Fiction as Fact: False Memories of WWII in the Philippines

Reviewed by: Fond Recollections of Captivity: An Austrian POW in Wales by Horst Jarka Günter Bischof Horst Jarka, Fond Recollections of Captivity: An Austrian POW in Wales. Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture, and Language. Riverside: Ariadne Press & Missoula: University of Montana Press, 2017. 206 pp. It is rare that an autobiographical account of one's years as a German prisoner of war (POW) after World War II would feature "fond" in the title. POW memoirs usually reflect on the extremity of the human condition, say wasting one's life away for years in a Soviet POW camp (the last POWs returned [End Page 128] from the Soviet Union in 1956!), working as a slave laborer in dangerous mines and being fed minimal diets, suffering from various diseases. It differed a lot where and when a German soldier fell into captivity during World War II. Given the nature of Nazi warfare in the East, not surprisingly being a POW in Soviet or Yugoslav camps happened to be the worst fate that could befall a Wehrmacht soldier; knowing that the Russians were not abiding by the Geneva Convention, they dreaded the prospect of falling into "Russian hands" (10). Chances for surviving captivity in the West were much better. To be a POW in American camps in the United States was every German soldier's dream (my father was a POW for one year in Camp Carson, Colorado, and also had some fond memories of "America"). Treatment was fair in Canada and England. POWs in France and Belgium were exploited as a form of "slave labor" reparation; some were kept until 1948. So what was Jarka so "fond of" as a POW in Great Britain? Drafted in the fall of 1943 after graduation from Gymnasium and trained in the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia," he was lucky to be sent to the Western front. He saw his first action and experienced the chaos of war in Northern France. Taken prisoner by the British in the Aachen area in October 1944 ("Vee Vant to Surrender," 16), he was transferred through Belgian holding camps to England in November 1944. His first encounter with the English was positive—a good meal, a warm bath, disinfection, and interrogation (25). Shipped through English camps in Sheffield and Denham Park, he ended up with a cushy job in Wales at Ruperra Castle in a mobile field bakery in July 1945, serving as an interpreter and clerk. Supervision was loose as he went out on walks enjoying nature and meeting local people. He chanced into meeting "Fiona," who became a quasi-girlfriend. Then he met the Rees ("Uncle William" and his sister and his niece Vivian). The Rees took him "to their hearts" (83) and showed him warm hospitality at their house during regular visits. Reading literature (Faust, Eichendorff) and poetry (Hölderlin) constituted Jarka's mental survival strategy (reading poetry "give[s] me strength," 30). He discussed poetry with the Reeses, who introduced Jarka to poets from Wales—he ended up writing a dissertation on Alun Lewis as a student of English and German at the University of Vienna after his return. Transferred to a series of other English POW camps in the summer of 1946 in Stratford-on-Avon, Sudbury, Colchester, and Aylsham, Jarka experienced the ennui of prisoner "behind barbed wire." What kept him going were letters to and from his mother and former [End Page 129] girlfriend in Austria and a lively correspondence with the Reeses (Uncle William addressed him as "Our Dear John," 163), a correspondence that continued after Jarka's return to Austria late in 1946. "Uncle William" had written letters to local authorities and MPs, asking them why the German POWs were not being repatriated. English public opinion was divided on quick repatriation. Some felt the POWs' only "crime was being loyal to their own country" (116). What was Jarka's "own country"? He does take a lively interest in following the news from Austria—the liberation of Vienna, and the formation of the Provisional Renner Government (34). Forced to watch a film on Nazi KZs "with piles of skeletons, corpses," he does not believe it: "German soldiers don't do that...

The purpose and objectives of the article are to analyze the application of humanitarian law in relation to prisoners of the First World War. The research focuses on the situation in the Siberian and Far Eastern camps of Russia during the Civil War (1918-1922). A number of solid scientific works are devoted to the treatment of foreign prisoners of war in 1914-1918 in Europe and the Russian Empire, while the adaptation of international law in the context of the statehood’s destruction and the decentralization of power is rarely the subject of distinct exercise. Bridging the gaps, the authors studied, how the successive regimes in the eastern part of Russia observed the IV Hague Convention with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land (October 18, 1907), as the main set of rules that protected prisoners of war. Methodological approach. The situation of captured members of the Central Powers’ armies in Siberia and the Russian Far East was studied on the basis of a set of published and unpublished archival documents. The revealed facts were analyzed in comparison with articles of the IV Hague Convention. It was established how the legal status of prisoners of war changed in 1918-1922, how the conditions for their maintenance and employment were ensured. The role played by foreign charitable organizations in the life of the camps is considered. Results and conclusions. Based on the results of the research, the authors came to the conclusion that during the years of the revolutionary struggle in Siberia and the Far East, the Russian authorities ensured the rights of foreign prisoners of war within the limits of reasonable humanism. However, violations of the IV Hague Convention’s articles were dictated not only by the objective realities of a large-scale crisis in the region, but also by the unfolding information war. The originality and value of the work lies in the study of the situation of prisoners of the First World War in the east of Russia on the basis of the source base expanding and analysis of the application of international law during the Civil War.

The authors aim to delineate cognitive dysfunction associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by evaluating a well-defined cohort of former World War II prisoners of war (POWs) with documented trauma and minimal comorbidities. The authors studied a cross-sectional assessment of neuropsychological performance in former POWs with PTSD, PTSD with other psychiatric comorbidities, and those with no PTSD or psychiatric diagnoses. Participants who developed PTSD had average IQ, while those who did not develop PTSD after similar traumatic experiences had higher IQs than average (approximately 116). Those with PTSD performed significantly less well in tests of selective frontal lobe functions and psychomotor speed. In addition, PTSD patients with co-occurring psychiatric conditions experienced impairment in recognition memory for faces. Higher IQ appears to protect individuals who undergo a traumatic experience from developing long-term PTSD, while cognitive dysfunctions appear to develop with or subsequent to PTSD. These distinctions were supported by the negative and positive correlations of these cognitive dysfunctions with quantitative markers of trauma, respectively. There is a suggestion that some cognitive decrements occur in PTSD patients only when they have comorbid psychiatric diagnoses.

More than 1.2 million Italian military men were incarcerated during World War II, about half taken by the Allies as prisoners of war (POWs). Among the more than five hundred thousand POWs total in US custody were just over fifty-one thousand Italians who were held in POW camps in the United States. Italian POWs began arriving in the United States in December 1942, and by the early fall of 1943, they were scattered across more than twenty camps. After Italy surrendered in September 1943, Italian combatants already classified as POWs and in Allied hands were, in most cases, given the opportunity to collaborate with the Allies; collaboration generally meant more liberties while still retaining the POW classification. By the spring of 1944, more than thirty-two thousand men had become collaborators in the United States, while the remaining were classified as non-collaborators. The two groups were separated into camps across the country: non-collaborators in high-security camps, and collaborators in lower-security camps organized as Italian Service Units or ISUs.This book tells the story of one of the high-security camps, Camp Hereford, located about fifty miles southwest of Amarillo, Texas. It focuses on the period from the spring of 1944, when the camp filled with non-collaborating POWs (the majority of them officers), until the prisoners’ repatriation, mostly in 1946. Conti also covers the years leading up to 1944 as well as the period after the war, documenting some reunion efforts among former prisoners. Hereford, by far the most famous of the non-collaborator camps, owes its fame, Conti suggests, not only to its size (at its peak it housed more than five thousand POWs) but also to the fact that it held leading figures in postwar Italian arts and letters—including university professors, lawyers, journalists, and artists.While Conti references Japanese and German POWs held by the United States, he does not offer a comparison with those groups, nor with the German Americans or Italian Americans who might have been arrested, detained, or incarcerated, let alone the more wide-sweeping and longer-lasting Japanese American incarceration. He instead focuses on Hereford in relation to the other places in the United States where Italian soldiers were imprisoned. He also does not compare experiences of soldiers held at Hereford with those of Italian POWs held elsewhere, outside the United States, nor of Italian Military Internees (Italian soldiers found in German-occupied areas after Italy's surrender).Conti's book is a tour de force, divided into twenty-five chapters, plus an introduction, conclusion, and a preface by Enzo Orlanducci, president of the Associazione Nazionale Reduci dalla Prigionia, or National Association of Prison Veterans. Included is a thick appendix with a list of all Italian officers and American military personnel at Camp Hereford and a selection of primary source material, including transcribed letters and postcards of one POW, Giuseppe Berto. A lengthy gallery of photographs and other images illuminates different aspects of the POW experience, including objects the POWs made and photographs from the postwar era.This book is indeed comprehensive, with parts devoted to various leisure activities (from playing sports to the development of a small zoo), prisoner health and medical care, religious practices, failed escape attempts, communication with Italy and censorship, a chapel built by POWs at the camp cemetery, and the seven deaths in the camp (none of them the result of maltreatment and one the brutal knifing of Pierluigi Berticelli by another Italian prisoner). Throughout, Conti covers the range of POW life, from quotidian experiences to extraordinary events, and demonstrates that for many prisoners even the most mundane aspects of the POW experience were life-changing.Camp Hereford has often been referred to as the “Fascist Camp,” a nickname Conti asks his readers to reconsider. He reminds us that there were multiple reasons why POWs might have chosen not to collaborate or were otherwise sent to Hereford. He finds that while some were committed Fascists, others were judged as such by US officials: Prisoners, even those deemed collaborators, were sometimes sent to Hereford for being politically suspect or disruptive. Conti also notes that since neither General Pietro Badoglio, who was central to Italy's surrender, nor any other post-armistice Italian official ever directly ordered Italian soldiers to collaborate, many prisoners felt that collaboration went against what they had committed to and might even have been considered treasonous.Conti also points to the intellectual life of the camp to demonstrate its ideological diversity. The camp library of 1,500 books favored works that were pro-democracy and pro-US. Most were in English, but some Italian-language books and newspapers also circulated. One of the permitted reading groups, studying works by Karl Marx, called its members collettivisti (collectivists) rather than communisti (communists). Conti also notes the existence of a reading group of “fascisti convinti” (committed Fascists), although it is less clear what that group was permitted to read.Conti devotes significant space to camp artists and to prisoners’ many creative expressions. In particular, he discusses the significance of Hereford on the development of Alberto Burri, who became a leading figure in the postwar arte povera movement. Burri arrived in Texas as a practicing physician and left as a visual artist. While at Hereford, he began experimenting with natural paints as well as unconventional canvases—both elements that would become part of his signature style of painting. Hereford had an exhibit of POW artists (the book reproduces the exhibit poster) but, as others have already documented, Burri did not display his paintings there. Conti suggests that Burri chose not to as he was not yet confident as a painter, although Burri did show some of his crafted work in the exhibit, including a carved wooden chess set.Conti also covers Hereford's many prisoner publications, among them one-time broadsides and regularly published newspapers. He suggests that Hereford must have been the most prolific of the camps to produce such publications since it contained many (presumably higher-educated) officers. And yet I cannot help but wonder what other factors might have led to this proliferation. For instance, because Hereford POWs, like all non-collaborators, were less likely to agree to perform daily work, they enjoyed more free time to devote to other forms of constructive creations.The book also covers, to some degree, how POWs saw the United States, especially in light of the mythical quality the nation held for many Italians. In this vein, Conti considers briefly the interaction of the POWs with Italian American military personnel, who often served as both formal language translators and informal cultural translators, suggesting the power of affinity even during the thick of hostilities.Importantly, Conti unpacks the often-referenced fact that just as the war in Europe was coming to an end, Hereford prisoners started to be less well treated, especially with respect to food rations. He documents how men went from being extremely comfortable and well fed (albeit with what many deemed strange food items, such as hot dogs and orange-colored cheese) to having their food rations radically cut in early 1945. Rationing started across all POW camps that year, presumably to save resources, but non-collaborating camps experienced more severe rationing. Apparently, as news spread about what Allied forces found in German concentration camps, rations at the non-collaborating camps became more pronounced. While never confirmed, this extra rationing appears to have been in retaliation for Italy's part in the evidence of genocide Americans confronted at concentration camps. Conti notes a drastic reduction in daily calories offered to POWs and documents the correspondence and oral testimonies of prisoners who tried to signal these changes to family on the outside. By the fall of 1945, inspectors from the Red Cross, the US Department of State, and the Italian Embassy found that the amount and quality of camp food was insufficient and that some men weighed less than when they had arrived. By December 1945, the situation had improved, with former POWs suggesting in retrospect that they felt Americans had decided to fatten them up before their repatriation.Conti has published numerous works in Italian on Italian POWs. In English, his Italian Prisoners of War in Pennsylvania: Allies on the Home Front, 1944–1945 (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2019), coauthored with Alan Perry, covers the ISU camp near Letterkenny, Pennsylvania. For Hereford, Conti relies heavily on archives, including those in Italy and the Vatican, as well as oral histories and interviews with former POWs. While at times burdened by encyclopedic coverage and many lists, this richly researched book is a much-needed deep dive into this still understudied aspect of Italian forced mobility in the twentieth century, more a primary source for scholars than a general work for students or casual readers. At the same time, Conti's observational style opens up the door to more questions than answers, especially about the ideological position of the prisoners during and after the war, the sociocultural context of their experiences, and how their time in Hereford influenced their communities both in postwar Italy and postwar United States.

To assess the long-term effects of the prisoner of war (POW) experience on U.S. World War II (WWII) veterans. Exploratory study. Participants were recruited through the Hines Veterans Affairs Hospital; a POW reunion in Orlando, Florida; and the WWII veterans periodical, "The QUAN." One hundred fifty-seven American military veterans who were former WWII POWs. Participants completed a mailed survey describing their POW experiences, POW effects on subsequent psychological and physical well-being, and ways in which these experiences shaped major decisions in their lives. Participants from the European and Pacific theaters reported that their captivity during WWII affected their long-term emotional well-being. Both groups reported high rates of reflection, dreaming, and flashbacks pertaining to their POW experiences, but Pacific theater POWs did so at higher rates in the present than in the past. Large portions of both groups reported greater rumination on POW experiences after retirement. Finally, 16.6% of participants met the requirements of a current, clinical diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) based on the Mississippi PTSD scale, with PTSD rates in Pacific theater POWs (34%) three times those of European theater POWs (12%). Traumatic memories and clinical levels of PTSD persist for WWII POWs as long as 65 years after their captivity. Additionally, rumination about these experiences, including flashbacks and persistent nightmares, may increase after retirement, particularly for those held in the Pacific theater. These findings inform the current therapeutic needs of this elderly population and future generations of POWs from other military conflicts.

526Belligerent Occupation — Treatment of Civilian Population — Reprisals — Obligations of Civilian Population and Question of Legality of Occupation — Jurisdiction of National Courts over Foreign War Criminals — Geneva Convention of 1929 on Prisoners of War — Interpretation of — Preparatory Work — Capitulation of Netherlands Forces — Civil Resistance — Retroactive Effect of Criminal Law — State of Necessity — Superior Orders — German Occupation of Holland — Mass Deportations — Persecution of Jews — Slave Labour — Looting — Confiscation of Wireless Sets — Mass Arrest of Students — Reprisals against Relatives of Policemen — Collective Fines.

The Befriended Enemy: German Prisoners of War in Michigan By Kevin T Hall There are many widely known stories of American prisoners of war (POWs) in Germany during the Second World War, from both the firsthand accounts of the prisoners themselves and the tales told by liberating troops. Several books and articles have described the health standards, physical treatment, food rations, and other aspects of prison camp life for American POWs.1 The experiences of German POWs in the United States, however, have not received as much attention, and certainly scholars have written little about Michigan. This is curious, for while there were nearly 95,000 American POWs in Germany, there were over 370,000 German POWs in the United States (and this figure does not include Italian and Japanese POWs).2 There were five hundred camps throughout the United States, thirty-two in Michigan alone, providing an indelible experience for both German prisoners and the Americans they interacted with. German POWs began arriving in 1942 when U-Boote (submarines) were sunk off the East Coast; more arrived after the defeat of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s 1943 Afrikakorps and from the Italian and French campaigns of 1944 and 1945.3 The US War Department brought the POWs to the States via empty returning troop ships because it proved 1 See Lewis Carlson, We Were Each Other’s Prisoners: An Oral History of World War II American and German Prisoners of War (New York: Basic Books, 1997); Roger Cohen, Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis’ Final Gamble (New York: Anchor Books, 2006); Marc Lanas, The Fallen: A True Story of American POWs and Japanese Wartime Atrocities (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2004); Thomas Saylor, Long Hard Road: American POWs During World War II (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2007); Harry Spiller, Prisoners of Nazis: Accounts by American POWs in World War II (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1997). 2 Allen K. Powell, Splinter of a Nation: German Prisoners of War in Utah (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1989), 263. 3 Robert Billinger, Jr. Hitler’s Soldiers in the Sunshine State (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), XIV. THE MICHIGAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 41:1 (SPRING 2015): 57-79© 2015 Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All rights reserved 58 The Michigan Historical Review too difficult to feed and house them in any war zone.4 Additionally, help was needed on the home front as there were shortages in manpower, particularly in agriculture and industry, that not even the rising numbers of women workers could alleviate.5 Over fifty years after the war’s end, Konrad Kreiten recalled his trip to Michigan as a seventeen-year old German POW: “it took more than three weeks [from Cherbourg, France] before our convoy of more than 200 ships at last reached the port of Boston, after passing through storms and rain.”6 Though those three weeks no doubt seemed long to the prisoners, the journey could take up to six weeks due to German UBoats hunting for Allied ships.7 Norfolk, Virginia, and New York were also ports of entry for the exhausted POWs, who Kreiten noted were “dirty, lousy, and seasick because the crossing had not taken place on a luxury steamer, but under [the] deck of a Liberty transport ship.”8 Immediately upon arrival in the United States, many German POWs were dismayed to see that the Nazi propaganda they had been subjected to for years was, in fact, a lie; the United States, particularly New York, had not been bombed to ruins.9 Seeing this, the young POW later recalled “our morale could not become worse,” adding to the disgrace of defeat and the uncertainty of what would happen to them next.10 After disembarking, prisoners showered, had their old clothes disinfected, received new garments (stamped with “PW”), and were examined by doctors.11 They then boarded Pullman cars, where Kreiten recalled they were “amazed when some black soldiers served us black coffee, bread, butter, jam and biscuits. Each of us received in the meantime a bag with a towel, soap, toothpaste, and a tooth brush. We 4 Judith Gansberg, Stalag U.S.A. (Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside...

In this article, the author studied the issue of taking prisoners of war by the Russian army payingspecial attention to international agreements regulating this process signed by the Government of theRussian Empire and regulatory documents in the form of regulations and instructions, which did not alwayscomply with these international agreements. The author also emphasizes the fact that the process of takingGerman and Austrian-Hungarian prisoners of war by soldiers of the Russian Empire did not always complywith these instructions and provisions.For example, according to international agreements signed by thegovernment of the Russian Empire, a prisoner of war had to state only his name and rank. However,according to the regulatory documents regulating the prisoners of war interrogation issue, approved by thesame government, he had to answer a number of questions relating the information on his military unit,the state of the enemy army, and the information the enemy was aware of on the Russian army. In addition,the author gives an example of certain military units, which did not even try to comply with regulatorydocuments, treated the prisoners of war very cruelly, and sometimes even executed them.The author considers the issue of placement of prisoners of war in the territory of the Russian Empire,which highlights the plans of the Government of the Russian Empire regarding this issue, and gives a numberof objective reasons preventing the implementation of these plans. Taking into account the regulatorydocuments and recollections of eyewitnesses, he analyzes the procedure for the transfer of prisoners of warfrom the moment of their capture to the places of their detention.On the ground of the provisions on prisonersof war, he characterizes the standards of their living arrangements and describes the way these were put intolife, focusing his attention on their stay in Ukrainian territories. The author comes to the conclusion thatprisoners’ of war living arrangements did not always meet the established norms. They were very differentdepending on where the prisoners of war were.Their living conditions in the military units differed fromthe living conditions in the prisoners’ camps or the places of their labor exploitation.Also, sometimestheir living arrangements varied depending on which nationality a prisoner of war was. Therefore, livingarrangements were better for the Slavic prisoners of war than for the Germans or the Hungarians. A part ofthe prisoners of war was transferred to the private parties for assistance in housekeeping. There were evencases when such prisoners of war, getting to the widows’ households, started living together as spouses.The author examines the structure of the institutions and organizations of the Russian Empire, whichwere supposed to keep records of prisoners of war, and gives reasons why these records were not aseffective as it was expected and dozens of thousands of prisoners of war were lost in the expanses of theRussian Empire.

“We . . . Are the Most Fortunate of Prisoners”: The Axis POW Experience at Camp Opelika during World War II While prisoners of war (POWs) have experienced danger and death throughout modern warfare, never has a conflict been as deadly for POWs as World War II. During the war an estimated 35 million soldiers were captured. Many of these prisoners faced starvation, exposure to the elements, epidemic disease, and cold brutality from their captors. Despite such international agreements as the Geneva Convention of 1929, approximately five million POWs died during World War II, most notoriously on the Eastern Front where both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union treated their prisoners with criminal callousness, and in the Pacific War, where the 132,000 Allied POWs captured by the Japanese endured such extremes of brutality that more than 35,000 of them (27 percent) died during their captivity.1 Despite the horrors that faced POWs in every theater of the war, pockets of humanity and compassion did exist, where the laws of war were respected and enemies treated as human beings. One such place was Camp Opelika, a POW camp for approximately 3,000 German soldiers located in Lee County in east-central Alabama—a wartime haven where enemy prisoners received humane treatment Daniel Hutchinson Daniel Hutchinson is an assistant professor of history at Belmont Abbey College in Belmont , North Carolina. Daniel would like to thank the following for their assistance in preparing this article and in documenting the German POW experience in Alabama: Dr. James Tent, Joachim Metzner, Mary Bess Paluzzi of the Aliceville Museum and Cultural Center, Dr. Maxine Jones, Ashley Greene, and Meghan Martinez. Special thanks goes to the editors and anonymous reviewers of the Alabama Review for their comments and suggestions , and to the Museum of East Alabama for generously providing images for this article. 1 S. P. MacKenzie, “The Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War II,” Journal of Modern History 66 (September 1994): 487; John Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York, 1986), 48. the alabama review 286 by members of the American military and by the people of Alabama. The prisoners at Camp Opelika considered themselves “the most fortunate of prisoners.”2 Camp Opelika’s story is a part of the remarkable experience of the approximately 425,000 Axis POWs held in the United States during World War II.3 By the war’s end more than five hundred POW camps were built to house some 370,000 German, 50,000 Italian, and 5,000 Japanese prisoners.4 Approximately 16,000 of these prisoners were interned in Alabama within twenty-four camps scattered across the state. Various aspects of the history of Alabama’s POWs have been addressed in previous scholarship.5 With the exception of the work of local historian Albert Killian, however, the history of Camp Opelika has been largely unaddressed.6 Camp Opelika is nonetheless worthy of attention. In many ways, the facility typifies the overall Axis POW experience in America during World War II. By understanding this camp’s history the larger story of German POWs across the United States becomes clearer. Camp Opelika also possessed characteristics 2 Edouard Patte, Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) Inspection Report, September 18, 1945, Records of the Office of the Provost Marshal General, Record Group (RG) 389, entry 459A, box 1618, file 255, Camp Opelika, National Archives and Records Administration , Archives II, College Park, MD (hereafter cited as PMGO Records, NARA II). 3 Notable works in the scholarly literature regarding the German POW experience in America not noted elsewhere in this article include: Robert D. Billinger Jr., Hitler’s Soldiers in the Sunshine State: German POWs in Florida (Gainesville, FL, 2000), and Matthias Reiß, “Die Schwarzen waren unsere Freunde”: Deutsche Kriegsgefangene in der amerikanischen Gesellschaft, 1942–1946 (Paderborn, Germany, 2002). 4 George G. Lewis and John Mewha, History of Prisoner of War Utilization by the United States Army, 1776–1945 (Washington, DC, 1955), 90–91. 5 W. Stanley Hoole, “Alabama’s World War II Prisoner of War Camps,” Alabama Review 20 (April 1967): 83–114; Ruth Cook, Guests Behind the Barbed Wire: German POWs in America, A True Story...

The return of Australian prisoners of war (POWs) from the Second World War did not begin in 1945. Hundreds of Australian servicemen, exchanged with enemy personnel at POW repatriations, returned home during the Second World War. Very little is known of these POW repatriations. This article examines the effects of the first, second and third Anglo-German POW repatriations on Australian POW policy. A particular focus is the manner in which the POWs involved in these repatriations were received on return to Australia. The article argues that the Australian Army was hostile to Australian soldiers who had been captured by the enemy, and that this was reflected in its treatment of these men. The article contributes to our understanding of the position of ex-POWs in Australian society.

The British war book took many forms in the inter-war period. Within the umbrella categorization of ‘war book,’ there were many experiences depicted of the global war effort. One of the more distinctive experiences published was of the Prisoner of War (POW). POW memoirs, representing soldier captivity in the hands of the enemy, were reasonably popular with British publishers both during and after the war. POW accounts defined an experience of war distinctive from other ‘war books’ as they described surrender, confinement, mistreatment and, in many cases, escape. It is the contention of this article that POW literature offers a distinct variation on the British war book, one that culturally demonstrated a different side of war memory in the 1920s and 1930s. Rather than POWs being disillusioned by their confinement and suffering, the POW book, especially the escapee narrative, represented a different take on martial literature during this period. The POW memoir represented often an adventurous experience, one infused with military bravado, where prisoner escapees could be read as military heroes in an age where the notion of a ‘heroic’ war experience was being widely questioned.

United by Barbed WireRussian POWs in Germany, National Stereotypes, and International Relations, 1914–22 Oxana Nagornaja (bio) Translated by Jeffrey Mankoff During World War I and the revolutionary turmoil in Central and Eastern Europe, Russian prisoners of war (POWs), 1.5 million strong and thus the largest group of enemy officers and men in German camps, became one of the few points of contact between Russia and Germany and an important channel by which each country could seek to influence the other. Presented in a variety of ways, the image of the POW became a popular propaganda theme in both countries. Domestically, it was used to dehumanize the enemy and enforce discipline on the home front. Internationally, it served to bolster one’s claim to be a civilized European state while accusing the opponent of barbarism. Public discussion of this issue in Russia and Germany shaped perceptions of the enemy, the self-presentation of each nation, and the practices of military and political officials. The prison camps themselves offered a unique space for unmediated contact with the enemy away from the passions of the front lines. Accordingly, both the actual treatment of prisoners and the rhetoric of those who had contact with them reflected the reception of stereotypes and their influence on the behavior of individuals and institutions. Thanks to the “new military history,” the issue of POWs on the Eastern Front in World War I has drawn much attention from historians.1 Existing works emphasize the multifaceted nature of POW experiences: once they became a mass phenomenon, both enemy POWs and one’s own compatriots held by the enemy acquired considerable military, economic, and diplomatic importance for the belligerent states. The totalization of military operations,2 the development of [End Page 475] international law,3 and domestic concerns such as forced labor,4 migration policy and social policy,5 and so on were reflected through the prism of the POWs. Historians are unanimous in recognizing that prisoners were an important object of nationalist and revolutionary propaganda and an instrument for exerting pressure on the opposing side.6 So far, however, the literature has not paid sufficient attention to depictions of the enemy and how these influenced the agencies and individuals working with POWs, or to the specificity of the intertwining discourses of captivity in Russia and Germany and their transformation during the revolutionary period.7 To understand how both sides instrumentalized the image of the POW, the present article explores the basic components from which the image of the enemy was constructed, their dissemination, their influence on the actions of individuals and groups, and the change in reciprocal perceptions during what Ernst Nolte [End Page 476] calls the “European civil war.”8 I therefore approach the construction of the other as a flexible, multilayered formation that is dependent on the milieu—the social group or political institution—where it occurs and that evolves in response to new experiences. This approach should make it possible to go beyond studying isolated propaganda tropes and illumine the link between constructed images and political practices. This study is based on Russian and German official correspondence, journalism, visual representations, and published memoirs.9 Colonialist Stereotypes and the Treatment of Russian POWs In the first months of the war, the number of POWs on German territory exceeded expectations and compelled the German military quickly to devise new plans to house and feed them and provide medical care. During this “improvisational phase,” but later, too, what Reinhard Koselleck calls a “horizon of expectations”—a stereotyped image of Germany’s eastern neighbors molded by mass-market fiction and wartime propaganda—decisively influenced how the prison-camp system operated. From the late 19th century on, racist studies founded on the precepts of Social Darwinism and emphasizing the natural slavishness, dirtiness, and low intellectual development of the Slavs were widely distributed in Germany and Western Europe.10 As a result, a habit of viewing the population of Eastern Europe through a lens that was not only liberal but also colonialist became firmly established both in propaganda and in popular opinion.11 [End Page 477] Political and propagandistic institutions used this kind of rhetoric against the Russian empire to...

The Battle of Sidi Rezegh in November 1941 and the fall of Tobruk in June 1942 were disastrous for South Africa. At Sidi Rezegh, the entire 5th South African Infantry Brigade was lost and at Tobruk the following year more than 10 000 South Africans were captured by German forces. As if the shock of becoming prisoners of war (POWs) was not bad enough, most South Africans were horrified when the Germans promptly handed them over to the Italians, who were to deal with the logistics for the thousands of POWs, first housing them in temporary camps in North Africa, and then transporting them to Italy. Once on the European continent, the South African POWs found themselves in better-organised prison camps, although most POW accommodation was a far cry from what the Geneva Convention required. Some were fortunate to be assigned to labour detachments, where they were in a better position to take control of their circumstances with regard to living conditions and food and even gaining a degree of freedom of movement. During each of the stages of their captivity under the Italians, the South African POWs displayed changing attitudes towards their captors. For the most part, the Italian forces in North Africa were viewed with disrespect and sometimes with cynical amusement. The antagonism towards Italians quickly changed to intense hatred when POWs suffered severe deprivations in the cargo holds of the boats that transported them to Italy. Once in Italy, however, the POWs came into contact with Italian camp guards who, in many cases, displayed a remarkable lack of interest in the prisoners and in the war. The changing attitudes of South African POWs towards their Italian captors reflect to an extent their changing circumstances as captives; however, their behaviour towards their captors also reveal how the POWs adapted to and accepted their POW identity. Ultimately, the POWs contact with the enemy captors changed the way they viewed their part in the war, and this article looks at examples of the shifting mind-sets until the Armistice in 1943 once again changed the state of affairs for the POWs.

Reviewed by: Lone Star Stalag: German Prisoners of War at Camp Hearne Matthias Reiß Lone Star Stalag: German Prisoners of War at Camp Hearne. By Michael R. Waters. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004. ISBN 1-58544-318-2. Maps. Photographs. Tables. Works cited. Index. Pp. xv, 268. $29.95. Of the more than 371,000 German prisoners of war (POWs) interned in the United States during World War II, about 80,000 ended up in Texas. Given this high number of German soldiers living in the state's 22 main and 48 branch camps, historians interested in the history of these men focused at an early stage on the Lone Star state. Despite the books and articles written on POWs in Texas since the second half of the 1970s, Michael Waters's study is a significant contribution to our understanding of POW history and shows how far this field has meanwhile progressed. Combining archival sources with oral history interviews of former prisoners, guards, and American civilians, Waters and his team of students also conducted the first intensive archaeological survey and excavation of a former POW camp site in the United States. It is hard to imagine a more comprehensive study of a single POW camp, and Camp Hearne is itself a very good choice for such an endeavour. Housing more than 4,800 German POWs from June 1943 to December 1945, the camp was the site of the German Postal Unit, which processed and despatched the mail for all German POWs in the United States from March 1944 to mid-July 1945. The lax security at the Postal Unit allowed the German NCOs working there to communicate with prisoners in other camps. In addition, Camp Hearne was the site of one of the five cases where German POWs murdered a fellow inmate. Corporal Hugo Krauss was severely beaten on the night of 17 December 1943 and died six days later from his injuries. All of this was already known, but Waters reconstructs the events at the Postal Unit and the murder case in hitherto unknown detail. Finally, between early September and mid-December 1945, Camp Hearne housed a small detachment of less than 500 Japanese POWs, who had been selected by the authorities to participate in a re-education programme. Lone Star Stalag is a balanced and well-written book. Although it uses no German literature, its reliance on both German and American recollections makes it interesting, especially when discussing the question of "Nazi terror". While former POWs, for example, claim that the Nazis were only a "very, very small minority group" (p. 117) and left alone by "the silent majority" (p. 117), the American chaplain in charge of the camp's religious activities claimed that half of the POWs belonged to this faction (p. 115) and that they would gruesomely kill anybody making unfavorable comments about Hitler and the Nazi party "at the earliest opportune time" (p. 114). At times, Waters could have done more to interpret these conflicting views, especially as the question of how many POWs were Nazis and to what degree they ruled the other prisoners' lives remains one of the last controversies in this field. Nevertheless, Lone Star Stalag is an excellent, very informative and beautifully crafted book, richly endowed with photos, graphics, maps [End Page 873] and tables. It can be highly recommended to everyone interested in the topic and should be a model for the studies of other camps in the United States. Matthias Reiß German Historical Institute London London, United Kingdom Copyright © 2005 Society for Military History

“Books Are More to Me than Food”British Prisoners of War as Readers, 1914–1918 Edmund G. C. King (bio) At the end of March 1918, within a few days of being captured in the German spring offensive, Captain John Guest of the Sixteenth Battalion, Manchester Regiment, arrived at Karlsruhe officers’ lager. Given access to postal facilities for the first time since capture, he wrote immediately to his parents in Wigan, outlining his material wants: I hope by the time this letter reaches you that you will have been informed that I am safe & sound though a prisoner of war in Germany. … First of all let me give you a list of what I want sent out to me. A pair of grey flannel slacks + my brown shoes. Socks (… khaki or blue) thick. I change of under clothes. … Handkies, soft khaki cap & badge. … Later on if this war is not over you can send me my British warm but I do not need it now that Summer is coming along. Send books out but only through the publishers. You are not allowed to send them. Please send the April issue of Nash’s magazine & the following months. Reflecting on the somewhat demanding tone of this first communication, he added, “This letter seems to be all ‘send’ but I know you will understand that I am not asking needlessly.”1 Six weeks later, he wrote again. Trying to give his parents a taste of the listless and static life in the officers’ camp at Karlsruhe, Guest drew a quick verbal sketch of his immediate surroundings: “Everybody in the room is endeavouring to write home but all seem to be failing miserably. There is so little to talk about.” However, he added, “There is a library here & so we pass the time reading.”2 Another letter reinforced the theme: “Here everything is a very lazy life. Nothing at all to do except read & eat.”3 The prominence that Guest gives to books and reading in his letters is by no means unusual in accounts of prisoner-of-war (POW) life during World War I. Some surviving POW diaries contain occasional lists of “books read,” interspersed with other lists—loaves of [End Page 246] bread received, letters read and sent—showing the place that books occupied within the wider textual and material cultures of captive life.4 Books, and the camp libraries that housed them, are also a regular motif in British memoirs written by former prisoners of war.5 The traces of prison reading experiences recorded in these accounts, however, raise a number of questions. Where did the books in prison-camp libraries come from? Who paid for their assembly, and what were they hoping to achieve by doing so? Finally, what part did the books they contained play in structuring the day-to-day experience of captive life? This article discusses two charitable schemes that set out to collect books for World War I prisoners of war: the Camps’ Library and the Prisoners of War Book Scheme (Educational). After tracing the schemes’ administrative histories and ideological underpinnings, it then describes the logistical challenges each faced in collecting and distributing books, before examining the conditions and practices of reading that existed behind the wire in German, Austro-Hungarian, and Turkish prisoner-of-war camps. How did prisoners of war use their books? To what extent—if any—did these usages accord with the book charities’ belief that they could “redeem the time spent in captivity” by giving prisoners access to reading material?6 World War I British prisoners of war entered captivity at a time when both the constitution of the armed forces and assumptions about the role and function of prisons themselves were in a state of large-scale change. The mass volunteering of 1914–1915, combined with the eventual introduction of conscription under the Military Service Act 1916, meant that the prisoners of war held in German, Turkish, and Austro-Hungarian camps during the First World War were unlike any previous prison population, civil or military, yet assembled in the nation’s history, both in terms of sheer numbers and in their social diversity. The ranks of the prewar British...