Did German WW2 soldiers just return home after the war if they were not killed or captured?

Let us not whitewash history. A tremendous amount of animosity persisted. Look up the Rhineland Camps or Rheinwiesenlager on Wikipedia. After capitulation there were 3.4 million German soldiers in the custody of the Western Allies, and they were “housed” in the open air in fields by the tens of thousands. Logistics for feeding, health, sanitation etc., were a nightmare.

Germany had been bombed into rubble; starvation near the war’s end had citizens rummaging through destroyed cities lucky to find wallpaper to eat. The Russians were advancing from the East driving German citizens westward and the Allies were overwhelmed.

“In April 1945, Eisenhower wrote to the Combined Chiefs of Staff of the Western Allies that the food situation in Germany was going to be desperate and that much needed to be done, and fast, to prevent starvation and chaos throughout the country. As Germany surrendered, and the occupation began, more slave laborers were freed than expected, more German soldiers surrendered than were expected as well, and around 13 million German civilians fled from the Russian occupied zone into the West.

In total, 17 million more people than Eisenhower expected when he saw the situation as desperate, now needed food as well.

In total, it is thought that the mortality rate in the camps was as high as one percent and that no more than 56,000 German prisoners died.

The Rheinwiesenlager were not the worst camps to be held as prisoner in, during and after WWII, though the Americans could have been much more humane in their treatment. Mostly, the tight rations often blamed for the deaths of thousands of German prisoners were the result of mass hunger in most of Europe at the end of the war.”