the EAC was set up by the 1943 Moscow Conference, it drafted the instruments of unconditional surrender. During the EAC debates the Allies determined that they could strip the Germans of all government, including their protection by international law, and be free to punish them without restriction. The Geneva Convention (GC) required SHAEF to feed German POWs a ration equal to its own base soldiers.