Some German POWs had it better in France than they would have in their war-ravaged home country. Read more: Was May 8, 1945, a day of defeat or Germany's liberation? Theofilakis believes that the general shortages and postwar confusion was a larger factor in the treatment of the German POWs than hate or a desire for revenge.

Others perished working in mines or clearing the land mines that Germany's Wehrmacht had left in France during the war. It is estimated that 40,000 former German soldiers died. For the POWs, there was even less food and clothing.

'The country's food supply at the time was catastrophic,' Theofilakis said. It quickly became apparent that France was overstretched by the huge number of POWs. In 1945, France's government sought to rejoin the ranks of the major global powers, but could scarcely meet domestic needs. Read more: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust on the battlefield Seventy percent of them came from POW camps administered by the United States. The situation was unlike that after World War I, when France's government had demanded mostly financial reparations from Germany.ДЄuthorities in France had reckoned they would have the assistance of more than 2 million former German soldiers, but ultimately they had to make do with 1 million. France's government enlisted as many German POWs as possible to work on the reconstruction of France. In 1945, the shoe was clearly on the other foot. Read more: May 8, 1945, was 'zero hour' for Germany in multiple waysДЄs the occupier of France during the war years, Nazi Germany required almost 650,000 French people to work across the border during World War II, where they came into contact with their German hosts mostly through agricultural labor. 'During the stops en route, they were spat upon or beaten up by the local people.' Theofilakis is the author of Les prisonniers de guerre allemands: France, 1944-1949, a history of German POWs in France - a topic that was underresearched for decades in both countries until his book was published in 2014В . 'They were taken to France in cattle cars,' said Fabien Theofilakis, a 44-year-old historian who teaches at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University in Paris. De Gaulle at the Arc de Triomphe following four years of the Nazi occupation of Paris

Wehrmacht victory march