Hitler's Generals in America: Nazi POWs and Allied Military Intelligence

262 Pages·2013·4.271 MB·English

by  Derek R. Mallett

Hitler’s Generals
in America

Hitler’s
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.
Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky
663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008
www.kentuckypress.com
17 16 15 14 13 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mallett, Derek R., 1969-
Hitler’s 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, 1939-1945—Prisoners and prisons, American. 2. Prisoners of war—
Germany—History—20th century. 3. Prisoners of war—United States—History—20th
century. 4. Generals—Germany—History—20th century. 5. World War, 1939-1945—
Military intelligence. 6. Cold War—Military intelligence. I. Title.
D805.U5M34 2013
940.54’7273—dc23 2013029397
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.
Member of the Association of
American University Presses
For my mother’s quiet strength and subtle leadership;
for her solid, principled example;
and for her having always been there.

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

Contents
List of Abbreviations viii
Introduction 1
1. Afrikaner and Französen 15
2. Hitler’s Generals Come to America 53
3. The Seeds of the American Transformation 77
4. Reeducating Hitler’s Generals? 107
5. Cold War Allies 133
Conclusion 169
Acknowledgments 187
Appendix A. Wehrmacht General Officer Prisoners of War
Held in the United States 189
Appendix B. German Military Document Section Studies
(Published) 193
Appendix C. German Military Document Section Studies
(Unpublished) 195
Appendix D. Wehrmacht Officer Prisoners of War in the
Hill Project (“Hillbillies”) 197
Notes 201
Bibliography 229
Index 237
Abbreviations
BA-MA Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg
CAD Civil Affairs Division, U.S. War Department
CSDIC Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre
GMDS German Military Document Section
MIRS Military Intelligence Research Section
MPEG Military Police Escort Guard
NARA National Archives and Records Administration,
College Park, Maryland
NCO noncommissioned officer
OKH Oberkommando des Heeres (German Army High
Command)
OKW Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (German Armed Forces
High Command)
PMGO Provost Marshal General’s Office
SD Sicherheitsdienst
TNA National Archives of the United Kingdom
USFET U.S. Forces European Theater
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.1 Yet the collective story of these men’s experienc-
es 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
America’s national security concerns in the summer of 1943, when the army
first brought Wehrmacht general officers to the United States, and the sum-
mer 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 Jürgen von
Arnim surrendered the Axis’s 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 prison-
ers 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 Britain’s Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC), the
agency charged with interrogating important prisoners of war in England,
1
2 Hitler’s Generals in America
“should act as advanced echelon” for their collaborative effort. But the ulti-
mate 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 promo-
tion 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.2
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 ef-
ficient and well-managed treatment of POWs during World War II. Britain
graduated from temporarily housing the Kaiser’s men aboard ships in the
winter of 1914–1915 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.3
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 war’s 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.4
Historian Richard Speed contends that “British camps [during the Great
War] more nearly matched the prewar ideal of captivity than did those of
any other European belligerent.” The British government heavily weighed the
often vague requirements of the Hague Conventions that governed the treat-
ment of war prisoners during World War I and sought to incorporate the
spirit of this existing international law to provide humane treatment for all
POWs. At the onset of the Second World War, twenty years later, the British
simply had to reincarnate the system for accommodating prisoners of war
that they had worked out during World War I.5
The American experience with prisoners, like the country’s experience
with the First World War in general, was unique. Whereas the other bel-
ligerents began dealing with prisoners of war in 1914, the United States did
not officially enter the war until 1917, and even then American troops did