Disarmed Enemy Forces

Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEF), less commonly,Surrendered Enemy Forces, was a US designation for soldiers who surrendered to an adversary after hostilities ended and for those who had already surrendered POWs and held in camps in occupied German territory at that time. It was Dwight D. Eisenhower's designation of German prisoners in post-World War II occupied Germany.

Because of the logistical impossibility of feeding millions of surrendered German soldiers at the levels required by the Geneva Convention during the food crisis of 1945, the purpose of the designation, along with the British designation of Surrendered Enemy Personnel (SEP), was to prevent categorization of the prisoners as Prisoners of War (POW) under the 1929 Geneva Convention.

German agriculture had suffered extreme productivity decreases in 1944 and 1945, as Germany had mobilized for total war, and food for the troops and war workers was a part of that war. A shortage of synthetic fertilizers had developed after nitrogen and phosphate stocks were channeled into ammunition production. Consequently, crop levels had fallen by 20% to 30% at the end of the war. Allied bombing raids had destroyed thousands of farm buildings, and rendered food processing facilities inoperable. Lack of farm machinery, spare parts, and fertilizer caused an almost total disruption of agriculture when the war was over. After the release of Ostarbeiters, slave laborers that were Russian POWs and Eastern Europeans, extreme agriculture labor shortages existed that could be relieved only by German DEFs and SEPs. Roving bands of displaced persons and returning soldiers and civilians decimated the hog herds and chicken flocks of German farmers.

In addition, the destroyed German transportation infrastructure created additional logistical difficulties, with railroad lines, bridges, canals and terminals left in ruins. The turnaround time for railroad wagons was five times higher than the prewar average. Of the 15,600 German locomotives, 38.6% were no longer operating and 31% were damaged. Only 1,000 of the 13,000 kilometers of track in the British zone were operable. Urban centers often had to be supplied with horse-drawn carriages and wheeled carts.

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