Razing of Friesoythe

By September 1944, the Western Allies had reached Germany's western border,[2] and by the end of October had captured Aachen, the first major German city to fall to them.[3] Over the following six months they overran much of western Germany. In November the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) publicly stated that the forces of the Western Allies would strictly adhere to international law in respect of their treatment of civilians.[4] However, SHAEF's manual Combating the Guerrilla stated that there were circumstances where commanders could take "stern measures" against civilians as a rapid response to guerrilla attacks, although this was in breach of the Hague Conventions.[4]

The frequency and nature of retaliatory actions differed between national contingents within the Western Allied forces.[5] Following SHAEF's policy, United States Army forces destroyed German buildings on several occasions, sometimes entire villages, and took other measures against German civilians. French troops took a similar, if more rigorous, approach to that of the Americans.[6] The British commanders disapproved of retaliations against civilians, and British troops carried out few reprisals.[5]

The First Canadian Army served in the predominately British 21st Army Group, and more frequently retaliated against German civilians than the British.[5] The commander of 4th Canadian (Armoured) Division, Major-General Christopher Vokes, believed that destroying property was the most appropriate way of responding to resistance by German civilians. The division carried out actions against German property more often than any other Canadian formation.[6]

Soviet forces conducted retaliatory actions more frequently than their Western Allies. The Soviet Union's leadership was concerned about the threat of a German resistance movement (called Werwolf), and Soviet forces killed, raped and imprisoned large numbers of local civilians and destroyed property following guerrilla attacks.[7]

There was frustration throughout the Allied ranks at the Germans' continued resistance in a clearly hopeless cause, anger at the casualties they inflicted when the war was widely, and correctly, perceived to be almost over, and a general feeling that severe, even ruthless, treatment of German soldiers and civilians was justified.[8] On 15 April the British reached Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where the inmates had been reduced to cannibalism.[9] The historian Rick Atkinson wrote that "the revelations of April ... sparked enduring outrage".[10]

An American officer wrote "The attitude of higher command seemed to be that these people ... should be made to feel the full significance of war and what their troops had done to other people."[11] US general George Patton wrote in his diary "In hundreds of villages ... most of the houses are heaps of stone ... I did most of it." When a sniper fired at one of Patton's officers, he ordered several German houses to be burnt.[12] When the commander of the US 3rd Armored Division, Maurice Rose, was killed in action 240 kilometres (150 mi) inside Germany on 30 March, several villages were razed by his irate troops, captured wounded Germans were shot on the spot and at least 45 Germans were executed after surrendering.[13] An American artillery officer wrote home in April that "we should fire about a thousand rounds into every [German] town. Do them good".[14] At least one British battalion refused to take Waffen-SS prisoners, shooting those who surrendered; an officer of the battalion blamed this on SS "truculence"[15] and a British battalion commander summed up the risk-averse attitude within his unit: "At this stage of the war, no one was very keen to earn medals."[16] A British pilot wrote: "It seemed a stupid time to die."[16] One British corporal spoke for many when he wrote "Why don't the silly bastards give up?"[8] Some divisions had suffered their last fatality by mid-April.[17] The historian Max Hastings wrote "The final Anglo-American drive across Germany offered ... many foolish little battles which wasted men's lives".[18]

Major-General Christopher Vokes (right) with Brigadier Robert Moncel at Sögel on 10 April 1945.

In mid-March 1945 the Western Allies prepared to cross the River Rhine in Operation Plunder. The Canadian official history describes the circumstances as buoyant as it was recognized that the end of World War II in Europe was close.[19] In early April the 4th Canadian (Armoured) Division, as part of II Canadian Corps, moved out of the eastern Netherlands in the wake of Operation Plunder's success. On 4 April, The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada, part of the 10th Canadian Infantry Brigade, one of two brigades in the division,[Note 1] made an assault crossing of the Ems River and captured the town of Meppen, suffering only one casualty. German prisoners included several 17-year-old youths with less than eight weeks of military experience.[21]

The division advanced a further 25 km (16 mi) to Sögel, which the 1st Battalion of The Lake Superior Regiment (Motor)[Note 2] captured on 9 April. The following day it repulsed several German counter-attacks before the town was declared cleared.[22][23] Some German civilians joined the fighting and were believed to have killed several Canadian soldiers. Vokes, believing the civilians needed to be taught a lesson, ordered the destruction of the centre of the town.[24] This was accomplished with several truckloads of dynamite. Vokes was aware that these actions violated the Hague Conventions and took care not to issue written instructions.[6] Soldiers of the division started referring to Vokes as "The Sod of Sögel".[25] The Canadian Army official history states:

Investigation established that German civilians had taken part in this fighting and had been responsible for the loss of Canadian lives. Accordingly, as a reprisal and a warning, several houses in the centre of Sögel were ordered destroyed by the engineers to provide rubble.[23]

Vokes was furious when he heard of Wigle's death. He wrote in his autobiography that "a first-rate officer of mine, for whom I had a special regard and affection, and in whom I had a particular professional interest because of his talent for command, was killed. Not merely killed, it was reported to me, but sniped in the back". Vokes wrote, "I summoned my GSO1... 'Mac,' I roared at him, 'I'm going to raze that goddam town. Tell 'em we're going to level the fucking place. Get the people the hell out of their houses first.'"[25][33] Vokes's GSO1 (head of the operations staff), Lieutenant-Colonel Mackenzie Robinson, obeyed but convinced him to not put this order in writing or issue a proclamation to the local civilians.[25][34] Hastings writes that the earlier incident at Sögel contributed to Vokes's fury.[17]

The Argylls had spontaneously begun to burn Friesoythe in reprisal for the death of their commander.[35] After Vokes had issued his order, the town was systematically set on fire with flamethrowers mounted on Wasp Carriers. In the side streets, soldiers threw petrol containers into buildings and ignited them with phosphorus grenades. The attack continued for over eight hours and Friesoythe was almost totally destroyed.[30] As the commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, The Algonquin Regiment later wrote, "the raging Highlanders cleared the remainder of that town as no town has been cleared for centuries, we venture to say".[36] The war diary of the 4th Canadian Armoured Brigade records, "when darkness fell Friesoythe was a reasonable facsimile of Dante's Inferno".[37]

The Canadian official history states that Friesoythe "was set on fire in a mistaken reprisal".[38] The rubble was used to reinforce the local roads for the division's tanks and heavy transport, which had been unable to move up due to the main roads near the town being badly cratered, and the smaller roads being inadequate to stand their weight.[39][40]

During the fighting around Friesoythe and its aftermath, ten civilians from the town and another ten from the surrounding villages were killed.[41] There were reports of civilians lying dead in the streets.[30] According to one German assessment, 85–90 per cent of the town was destroyed during the reprisal.[42] The Brockhaus Enzyklopädie estimates the destruction to have been as high as 90 per cent. The town's website records that of 381 houses in the town proper, 231 were destroyed and another 30 badly damaged.[41] A few days later, a Canadian nurse wrote home that the convent on the edge of town was the only building left standing.[43] In the suburb of Altenoythe, 120 houses and 110 other buildings were destroyed.[41] In 2010, the author Mark Zuehlke suggested that, "Not all of Friesoythe was burnt, but its centre was destroyed".[37]

In early 1946 Vokes heard an appeal against the death sentence of Kurt Meyer, a convicted German war criminal. Referring to his discussions about this Vokes said to the Canadian High Commissioner in London, "I told them of Sögel and Friesoythe and of the prisoners and civilians that my troops had killed in Italy and Northwest Europe".[25] Vokes commuted the sentence to life imprisonment saying, "There isn't a general or colonel on the Allied side that I know of who hasn't said, 'Well, this time we don't want any prisoners'".[49]

The Canadian Army official historian, Colonel Charles Stacey, visited Friesoythe on 15 April. He wrote in the Canadian Army official history, which was published in 1960, that "there is no record of how this [destruction] came about".[37][50] Responding to this, the historian Mark Zuehlke wrote that there were records of the events in the war diaries of several units, but that he did not believe Stacey's vagueness was an attempt at a cover-up.[37] In his 1982 memoirs Stacey expanded upon the official history to comment that the only time he saw what could be considered a war crime committed by Canadian soldiers[Note 4] was when

... at Friesoythe, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada ... lost their popular commanding officer ... as a result a great part of the town of Friesoythe was set on fire in a mistaken reprisal. This unfortunate episode only came to my notice and thus got into the pages of history because I was in Friesoythe at the time and saw people being turned out of their houses and the houses burned. How painfully easy it is for the business of "reprisals" to get out of hand![52]

Vokes commented in his autobiography, written forty years after the event, that he had "[a] feeling of no great remorse over the elimination of Friesoythe. Be that as it may."[24][25] This position may have been motivated by a continued belief that the retaliatory actions were justified.[53]