Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaeger
i am saying there was not a plan to kill them all. if that were the case they would have all been dead its just fucking logic.
|
death marches certainly were not logical and didn't kill everyone marching either.
In the final months of the Third Reich, as the Allied armies approached Germany, the regime began to evacuate the 715,000 prisoners held in concentration camps. Most of the inmates were being used as forced labour for the German war economy, although under conditions deliberately engineered to weaken and eventually kill them: the Nazis even had a specific term for this, Vernichtung durch Arbeit, "annihilation through work".
Although the prisoners were already very weak or ill after enduring the routine violence, overwork and starvation of concentration camp or prison camp life, they were marched for dozens of miles in the snow to railway stations, then transported for days at a time without food, water or shelter in freight carriages originally designed for cattle. On arrival at their destination, they were then forced to march again to the new camp. Prisoners who were unable to keep up due to fatigue or illness were usually executed by gunshot.
