Hitler's Generals in America
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A study, German Training Methods, also found much of interest in the Wehrmacht procedure, the system of wartime training in particular. “All fundamental training problems for the entire army (Field Army and Replacement Army) were worked out by the Training Branch of the General Staff of the Army.” This branch prepared training manuals that were largely based on the combat experiences of the military’s most decorated veterans and disseminated them throughout the various arms of the German military. Moreover, in the interest of providing essential new information to the troops as quickly as possible, the manuals were regularly supplemented with “instructional pamphlets, training hints, illustrated weapons pamphlets, and film and lantern-slide lectures.” The individual military branches also issued monthly bulletins with specialized, branch-specific instruction, descriptions of pertinent combat experiences to spur further training ideas, and information about new weapons and methods of combat employed by the enemy.52
German Military Transportation provided a detailed analysis of the wartime German transportation system. The Germans largely relied on railroads, although they utilized inland waterways to some degree as well. This had much to do with historical development. Beginning with the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian Wars of the 1860s and 1870s, the Germans built extensive rail networks and connected their four main rivers—Rhine, Weser, Elbe, and Oder—through a system of canals. Given that all of Germany’s major rivers run generally south to north and that German fears of a two-front war necessitated rapid east–west transportation, the rail network took precedence from the beginning. Furthermore, thirty-five thousand miles of railroads that were mostly state-owned by 1938 and an abundance of coal and iron meant that even Hitler’s “motorization” of Germany in the 1930s could not cause the railroad to be surpassed as the primary transportation medium, especially given Germany’s lack of oil and natural rubber.53
Germany’s dependence on rail meant that the transportation system itself offered few insights for the Western Allied governments, who relied much more heavily on automobiles and maritime transportation. However, what Western Allied intelligence did take an interest in was the manner in which German “civilian and military railway officials managed to cooperate very effectively.” While noting weaknesses, such as “the inability of lower echelons to make major decisions” and the “uncertain relationship between the Operations Branch of the Army High Command and the military and civilian transportation authorities,” the study concluded that the “German military transportation system functioned efficiently.” In the east, the movement of troops and supplies remained relatively functional until near the end of the war. And even in the west, where American and British bombing pounded German rail networks, troop and supply trains continued running, although it required “ruthlessly cutting down civilian traffic.”54
A series of seven special reports rounded out the publications of the Hill Project. Two of these reports, Officer Efficiency Reports in the German Army and Officer Candidate Selection and Training in the German Army, were requested by the Classification and Replacement Branch of the U.S. Adjutant General’s Office in Washington, D.C. The British Army of the Rhine asked for the study Ration Administration in the German Army, and the Officers’ Branch of the U.S. War Department General Staff ’s G-1 Division sought those titled German Officer Courts-Martial and Screening of German Enlisted Personnel for Officer Appointments. Of the final two special reports, Infantry in the Sixth Year of the War was a translation of an internal Wehrmacht study of the Twenty-Ninth Panzer Grenadier Division’s experience in Italy. German Chemical Warfare was a bibliography of all important documents concerning German chemical warfare then in the collections of the German Military Document Section.55
In addition to these fifteen published studies and special reports, Hill Project researchers initiated ten other studies during their tenure at Camp Ritchie. Yet, for whatever reason, the Military Intelligence Division chose not to publish these manuscripts and essays. Some of them were never even translated into English, although at least one of them, a lengthy study titled “German Manpower: A Study of the Employment of German Manpower from 1933–1945,” was later circulated on a very limited basis despite not being formally published.
Because of the exhausting, intellectual nature of the prisoners’ work at Camp Ritchie, Allied personnel decided to offer the prisoners some intellectual diversions. These came in the form of weekly lectures presented in English, typically covering some period of English literature. The lectures were designed to complement the English-language classes held in the prisoners’ enclosure four times each week. British and American officers offered four different levels of language instruction, ranging from beginner to advanced, and while the prisoners were not required to attend the courses, they almost always did. The language instruction served to raise morale among the prisoners, better prepare some of the advanced students to translate documents, allow the prisoners to speak with those Yanks, British, or Canadians who could not speak German, and “enable GMDS officers to form a clearer estimate of the individual [prisoners’] characters.”56
This regular contact between Allied teachers and German students, not to mention that between fellow researchers in the Hill Project, fostered respect and concern between these former enemies. In fact, the American personnel in charge of the operation went to great lengths to help the German officers and NCOs in their custody. General Buhle, in his capacity as senior officer and spokesman for the prisoners, directly corresponded on at least three occasions and met once in person with American colonel John Lovell. Lovell, assigned to the War Department’s Military Intelligence Division in Washington, D.C., served as overall chief of the GMDS operation and was the officer with whom Colonel Blunda, the director of the program at Camp Ritchie, coordinated his effort. Buhle provided Lovell with a list of each prisoner’s immediate family members and their last known addresses. Lovell assured the German general that he would try to obtain the whereabouts and current circumstances of these individuals.57
Once contact with an individual prisoner’s family had been reestablished, however, American authorities imposed some restrictions in an effort to protect the secrecy of the program. The prisoners’ family members were instructed to send any mail intended for the Hill Project prisoner to a post office box in Frankfurt, Germany. From there, the letters or packages were then forwarded to Camp Ritchie through U.S. Army channels. A problem arose because many of the family members addressed their letters using the prisoner’s military rank. Gronich feared that the post office box was being watched by the French and the Russians and that the Americans’ receipt of letters addressed to a number of high-ranking German officers would arouse suspicion and lead to potential complications with their nominal allies. Clearly, the Americans were not prepared to reveal the extent and nature of their relationship with members of the German General Staff to any but the two Allies with whom they were already collaborating on the program. Thus the prisoners’ families were asked to avoid using any military ranks in future correspondence.58
The Hill Project prisoners and their Allied supervisors and coworkers completed all twenty-five of their studies and reports by early April 1946. The only problem that intruded during their roughly six months at Camp Ritchie was the health of General Buhle. For unspecified health reasons, Buhle was transferred to the hospital compound at Fort George Meade, Maryland, in mid-March, where he remained until his repatriation to Germany in late April. In his absence, General Laegeler became the senior officer and, thus, the prisoners’ leader and spokesman.59
With most of the Hill Project’s work completed as anticipated, the operation was officially terminated and the bulk of the prisoners repatriated to Germany beginning on April 15, 1946. The prisoner-of-war enclosure at Camp Ritchie, established solely for the Hill Project and its support staff, was emptied and shut down by the end of the month, and Allied authorities coordinated procedures for returning the prisoners to civilian life in Germany. Considering that
the hillbillies had been part of a top secret military intelligence project and, as mostly former members of the German General Staff, were high-profile prisoners, Allied military intelligence considered them a “potential security menace.” Consequently, the prisoners’ military personnel files, which included “as much detail as possible about family and business associations, residences, political affiliations, and a short security estimate of [each] man,” were circulated to American and British military intelligence authorities in the European Theater. Allied operatives then kept these men under surveillance throughout their occupation of Germany. Allied officials also feared that information might be leaked by their own personnel who had worked with the GMDS at Camp Ritchie and took steps to impress upon these men the importance of keeping their work secret as well.60
The lengths to which American and British authorities went to stem any “potential security menace,” not to mention the benefits they provided these prisoners of war during the course of the operation, testify to the Hill Project’s importance to Western Allied military intelligence. This high level of secrecy also suggests that authorities in Washington, London, and Ottawa had greater concerns than simply gathering information for the war in the Pacific or improving Western Allied military operations. The Hill Project and the German Military Document Section were not simply historical endeavors. Had the operation been initiated simply to chronicle the German conduct of the war there would have been little need to keep the project’s existence so confidential. The U.S. Army Historical Division’s Operational History (German) Section, which utilized former Wehrmacht officers to write a comprehensive history of the Second World War, roused little if any resistance from the American public or local German citizens once the program became public knowledge in the years after the war. So why the shroud of secrecy surrounding the Hill Project?
Allied authorities feared that public knowledge of the German prisoners’ participation in the Hill Project might compromise both captor and captive alike. In early March 1946, the Directorate of Military Intelligence in London learned that word of the operation might be brought before the House of Commons in a debate over a defense measure. This possibility stirred discussion among American and British authorities about the prospect of releasing an article themselves, detailing the “proper story” to the public to “vitiate possible adverse criticism.” No evidence of such an article can be found, suggesting that either the matter was dropped before it reached the House of Commons, and thus no article was necessary, or the War Department simply decided against a preemptive public relations strike.61
Curiously, the proposed article would have contended that the Hill Project had been “undertaken from a strictly scientific point of view in order to determine the cause for the success of the German Military Operations in order that war in the future might be prevented.” Yet, despite the ostensibly “scientific” nature of the endeavor, Allied personnel feared that the prisoners involved would be branded as traitors by the German public had information about the Hill Project been released.62
A letter from General Buhle to Colonel Lovell dated January 23, 1946, suggests that the hillbillies did harbor some qualms about working directly for an Allied intelligence project. Buhle describes the prisoners’ quandary by saying that “the situation which emerges from this unorthodox and unparalleled method of work is as difficult to comprehend for our own officers as it would be for the officers of any other nation and it requires constant control over our minds to vindicate our conscience.” This supports the notion that the clandestine nature of the Hill Project was intended, at least in some measure, to protect the reputations of the German prisoners involved.63
Despite the prisoners’ concerns about working with their recent enemies, a number of reasons can be offered to explain their willingness to participate in the program. Given the choice between languishing in hastily prepared and often overcrowded prisoner-of-war camps in war-ravaged Europe or working for the Allies in a well-furnished camp in the United States with plenty of amenities, many a prisoner would have easily chosen the latter. Furthermore, the hillbillies gained a great deal from their service to the Allies, particularly in the manner in which the U.S. Army located and cared for most of their family members. The prisoners likely saw the potential to benefit their families and themselves early on and made continued attempts to better their situations throughout their time in the United States.
For instance, the former members of the German General Staff appear to have feared conviction as war criminals by the International Military Tribunal and insinuated that the Americans should correct any “misconceptions” about the “criminal-of-war question.” Buhle expressed concern because “the gravest indictments [were] being raised in the public during the Nuremberg trial” against various elements of the German High Command, adding that “the claim has been uttered that they are to be considered collectively as criminal organizations.” He continued by asking Colonel John Lovell, who was assigned to the War Department’s Military Intelligence Division in Washington, D.C., and served as overall chief of the GMDS operation, if it would be possible, “on your journey to Nuremberg, to influence the appropriate officials to correct the view on war guilt of OKW, OKH and General Staff officers as a whole, which we feel is a misconception, so that a conviction of these groups will not be effected.”64
The International Military Tribunal chose not to pursue the idea of collective responsibility for the German High Command organizations, and it is doubtful Colonel Lovell could have influenced them either way. But Buhle’s request illustrates that self-interest also lay at the core of the hillbillies’ willingness to participate in the program, despite their contention that their “only motive” was “the desire to throw light on the pertinent and historic development of German military leadership and organization” and to “contribute to world peace and thus save Europe and [their] country.”65
The Western Allied general staffs also fostered the secrecy of the project because they did not wish for it to appear as if they and the German General Staff “were collaborating in preparation for a future war.” This fear was predicated on a long-standing distrust between the Western Allies and their Russian counterparts in the Grand Alliance. Moscow harbored fears that American and British anticommunism would eventually compel the Western Allies to turn against the Soviet Union, possibly even siding with Nazi Germany if it best suited their interests. Considering the nature of the Hill Project, Soviet fears may not have been completely unfounded.
The overwhelming majority of the Hill Project publications offered “important lessons” and a detailed view of German methods that the Western Allies could use to improve their own military organization and techniques. This, of course, satisfied the third item on the research agenda for the Hill Project, that of improving intelligence organization and techniques. The Japanese surrender had relieved the program of any need to address the agenda’s second stated goal, that of research that would aid the war in the Pacific. This left only the first item, research on “subjects which will aid in preserving military security in Europe,” to be addressed. A few of the project’s documents, the study of the German General Staff Corps in particular, provided a greater understanding of the structure and command of the German Army that might have proved useful in the process of Allied demilitarization of postwar Germany. Only one, Armored Breakthrough, specifically examined the German war against the Soviet Red Army, however, and it dealt exclusively with the earliest stage of the German invasion in 1941.
Consequently, it might appear that the first goal of the program had gone unaddressed. Yet, unbeknownst to the hillbillies at Camp Ritchie, research into preserving security in Europe was being conducted nearby. After the Hill Project was officially terminated, a handful of these prisoners found that their route home diverted them through Fort Hunt, Virginia.
Lieutenant Colonel Gerald Duin, who was sometimes listed as the commanding officer of the prisoner-of-war guard detachment at Camp Ritchi
e and other times as the chief of the Hill Project, oversaw the camp’s POW enclosure. He stated that “Colonel Lovell’s idea in assembling the German Documents Center Project was to collect a representative German General Staff group and put them to work writing a comprehensive history of German Army experiences on the Eastern Front in all sectors and all branches of the service. Results of their work were to be complete studies of combat under all types of circumstances and conditions.”66
Duin had first served in World War II as chief interrogator at the U.S. Interrogation Center at Fort Hunt, Virginia, code-named “PO Box 1142.” The Fort Hunt staff interrogated the majority of the most important German prisoners in American custody during the Second World War, giving Duin invaluable experience for working with the hillbillies at Camp Ritchie. After “further wartime interrogation work in North Africa and Europe” and then service as chief interrogator for the Twelfth Army Interrogation Center, Duin was eventually assigned to the Hill Project at Camp Ritchie in October 1945. Clearly, Duin assumed a great deal more responsibility than simply commanding a POW guard detachment. He organized the entire Allied relationship with the prisoners and had been placed in this role because of his extensive military intelligence experience.67