Looting Normal Wartime Conduct Crawley

Escape From Germany, by Aidan Crawley. 2015

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Universality of Looting—Not Some Kind of Polish Disease Aimed at Jews. Fascinating Details on The Great Escape

This work includes fascinating information. But first some media distortions that needs correction:

UNIVERSALITY OF LOOTING. NOT ONLY JEWS WERE VICTIMS

Crawley’s fascinating work provides details of wartime events other than those immediately related to the subject at hand. Consider, for example, the memorial built at the site of Stalag Luft III. Crawley comments, “This memorial was carefully tended by the prisoners while they remained at Sagan, but when a British officer returned in February 1946, he found that as the war had swept over the area someone had looted it. Some of the urns were missing and ashes were scattered over the ground. Later, when the German population was driven out, and the Poles occupied Sagan, the memorial was once again properly tended.” (p. 259).

Neo-Stalinist Jan T. Gross has written, in his FEAR, about Poles stealing from Jews, and the media treated it as some kind of revelation—a testimony of how bad Poles were to Jews. Crawley’s quoted comment puts all this in proper perspective. Looting was a common wartime and postwar event, moreover hardly limited to Poles as perpetrators and Jews as victims.

LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS ABOUT THE GREAT ESCAPE

This is one of the first works on the Great Escape. Unlike Paul Brickhill’s classic, it includes details on British POWs and the Great Escape. It specifies the fact that, of the 76 escapees, 24 got more than 50 miles away from Stalag Luft III. (p. 262). This is in addition to the three who made it all the way to freedom.

One striking fact, rarely if ever mentioned in other works on the Great Escape, is the fact that there were many methods of dispersing tunnel sand other than those much-discussed trouser bags. (pp. 236-239). For instance, there were trees still left growing in the compound by which the yellow sand came naturally to the surface and to which tunnel sand could be mixed-in. There were also blind spots within the camp itself, wherein no sentry on a tower could see.

The technical details that author Crawley provides includes those on the three tunnels. Polish engineers, serving in the RAF, designed the traps. (p. 229).

The German murders of 50 of the recaptured officers are described by Crawley. He adds, “An account of this conference was given by Keitel to Major-General Westhoff who was then in charge of the Prisoner of War Inspectorate and was later captured by the British…Westhoff stated that he had never received any reports suggesting that the prisoners had committed sabotage or espionage, nor is there any evidence that any of them resisted arrest.” (p. 262). The foregoing contradicts accounts of the escaped POWs engaged in deliberate spying.

UNIVERSALITY OF LOOTING

Crawley’s fascinating work provides details of wartime events other than those immediately related to the subject at hand. Consider, for example, the memorial built at the site of Stalag Luft III. Crawley comments, “This memorial was carefully tended by the prisoners while they remained at Sagan, but when a British officer returned in February 1946, he found that as the war had swept over the area someone had looted it. Some of the urns were missing and ashes were scattered over the ground. Later, when the German population was driven out, and the Poles occupied Sagan, the memorial was once again properly tended.” (p. 259).

Neo-Stalinist Jan T. Gross has written, in his FEAR, about Poles stealing from Jews, and the media treated it as some kind of revelation—a testimony of how bad Poles were to Jews. Crawley’s quoted comment puts all this in proper perspective. Looting was a common wartime and postwar event, moreover hardly limited to Poles as perpetrators and Jews as victims.