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The Not-So-Nice Canadians of World War I

Khalid Elhassan December 9, 2024 15 min

Canadian - A WWI Canadian recruitment poster — A WWI Canadian recruitment poster. Library and Archives, Canada

5. The Slaughter of Captives

Captured German soldiers in gas masks being led to the rear. Canadian War Museum

Surrendering Germans were most often killed after the capture of an enemy position whose seizure involved the loss of comrades. As one Canadian lieutenant put it, “[a]fter losing half of my company there, we rushed them and they had the nerve to throw up their hands and cry, ‘Kamerad.’ All the Kam-erad they got was a foot of cold steel thro them“. Some captured Germans were murdered in cold blood. For example, one Canadian slipped a live grenade into the greatcoat pocket of a prisoner. Some were slain in fits of rage, as a Canadian who lost it after a friend’s death at Vimy Ridge wrote: “Once I killed my first German with my bayonit my blood was riled, every german I could not reach with my bayonit I shot. I think no more of murdering them than I usted to think of shooting rabbits“.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.