Burying Friend and Foe: The Employment of German Prisoners of War in the Construction of Military Cemeteries in Normandy after 6 June 1944

Abstract

The history of the German prisoners of war of World War II held by British and American authorities in Europe remains a field of study that is largely ignored by historiography. Although the Allies made an extended use of this prisoner manpower for labour purposes, employing hundreds of thousands of captive German soldiers for all kinds of tasks, all but a few material traces of the prisoners’ life and activities in liberated Europe have vanished. An exception to this are several British, American, and German military cemeteries, especially in Normandy, many of which had been built during or immediately after the battle using the workforce of thousands of German soldiers that had been captured in the region during the summer of 1944. This article examines the general organization of the Allied labour service for German prisoners in Normandy and focuses especially on their work on the military cemeteries, before addressing the question of the memory – or rather the absence of memory – of this process, not only in Normandy itself (and in the United States and Great Britain), but also in German society.