Land of Mine

Notes:

It seems like today is Lesser-Known War Crime day.

Land of Mine is based on the rapid mine clearance of landmines from Denmark at the end of WW2 using German POWs.

At first, it was comprised of volunteers from German Engineer (Pioneer) units that had some experience with dealing with landmines and had received specialised training in regards to this due to their occupation.

However, due to their small numbers, they weren't working fast enough and so an additional 800-1000 POWs were drafted and given three whole days of training before getting sent out onto the fields and beaches of Denmark with sticks to find and then defuse any landmines they found.

The Minekommando suffered a casualty rate of 20% due to the inexperience of most of the POWs and the fact that prodding was the main way of detecting landmines, which as you can probably imagine is a less than desirable way of finding landmines safely.

Now, why was all of this a war crime?

Because it is against the Geneva Conventions to make Prisoners of War do any work that is considered dangerous.

They got around this issue by renaming them Surrendered Enemy Personnel instead.

A full break down of the operation can be found here.