Why were these British Second World War burials draped with Nazi flags?

“When somebody dies, even if they’re on the other side, you’re faced with the practical question of having a body, [and] treaties stipulate that even enemy dead should be buried with some respect,” explains historian Tim Grady, author of Burying the Enemy: The Story of Those who Cared for the Dead in Two World Wars, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast about the treatment of British and German war dead in the wars of the 20th century.

But how, exactly, did such visually shocking funerals end up taking place in Britain?

The practical problem of the war dead

Every conflict leaves behind bodies. In the most basic sense, burying the enemy dead was a matter of hygiene: corpses couldn’t simply be left to decay on public land.

But there was also a legal and moral dimension. The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which both Britain and Germany had signed, required that enemy dead be treated decently and, where possible, buried honourably. The principle was that the humanity of the fallen should be acknowledged, regardless of uniform.

“Prisoners of war might be able to take a body to a cemetery, accompany it to the grave and take part in the funeral,” says Grady. “That happened in both Germany and Britain in both the First and Second World Wars.”

But that wasn’t the only story.

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In the First World War, professional armies often commemorated each other’s fallen. Soldiers recalled brief truces to collect bodies, and officers sometimes exchanged condolences. Enemy graves were marked, and burial parties occasionally saluted one another across no man’s land.

The Second World War was harsher. Treatment of enemy dead depended heavily on where and when they fell. On the Eastern Front, German and Soviet soldiers were often denied burial altogether, their bodies left uncollected. In Western Europe too, standards slipped as bombing campaigns escalated and hatred for the enemy grew more intense.

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By 1944, with German cities devastated by Allied bombing and Nazi propaganda portraying aircrews as “terror fliers”, downed pilots were actively treated with disdain.

“In the latter stages of the Second World War, the bodies [of Allied Airmen] were sometimes just chucked in pits with no ceremony, no care, no understanding, and no respect,” says Grady.

Reciprocity and propaganda

For most of the Second World War, however, Britain and Germany were acutely aware that how they treated enemy bodies might influence how their own men were treated abroad.

“If you’re dealing with the enemy dead, this [is] a reciprocal issue … they want their dead to be treated with the same respect and they want some kind of respect to be given with the bodies overseas as well,” says Grady.

Respectful burials were also about image. Funerals could be public performances of civilisation. By honouring the enemy’s dead, governments signalled to neutral observers, and to their own citizens, that they actively upheld the rules of war.

Nazi flags on British coffins

Nowhere was this more striking than in Britain itself. German airmen shot down in the Battle of Britain, or sailors washed ashore after naval battles, were often given funerals with full military formality.

These ceremonies were not concealed. Newspapers published the photographs of coffins covered with swastikas, carried by military pallbearers and followed by solemn processions. The government wanted the public, and the enemy, to see that Britain respected international obligations.

It was also a calculation. By treating German bodies with dignity, Britain hoped that its own captured or fallen servicemen would be accorded the same courtesy.

The view from local communities

Despite their potentially incendiary nature, the funerals of enemy combatants were not kept secret from the communities in which they were held.

“They could be quite public affairs” says Grady. “The bodies would be taken through local streets to a cemetery because you have to get to the cemetery somehow,” Grady explains.

Residents lined roads as the coffins passed, a reminder that the war was not just fought abroad but had reached their own towns.

“There was occasional resistance, but for the most part, people seemed to understand they’ve got to be buried somewhere,” Grady notes.

The treatment of enemy dead during the Second World War was as much about reciprocity, image and propaganda as it was about hygiene and legal obligations. Respectful burials were staged to show the world that Britain behaved honourably, even towards those who had killed its citizens.

The sight of Nazi flags on coffins in British cemeteries spoke to a wartime logic: in treating the enemy’s dead with dignity, Britain hoped to safeguard the dignity of its own.

Tim Grady was speaking to Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.