Oh, I wish I had seen this when ploughing through material at Kew. Thanks for posting. Though there's no apparent date, the nature of the questions indicates a post VE day. I suspect the pen of Henry Faulk at work?
If this should have passed you by folks (Malcolm56!) you may be interested in this pdf from the American side (very much a chapter and verse) of things attached to the post here (Interrogation/screening to the fore): Seeking Help!: U.S. PoW Interrogation Teams 1945-1946 Kind regards, always, Jim.
From what I have read, POW screening was in an embryonic, disorganised and haphazard state in 1944, especially when the influx overwhelmed the initial interrogation resources at reception camps like Kempton Park.The process was in the hands of the military. Faulk is quoted in Sullivan's book Thresholds of Peace as saying that ‘Frankly, there were quite a few sods among the screeners then.’ He was given the responsibility of screening the screeners by his Foreign Office superiors in the Political Warfare Executive, who were given the task of sorting the issues out instead of the military. PWE had wider responsibilities than just this and operated through the Prisoner of War Department. POWD was titled by a confusing series of changing Foreign Office departmental names under which it functioned or was loosely referred to during its existence. These changing titles included PWE, Political Warfare Executive, PID, the Political Intelligence Department, COGA, Control Office for Austria and Germany and POWD. Faulk was given responsibility for screening/segregation and re-education by September 1945.
Would the following passage in the doc uploaded by JimHerriot, be a description of ‘Ballot Screening’??? “Every prisoner transiting through the ports carried documentation that provided the bearer's name, rank, internment serial number, birthplace, place of residence, and civilian occupation. They were also provided with forms that requested additional background information. The vast majority of the POWs completed these forms without question, believing it to simply be one step in the overall debarkation process. The screening officers were often able to make a reasonable assessment of the POW's potential as a source for interrogation based a careful review of this documentation alone.” THE HISTORY OF MIS-Y: U.S. STRATEGIC INTERROGATION DURING WORLD WAR II by Steven M. Kleinman - P92/3
I am not sure whether the #5 quote above is ballot screening but I admit it's tempting to think so but as I have, as yet, to find British use of the term or any detailed description that is similar. I feel the term applies only to prisoners destined for US imprisonment. As the US controlled several POW camps in the UK, creating the 'ballots' may have been done in US POW camps in Britain or France (see ww2 talk thread US controlled POW camps in Britain). If anyone has corroborating evidence of the ballot screening term in British use it would be good to know of it. September and October 1944 were very busy following Falaise and the advance across much of France. Malcolm, Henry Faulk's secretary usually put his initials and hers separated by a / at the bottom of her typing. Are there any identifying marks or contextual docs in FO 939/460 that can date your original post #1?
#1 came from a doctoral thesis which was sent to me. I have just looked it up and the whole pdf is available at: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10186529/2/Sam Erkiletian Viva Final Copy.pdf
Thanks Malcolm for posting the link. I see on FO 939/460 top right that it reads to me as MI7, who were responsible for propaganda. As I wrote above, the term Training Adviser came into use in late September 1945 when Henry Faulk re-wrote the Camp Visitor instructions, crossing out the old title and inserting the new. Some initial comments on the thesis which at the moment I am only skimming through. Re-education did not start in the Spring/ Summer of 1946, it started at least as early as summer 1945. I have camp records to that effect. For instance, university lecturers were going into camps giving democracy talks.Debate was encouraged. There was widespread use of labour on farms, which the thesis skates over. For dairy farms, prisoners lived on farm very often as cows don't like waiting for the POW transport to turn up at odd times.This was happening widely from 1945 on wards. This provided the opportunity for unfettered fraternisation. When the Italian and Austrian prisoners began to leave Britain from January 1946 to be replaced by POWs from Canada and the USA, many German black C prisoners had to be sent out in a hurry to the farm billets to replace those leaving as the cows didn't understand the disruption to milking and the farmers were hopping mad. This obviously increased interaction with the public. Camp IOs were not called intelligence Officers in the UK, but Interpreter Officers to try to shroud their dual function. They did a great deal of screening from autumn 1945 and were important for finding those POWs who could be transferred from base camps to working camps.
One of the earliest references I have found to re-education - “The prisoners arriving straight out of Nazi Germany betray so clearly the effect of their intensive Nazi training and their isolation of recent years from the rest of Europe that it becomes evident that, sooner or later, some sort of political re-education of these German prisoners will have to be seriously considered as part of the preparation for the ultimate settlement of Europe.” [Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Anthony Eden, 18 December 1939, WP(G)(39)157] I did write a brief report to give background to some local historians who wanted to know more - any comments / corrections would be welcome. It can be found at the bottom of - Updates and Information – WW2 P.O.W. Camps in the UK "Notes of re-education."
.... I should have looked this up before - the NA file gives a date range for the docs - Reference: FO 939/460 Description: Classification and segregation of German PWs: policy Date: 1945-1946
