The razing of Friesoythe was the destruction of the town of Friesoythe in Lower Saxony on 14 April 1945, during the Western Allies' invasion of Germany towards the end of World War II in Europe. The 4th Canadian (Armoured) Division attacked the German-held town of Friesoythe, and one of its battalions, The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada, captured it.
During the fighting, the battalion's commander was killed by a German soldier, but it was incorrectly rumoured that he had been killed by a civilian. Under this mistaken belief, the division's commander, Major-General Christopher Vokes, ordered that the town be razed in retaliation and it was substantially destroyed. Twenty German civilians died in Friesoythe and the surrounding area during the two days of fighting and its aftermath. Similar, if usually less extreme, events occurred elsewhere in Germany as the Allies advanced in the closing weeks of the war.
The rubble of the town was used to fill craters in local roads to make them passable for the division's tanks and heavy vehicles. A few days earlier, the division had destroyed the centre of Sögel in another reprisal and also used the rubble to make the roads passable. Little official notice was taken of the incident and the Canadian Army official history glosses over it. It is covered in the regimental histories of the units involved and several accounts of the campaign. Forty years later, Vokes wrote in his autobiography that he had "no great remorse over the elimination of Friesoythe".
Context
Allied tactics
By September 1944, the Western Allies had reached Germany's western border, and by the end of October had captured Aachen, the first major German city to fall to them. 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. 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.
The frequency and nature of retaliatory actions differed between national contingents within the Western Allied forces. 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. The British commanders disapproved of retaliations against civilians, and British troops carried out few reprisals.
The First Canadian Army served in the predominately British 21st Army Group, and more frequently retaliated against German civilians than the British. 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.
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.
Allied attitudes
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. On 15 April the British reached Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where the inmates had been reduced to cannibalism. The historian Rick Atkinson wrote that "the revelations of April ... sparked enduring outrage".