Poles in the Wehrmacht.

I have been looking into the Polish buried here in Newark and was checking up on the deaths of some of the PRC after the war. One death cert showed something interesting , this one Pole is listed on the CWGC as a Sergeant Polish Army ( no unit listed ) but on his death cert listed as Polish POW ( POW number ) German Army. He came from Upper Silesia , so I take it he was conscripted under the Volksliste. After a bit more reading I found most of these men on capture joined the Allies. So if anyone can answer me this , did such men carry on in their old units or were they amalgamated into new ones or existing ones ? Also would they still be classed as POW's or was this man just a Germanic Pole ?

 

Polish Resettlement Corps

 

I have heard that too. In the story I heard it was a wounded fallschirmjaeger at Monte Cassino.

 

In Normandy,the Polish 1st Army Armoured Division took their casualty replacements from Poles who had been captured while in the Wehrmacht service.These Poles had been pressed into the Wehrmacht as deemed to bei ethnic German and to conduct a change of sides,spares uniforms were carried.

(The Germans also abducted Polish children who were deemed to have Aryan features for adoption by German couples.)

The Germans also used pressed Poles in their occupational troops in France.Ian Wellsted of the SAS records in the Burgundy Moran area of operations that the Poles,revolted against their German officers and killed them to surrender to the SAS and Maquis units.

Russian POWs were also used as Wehrmacht occupation troops in France and as the Polish contingents soon were eager to dispose of their German officers and surrender to British elements when the opportunity arose.....their behaviour to the French population being such that they ran a risk of bad treatment and worse if they surrendered to the Maquis or Resistance.

 

SRY War diary for 6th July 1944 has for example:

"On 231 Bde front a certain number of Poles have been giving themselves up. They said that many others would do the same but were awaiting instructions."

And for 11th July 1944 the SRY wardiary has:

"A + B Sqns completed the first 2 of the four Phases of the attack with sp of an Arty barrage, but found the very enclosed country favoured the Germans defensive methods. The Inf had a trying time, but more than 50 prisoners including several Poles were taken and many Germans were killed and seriously wounded. We "brewed up" 4 Mk IV Specials and probably K.O'd another at very short range."

In early August 1944 - my grandfather who was then a Sergeant in the SRY wrote:

"I’ve just been listening to the 6.O.C. news. The Yanks are still rolling on, they must have masses of troops to back them up. It’s very queer going into some villages when the Boche goes out, sometimes they haven’t been battered, not a soul in the place, chicken, cows, ducks and of course a few cats. One wouldn’t be surprised to see a farmer or his family, but they’ve gone off to some other village, in two or three days they’ll all be back there farming as usual.

Not all of them leave their homes, I’ve seen plenty of children in the front line, we give them chocolate and Bon Bons as they call sweets, they are quite unconcerned about it all. Others aren’t so lucky, the Boche have left some ugly sights behind.

One chap gave himself up, he was a Pole, by what he said he’d been very hard at work trying to get in our lines without being shot at. It so happened that they had to change the escort for him which meant him walking around the corner of a building, someone must have been telling him some tales, he was terrified to turn that corner, however they pushed him around it…

…and when he came back two minutes later the look on his face was quite amusing, they told him to put his hands down while he stood there, he just couldn't understand our chaps, they were fooling with some hats, bowler, straw and ladies, he must have thought us a queer crowd."

I assume, for example, the chap who "gave himself up, he was a Pole, by what he said he’d been very hard at work trying to get in our lines without being shot at. "

- was very hard at work at that time trying to get into the SRY lines "without being shot at" by not just the allies.

There's a wiki page - with the same name as this thread - I glanced briefly at a while back: Poles in the Wehrmacht - Wikipedia

And it currently says there: "In June 1946 the British Secretary of State for War reported to parliament that among the citizens of interwar Poland who served in the Wehrmacht as foreign conscripts, a total of 68,693 men were captured by the Allies in north-west Europe. The overwhelming majority of them, 53,630, enlisted into the Polish Army under the British Command,[2] and served in the Polish Armed Forces in the West against the Germans until the end of World War II."

With the ref: Kaczmarek, Ryszard (2010), Polacy w Wehrmachcie [Poles in the Wehrmacht] (in Polish), Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, first paragraph,ISBN 978-83-08-04494-0, retrieved June 28, 2014, Paweł Dybicz for Tygodnik "Przegląd" 38/2012.

 

The death cert was signed at Lincoln Military Hospital , he died of TB in 1946 aged 22. Lincoln had several local DP ,PRC and POW camps. POW No B10471 German Army, gives his trade as locksmith.

 

Special Operations Executive undertook several missions in France & Italy to persuade Poles to desert the Wehrmacht and join the Allies - The famous agent Christin Granville undertook such a mission in SW France persuading a unit to come over to the Allied side

 

RAF Ingham was the prominent PRC in the Lincoln area,situated on "Middle Street",the B 1398, between Scampton and Hemswell airfields.

 

Checking through Polish burials in the CWGC plot at Newark, most are Polish Air Force from the local training and bomber bases. But since the burials continued up to December 1947 there are also some Polish soldiers, PRC and some DP's. I know many Poles, especially from Silesia and Pomerania were conscripted into the Wehrmacht. In fact the only photo we have of one man buried here is in German uniform, but his gravestone has a Polish army unit inscription, indicating he swapped over as soon as he could. One death certificate I have does state Polish POW from Rybnik B10471 German Army. Died 1946 aged 22, his gravestone just has his rank St Strz (Lance Corporal Rifles) name, Joseph Kozielski, date of death and Polish Forces inscribed on it. Would anyone know if B10471 is a POW number and issued when and location ?

 

Hi
This is an interesting post. Yes, B10471 is a POW number issued by the British. It isn't possible to identify when or where it was issued unfortunately. I know of another Polish grave in Scotland where the man buried there is also listed on the VDK website as a German soldier. I checked the VDK site for Kozielski but he is not listed there.
Matt

 

His death cert just list death registered at Lincoln, Military Hospital due to Pneumonia caused by TB.