Given Up for Dead: American POWs in the Nazi Concentration Camp at Berga [Hardcover]

Flint Whitlock (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 29, 2005

In December 1944, the Ardennes Forest on the German-Belgium border was considered a "quiet" zone where new American divisions, fresh from the States, came to get acclimated to "life at the front." No one in Allied headquarters knew that the Ardennes had been personally selected by Hitler to be the soft point through which over 250,000 men and hundreds of Panzers would plunge in the Third Reich's last-gasp attempt to split the Americans and British armies and perhaps win a negotiated peace in the West. When the Germans crashed through American lines during what became known as the "Battle of the Bulge," in December 1944, thousands of stunned American soldiers who had never before been in combat were taken prisoner. Most were sent to prisoner-of-war camps, where their treatment was dictated by the Geneva Convention and the rules of warfare.For an unfortunate few - mostly Jewish or other "ethnic" GIs - a different fate awaited them. Taken first to Stalag 9B at Bad Orb, Germany, 350 soldiers were singled out for "special treatment," segregated from their buddies, and transported by unheated railroad boxcars with no sanitary facilities on a week-long journey to Berga-an-der-Elster, a picturesque village 50 miles south of Leipzig. Awaiting them at Berga was a sinister slave-labor camp bulging with 1,000 inmates. The incarceration at Berga is the only known instance of captured American soldiers being turned into slave laborers at a Nazi concentration camp. Given Up for Dead is the story of their survival.For over three months, the American soldiers worked under brutal, inhuman conditions, building tunnels in a mountainside for the German munitions industry. The prisoners had no protective masks or clothing; were worked for 12 hours per shift with no food, water, or rest; were beaten regularly for the most minor infractions (or none at all); were fed only starvation rations; slept two to a bed in ghastly, lice-infested bunks; and were never allowed a bath or a change of clothing. Of the 350 GIs in the original contingent, 70 of them died within the first two months at Berga; the others struggled to survive in a living nightmare. As the Allies' front lines moved inexorably closer to Berga, the Nazi guards forced the inmates to endure a death march as a way of keeping them from being liberated; many died along the route. Only the timely arrival of an American armored division at war's end saved them all from certain death.Strangely, when the war was over, many of the Americans who had survived Berga were required to sign a "security certificate" which forbade them from ever disclosing the details of their imprisonment at Berga. Until recent years, what had happened to the American soldiers at Berga has been a closely guarded secret.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

In December 1944, many American soldiers were captured in the Battle of the Bulge. Most prisoners were treated according to the rules established by the Geneva Convention, but 350 POWs who were Jewish or from other "undesirable" ethnic or religious groups (including Catholics) were sent to the slave-labor camp Berga, outside Bad Orb, Germany. They worked in the mines and surrounding forest; the camp was crawling with lice, there was very little food, they were beaten, and they suffered from mental cruelty. On April 3, 1945, the survivors were marched south toward Bavaria, and on April 22, American soldiers liberated them. Some of them had died "on the route to nowhere." After the war, the U.S. Army told some of them not to disclose any details of their captivity. Whitlock interviewed survivors, and his book, with 95 black-and-white photographs and 11 maps, chronicles their story for the first time. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Flint Whitlock is a former U.S. Army officer who served on active duty from 1965 to 1970, including a tour in Vietnam. He has been a military historian since 1986 and is the author of Soldiers on Skis, The Rock of Anzio, and The Fighting First. He is a regular contributor to World War II magazine and WW II History magazine. He is the president of the newly formed Colorado Military History Museum, Inc. He lives in Denver, Colorado.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; First Edition edition (March 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813342880
• ISBN-13: 978-0813342887
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,098,832 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Given Up For Dead, May 7, 2005

By 

Neal Bellet (Wayne, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Given Up for Dead: American POWs in the Nazi Concentration Camp at Berga (Hardcover)

Given Up For Dead, by Flint Whitlock, is the story of a group of American POW's, the majority of whom were Jewish, who were taken to a concentration camp after they were taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge. The author does a good job telling about these brave men who were used as slave laborers contrary to the Geneva Convention. Their treatment was a crime that, unfortunately for many reasons, went unpunished after the war. For many, survival was a miracle. A lot of the men interviewed for the book are still suffering both mentally and physically some sixty years later as a result of their experience at Berga, a sub camp of Buchenwald. Although this book isn't written in as interesting of a style as the other recently published book on this subject (Soldiers and Slaves by Roger Cohen) it is still a must read for all.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Courage of the Common Soldier, April 18, 2009

By 

Mac Pro "Local History Buff" (Oklahoma USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Given Up For Dead: American GIs in the Nazi Concentration Camp at Berga (Paperback)

Again we learn just how courageous and resilient ordinary young American boys who were swept into war can be. The boys depicted in the book were hardly off the farms or out of high school when they were forced to endure a life they could have never imagined. While they were trained for battle and even expected to be shot out and even be killed they were subjected to horrific status as prisoners of the Germans. Jewish soldiers were pulled out of the ordinary POW camps and had to know they might be executed but they stood up anyway. The author did extensive research, talking to many survivors or their families to get a first hand story of what really happened. Even with the documentation it's still hard to comprehend human beings can be so cruel to one another. Some of the first part of the book is a little tedious as Whitlock leads us through the battles setting up the ultimate fighting where these men were taken captive. Although probably necessary it's a little confusing (and boring) as you wait to get to the "stories." Other than that, the book is informative and well worth the time to read.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars U.S. POWS In A Nazi Concentration Camp:Described As a Million Dollar Experience Not Repeatable If Offered 2 Million!, April 21, 2011

By 

Bernie Weisz "a historian specializing in the... (Pembroke Pines,Florida U.S.A.) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Given Up For Dead: American GIs in the Nazi Concentration Camp at Berga (Paperback)

Flint Whitlock has done it again! After reading and reviewing "Internal Conflicts" I was glad that the conclusion of that book was based on historical fiction. Internal Conflicts Quite the contrary, I was horrified that the contents of this book are very real and lurid, with such inhumane acts being inflicted to American prisoners of war that were doled out by barbaric men who in the end were given a slap on the wrist. The history of W. W. II is well known. After swallowing up large parts of Europe starting in 1938 which included Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, Belgium, Greece and Yugoslavia, et al, in the last six months of 1941 Adolf Hitler launched an aggression that would ultimately cost him the war, his life and the obliteration of "The Third Reich." First he attacked the Soviet Union on June 22nd, and by years end, four days after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, he made another major blunder. President Franklin Roosevelt and his administration received the following communication from Hitler: "The Government of the U.S., having violated in the most flagrant manner and in ever-increasing measure all rules of neutrality in favor of the adversaries of Germany and having continually been guilty of the most severe provocations toward Germany ever since the outbreak of the European war, provoked by the British declaration of war against Germany on September 3, 1939, has finally resorted to open military acts of aggression. Although Germany on her part has strictly adhered to the rules of international law in her relations with the United States during every period of the present war, the Government of the United States from initial violations of neutrality has finally proceeded to open acts of war against Germany. Hitler: A Study in Tyranny The Government of the United States has thereby virtually created a state of war. The German Government, consequently, discontinues diplomatic relations with the United States of America and declares that under these circumstances brought about by President Roosevelt, Germany too, as from today, considers herself as being in a state of war with the United States of America."

Flint Whitlock would prove that the only law Adolf Hitler would adhere to was of his own machinations. From sending in the Wheremacht and Luftwaffe into Russia, expecting them to survive nevertheless victoriously prevail with little petrol and light winter clothes, to taking on Britain, the U.S. and Canada, to attempting to implement his "master race" demented Aryan philosophy, it was only a matter of time until the world found out what Adolf Hitler was capable of. 1942 would give universal flavor to the aforementioned. Lidice is a village in the former Czech Republic just north-west of Prague. As part of the 1938 "Munich Agreement," The Czech state was now part of the Third Reich. The Killing of Reinhard Heydrich: The SS 'Butcher of Prague' Reinhard Heydrich, also known as "The Hangman," was a high-ranking German Nazi official who chaired the 1942 "Wannsee Conference," of January 20, 1942, which discussed plans for the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In an operation named "Operation Anthropoid," he was attacked in Prague on May 27, 1942 by British-trained Slovak and Czech agents who had been sent to assassinate him there. He died approximately one week later due to his injuries. Lidice, as per orders directly from Heinrich Himmler, the Reich Leader of the dreaded Gestapo from 1929 until 1945, was completely destroyed by German forces in reprisal for the assassination of Heydrich in the late spring of 1942. The world was getting a minor taste of the future . On June 10, 1942, Himmler ordered all 192 men over 16 years of age from the village murdered on the spot and the rest of the population of Lidice sent to Nazi concentration camps where many women and nearly all the children were killed. Martyred Village: Commemorating the 1944 Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane Six weeks after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers initiated the "Manhattan Project" to develop an atomic bomb, on July 22, 1942 Germany began deporting hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka concentration camp for the purpose of the "Final Solution."

The Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust. Himmler was the chief architect of the plan, and mass killings of about one million Jews occurred before the plans of the Final Solution were fully implemented in 1942, but it was only with the decision to eradicate the entire Jewish population that the extermination camps were built and industrialized mass slaughter of Jews began in earnest. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust This decision to systematically kill the Jews of Europe was made, as previously mentioned, at the "Wannsee Conference." However, Hitler's initial luck would soon wane. On November 8, 1942 the Allies invaded North Africa, beginning "Operation Torch." U.S. forces landed in Algeria, Oran, and Casablanca, and on May 12, 1943, the Axis forces in North Africa surrendered. Hitler's stock continued to fall, where on January 31, 1943, over 90,000 German troops at Stalingrad surrendered to the Soviets. It was a significant turning point in the war against Germany. On April 19, 1943 the world saw with repulsion the way Hitler dealt with the Polish Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, where German troops attempted to deport the ghetto's last surviving Jews, and about 750 Jews fought back the Germans for almost a month. German troops would slaughter thousands of Jews there, the rest were sent to the Treblinka concentration camp to die. However, in July of 1943, the Allies landed in Sicily, and by month's end Benito Mussolini's fascist government was overthrown in Italy. In September Italy formally surrendered, and on Oct. 13th declared war against it's former partner, Nazi Germany.

It was the next year, particularly the winter of 1944-45 that Whitlock's story centered on. Nazi fortunes continued to plummet. For it was that year that the Nazi siege of Leningrad, which began in September 1941 finally ended, sending the Soviets westward in a vengeful pursuit which would not cease until they met the Anglo American forces at the Elbe River on April 25, 1945. In February, the Allies began their massive bombing campaign of Germany, and the beginning of the end started on June 6, 1944, "D-Day" or "Operation Overlord." This was the Allied invasion of German-occupied Western Europe that began on the beaches of Normandy, France and ended similarly with Allied and Soviets shaking hands in Berlin. Seeing what was going on, Hitler sped up the extermination camp killing machinery, tried terrorizing Britain by launching "V-1" flying-bombs, nevertheless the handwriting was on the wall. Proof of this was the July 20, 1944 German military leaders failed attempt to kill Adolf Hitler in the Rastenburg Assassination Plot. Allied armies were now invading German-held Europe from all sides. Assault Division: A History of the 3rd Division from the Invasion of Normandy to the Surrender of Germany (Spellmount Classics) From August on, the Allies retook France, the Netherlands, and October 21, 1944, they captured Aachen, the first city to be taken in Germany. On a steady diet of constant injections from his doctors, in a morphine and amphetamine induced euphoria, Hitler issued a "stand and fight" edict. Hitler proclaimed that although the once vast Nazi empire had diminished, the Fatherland could never be penetrated. He created the "Volkssturm," the German militia created to defend the German homeland in the last months of World War II. Nazi Germany's last-ditch effort to defend the fatherland fell on the Volkssturm, or "Peoples Army." Drafted were any able body, man or boy, ages 15-65. In most cases the Volkssturm were elderly men and Hitler Youth fanatics. This group, along with whatever remained of his Wheremacht, would coalesce together in one final effort to reverse the impending German defeat.

Code named "Wacht-am-Rein" or the "Battle of the Bulge," it started on December 16th, 1944. Delusional thinking convinced Hitler that the alliance between Britain, France and America in the western sector of Europe was weak. Concluding that a major attack and defeat would break them up, he ordered a massive attack against what were primarily American forces. The attack was strictly known as the "Ardennes Offensive," but because the initial attack by the Germans created a bulge in the Allied front line, it became more commonly known as the "Battle of the Bulge." Hitler's goal was to launch a massive attack using three German armies on the Allies . This would, in his mind, destabilize their accord and also enable his forces to capture the huge port of Antwerp, through which a great deal of supplies reached the Allies. In theory, it was a preposterous plan, especially as Germany had been in retreat since D-Day, her military was depleted of supplies and was facing the awesome might of the Allies. Regardless, Hitler, as commander-in-chief of the military, decreed that the attack take place. He intentionally focused on an area in the Ardennes held by the 99th and 106 Divisions, mostly freshly trained, untested recruits of 80,000 Americans. Although in comparison it seems meager to his "Operation Barbarossa" (in the 1941 invasion of Russia, Hitler sent 3 million troops) he was able to muster almost 300,000 troops, thinking a... Read more ›