Just seen this image of PoWs in the Haynes book on 'German Infantryman'. German Infantryman Manual | Haynes Publishing Captioned as men from 15 Panzer Division. The Obergefreiter & chap next to him have Eastern Front medal ribbons. I was thinking how lucky those chaps were, being captured in Tunisia rather than being lost on the Ostfront. They'd probably get sent to some nice PoW camp in Canada or if they were really lucky in the USA eating ice-cream for the rest of the war. I wonder how well the de-Nazification programs worked on them whilst in those camps. They've already seen a fair bit of combat going by the infantry assault badges & wound badges on display. Just a bit of a waffle from me. We don't seem to look at the Germans so much on here. Just felt like looking at the other side for a change.
As you brought the subject up still reading through this https://scholarworks.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5402&context=etd RE-EDUCATION OF GERMAN PRISONERS OF WAR IN THE UNITED STATES DURING WORLD WAR II TD
Owen, Great photo. TD, I have looked at this recently and I would add a note of caution for those who might think that thesis is definitive. It has useful references. There are some good accounts of what life was like. However, the conclusions 77-80 say the US 'program' was a success, with rather thin proof to put it mildly. It was written in 1993 and later writers have not agreed.R. Robin,The Barbed-Wire College Reeducating German POWs in the United States During World War II. If you look at the US prisoner reactions to their lives in the US and their underlying political views when they went into the UK re-education programme you get a completely different picture. (The British programme was not without many faults, but it was better). A. Weis, ‘“On Behalf of my Comrades”: Transnational Private Memories of German Prisoners of War in US Captivity’, (D. Phil thesis, University of Kansas, 2008) has some interviews with former US prisoners and they often show no change in opinions despite their re-education in the US. The US Provost Marshal's Special Projects Division organisation undertaking re-education was not, in my view as well focused as the Foreign Office Political Intelligence Department that led the British efforts. A criticism of the US programme was it was largely lecture based, set up and driven by academics for academics and was too esoteric and intellectual for the vast majority. This was a criticism leveled at the British programme that began the same way, instituted by PID itself, but it did not stop there like the US one seems to have done. In Britain, it was developed to get German prisoners trained to deliver courses developed by Germans for Germans at the level of the camp and these were checked out by PID. Britain also screened out Nazis from anti-Nazis far more assiduously to give the green shoots of democracy more of a chance to develop without being trampled on by the fanatics that happened regularly. The US only had about four(?) camps for non Nazis. I would like anyone who has information to contradict me, please do so, when I say I can find accounts by very large numbers of Germans who ascribe their renunciation of Nazism to the British programme, but I have not seen any applauding the US programme. I do not mean the applause for the US quality of life and living there 1943-1946 for which you will find plenty, I mean the things they learned in camps in re-education courses and caused their Damascus moment. Does any one speak German and have access to Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des zweiten Weltkrieges, edited by Maschke, 1970, which should clear up any debate? For all the errors in the UK programme, and there were many, you only have to look at Matthew Barry Sullivan's Thresholds of Peace and Henry Faulk's Group Captives for the successes in the British re-education effort. Both of these men were profoundly involved in the British POW system but do play their innings 'with a straight bat.' Sullivan is an uplifting book to the goodness in many folk, especially in the dreadful time we live in now. Faulk is more sociological (and contributed a volume for Maschke). Read up on Wilton Park camp 300, Norton 174, Haltwhistle 18, Radwinter/Trumpington 180. While these were the limelight camps, there was a great deal of very good work done elsewhere as well as some shabby work, especially in camps run by obstructive and disinterested commandants and interpreter officers. I have not mentioned the interaction of the POWs with the civilian populations in the US, Canada and Britain, but these were highly educational and eventually very beneficial, but that is another story altogether for another day.
Hi Osborne I personally wouldnt take it as definitive, there is a lot written on the subject and people always have differing views, even if they are on the same side. Its a document I came across recently and found it gave some historical insight on the subject and one perhaps to whet the appetite to explore further TD
And the bloke far right (not literally far right as in nazi) looks like Hesslers driver in the film Battle of the Bulge
I see it's also on page 209 of the classic Brian L Davis book German Army & Insignia 1933-1945. Today was one of those times when I thought I'd seen a photo for the first time - turned out it wasn't.
