Had this reasoning been explained to the generals months earlier, a great deal of confusion and complaining might have been avoided. That Mc-Ilhenny took the time to do so in August 1944 demonstrated the commandant’s interest in building a better relationship with his prisoners. But what most impressed the inspectors was not Mc-Ilhenny’s explanations but his actions. True to his word, he was now doing his utmost to provide all he could for the generals. War Department officials had refused to provide awnings over the doors and windows of the generals’ mess and recreation buildings because these items exceeded the accommodations provided for American general officers. Mc-Ilhenny circumvented this policy by placing scrap lumber and the necessary tools at the prisoners’ disposal and permitting the generals’ orderlies to construct and install the awnings themselves. This worked so well that awnings were added to the officers’ quarters as well, which exceeded the generals’ original request. And instead of denying the generals tennis courts because this too would have required cement, Mc-Ilhenny ordered construction of clay courts, one of which was nearly completed at the time of the inspectors’ visit in August 1944 while another was added shortly thereafter.24
The camp commander now sought to address virtually all of the senior officers’ concerns. He relocated the American personnel offices out of the prisoners’ recreation hall and initiated plans to remodel the building to suit the generals’ needs. The American guard who accidentally fired his weapon near the officers’ compound received disciplinary punishment, and Mc-Ilhenny began allowing the generals regular walks outside the camp after Washington reached some compromise with the men over the wording of the parole forms they were required to sign. The commandant also promised to show films in the prisoners’ compound and ordered a large number of books to supplement the POW camp library. Remarkably, for the first time in Mc-Ilhenny’s administration at Camp Clinton, inspectors reported the existence of a “very congenial relationship” between the commanding officer and his general officer prisoners.25
Mc-Ilhenny’s treatment of the German generals only improved. When Emil Greuter from the Swiss legation and Charles Eberhardt of the U.S. State Department inspected Clinton in January 1945, they found a very different camp from the one their organizations had condemned six months earlier. Of course, the most noticeable change from the prior visit was the considerably larger number of prisoners. Fifty-three prisoners inhabited the officers’ compound at Clinton, twenty-nine of them listed as general officers.26 Curiously, this number reflected the departure of three of the senior officers in the previous few months. Admiral Hennecke had been transferred to Camp Pryor, Oklahoma, where he joined other high-ranking German naval officers, and General von der Mosel had temporarily gone to the POW hospital at Camp Forrest, Tennessee, for unspecified health reasons. The third departure, that of Gotthard Frantz, was unique. Like von der Mosel, Frantz was beset by health problems. He had spent a month in a British hospital while a prisoner at Trent Park and his chronic ailments continued to plague him during his time in the United States. Consequently, American authorities opted to repatriate Frantz in early 1945 for health reasons. Unfortunately for Frantz, this American decision brought unintended consequences. He arrived in Germany on the first of February, only to be captured by the Soviet Army two months later, in April 1945. He then spent over four years as a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union before finally being allowed to again return to Germany, on November 2, 1949.27
Other transfers out of Camp Clinton occurred in the following months, most of these for health reasons. On the very day of Greuter and Eberhardt’s visit in January, Clinton camp authorities began arrangements for the transfer of General Bülowius. He too was bound for the POW hospital at Camp Forrest, Tennessee, although unlike his colleague von der Mosel, Bülowius never returned to Clinton. Bülowius suffered from “involutional melancholia, manifested in depression and delusions of persecution.” The general was convinced that he had been given a death sentence by an impromptu court-martial of his peers at Clinton. American investigations found these claims to be entirely unfounded. Nonetheless, these delusions drove Bülowius to attempt to take his own life by slashing his wrists. This first attempt proved unsuccessful, causing only superficial wounds. On March 26, 1945, however, the general wrote a suicide note to his friend and fellow prisoner, Willibald Borowietz. The following day, he removed the leather straps from his briefcase and hanged himself from the crossbars of the window in his room at the mental health ward of the Camp Forrest POW hospital. By the time the American medical staff found him, he was dead.28
Bülowius was not the only German prisoner-of-war general to take his own life. Ironically, Borowietz, the friend and fellow prisoner to whom Bülowius had addressed his suicide note, followed suit a little over three months later. The local newspaper, the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, reported that Borowietz had “just dropped over dead” from a “cerebral hemorrhage” on July 1, 1945. Rumors quickly spread, almost certainly originating with American personnel who worked at the camp, that the general had committed suicide, but camp officials refused to confirm these reports. Many years after the war ended and the camp closed, W. P. Taylor, a member of the American guard personnel who had been stationed at Clinton in July 1945, vividly remembered that Borowietz “got in a bath tub filled with water and stuck his finger in a light socket. It was instant suicide.” While the autopsy results do not appear to have been publicized, the official records of the U.S. Provost Marshal General’s Office list Borowietz’s cause of death as “electric shock,” corroborating Taylor’s story of Borowietz’s death being a suicide by electrocution.29
One other Clinton general also committed suicide, although not until he returned to Germany. Alfred Gutknecht displayed typical, albeit somewhat extreme characteristics of “barbed-wire psychosis”—the damage to a prisoner’s mental health after months of captivity. Clinton camp officials stated that by January 1945 Gutknecht “had reached the stage where, pacing the compound like a caged animal, continually crowding against the wire enclosure, he seemed in danger of being fired upon by some guard. He refused to accompany the other officers on their daily walks, saying that they ‘walked too slowly.’” Clinton medical authorities transferred Gutknecht to Glennan General Hospital in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, which had recently been designated as an asylum for mentally ill prisoners of war. Unlike his colleague Bülowius, who had been sent to Camp Forrest, Tennessee, Gutknecht recovered enough to survive his ordeal as a prisoner of war and return to Germany. Yet, tragically, he took his own life in Berlin on November 12, 1946, shortly after he had returned home.30
Despite the temptation to assume “barbed-wire psychosis,” it is almost impossible to determine why any of these men would have chosen to commit suicide. American officials conducted a study comparing the suicide rate among all prisoners of war in the United States with that among the American civilian population and found almost identical results. Thus it seems most likely that each of the three generals who committed suicide probably already suffered from some form of mental illness and the generals’ status as prisoners of war simply exacerbated their condition.31
Aside from these suicides, only one other Wehrmacht general died while a prisoner of war in the United States. Hans Schuberth died from a brain tumor on April 4, 1945, in Kennedy Army General Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had been transferred a month earlier. Regardless of his service to the enemy or his status as a prisoner of war, American authorities allowed his fellow prisoners to pay their respects in proper military fashion. Eight days later he was buried in the cemetery at Camp Como, Mississippi, a short distance from Memphis. His body first laid in state in the camp’s prisoner-of-war chapel, guarded by German prisoner-of-war officers from the camp. For his funeral, a Nazi flag bearing the swastika was draped across his casket, which was carried by the German officers through two lines of German prisoners solemnly offering a Nazi stiff-armed salute. Three drummers and a small band, all prisoners of war, led the procession to the
cemetery, a mile away from the prisoner stockade, followed by the hearse bearing the deceased general and lines of unguarded prisoners. The procession returned to camp after two of the prisoners offered an oration and a eulogy in German and a squad of American soldiers fired three volleys over Schuberth’s grave.32
These tragedies notwithstanding, Greuter and Eberhardt were also immediately struck by the greatly improved attitude of Camp Clinton’s administration during their January 1945 inspection. Where Weingärtner and Mason had been largely disregarded during their two-day visit in July 1944, Tidwell met Greuter and Eberhardt early in the morning at the front gate and escorted them to the camp commander’s office, where Mc-Ilhenny awaited their arrival. The two American officers showed the inspectors “every courtesy and attention,” including Mc-Ilhenny joining the two men for dinner in the officers’ mess both evenings of their visit.33
Not only were the American personnel noticeably more professional, but the generals’ living conditions also showed “marked improvement.” In fact, the inspectors’ January 1945 description of the camp illustrates that the American administration had addressed almost every previous complaint. The generals had been enjoying the new clay tennis court, completed four months earlier in September 1944, a German minister and priest now conducted services in the officers’ compound, and camp personnel permitted the generals outside of the camp several times each week. Usually the generals took regular two-hour walks escorted by an American officer along the roads surrounding Clinton, and two days each week the officers were allowed unescorted visits to the Mississippi River Basin Model being constructed by the enlisted prisoners adjacent to the camp.34
Even more remarkable, Greuter and Eberhardt commended the “good job” Mc-Ilhenny had done in repairing the building in the officers’ compound. Denied sufficient lumber, the commandant secured the use of a type of “tar paper linoleum” for the floors in the generals’ quarters and had the interior walls in the apartments, mess hall, recreation hall, and chapel repainted. Furthermore, Mc-Ilhenny had partitions built between the toilets in the building used for showers and bathrooms despite the fact that the generals’ prior requests to this effect had been denied by the U.S. War Department.35 Camp Clinton’s commanding officer obviously took seriously his superiors’ admonition to acquiesce to the generals’ requests wherever possible.
Yet Greuter and Eberhardt continued to criticize Mc-Ilhenny’s administration of Camp Clinton, despite their admission that the generals “had no complaints, only wishes or requests” and that these requests largely involved articles that were restricted for prisoners of war. The Swiss inspectors seemed to be caught in a maze of their own creation. Eberhardt conceded that “nothing should be allowed to detract from the really commendable work of Colonel Mc-Ilhenny,” but the two inspectors pressed for further improvements nonetheless. They believed that “a camp commander [who was] not too-rules-and-regulations-bound, and with some initiative and imagination, could and might well have closer and more frequent contacts with these generals, and also make certain concessions and possibly waivers of strict application of regulations to permit the generals to be supplied with various articles for their personal use even though such articles may at the moment be on the restricted list.”36 Thus the inspectors charged that Mc-Ilhenny lacked the proper initiative for the position of commandant at an important post like Clinton in large measure because he refused to exceed or circumvent existing U.S. War Department regulations in his relations with the German general officers.
American expectations had clearly risen. One year earlier, condemnations of the generals’ compound at Camp Clinton by the Swiss legation and the U.S. Department of State garnered little attention. By January 1945, seven months after the successful Allied invasion of northwest France and at a point in the war when Allied officials believed victory to be imminent, camp inspectors now criticized the very same camp administration for failing to circumvent War Department regulations. American beliefs that these generals might be of use after the war now compelled Washington to demand that the generals in its custody receive treatment that paralleled that accorded to the generals in Britain.
The International Committee of the Red Cross agreed. On the first of February 1945, Paul Schnyder and Dr. Max Zehnder of the Red Cross arrived at Camp Clinton. These visitors reiterated the criticisms of Clinton’s treatment of the generals made the month prior by Greuter and Eberhardt. Their inspection report stated that Mc-Ilhenny “was informed of the desire of the officers to buy pajamas with their own money, but the colonel refused, pursuant to instructions contained in [U.S. War Department prisoner-ofwar] circular no. 50, which forbids such purchases.” Schnyder and Zehnder continued by observing that Mc-Ilhenny refused to authorize the generals to purchase the reading glasses that several of them apparently needed, and the generals’ requests for cigars and chests for the safekeeping of their personal effects had apparently gone unfulfilled. The Red Cross inspectors concluded that “this camp makes a rather good impression, although it appears a little neglected by the authorities.”37 That a lack of pajamas and cigars qualified the camp to be characterized as “a little neglected” illustrates the high international expectations for the treatment of general officer prisoners.
As early as August 1944, officials in the U.S. State Department had begun to reexamine American treatment of the German generals at Camp Clinton, likely in response to the series of critical camp inspections during the spring and summer of 1944. Noting the high “social standing and general prestige” of general officers in Germany, John Brown Mason of the State Department argued that, upon repatriation, “several or all of [the German generals at Clinton were] likely to exercise considerable influence on Germany’s life regardless of the type of German government which may then be in existence.” Mason observed that approximately thirty German generals were already in Soviet custody and that these prisoners were likely to “return to Germany deeply impressed with their experiences against and inside Russia” and “with memories of special courtesies and opportunities extended to at least half of them.” He stressed that it would be in the best interest of the United States if “there should be among the returned German prisoner of war officers a strong contingent of generals who have strong and favorable impressions of this country.”38
With this end in mind, Mason proposed a nine-point “Course of Action.” His plan started with treating the generals in a fashion that would impress them with the “knowledge that they were treated as generals and gentlemen [in the United States], more in line with the way they [had] been treated in Great Britain and in contrast with the reception given them at Clinton.” Mason suggested that the generals have the opportunity to become better acquainted with the “enormous economic strength and industrial power of the United States” as well as “certain aspects of American history, political life, education and cultural activities.” To this end, films, books, lectures, and even visits to places like shipyards and ordnance depots or museums, historic sites, and universities should be employed.39
Mason “strongly recommended that the post of camp commander at [Camp Clinton] be assigned to a retired American general, preferably a graduate of West Point or other military school,” and that this officer “possess a strong sense of military tradition and courtesy.” He believed the commandant of the generals’ camp should be widely traveled and well educated so as to “present an intelligent American attitude” to the generals in U.S. custody. Mason also recommended the appointment of a camp educational officer of similar mindset, albeit not necessarily of the same high rank, and with the ability to speak German to assist the camp commander. He suggested that a POW officer be assigned to teach the generals the English language and that each general be given the opportunity to purchase his own radio so that any extremists among them could not prevent their fellow prisoners from listening to American news broadcasts. Moreover, he suggested that the generals should be furnished with copies of the Nazi newspapers Völkischer Beobacht
er and Der Angriff as well as the leading Swiss newspaper, Neue Zürcher Zeitung. The Swiss paper, printed in German and obviously not of Allied origin, was popular with anti-Nazi Germans because of its “reputation for truthfulness” and its informative articles by “outstanding contributors.” Mason believed the “obvious contrast” between the Swiss paper and the Nazi papers would have “a much stronger educational value than even the best newspaper published in the United States.” Mason also stressed the importance of selecting an appropriate German priest and German minister to serve the generals’ religious needs. He stated that religious guidance “by its very nature [was] anti-Nazi, without any need for ‘political’ sermons,” and he thought that most of the generals were religious men who were “generally respectful to the Christian Churches.”40
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