Mallett - Hitlers generals in America Nazi POWs and allied military intelligence

Hitlers Generals in America

HITLERS GENERALS IN AMERICA

Nazi POWs and Allied Military Intelligence

DEREK R. MALLETT

Copyright 2013 by The University Press of Kentucky

Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mallett, Derek R., 1969

Hitlers generals in America : Nazi POWs and allied military intelligence / Derek R. Mallett.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8131-4251-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8131-4253-1 (pdf)

ISBN 978-0-8131-4252-4 (epub)

1. World War, 1939-1945Prisoners and prisons, American. 2. Prisoners of warGermanyHistory20th century. 3. Prisoners of warUnited StatesHistory20th century. 4. GeneralsGermanyHistory20th century. 5. World War, 1939-1945Military intelligence. 6. Cold WarMilitary intelligence. I. Title.

D805.U5M34 2013

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

For my mothers quiet strength and subtle leadership;
for her solid, principled example;
and for her having always been there.

And for my fathers satirical view of the world;
for his firm, fathers hand;
and for his reminder that life is not always what it seems.

Contents

Abbreviations

Introduction

Discussions of World War II German generals often bring to mind names like Erwin Rommel or Heinz Guderian. Undoubtedly, these men and officers like them played significant roles in the conduct of the war. Scholars have paid less attention to the fates of hundreds of senior German officers taken prisoner by the Allies, with the exception of Wehrmacht officers in Soviet hands, those issuing anti-Nazi propaganda from Russian prisoner-of-war camps being of particular note.

What seem to have been of least interest are the general officers captured by the Western Allies who spent anywhere from a few months to a few years in England or North America. Indeed, little has been written about the fifty-five German general officers who were held as prisoners of war in the United States during World War II. Yet the collective story of these mens experiences as prisoners of war reveals a great deal about the differences in American and British perceptions of these men, and even more about the differences in Americas national security concerns in the summer of 1943, when the army first brought Wehrmacht general officers to the United States, and the summer of 1946, when it repatriated the last of them.

From the earliest stages of the war, providing for captured enemy soldiers increasingly burdened Allied authorities. When General Hans Jrgen von Arnim surrendered the Axiss North African forces in May 1943, 250,000 German and Italian soldiers became the responsibility of the British and American governments. This represented the first massive influx of prisoners of war into Allied custody. These prisoners included not only the usual German and Italian enlisted men and lower-ranking officers but seventeen German general officers as well, including General von Arnim himself. Washington and London engaged in a great deal of discussion regarding who should take responsibility for these select prisoners. The two Allies agreed that Britains Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC), the agency charged with interrogating important prisoners of war in England, should act as advanced echelon for their collaborative effort. But the ultimate question of ownership of these prisoners was immaterial, as transfers of some of the generals to the United States could be easily effected. As if to demonstrate this, CSDIC sent four generals and a colonel awaiting promotion to the United States on the first of June, a little more than two weeks after their capture in North Africa, with more to follow as the war progressed.

The U.S. War Department most likely deferred to the British in dealing with the general officer prisoners because London had far more experience handling prisoners of war. During the First World War, the British learned a great deal about caring for war prisoners, which provided a model for efficient and well-managed treatment of POWs during World War II. Britain graduated from temporarily housing the Kaisers men aboard ships in the winter of 19141915 to the establishment of land-based camps both in the British Isles and in France the following year. Prisoners of the British enjoyed a bountiful food allotment of forty-six hundred calories a day through most of the war, and even when Britons themselves struggled with food shortages in the spring of 1917, POWs still consumed three thousand calories a day.

Other staples of World War II British POW policy developed out of the trials and errors of the Great War as well. The use of prisoner labor, while not practiced at all until the spring of 1916, quickly expanded until almost one-third of the German prisoners in Britain were working at various agricultural jobs by wars end. And, not unlike their successors in the Second World War, World War I German officer prisoners found themselves in stately mansions like Donington Hall in Derby, enjoyed the use of adjacent acres of land for regular walks, and were aided by enlisted prisoners who acted as servants and orderlies.