German after-war prisoners dug trenches to escape American night-time bullets! Americans starved, beat, and killed millions of German prisoners after the war, whereas during the war Germans gave American inmates good food, housing, and medical attention.

About June 1945 in one of the hundreds of Americans and British field-camps. Former Waffen SS prisoner Ernst Koppe surrendered with his men on the Austrian border, and was kept in a field-camp with 12,000 other soldiers with no tents for 2 months. They ate thin vegetable soup once a day, an army biscuit every 3rd day, and grass, worms, and bugs. Occasionally locals threw them food, which the Americans took if they saw it. Thousands died from cold, rain, and very little food, while Americans refused offers from local Churches to house and feed them. Russian SS were taken away one day, and Koppe heard they were sent to the Soviet border.

The same camp. Very young to middle-aged prisoners. Koppe says they scraped trenches with their hands because some nights American guards fired their rifles into the camp wounding and killing some. The trenches also protected them from the cold. Prisoners were continually taken away for questioning and beaten, especially middle ranking officers. Koppe continually witnessed guards "bashing" the faces and bodies of inmates with rifle butts and fists, and guards shooting inmates. All National Socialist government men were badly beaten, many to death. After 6 to 8 weeks of minimal food Koppe could barely stand, and was transferred with most of the remaining inmates to work camps. Ref: Photos from "Other Losses" by James Bacque. Ernst Koppe's eye-witness stories recorded 1998.