Hitler's Generals in America

by Derek R. Mallett

  The anti-Nazi prisoners at the Idea Factory closed by asserting that the general officers had lost the respect of their men because of their dogged allegiance to Hitler’s policies. They opined that “millions of German soldiers [had] experienced in this war . . . how German generals have foolishly sacrificed their men in order to execute the orders and plans for conquest of the ‘Führer.’” This betrayal, they continued, had been “burned deeply in the hearts of German soldiers.” And they stated that in this regard there was “no difference of opinion between anti-Nazis and other prisoners.” The Idea Factory prisoners concluded by suggesting that “the only possibility to make use of a prisoner of war German general would be to use him for influencing nationalistic minded German officers in Allied prisoner of war camps,” something the Americans were apparently attempting to do at Camp Dermott.21

  In addition to soliciting the opinions of the most trusted German prisoners of war in American custody, the War Department also sought the opinion of Colonel Truman Smith. Smith had spent a number of years living in Berlin in the late 1930s, serving as the American military attaché to Germany. While he appeared less critical of the character of German generals than did the prisoners at the Idea Factory, Smith was equally pessimistic about the program’s potential for success. Citing the “lack of a national policy on the ultimate disposition and future of Germany as a nation,” Smith argued that American authorities were “not in a position to offer anything to these German general officers at this time.” Therefore, he concluded that any long-term reorientation of the generals in the United States would be unsuccessful. He did recommend, however, “the creation of a relationship with these officers that would permit [the United States] to achieve maximum benefits from their services once a national policy [was] established.” To foster this relationship, Smith reiterated others’ suggestion of the appointment of an American general as commanding officer at Camp Clinton and recommended that other American generals make formal courtesy calls to visit the German generals interned there. Curiously, Smith opposed the plan to segregate some of the generals by transferring them to a different camp, like Dermott.22

  By February 1945, a month before the five generals were slated to be transferred to Dermott from Camp Clinton, the War Department had been advised against using even the most collaborative Wehrmacht general officer prisoners for any special purposes. Perhaps as a consequence of these revelations, Washington never bothered to clearly define what it meant by “psychological warfare,” and the idea of using the generals for this purpose was dropped altogether. Similarly, War Department officials made no plans to include any of the generals in the postwar reconstruction of Germany and no further discussion ensued about how the generals might influence their subordinate prisoners at Dermott or anywhere else. Indeed, it appears that Washington simply changed its mind about what to do with the five generals being sent to Arkansas. Obviously, the transfer of the generals to Dermott continued, as the plan had been set in motion months earlier. But the idea of engaging these men in a collaborative relationship with American authorities petered out. Instead, the War Department took advantage of Camp Dermott’s unusually large supply of housing suitable for officer prisoners, and reorientation took a backseat to logistical demands.

  In addition to assessing the potential reeducation program, Truman Smith’s comments also highlighted the underlying problem with American policy toward German general officers in the United States as a whole: Washington had not figured out what it wanted to do with Germany after the war. President Franklin Roosevelt had done more to obscure American policy regarding occupied Germany than to provide any kind of unified direction. He expressed his views in a cable to Secretary of State Cordell Hull in October 1944, writing, “It is all very well for us to make all kinds of preparations for the treatment of Germany, but there are some matters in regard to such treatment that lead me to believe that speed on these matters is not an essential at the present moment. It may be in a week, or it may be in a month, or it may be several months hence. I dislike making detailed plans for a country which we do not yet occupy.”23

  What policy existed had emerged from the internal workings of the War Department, the creation of the Civil Affairs Division in particular. War Department officials had initially begun considering the potential occupation of Germany with the creation of a small military government division within the Provost Marshal General’s Office in July 1942. The division created the Military Government School, located on the campus of the University of Virginia, to train American officers for the coming occupation duties. In March 1943 the War Department’s newly created Civil Affairs Division (CAD), led by Major General John Hilldring, assumed the responsibility for training military government officers as well as a number of other duties.24

  CAD organized a similar training program at Fort Custer, Michigan, which recruited hundreds of surplus officers from various army units. CAD also recruited civilian applicants, largely from professional positions, who earned officer commissions. All of these men received a month’s training at Fort Custer before departing for Civil Affairs Training Schools at various American university campuses. They then received more training at the Civil Affairs Center in Shrivenham, England, before being sent to Germany to begin their assignments.25

  Despite training hundreds of officers for military occupation duties, CAD suffered from the same overall lack of direction regarding American goals for postwar Germany. Historian Edward Peterson contends that CAD “emphasized the combat functions of military government and how to help the advancing armies” but “relatively little attention was paid to the job of military government after hostilities ceased.” Moreover, CAD officials in Washington resented State Department involvement, often refusing to meet with State Department officials regarding military occupation policy matters. Ultimately, CAD simply relayed messages from American commanders in Germany to higher War Department officials, allowing U.S. occupation policy to be largely determined by the American military governor, Lieutenant General Lucius D. Clay, and his subordinates in the field.26

  Even during the first years after the war, authorities in Washington failed to devise clear American objectives for the reconstruction of Germany aside from the need for denazification and demilitarization. Had overall goals for Germany been determined earlier, the Provost Marshal General’s Office could have better formulated plans for Germany’s senior officer prisoners in America. But lacking a unified policy from Washington, the nature of the American relationship with Wehrmacht generals continued to be determined on a mostly ad hoc basis, as it had been from its inception.

  Even in regard to the stated American objectives of denazification and demilitarization, Washington struggled to provide a coherent policy, at least when it came to its prisoners of war. The environment at Camp Dermott epitomizes this struggle. Even while promoting their new reorientation program, American authorities in Washington and Arkansas stood by and watched Nazi enthusiasts intimidate any German prisoners who attempted to ally themselves with American ideals. This raises serious questions about American priorities. If the progress of the war in the spring of 1945 had convinced American authorities that victory was imminent, which it surely must have, then what kept the U.S. military from cracking down on the minority of Nazi sympathizers among its prisoner-of-war population at Camp Dermott and other POW camps in the United States? Would the democratic ideals that the American reorientation program sought to inculcate not have been better illustrated by protecting the prisoners’ freedom to explore and express them?

  Apparently, American authorities prioritized order and discipline within their prisoner-of-war camps more highly than they did any attempts to denazify or demilitarize the prisoners. American camp authorities usually found that leaving the existing German military hierarchy intact, Nazi intimidation notwithstanding, meant that their POW camps functioned efficiently. Thus, when given the choice between a well-disciplined, Nazi-led prisoner-of-war camp on the one hand or a p
otentially open-minded but less cohesive prisoner population on the other, American officials often chose the former. The need for order—and for POW labor in camps that housed enlisted prisoners—ranked first among American priorities.

  Despite this lack of national policy and continued Nazi intimidation, Camp Dermott’s assistant executive officer, Captain Alfred Baldwin, continued praising the political stance of the generals in his custody and promoting the educational program at the camp. He was most impressed by Elster, von Liebenstein, and von Sponeck. Baldwin described Elster as “markedly anti-Nazi,” “very intelligent,” and “thoroughly trustworthy,” although, given his lack of popularity with the pro-Nazi elements at both Clinton and Dermott, he may not have had much choice. But the American officer also characterized both von Liebenstein and von Sponeck as intelligent and trustworthy anti-Nazi officers who had been “cooperative with U.S. authorities.”27

  Dermott’s educational program also continued to receive rave reviews from camp inspectors. Y.M.C.A. representative Olle Axberg visited the camp in June 1945 and simply described the program as “astonishing,” the expansive curriculum in particular. Dermott offered 439 courses taught by 286 teachers and featured a “vivarium” that included “a hundred animal, bird and insect specimens.” Baldwin and his staff had recently spent $54,000 on educational materials that included three hundred subscriptions to the New York Times, two hundred copies of the Chicago Tribune, and one thousand issues of Time. Axberg also stated that “one hundred percent of the prisoners of war” attended the two films shown weekly in the camp theater.28

  Axberg’s observations portray a camp with the overwhelming majority of the prisoners involved in the intellectual diversions provided by the American reeducation program. Yet it is important to note that in the courses taken by prisoners at Camp Dermott, half of the students and almost two-thirds of the instructors were engaged in study of the English language. Captain Alexander Lakes, a field service officer from the Special Projects Division, assessed Dermott’s program in August 1945, the month following Axberg’s visit. Lakes criticized the lack of courses in American history, geography, and civics, topics that were intended to be the focal point of the reorientation program, and expressed skepticism about the overabundance of chemistry and science courses taken by the prisoners. Moreover, he stated his suspicions that the curriculum of a course in jurisprudence, taught by one of the prisoners, involved the teaching of Nazi ideology.29

  Lakes also questioned the absence of a camp newspaper at Dermott, another staple of the American reeducation program. These camp newspapers, written and edited by trusted anti-Nazi prisoners, were intended to serve as a complement to the circulation of Der Ruf by offering a local prisoner perspective. Camp officials asserted that no POW newspaper existed at Dermott because the officer prisoners at the camp were “of a higher than average intellectual caliber” and had “gained the most personally from the success of the Nazi Party.” This, the officials contended, explained why “the fanatical Nazi element in this camp, though weaker than prior to V-E Day, [remained] significantly influential.” Dermott authorities believed that books and articles by renowned British and American writers would appeal more to the German officer prisoners in the camp than would essays by their anti-Nazi colleagues. Camp officials conceded that only one true “re-education” course, a 250-prisoner class on the U.S. Constitution, had been prepared. They cited “the necessity for the utmost care in their preparation and for the appointment of a reliable teaching and supervisory staff ” as the reason for such a dearth of courses dealing with American culture and values.30

  The incongruity of the prisoner-of-war camp being highly involved in a reeducation program, albeit one overwhelmingly focused on English and science courses, while also being heavily influenced by a “Nazi element” continued for the remainder of the prisoners’ stay in Arkansas. When Olle Axberg returned to Camp Dermott in October 1945, along with Louis Phillipp of the U.S. Department of State, the two men reported that camp officials had spent a total of almost $200,000 on books for the large camp library, which now held over eighty-seven hundred volumes. The inspectors complimented the camp’s music and art programs. Dermott possessed over two hundred musical instruments valued at over $30,000 and boasted the first play written and presented by prisoners of war in an American camp, a historical production titled Christopher Columbus. Yet Axberg and Phillipp also reported that the camp now had segregated compounds where an open camp environment had once existed. Their report also indicated that the “Nazi” Colonel Rudolf Otto continued to serve as prisoner spokesman and that most of Dermott’s prisoners had come from Camp Alva, Oklahoma.31

  Complaints surfaced as well, particularly in regard to the reduction of food rations for the prisoners during the spring and summer of 1945. The Allied liberation of their own, underfed prisoners of war from German camps beginning in early 1945, along with the discovery of the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps, caused an adverse reaction toward German POWs by the American public. This reaction, coupled with the War Department’s need to prepare for the invasion of Japan, prompted Washington to significantly reduce food rations allotted to German prisoners of war in camps across the United States and to replace some items with less desirable substitutes. American authorities abandoned this policy by the fall of 1945 due to the need for healthy POW labor and a realization that the tenets of the American reorientation program were less likely to be absorbed by men with empty stomachs. Yet some damage to the prisoners’ confidence in American democratic values had been done. Many of the prisoners viewed this brief episode as an act of American vengeance on a defeated enemy and it set back the reeducation program accordingly.

  Admiral Paul Meixner, who had been transferred to Dermott in the summer of 1945, put his English skills to immediate use serving as a translator for the camp’s ranking general, Gustav von Vaerst. His first responsibility, as it turned out, was to relay von Vaerst’s complaints to Axberg and Phillipp in October 1945 about the treatment of the prisoners at Dermott. Meixner boldly stated that “the future of the world and of Germany [rested] upon collaboration between the Western powers and Germany.” He believed that “the Germans were ready for such collaboration and they had full confidence in the United States.” Meixner pointed out, however, that “the treatment which the prisoners of war had received since V-E Day was bad,” especially the reduction in prisoner rations, and that it had shaken their positive perceptions of American ideals. Considering that food allotments had been partially restored a few weeks before Axberg and Phillipp’s visit, the generals’ complaints became a moot point. Indeed, the inspectors declared that the prisoners received “fair and honorable treatment,” despite “their repeated complaints over the size of the ration.”32

  In addition to the reduction in the amount and quality of available food, a number of other changes had occurred at Camp Dermott since Axberg’s previous visit. For instance, the well-respected Colonel Wales had been replaced by Colonel James H. Kuttner as camp commanding officer. Kuttner was not the West Point graduate that camp inspectors had requested and appears to have been transferred to Dermott from a post in the Louisiana National Guard. More importantly, the camp had assumed additional roles in regard to housing senior officer prisoners. No longer was Dermott designated only for cooperative general officers. By the fall of 1945 it had become home to numerous naval prisoners. In addition to Meixner, Walter Hennecke, previously at Camp Clinton, and fellow admirals Alfred Schirmer, Hans von Tresckow, and Carl Weber had all arrived at the Arkansas camp. Furthermore, Generals Heinrich Aschenbrenner, Walter Vierow, Curt Gallenkamp, and Hermann Pollert had come to Dermott in the fall of 1945 after spending a few months being observed and interrogated by American personnel at Fort Hunt, Virginia.33

  These changes illustrate Washington’s abandonment of the idea of reeducating and collaborating with the German general officers at Camp Dermott. War Department officials such as Colonel Truman Smith and numerous inspectors
of both Camps Clinton and Dermott had suggested the assignment of a high-ranking graduate of the U.S. Military Academy as commanding officer of any camp housing German general officers. Yet the well-respected Colonel Wales, who largely met these criteria, was replaced by an officer of lesser qualifications. Moreover, some of the new transfers represented the type of senior officers whom American authorities least desired to include in any plans for postwar Germany. Both Curt Gallenkamp and Walter Vierow were later convicted of war crimes. Gallenkamp had commanded the German Eightieth Corps in France in September 1944 when it captured thirty-two paratroopers from the British First Special Air Service Regiment. After first sending these prisoners of war to Poitiers prison for interrogation by the Sicherheitspolizei (German security police), Gallenkamp ordered that all the men be shot. Two days later, a German unit drove the British prisoners outside Poitiers, executed them “on the orders of Hitler,” and subsequently reported to the International Red Cross that they had all been killed in action. A British military court convicted Gallenkamp of the murder of these prisoners in March 1947 and sentenced him to death. His sentence, however, was commuted to life imprisonment and he was released in February 1952. Similarly, Vierow was later convicted of war crimes by a Yugoslavian court and sentenced to twenty years in prison. He too received an early release, in 1953.34

  Remarkably, an “open” camp originally conceived as a haven for anti-Nazi officer prisoners had become a nest of Nazi extremists and war criminals. Indeed, Camp Dermott had been supplanted as the “anti-Nazi” camp by Camp Ruston, Louisiana. As early as the spring of 1944, well before the conception of American plans to segregate cooperative general officers, Ruston had been “designated for the internment of German Army officers and enlisted men, POWs, who [had] been classified as Anti-Nazi by the Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2” of the War Department. By the spring of 1945, the Louisiana camp’s one thousand prisoners consisted of a mix of officers, NCOs, and enlisted men as well as a blend of army and navy prisoners, almost all of whom had been classified as “anti-Nazi.” William Raugust examined the reeducation program at Ruston two weeks prior to his first visit to Dermott in February 1945. He observed that the prisoners were requesting lectures on American history and American government and that three films were shown weekly to all of the prisoners. Significantly, Raugust reported the absence of any type of Nazi underground at the camp.35