‘The following month she married him’: your remarkable stories of Britain’s forgotten WWII PoWs

At the end of the Second World War, Britain stood victorious. In almost every other respect, it was on its knees: exhausted, wounded and effectively bankrupt. Food remained tightly rationed and bomb craters pockmarked the land. The incoming Labour administration had a lot to sort out.

Plenty has been written about prime minister Clement Attlee’s response to those challenges, from housebuilding, to welfare, to founding the NHS. But there was another issue that has almost been forgotten: what to do with more than 400,000 German and Italian prisoners of war (PoWs) still in camps across Britain? International law stated that PoWs should be repatriated after a peace treaty was signed – but with Germany occupied, and later divided, there would be no such treaty until 1990.

Wary of inadvertently repatriating fervent Nazis, and faced with a debilitating labour shortage, Attlee decided to use the prisoners to help “rebuild Britain”.

Reading the Telegraph’s recent obituary of the German theologian and PoW Jurgen Moltmann, Stephen Hamilton-Jones wrote in, pointing out that many such PoWs were “put to work in agriculture” and that, by September 1946, “it was estimated that German PoWs made up one-quarter of the agricultural workforce”. With pressure growing from MPs, civil society and German leaders, Britain began repatriating prisoners “at the rate of 15,000 a month”, with the last leaving in 1948.

As Mr Hamilton-Jones wrote, “this chapter of history ought not to be forgotten” – and you, our readers, have certainly not forgotten it. Since Mr Hamilton-Jones’s letter we have been inundated with memories of your encounters with PoWs. Collected here, they shine a remarkable light on an often hidden aspect of post-war Britain.

‘How about that for reconciliation?’

Fraternisation between prisoners and the local population was forbidden until December 1946, when restrictions eased and Britons were encouraged to invite prisoners into their homes. As readers revealed, these new interactions could take some unexpected turns.

SIR – My father, Herbert Hoffmann, was taken prisoner in France in 1944, then sent to the United States in 1945, working as a cotton picker in Mississippi.

In 1946 he arrived in Liverpool, was sent to help on a farm in Yorkshire and eventually arrived at a PoW camp in Harrow in 1947. He was put to work building prefab houses (which are still in use today). He couldn’t be repatriated because his home town in eastern Germany was under Russian control and his family were refugees.

Prisoners like him were allowed a certain amount of freedom, and one day in April 1948 he was waiting to meet a local English girl. My mother was also waiting nearby to meet another German PoW, who didn’t show up. They got chatting, Mum took him home to meet my grandparents and, the following month, they were married. He spent the rest of his life here and used to delight in pulling people’s legs by telling them he had been Rommel’s batman.

Rosemarie Lawani
Stanford in the Vale, Oxfordshire

SIR – My family’s farm in the Darent Valley, west Kent, took on a German PoW from the nearby camp during the war.

My grandfather clearly treated Georg well, and when the war ended he stayed on. He married a German nurse and they made Kent their home, living in one of our cottages until my father sold up in 1969.

Georg became something of a family friend as well as an employee, and as a child I knew of no stigma attached to his presence with us.

A poignant feature of the couple’s life here, however, was that the post-war sub-division of Germany made joint visits to see their families impossible, as one was in the west and the other in the east.

David Lander
Old Woking, Surrey

SIR – In 1948 my brother was waiting to be called up into the Royal Marines. In order to get fit and pass the time he dug a swimming pool in the garden, removing 90 tons of earth. When he left, my father – just retired from the Admiralty – took over the concreting with two German PoWs who were retained in England by Clement Attlee to “rebuild Britain”.

My father had learnt German as a child, and was an interpreter for the Navy; and so, able to speak their language, he motivated Willy and Hans, and paid them 2/6 an hour. It transpired that one of these helpers had been a sergeant in Hermann Goering’s SS guard.

Caroline Osborne
Elmswell, Suffolk

SIR – My father was a dispatch rider in France, Holland and eventually Germany, where he finished his war at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the liberation, which changed his whole view on life forever.

In 1946 he returned to the farm at Stelling Minnis in Kent, which he had worked on prior to the war. There he befriended a German prisoner of war, who was labouring in the fields. Before he was returned to his own country a couple of years later, my father appointed him as one of my sister’s godparents. How about that for reconciliation?

Reginald Hoare
Canterbury, Kent

SIR – A relative of my mother ran a mixed farm near Stocksfield in Northumberland.

During the war she had a variety of PoWs help on the farm, including Italians and Germans. One was a German named Karl. He had been a professional sailor and then a conscripted chief engineer on a U-boat. He was apparently most useful, turning his hand to any farm work, but was especially good at repairing farm machinery. In fact some local farmers asked him to do such repairs and even acquired a lathe for him to use to make machinery parts.

As an eight-year-old evacuee to Stocksfield, I often met Karl at the farm. He was friendly and kind, and encouraged me to work hard at school. He had a wife and family in Hamburg. He was repatriated in 1946, but sadly found that all his family had been killed by bombing.

He applied to return to Stocksfield, and he and my aunt eventually married and ran the farm together. Both are buried in the nearby churchyard.

John Urwin
Castle Douglas, Kirkcudbrightshire

SIR – After the Second World War, Winston Churchill employed several German prisoners of war as gardeners on his Chartwell estate. One of them, Albert, met and married a local girl and continued working in the area as a gardener when his employment at Chartwell ceased.

Many years ago my wife met Albert. He talked to her about his time working for Churchill, and told her of the occasion when other staff on the estate complained about having to work with “the enemy”. This was before the Cold War was in full swing. Churchill reprimanded the men, telling them that the enemy they needed to worry about was the enemy of the future: the Russians.

Roger Brine
Sevenoaks, Kent

‘After the war there was a knock at the door’

Many PoWs enjoyed considerable freedom, with house visits, Sunday teas and tourist visits all permitted. Other liberties were even more surprising.

SIR – My grandfather was a vet. During the Second World War, one of his jobs was to look after the pets which the German PoWs in the nearby camp were encouraged to keep.

After the war there was a knock at the door. It was a German soldier from the camp. He said: “I’m going home now but I cannot take my dog and I am worried what might happen to him.”

So my grandfather acquired a dachshund called Fritz. The dog only answered to commands in German, which was awkward in 1946 Yorkshire.

Five years later there was another knock on the door and it was the German soldier again, accompanied by his new wife. “Thank you so much,” he said, “but I have come for my dog.”

Andy Lyons
Sherborne, Dorset

‘He found them roasting a swan’

Despite being on British soil, many PoWs stayed true to their roots. Readers recall that the Germans often spent their spare time making things. The Italians, meanwhile, were rather more focused on food.

SIR – My father grew up on his grandfather’s arable farm; during the Second World War, Italian prisoners of war were sent to work there. The only time my great-grandfather had cause to get annoyed with them was when he found them roasting a swan.

Sandra Hancock
Exeter, Devon

SIR – My late father-in-law was sent by a concerned commander of a PoW camp to go and check on the Italians, who had not been turning up for meals. On the far side of the camp, next to the woods, he found them, happily clustered around a bubbling stewpot, which they offered to share. It turned out to be an excellent rabbit stew.

The only concern: there were no rabbits inside the camp. But there were lots on the other side of the fence.

He concluded that the Italians were content to enjoy British hospitality – but drew the line at our food.

Deborah Tompkinson
Maidenhead, Berkshire

SIR – During the war, we had Italian PoWs working on my grandfather’s farm near Salisbury in Wiltshire.

I remember him noticing that every so often a whole sheep would go missing, and remarking to my grandmother that if they could kill and divide up a sheep without being caught then they deserved to keep it.

As children we loved them because they made us toys out of empty corned beef tins.

Richard Beaugie
Shadoxhurst, Kent

SIR – My grandparents had Italian PoWs working on their land in Oxfordshire.

One of the prisoners was asked to help out at a dinner party they were giving. On being informed by a guest that he didn’t want broccoli, the young prisoner said: “Whatta no veg? You getta the rickets.”

This was told to us as children, and we always ate our veg.

Amanda Baly
Leiston, Suffolk

SIR – I remember a German PoW from a nearby farm coming to our house for Sunday tea.

His name was Lothar, and he was from Bavaria. He had worked in his family’s brush-making business.

After the meal, I remember my mother packing a food parcel for his family. I don’t recall what she put in it, but I remember thinking it was odd, as rationing was still in place here.

Margaret Winstanley
Bury, Lancashire

‘They brought carved Mickey Mouse toys’

Readers also recalled PoWs giving gifts, many of which were treasured long after the prisoners had left.

SIR – In 1945, my parents entertained two German PoWs for Christmas. As gifts for my sister, my brother and me, they brought carved wooden-jointed Mickey Mouse toys, together with 18-inch wooden slopes that the mice walked down. Reaching the bottom, they remained standing upright.

These clever gifts still take pride of place among our decorations each Christmas.

Leslie Kotting
Shalbourne, Wiltshire

SIR – When I was a toddler at the end of the Second World War, my child seat on the back of my mother’s bicycle was beautifully crafted in wickerwork by Italian PoWs in what is now Cambridgeshire.

The seat no longer exists but I still have the wickerwork rattle they had made for me when I was a baby.

G M Wootten
Darlington, Co Durham

SIR – I was born in the summer of 1946, and spent the first few years of my life in Army quarters in Devizes, Wiltshire. Behind our garden wall was a German PoW camp.

For my first Christmas, two of the prisoners gave me beautifully carved wooden toys: a walking “wobble” horse and a pecking chicken. They explained to my parents that they each had a small daughter at home.

I treasured those toys for many years.

Cynthia Setter
Bovey Tracey, Devon

SIR – We had an Italian, Luigi, living with us and working on the farm until late December 1945, when he was repatriated and replaced by a German, Hans. Hans was with us until March 1948. It can’t have been easy for him, a former bank clerk, working on a small, rather primitive farm, worrying about his wife and two small daughters in Germany. But he got on with things and many years later brought his family over to see us.

I wish I had kept the chess set he made. He taught me how to play, but I don’t think I posed much of a challenge.

E M Griffin
Colyton, Devon

‘The correspondence continued ... ’

For many people, PoWs were a fleeting feature of British life, but for some these encounters were just the beginning of a longer story.

SIR – Several years ago, I was in the same hospital ward as the son of a PoW, who had taken over his father’s small farm in north-west Derbyshire.

The son told me that his dad had been assigned to labour on a farm, and had worked so hard that, when the war was over, the farmer gave him a 50-acre plot.

He decided not to go home, and developed his land so effectively that he was eventually able to bequeath farms to his two sons and two daughters, all of whom are still running them.

Ken Hope
Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire

SIR – One of the most famous German PoWs to stay after the war was Bernhard Trautmann. He fought on both the Eastern and Western Fronts as a paratrooper and was captured towards the end of the war, one of only 90 from his regiment still alive. He was sent to a PoW camp in Ashton-in-Makerfield, where he worked on local farms.

After playing for the PoW team, the club secretary of St Helens recognised his talents as a goalkeeper. He was soon spotted by Manchester City, for whom he signed in 1949. At first there was discontent at a perceived Nazi playing for City. It took the intervention of a local rabbi to quell the protests.

“Bert” went on to become a star, perhaps the greatest keeper of his generation. His fame peaked in 1956 when he broke his neck playing in the FA Cup final. At first he thought he had just strained it but later tests revealed five dislocated vertebra, one of which was fractured. He was lucky to be alive.

Bert played 545 times for City between 1949-1964 and is still regarded as one of the finest keepers ever to play the game.

He died, aged 89, in 2013.

Andrew Holgate
Wilmslow, Cheshire

SIR – In 1942 my mother took her young family to live with her sister in rural Anglesey, to escape the German bombing. I attended school in the tiny village of Moelfre and, aged nine, was deeply puzzled to find it run by two German ladies, mother and daughter. Were we not at war with Germany?

Some 50 years later I had retired from the RAF to live in Sussex, where I discovered that my opposite neighbour was a former German PoW. Dr Hans Florin was by then a very senior retired Lutheran pastor and a much-loved local priest. We shared an interest in sailing and soon became close family friends.

Eventually he told me that his father had tried to shield him from the Hitler Youth movement by removing him from school and providing him with a governess. As Jews, the governess and her family had been forced to leave Germany in 1936. Hans was later conscripted as a Luftwaffe anti-aircraft gunner.

To our mutual astonishment, we eventually established beyond doubt that this lady and her daughter had been my schoolmistresses in 1942. Before Hans died, we both agreed that coincidences were one of God’s ways of reminding us all that He is still there.

Air Commodore Michael Allisstone
Chichester, West Sussex

SIR – In 1946 my late husband, aged 14, and his two young brothers befriended prisoners of war who worked for the local Norfolk farmer. One, Eric, never forgot the kindness of my mother-in-law, who arranged to get his watch strap replaced. On returning to Germany, he stayed in touch with my husband.

When my husband joined the Army, he realised he could not continue communicating with an East German, and stopped writing without any explanation. He was always ashamed of this – so, when the Berlin Wall came down 25 years later, he took a chance and wrote to the last address he had.

A reply came, full of enthusiasm and gratitude, and within six months my husband travelled to see Eric and his family. He was overwhelmed by the welcome he received, and the correspondence continued for the rest of Eric’s life.

Sara Williamson
Bulford, Wiltshire