“You’re Not Animals”— German Women POW’s Shocked When Canadian Men Removed Their Chains

When Chains Came Off: How Canadian Soldiers Changed the Lives of German Women POWs in 1945

In the final weeks of World War II, as Nazi Germany collapsed and Allied forces swept across Western Europe, thousands of German soldiers were taken prisoner. Among them were women—signal operators, anti-aircraft auxiliaries, clerks—many barely out of their teens. What awaited them, they had been told, would be cruelty, humiliation, and revenge.

What they encountered instead, in one Canadian port and later deep in Ontario, unsettled everything they believed.

When a convoy of German women prisoners arrived in Halifax Harbor in late April 1945, they stepped off transport ships with metal chains still wrapped around their wrists. The restraints were not unusual by regulation; prisoners were often chained during transport to prevent escape. But when Major Douglas Campbell of the Canadian Army saw the women standing in line—exhausted, thin, and visibly injured—he stopped.

“Get those off,” he ordered.

An aide hesitated, citing procedure. Campbell cut him short.

“They’re not animals,” he said. “Remove them.”

Within minutes, chains that had been worn for more than a week were unlocked and dropped onto the dock. For the 76 German women standing there, it was a moment none would forget.

Raised on Fear

Many of the women were products of Nazi Germany’s propaganda system. They had been taught that Allied soldiers—especially British, Canadian, and American—were brutal enemies who would abuse captured women without mercy. The fear was so ingrained that some prisoners believed the chains were only the beginning.

Instead, they were given food, water, and medical care.

“They expected punishment,” said one Canadian officer later interviewed by military historians. “What they got was paperwork, soup, and a place to sleep.”

During the Atlantic crossing, Canadian medics treated shrapnel wounds and infections. Meals were simple but regular. The women noticed something unsettling: the guards ate the same food they did.

“That confused them more than cruelty would have,” one camp administrator later wrote.

A Different Kind of Captivity

From Halifax, the prisoners were transported by bus and train to Camp 30 in Bowmanville, Ontario—one of several Canadian POW camps holding German and Italian prisoners. The women were housed separately from male prisoners, in wooden barracks with real beds, clean blankets, heating stoves, and electric lights.

It looked like a prison. It did not feel like the nightmare they had been promised.

Under the Geneva Convention, which Canada strictly enforced, prisoners were to be treated humanely and kept in conditions comparable to those of their guards. At Camp 30, that meant adequate food, medical care, work assignments, recreation time, and the ability to write letters home through the Red Cross.

For many women, the shock was psychological.

“They were prepared for hatred,” said a Canadian civilian supervisor who worked at the camp laundry. “They were not prepared for order, fairness, or politeness.”

Cracks in Belief

Daily life slowly dismantled years of indoctrination.

Women assigned to the kitchen saw storerooms filled floor to ceiling with food—flour, meat, vegetables, canned fruit—while remembering that their own families in Germany had gone hungry. Others worked in administrative offices where the Geneva Convention was posted on the wall, printed in both English and German.

“They realized they had been lied to,” said one former interpreter. “Not just about the enemy—but about the world.”

The realization did not come all at once. Some women clung to old beliefs. Others grew bitter. But a growing number began to question everything they had been taught.

The turning point came on May 7, 1945.

“The War in Europe Is Over”

That evening, all prisoners at Camp 30 were assembled in the main yard. A Canadian colonel announced, through a German-speaking interpreter, that Germany had signed an unconditional surrender. The war in Europe was over.

Reactions varied—shock, grief, silence, tears. For many women, it was the moment when ideology collapsed completely.

Later that night, a civilian supervisor whose son had been killed fighting in Italy entered one women’s barracks carrying a box of chocolate, tea, and biscuits. She offered them quietly, without speeches.

“You’re young,” she told one former teacher. “You still have a future. Don’t waste it on bitterness.”

That moment, several former prisoners later wrote, stayed with them for the rest of their lives.

Learning Again

In the weeks that followed, divisions emerged among the women. Some denied everything. Some accepted defeat but remained resentful. Others—slowly, painfully—began to change.

They enrolled in English classes taught by local volunteers. They formed reading groups using donated German-language books. Former teachers taught again. Former clerks helped organize records. Young farm girls learned baking skills they planned to bring home.

One woman, assigned to the camp laundry, repaired an industrial washing machine in minutes. “You’re smart,” her supervisor told her. “Germany will need people like you.”

For the first time in years, she believed it.

Facing the Truth

As Allied newspapers reached the camp, censored but undeniable, reports of liberated concentration camps began to circulate. Photographs from Bergen-Belsen and Dachau shattered remaining illusions.

Some prisoners refused to look. Others read everything.

“We can’t undo what was done,” one former legal secretary wrote in her diary. “But we can decide who we become afterward.”

More Than a Camp

By summer 1945, Camp 30 no longer felt like the place they had arrived in chains. It was still a prison. Freedom was still months away. But for many women, it had become something else as well: a place where their worldview collapsed—and where a new one, fragile but honest, began to form.

The chains, long since removed, became a symbol. Not just of captivity, but of what had been taken off their minds.

Decades later, several former prisoners would write memoirs or speak quietly to historians. They did not describe Canada as kind because it was soft, but because it was firm without cruelty.

“They won the war,” one woman later wrote, “and they proved they did not need to humiliate us to do it.”

In a conflict defined by destruction, that restraint became its own kind of victory.