What to Do With German Prisoners: The American Muddle

by JAMES H. POWERS

I

IN NINETY-NINE base camps and ninety-eight branch camps scattered across the United States, a familiar spectacle these days is a column of gray-or denim-clad German prisoners of war, swinging along in the precise, easy rhythm achieved only by men familiar with marching since boyhood. Their average age is between twenty and twenty-two years, and they number well over 200,000. These German prisoners put the War Department — and incidentally the American people—in a difficult quandary.

The difficulty has little to do with such relatively simple matters as housing, food, and security. Such challenges the Army takes easily in its stride. The Geneva Convention of July 27, 1929, to which this nation as well as Great Britain and Germany is a signatory, charted a blueprint for the Service Command in such matters. Accordingly, our prison camps or compounds are similar to any other camps, posts, or military stations throughout the country — except for the barbed wire or the high walls of the compound, and the guards posted to watch them. Dormitory arrangements copy faithfully those provided for our own soldiers. Every standard compound accommodates a thousand men and is complete with an administration building, four mess halls, a recreation building, an infirmary, a workshop, a canteen, four camp storehouses, a chapel, and a guardhouse. The physical surroundings of the German prisoners in our midst present no possible grounds for complaint.

The difficulty lies in the fact that the German P.O.W. is a riddle which the United States Army has not yet solved. The solution involves more than a stiff test in psychology— a subject in which not a few American officers attached to the Service Command are somewhat less than proficient. It involves, also, a broad understanding of the meaning of contemporary history. For these men are unlike any other prisoners of war we have ever held. They have been through the Nazi educational mill, which extirpates ruthlessly most of the principles accepted by Americans as essential to civilization. Perhaps it might be worth our while to find out how they are getting along.

The majority of the German prisoners of war endure captivity with a high contempt for their captors in no wise diminished by the plight in which they find themselves. Their arrogance is obvious and outspoken. An American sergeant in charge of a detail dumping trash asked a prisoner leaning against a tree what he thought about America. The German admitted that everyone in America has a car and that there are more movie houses in America than in Europe; then he registered his contempt: “ Yes, you haven’t burned up all your gas quite yet.”With this sarcastic comment he turned his back.

Arrogance is accompanied by a stiff confidence in the ultimate triumph of Nazi principles — if not in this war, then in the next. A German noncom in one camp proclaimed triumphantly to a Germanspeaking guard that we shall never defeat Germany because our casualties on the Normandy beachhead, the first day alone, were 70,000 — information which he claimed he had seen in the papers and heard over the radio. Our casualties were actually but a small fraction of that number; yet it was useless to correct him. He knew! And the work squad of German P.O.W.’s under his charge fervently approved his scorn. For them it was the official attitude, proper to be adopted toward the enemy — to wit, ourselves.

“Remember,” an Unteroffizier was overheard barking to his fellow prisoners, “that you are still members of the German Army, whose duty it is to work for Germany.” His warning carried obvious implications against backsliders. At the same camp a prisoner taken in Tunisia, who had served in the Afrika Korps all through the desert campaign, told an interpreter that the Americans could be thankful they were giving the best food and barracks available to the Germans. “When Germany wins the war,” he announced, “that will be at least one good mark on your record.” That view has been echoed by captives taken in France this summer. The respectful treatment which we accord to German prisoners is accepted without the least surprise. It is only natural that the “hero race” should be waited upon by flabby Americans.

This amiable conviction is sustained by the awe frequently displayed by our Army interrogators — or, as the Army calls them, “processors” — before members of crack German divisions. Of the grisly and horrible excesses committed by these same grenadiers and paratroopers in French and Italian villages and Russian towns, apparently such processors have never heard. Prisoners, almost without exception, attribute kind treatment to our fear of retribution. One of them expressed regret that the war would not be over for him for a long while, because, after the British and the Yankees had walked into the giant deathtrap in France and had been driven home beaten, he would still have to go to the East to help finish up the Russians. Defeat in France has not altered this notion among prisoners: the “deathtrap” they wait to see sprung has merely been moved back into the Reich.

This unshakable attitude of German prisoners of war, so general in many American Army prisoner compounds, is fostered by the functioning of a secret police, usually under the direction of a prisoner who has ties with the Gestapo. Here, admittedly, is a hard nut to crack. Prisoners themselves are so firmly under the thumbs of these fanatics, and so cowed by past experience, that they seldom reveal the existence of the terror until secret disciplinary punishments inflicted upon them by their Nazi noncoms become intolerable. Then there is an explosion, as there was at the camp in Colorado, where thirty masked men, under direction of a secret representative of the master race disciplinary arm (a fellow P.O.W.) were caught pursuing a handful of fugitive prisoners who said they were anti-Nazi. The camp authorities closed the episode by segregating the thirty.

At another camp four prisoners disobeyed their German noncom and then refused to submit to punishment. A riot ensued. The four barricaded themselves in an empty barracks against attack by most of the other prisoners. They were barely rescued in time. The trouble arose because they objected to persecution and discriminations practiced against them by the Nazi majority.

Such incidents might be multiplied. They have a common foundation: inadequate measures taken by our military to weed out Nazi secret police organizers, and failure to admit that any critical situation exists until one explodes. Yet this system of secret terror is known. Its presence is often attested in grim fashion — as when German prisoners of war were found hanged, apparently “dead from suicide.” There have been more than a dozen instances of actual murder. Fellow prisoners of the victims as a rule offer no assistance to the military in probing these “accidents.” Having seen what happened, they fear to testify. Military law, the Articles of War, the state law, the local law — all extend jurisdiction over P.O.W.’s suspected of crimes. There is plenty of law. The shortage is of strong policy and effective supervision.

2

PERSISTENCE of German Gestapo tactics in the P.O.W. camps is but part of the story of the shortcomings in our present practice in handling disciples of the Nazi philosophy. Any approach to the correction of this situation leads back immediately to other defects in the Army’s procedure. One has to do with the screening of the prisoners as they arrive at the camps. Separation of identifiable Nazis from anti-Nazis is counseled not only by common sense; it is urgently needed to ensure the safety of the prisoners themselves.

Under Army rules governing the processing of prisoners of war, a basic personnel record is prepared for each prisoner. It includes his name, rank, serial number, photo, fingerprints, description, and an inventory of his effects. The final item on the list is “personal information.” Prisoners are segregated by nationality, and officers are quartered apart from noncoms and enlisted men.

The prisoners are brought to camp, and shortly thereafter processing companies find them in an orderly line, waiting to be searched and questioned. Right at the very beginning, the German noncoms make their presence felt. They intervene, and whenever they can — which is often — they assume full control of the proceedings. The coöperation of prisoners, it becomes clear at once, is not in response to their American examiners but at the order of their own noncommissioned officers. As a matter of convenience in handling groups, this procedure may have its points; as a method of handling P.O.W.’s brought up in the Germany of Hitler and schooled in the doctrines of the German National Socialist Party, it is senseless. It builds a wall between every individual prisoner and the camp processors.

Examinations generally take place at tables set so near together that any prisoner wishing to make it plain he is an anti-Nazi faces another hurdle. If his fellows hear him making any such declaration, he knows he is a marked man. To make matters worse, the examination disregards the issue of his being a Nazi or an anti-Nazi. Interpreters are not permitted to solicit this information from a prisoner. If he wants to be segregated, he must volunteer the information — though he frequently does not know that he must. Such procedure obviously follows an assumption that it doesn’t matter much what a prisoner’s political views are. That assumption is belied by a record of strikes, fracases, riots, and murders in camps all over the United States. Incidentally, it also ignores the recorded history of Europe these past ten years.

Prisoner B.L. (an actual case) is of Polish birth. A member of the Polish Army until 1940, he was impressed into the German Army and sent to Italy. Clearly, this man has an interesting political background, and obviously some cognizance should be taken of the anomaly he represents as a German soldier. Throwing suspicious glances at the other prisoners near him on either side, he says something in Polish. The fact that he does so is powerful evidence that he is afraid of something. But the interpreter knows no Polish. So the man is sent along abruptly with the other German prisoners without further inquiry.

Though separate camps are set up for anti-Nazis, inefficient administration may delay a man’s transfer; meanwhile his life is endangered by enemies in his own sleeping chamber!

Other camps are set up for troublemakers and for uncoöperative prisoners. Here again, an excellent idea often bogs down in poor administration. Worse: misinterpretations are made of the protests of some of the men that they are anti-Nazi. It does not dawn on some camp officials that a real anti-Nazi German soldier, in a prison compound with a group of convinced devotees of Hitler, is in genuine peril; and that the least he faces is prospect of torment and abuse if he is left in a company where Nazis are in control — which is usually the case.

Estimates by guards and officers who have handled German war prisoners vary as to the actual percentage of real Nazis among the captives. The lowest figure is 25 per cent, the highest a little more than 50 per cent. Obviously it makes a difference where and under what circumstances the prisoners were taken. The percentage of convinced Nazis among prisoners captured in Normandy did not run very high at first, because of the dilution of forces practiced by the Germans in manning their Atlantic Wall. It rose steeply when the Allies drove inland. Units captured in Tunisia or Italy have contained a uniformly high number of real Nazis.

3

THE Geneva Convention provides that prisoners assigned to a compound may elect one of their number as a spokesman, under Article 45 of the Convention, which specifies that in every case where there are P.O.W.’s “they shall be allowed to appoint agents entrusted with representing them directly with military authorities and protecting powers. This appointment shall he subject to approval by the military authorities.” Such spokesmen, according to a War Department circular, are not allowed any command or disciplinary functions.

The Convention further provides that only privates may be compelled to work, and then only under the same conditions, except for pay, as native laborers. Noncommissioned officers may volunteer for work in order to receive the 80 cents a day that privates earn, half of which is given in canteen checks. Noncoms cannot be compelled to work, although they can be compelled to take supervisory jobs over work details. In other words, they, like the “spokesmen,” function under the order and subject to the approval of t he camp authorities and not by virtue of any rights as noncommissioned officers.

But what happens, under our practice, is this: there is not enough work for all prisoners of war who desire it, and the responsibility for assigning duties is handed over to the higher-ranking German noncoms in most American P.O.W. camps. This procedure is not ordered by the Convention. It is an interpretation put on the Convention by the Service Command. Other signatories of the Geneva pact do not recognize it.

The result is to place a disciplinary rod in the hands of the German noncom prisoners. They enjoy practically the same authority they held while in the functioning German Army. No one with Army experience will fail to grasp the significance of this fact in relation to the problem of the German P.O.W.’s. Power over assignment to detail is the traditional club wielded by all army sergeants, time out of mind.

A German noncom holds his rank, under contemporary German Army practice, partly because of his proved competence as a soldier and partly because of his proved adherence to the pure line of Nazi Party doctrine. The power of persecution which our practice places in the hands of these men is seldom neglected. An American corporal who served eight months at a P.O.W. camp gives the picture clearly in a letter to the New York Herald Tribune, describing a camp in the 8th Service Command area: “It is the Feldwebel (sergeant), not the commissioned officer, who commands the men’s respect. In this group we find quite obviously the greatest percentage of Nazis. I should say that 50 per cent of the German noncoms definitely support Hitler and his government. They are, in reality, a police force in the camp, since all activity inside the barbed wire is directed by them. The effect of their rule is a little Germany, where persecution of antiNazis is thorough and violent.”

German noncoms go to extraordinary lengths In our prison compounds in enforcing their Nazi point of view. Assuming a power and authority without legitimate basis, they bar attendance of their groups at educational or other movies provided for the men’s recreation by camp officials. They even operate as censors over the prisoners’ reading. In a certain Midwestern camp the American authorities prepared a booklet on American history, past and present, for distribution within the stockade. The plan was blocked by the German sergeant. He declared that the book was untrue and would have to be censored since it gave a distorted view of the real history of this country — which he had studied in Germany! Camp officials, timidly interpreting the Geneva Convention’s strictures against compulsory indoctrination of prisoners, bowed to this veto of a booklet that had been prepared with careful attention to the intent of the Convention.

To a just but rigorous policy, enforced by officers who will stand no nonsense, the German P.O.W.’s respond well. They understand it. But they are swift to exploit any disposition to grant them favors. Their cooks, who are not subject to the periodic inspections American Army cooks must undergo, and who have the help of an abundance of KP labor, turn out elaborate meals of a German flavor, trading bushels of beans for a huge quantity of sauerkraut, for instance. This occurred specifically at a camp in Arkansas last summer. American officers and enlisted men in charge at the compounds usually help the Germans in every way possible. They do anything, from scaring up lumber and paints which the P.O.W.’s want for their clubhouse, to a little harmless manipulation of quartermaster stores — also for P.O.W. convenience.

4

HERE, then, dwell Hitler’s supermen, in a world which they have succeeded astonishingly in recreating according to their own design. Here they await the day of victory which Party doctrine has taught them to consider inevitable, and meanwhile nurse contempt for what they deem our softness.

“You are fools to suppose you can win our friendship with good food and fine buildings,” snorted a Wehrmacht veteran to a guard at a Michigan camp. By the record he would not seem far wrong — unless both the Army and the American public wake up to the realities which this war should have made self-evident. Overseas our soldiers fight and die to break the hold these men and their fellows have fixed upon a continent sheltering more than 300 million people. That grip they have cemented with an array of thoroughly documented atrocities staggering to the civilized mind.

“It is not our business to change these men’s habits or beliefs or to re-educate them. This company has a job to do and we simply do it in the way which will bring the best results,” says one American officer. (This officer does not speak German, though his company deals exclusively with German prisoners. In fact, at many prison compounds, neither the commander nor the guards can speak a word directly to the prisoners.)

One can match this remark with the comment of the American officer in Italy who, being asked last spring what he intended to do about clearing a liberated Italian town in his jurisdiction of notorious Fascist functionaries, replied: “We’re not here to fight Fascism. We’re here to defeat the enemy.”

Who is the enemy? An army? An idea? Or both in fusion? The theory that all we need to do in handling the German P.O.W.’s is to pursue a policy which “will bring about the best results” depends for its validity upon one’s ideas about what “the best results” are. These prisoners are dynamite, not only while the war lasts, but through many uncertain tomorrow’s which will follow. Neither of these threats is eliminated by attempts to ignore it. Slight pressures from one side or the other at this time may result in final crystallization of social and political attitudes among large numbers of these men, who will be citizens of the Germany of tomorrow and Inhabitants of our post-war world. Is this unimportant?

Last May Hitler reinstituted the notorious Executive Office for German Organization, which directed the “pity campaign” for the German Reich between 1918 and 1939. That agency provided the foundations, between wars, for the Nazi fifth columns all over the world. Dr. Hans Graeber, whose success in that effort is history, has again been given the job of directing the resuscitated agency and re-establishing its underground conspiracy against peace and human liberty throughout Europe and the Americas. It is from the Hitler Youth, to which almost every German P.O.W. under twenty-five once belonged, that the recruits for these new tasks of disruption and social poison are to be selected. Let any American who thinks that our task is “not to fight Fascism but to defeat the enemy” examine recent ferments in Latin America before he concludes that perfunctory handling of these German P.O.W.’s has no dangers for the future well-being of this nation and hemisphere.

Shall we send these prisoners home with a clearer understanding of this country’s decision to stand no more of their nonsense, or with an indulgent notion that we are simpletons, against whom a third try will succeed? To blame the strictures of the Geneva Convention is idle. The British get results under that identical Convention. In Britain, German P.O.W.’s are put all on one plane, regardless of rank; spokesmen and leaders are picked from carefully selected anti-Nazi prisoners; German noncoms have no authority whatever; terrorists are dealt with summarily; and Polish guards ensure a minimum of quibbling by “Geneva Convention lawyers” among the prisoners. England no longer plays with her deadly foes.

5

THE United States Army has been coöperative and open-minded in its general policy regarding public interest in prisoner-of-war problems. Visits and studies by penologists, representatives of the press, and others are numerous. Yet little has been done to relate these reports one to another, to assemble pertinent evidence regarding desirable changes, and to draw the necessary conclusions. Until some such comprehensive analysis is undertaken, the administrative defects and weaknesses of policy now apparent will persist.

The assumption is all too prevalent in the Service Command that the prisoner-of-war problem is unimportant and can be relegated to officers who do not fit well elsewhere. This view of the P.O.W. Camp as the incompetent officer’s last hope persists, despite brilliant exceptions. It should be ended at once. Soundness in the policy applied to the P.O.W.’s in this country, efficiency of the administration which governs them, and a high standard of competence, character, and experience in officers charged with the responsibility of the task — all these must be achieved, even if it implies drastic revisions of present procedure.

Attitudes toward prisoners among camp guards and other camp personnel should be firmer and more objective. Prisoners, especially German noncoms, should not be permitted to set. the tone of that relationship. No provision of the Geneva Convention requires that they retain their own importance or prerogatives. Military common sense forbids it. The prisoner is the beaten enemy. To allow him to elevate his ego is to proffer him a claim to privilege to which he is not entitled. It clearly fosters arrogance among all prisoners.

Processing should be revised to enable prisoners to answer questions without fear of eavesdropping by their fellows. The political frame of mind of every prisoner should be explored carefully, as it is in England. Nazi fanatics should be segregated from anti-Nazis swiftly and completely. Work programs, and the assignment and selection of details, should become the immediate, exclusive responsibility of American officers and their noncommissioned personnel. Any competent U. S. Army sergeant with an alphabetical list of prisoners can easily handle this job. The German noncom abuse should be eradicated root and branch.

The weeding out and severe segregation of Gestapo agents and terrorists should be relentless. Censorship, either of the reading or of the motion pict ure attendance of prisoners, should be reserved exclusively to the American authorities, with each prisoner permitted to judge for himself whether he desires to read a book or stay at a movie to the end. There must be a social plan and an educational program. Recreation should be so directed and managed that it emphasizes constructive and characteristic American points of view.

Dealing with these prisoners is a foretaste of what we shall meet in dealing with a defeated Germany. Let us not forget that. Here is an opportunity to show that we can be firm and just, to prove that we know the time of day in the world we inhabit, to make it clear that we do not propose to be fooled again. If we continue to bungle this job here at home where every facility favors us, how shall we fare in Germany when the firing ceases?