It is well known that the Nazis operated a terrifying network of concentration camps during World War II. However, many people are unaware that the United States Army also imprisoned over a million Germans in a series of prisons at the end of the war. These prisons were collectively known as Rheinwiesenlager.

Rheinwiesenlager, meaning "Rhine Meadows Camps," were built in 1945 for soldiers and personnel of the Wehrmacht who surrendered in the final days of the war in Europe. Between April and September of that year, hundreds of thousands of German men and women were held in these camps to prevent a rebellion following the collapse of the Nazi Party.

Public DomainAn American soldier guarding one of the Rheinwiesenlager camps in Remagen, where thousands of German soldiers captured in 1945 were held.

The U.S. referred to the inmates in these 19 facilities as "unarmed enemy forces," thus avoiding the need to comply with the Geneva Convention. This situation led to horrific conditions in the camps, and a report by the Army Medical Department likened Rheinwiesenlager to Andersonville Prison.

However, a German television special program published in 2020, The Fears of the Rhine Meadows Camps, stated that many people at the time believed, "Germans are responsible for the worst crimes in the war; they cannot expect mercy."

Rheinwiesenlager: The Final Moves of a Lost War

By the spring of 1945, it was clear that everything was coming to an end for the Nazis. As millions of Allied soldiers surged into the Rhine region from the west, German SS and Wehrmacht forces were desperately putting up last stands in Vienna and Berlin to slow the advance of the Soviet Red Army from the east.

During this collapse, millions of German soldiers began to leave the Eastern Front and pass through Germany to surrender to American or British troops. Their hope was that they would be treated less vengefully than the victorious Soviets.

Flickr/ArmyDiversityAn American soldier guarding German soldiers captured in a forest. April 1945.

The influx of Germans became so great that the British stopped accepting prisoners due to logistical issues. When soldiers had nowhere else to go, the U.S. began constructing simple camps in the newly occupied western Germany. These camps eventually became known as Rheinwiesenlager.

The U.S. Army built a total of 19 camps, surrounding large agricultural fields with barbed wire and constructing simple structures to serve as kitchens, hospitals, and administrative offices. Each facility was divided into 10 to 20 sections, capable of holding between 5,000 and 10,000 prisoners.

Between April and September 1945, between one million and two million German soldiers were held in these camps, and conditions were quite harsh.

A New Status for Prisoners

The Geneva Convention and the 1907 Hague Convention strictly regulate the treatment of prisoners of war. Captured enemy soldiers cannot be subjected to torture or execution for fighting for their countries. They cannot be publicly displayed or humiliated, overworked, or punished without cause.

The conventions require that each prisoner of war be fed and housed in a manner equal to the standards provided for their guards. For example, if heating the barracks for prisoners is impractical, the camp personnel should also not have heated accommodations.

National Archives and Records AdministrationAn aerial view of a Rheinwiesenlager camp holding approximately 160,000 prisoners in April 1945.

However, during the construction of Rheinwiesenlager, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was the commander of the Allied Forces High Command at the time, decided that the surrendered German soldiers would not be classified as prisoners of war. Instead, they were referred to as "unarmed enemy forces."

Thus, they did not benefit from any protections under the Geneva Convention. They were at the mercy of the U.S. Army.

Horrific Conditions in Rheinwiesenlager

When prisoners began arriving at Rheinwiesenlager in the spring of 1945, they immediately noticed that even basic shelter was not provided. They were forced to dig holes in the ground to sleep. The U.S. Army Medical Department stated in a report published in 1969, "Often prisoners were left without covers and exposed to rain, snow, and mud in the last winter, and as spring progressed, they were subjected to heat, dust, or rain and mud."

Public DomainMost German prisoners were not provided barracks and had to dig temporary shelters in the ground.

Most of the Rheinwiesenlager camps were overcrowded. A camp that was planned to have a capacity of 100,000 was filled with 184,000 people. Initially, about 40,000 U.S. soldiers were assigned to guard the prisoners, but they were so overwhelmed that some Germans were given extra rations to maintain order among the other prisoners and prevent escapes.

This overcrowding also led to food shortages. According to a 1991 article by historian Stephen Ambrose published in The New York Times, some prisoners resorted to making "soup" from water and grass to survive.

"Some cages resembled Andersonville Prison of 1864," wrote the Army Medical Department.

The International Committee of the Red Cross was not allowed access to the camps for several months, and when the organization was granted access, officials described the conditions as "horrific." However, despite these issues, the mortality rates in Rheinwiesenlager remained relatively low.

The End of German Prison Camps

Estimates of the number of German prisoners of war who died in the Rhine Meadows Camps in 1945 range from 3,000 to 4,500. However, one author has claimed that many more people died within the barbed wire.

In 1989, Canadian author James Bacque published a work titled Other Losses, claiming that nearly a million Rheinwiesenlager prisoners died from disease, starvation, and cold. However, as Ambrose noted in The New York Times, Bacque's work is "fundamentally flawed in its most basic aspects. Bacque misuses the documents; misreads the documents; ignores contrary evidence... and as a result of these and other deficiencies, draws conclusions and makes accusations that are clearly absurd."

Public DomainConditions varied from camp to camp, but even prisoners who managed to set up a temporary tent had to share their small space with others.

Indeed, most prisoners at the Rhine Meadows Camps were released shortly after they arrived. Within just a few weeks, members of the Hitler Youth and women who worked as administrative personnel for the Wehrmacht were released.

Shortly thereafter, workers such as farmers and miners were released to assist in reconstruction efforts. By September 1945, five months after Rheinwiesenlager opened, only one small camp remained closed; this camp served as a temporary holding station for German prisoners released from other facilities in France.

As a result, it is clear that prisoners in Rheinwiesenlager were subjected to horrific conditions. However, while the exact number of Germans who died in these U.S. Army camps will never be known, the mortality rates were not high enough to be compared to the victims of the Holocaust, who suffered Nazi persecution.