Hitler's Generals in America

by Derek R. Mallett

  Much of the confusion stemmed from the fact that the generals were sent to numerous locations upon their return to Europe. Indeed, Allied, particularly American, determination of which camp a particular POW general should be interned in appears to have been somewhat haphazard, at least until the Historical Division began requesting prisoners, first for Garmisch and then for Allendorf. Badinski, Stolberg, Spang, Ramcke, Richter, Elster, and Gallenkamp first arrived at Camp 2226 in Zedelgem, Belgium, one of the camps operated by the British Army of the Rhine outside Brugge. Daser found himself at Zuffenhausen, north of Stuttgart, and various others, including von Sponeck, Krause, von Liebenstein, and von Choltitz, were sent to Bolbec in France. This prompted USFET to cable Washington, requesting a list of the German generals who had been interned in the United States since the beginning of the war. Only adding to the confusion, the list that the Provost Marshal General’s Office provided was incomplete. It provided the names of only forty-two of the German general officers who had been interned on American soil.27

  U.S. Army Historical Division priorities seemed to dictate much about U.S. policy regarding the POW generals in Europe. The division initiated searches for Generals Erwin Menny and Franz Vaterrodt in February and March 1947, respectively, at a time when many of the generals were being released from the history program. Moreover, American officials released the generals at different times, depending upon their work for the program. Badinski, Bieringer, Bruhn, von Choltitz, Kessler, and Ullersperger departed Allendorf in April 1947, after each of these officers had completed reports for the Historical Division, while von Liebenstein and von Sponeck were retained as civilian internees to prepare further studies.28

  For those generals not participating in the historical program, both the Americans and the British released the prisoners according to their date of capture, with the earliest captured being released first. Yet further restrictions applied. The Americans and British agreed immediately after the war that “a principal purpose of the Allies in occupied Germany [was] to prevent the renascence of the German Armed Forces and to destroy the German military spirit and tradition.” It was for this reason that the generals had been kept out of Germany for so long after the war. Furthermore, the Allies defined a “militarist” as “any former regular officer of the German Navy, Army or Air Force . . . who by reason of his disposition, past activities and professional military knowledge is considered by the Military Governor as likely to foster or resuscitate the military ambitions of the German nation.” Being classified as a “militarist” or “security suspect” meant the former general officer was subject to varying restrictions on travel and political participation, as well as other potential limitations.29

  By April 1946, the British and Americans jointly maintained a “watch list” of German generals in Europe whom they deemed to be militarists and security suspects. This list included Alfred Gutknecht because of his “Nazi sympathies” and because he was a former police officer. The Allies believed former policemen might be tempted to rejoin police organizations and thereby “perpetuate military tradition and training under cover of police activities.” Heinrich Kittel was also included because of his “Nazi sympathies.” Notably, both of these men were soon to be working for the U.S. Army Historical Division. Remarkably, the list also included Wolfgang Thomale, who was characterized as having “Nazi sympathies” and being “very clever” as well as considered to be a potential resistance leader because he had joined the Freikorps in 1919. At the time the list was promulgated in April 1946, Thomale was an integral part of the Hill Project at Camp Ritchie and soon after joined the Bolero Group at Fort Hunt, Virginia.30

  Clearly, as late as a year after the end of the war in Europe, American authorities appeared to be of two minds regarding their Wehrmacht general officer prisoners. On one hand, many of these men were deemed to be potential threats to the successful reconstruction of western Germany. Yet their American captors had also come to view some of these very same men as valuable sources of both historical information and military intelligence. Paradoxically, American officials trusted a number of German officers to accurately provide sensitive information but then harbored enough suspicions of these former enemies to keep them under surveillance for months after their repatriation.

  Despite Western Allied fears, the prisoners could not be kept indefinitely. The U.S. Historical Division sought to retain prisoner-of-war status for the German historical program participants for as long as possible in order to gather as much information from these men as it could. Also, had the general officer prisoners been reclassified as civilian internees, they would have lost their military rank and accompanying pay along with rations of five hundred calories per day because German civilians were allotted less food than were POWs. But a U.S. European Command directive required that all prisoners of war be discharged by June 30, 1947, and the Historical Division was forced to comply. At the time of discharge, there were 767 German officers writing reports; 401 of these remained as “civilian internees” to continue the program.31

  A number of generals remained in the German history program long after their conversion from prisoners of war to civilian internees. The program continued in a reorganized fashion under the direction of the Control Group, a select number of German generals led by one-time chief of the German General Staff Franz Halder. After again relocating, this time to Königstein, near Frankfurt, in May 1948, Halder and his staff entertained requests for special studies submitted by various U.S. government agencies through the U.S. Army Historical Division in Washington. Control Group members then chose qualified former generals to write the special reports, supervised their preparation, and served as liaisons between the former German generals, who wrote these reports from their homes, and the German history program authorities. Not surprisingly, an overwhelming number of these special studies dealt with issues related to the German war against the Soviet Union. Requests for special studies came from numerous U.S. government agencies, including the U.S. Army staff and officer training schools, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Joint Chiefs of Staff.32

  The Control Group continued preparing historical reports and special studies until it was finally disbanded in 1961. During the German history program’s fifteen years of operation, former Wehrmacht generals prepared over twenty-five thousand manuscripts totaling over two hundred thousand pages. Chief German coordinator and former general Franz Halder received the Meritorious Civilian Service Award from the United States for “a lasting contribution to the tactical and strategic thinking of the United States Armed Forces.”33

  British authorities retained their Wehrmacht generals as prisoners of war for almost a year longer than did their American counterparts. In October 1947 the British transferred a number of them, considered militarists and security suspects, to a camp in Adelheide, outside Bremen in northern Germany. Three former U.S. POWs were included in this group, Carl Köchy, Hans von der Mosel, and August Viktor von Quast. These men were retained at the camp until the spring of 1948. Once released, their names were added to a “stop list” that prohibited them from leaving Germany unless the military governor of the British Zone agreed to remove their restrictions. The names of numerous other generals appeared on the “stop list” as well, including Detlef Bock von Wülfingen, Knut Eberding, Erwin Menny, Ferdinand Neuling, Robert Sattler, Karl Spang, Christoph Graf zu Stolberg-Stolberg, Erwin Vierow, and Heinrich Aschenbrenner.34 By the summer of 1948, however, British and American officials had repatriated all of their general officer prisoners with the exception of a few, like Ramcke, who remained in Allied prisons awaiting trial for war crimes.

  During the six years in which the British and Americans held German generals as prisoners of war, the relationship between Anglo-American officials and the fifty-five Wehrmacht general officers considered in this study had evolved considerably. The transformation of this relationship, wrought by the developments of the war and the national security concerns of the immedi
ate postwar era, illustrate two important points. First, despite some similarities, the respective priorities of British and American authorities regarding their POW general officers differed significantly. British officials consistently interrogated and eavesdropped on all of their senior officer prisoners. London primarily sought operational and tactical intelligence to aid the Allied war effort. The British believed that anything the generals could tell them about individual commanders, their histories and habits, soldier morale, or the weapons and equipment Wehrmacht forces used in the field would be useful in the war against Nazi Germany. Moreover, CSDIC took great interest in the possibility of organizing a Free Germany Committee like the one that emerged among the German officer and enlisted prisoners of war in the Soviet Union, even though it eventually determined that such a group would not be feasible among the prisoners in Britain.

  Once Allied victory appeared likely in the fall of 1944, British intelligence also developed some interest in evidence of potential war crimes committed by the generals in its custody. Although few of the general officers in this study were tried by the Allies after the war, London was in the best position to assess which British prisoners should be investigated because of the time and resources it had spent gathering this type of information; Bernhard Ramcke may be a good example. CSDIC also unearthed evidence of collusion that violated international law between some of the general officers at Trent Park and at least one of the ostensibly neutral inspectors from the Red Cross. Furthermore, by the end of the war the British also showed considerable interest in the generals’ views of the respective Allied powers and assessed each prisoner’s willingness to collaborate with the Allies in the reconstruction of postwar Germany.

  Yet CSDIC’s interrogation and monitoring of the prisoners’ activities and conversations ended immediately following Germany’s surrender. In January 1946 London moved its general officer prisoners to Bridgend, where it held these officers for almost two and a half years and never again systematically sought any information from them. Clearly, the primary purpose of the British operation was to gather information that could help the Allies win the war. Once this had been accomplished, the operation no longer appeared necessary.

  In sharp contrast to its British allies, Washington initially had little regard for the value of Wehrmacht general officer POWs. Despite briefly accommodating its first handful of POW generals at the luxurious Byron Hot Springs resort in California, the U.S. Provost Marshal General’s Office quickly transferred these men to Mexia, Texas, where the generals voiced complaints about the insolence of American personnel. In response to these complaints, American officials assured the generals that accommodations more appropriate for prisoners of their high rank awaited them at Camp Clinton. But the generals found life in Mississippi little different than it had been in Texas. Indeed, as late as August 1944, War and State Department inspectors condemned the quality of the personnel who guarded the generals at Camp Clinton, labeling them misfits and men collectively unqualified for the job of providing security for a high-profile camp of that nature. Moreover, for the duration of the war, U.S. War Department officials entrusted Camp Clinton’s most distinguished prisoners to a commandant who believed these men should be treated like any other prisoners of war and regularly turned a deaf ear to their requests and complaints.

  This early American neglect and disregard for German POW generals sprang from the U.S. War Department’s initial lack of interest in these men. Most U.S. officials did not believe that the officers who had been captured in North Africa could offer them any intelligence of value to the coming invasion of northwest France. Besides, their British allies had a great deal more experience dealing with prisoners of war, including general officers, and CSDIC made what valuable information it gleaned from the generals in its custody available to American military intelligence. Thus Washington likely saw no need to expend its own precious resources. After the generals’ first brief stay in California, the War Department did not make any further attempts to interrogate or eavesdrop on its general officer prisoners at Camp Mexia, Camp Clinton, Camp Dermott, or Camp Ruston. American authorities appeared only too happy to allow their British counterparts to take the lead in gathering information from captured Wehrmacht senior officers.

  The War Department slowly began to develop a formal policy for dealing with its senior prisoners after the success of the Allied invasion of Normandy. American intelligence personnel began directly interrogating a select few prisoners who possessed particular kinds of operational, technical, or logistical expertise. Yet, despite this modicum of autonomy in their handling of German general officer prisoners, U.S. officials still continued to allow CSDIC to take the lead in interrogating most of the senior German officers captured before the end of the war in Europe.

  Washington officials also finally began to reconsider the kind of relationship they were developing with the Wehrmacht generals in their custody. What prompted this reconsideration was the formulation of American ideas about what the United States wanted to do with postwar Germany, something about which it had had little concern prior to D-Day. Once American officials determined the importance of building a democratic, demilitarized postwar German state, they began to evaluate what, if any, role the generals in their custody might be able to play in this process.

  Still, the development of American policy was slow and halting. It was anti-Nazi German POW collaborators who pointed out to the War Department the incongruity of using German general officers to “re-educate” lower-ranking and enlisted German prisoners of war when demilitarization was one of the primary goals of the process. Moreover, until the end of the war, logistical concerns like finding appropriate housing for the numerous German officers interned in the United States continued to take precedence over establishing any kind of bona fide reorientation camp for collaborative anti-Nazi senior officer prisoners, as the shifting arrangements at Camp Dermott attest.

  Finally, by the end of the war a new concern occupied American military policy makers, one that demonstrated the confluence between postwar national security concerns and wartime POW policy for high-ranking officers. Admiration for the prowess of German officers and the German military tradition in particular, coupled with anxiety about Soviet intentions and the strength of the Red Army, drove Washington officials into a collaborative relationship with many of the Wehrmacht general officers in U.S. custody.

  The second important point emerging from this study deals with this collaborative relationship. The evolution of America’s national security concerns in the years immediately following the end of World War II had consequences for its policy governing the treatment of high-ranking prisoners of war. Seemingly overnight, U.S. officials came to view Wehrmacht POW generals as highly valuable sources of information. Indeed, these prisoners proved far more valuable to the United States after the war concluded than they had during the war itself.

  American officials quickly came to rely on Wehrmacht generals for a variety of purposes. Following the end of the war in Europe, American military intelligence first sought information about the German-Japanese alliance that could aid the American war in the Pacific. German generals like Ulrich Kessler were now taken to Fort Hunt, Virginia, where American interrogators questioned and eavesdropped on these men in much the same manner as CSDIC had done throughout the war. During the final month of the war in Europe, American, British, and Canadian military intelligence began organizing the Hill Project, utilizing recently captured German General Staff officers to provide information about the German military that might help the Western Allied armies improve their own mobilization, logistics, training, and efficiency, among other things. And, given the U.S. Army’s burgeoning interest in preparing for a potential war against the Soviet Union, a general like Reinhard Gehlen offered Allied military intelligence firsthand information and lessons learned from the German war against the Soviet military.

  Driven by the needs of the war in the Pacific, American and British admiration for
the German military model, and Western Allied fears of Soviet intentions, American authorities began to reconceptualize their German prisoners of war as potential “allies.” Whereas only a year earlier American officials had found little use for the German generals in their custody, changing national security concerns in the immediate postwar era transformed Washington’s relationship with Wehrmacht general officers. Similarly, as the generals were returned to Europe, the U.S. Army Historical Division solicited information from hundreds of German generals to supplement the American historical record of the war. Eventually, the reports these generals produced began to play a highly influential role in the development of U.S. Army policy in the late 1940s and early 1950s, particularly in plans to defend Western Europe from a potential Soviet invasion.

  British authorities had taken on the lion’s share of the effort to gather valuable military intelligence from Wehrmacht general officer prisoners during the war itself. But a change in national security concerns immediately following the war compelled American authorities to take the lead in developing a relationship with German generals in the early years of the Cold War. Remarkably, the relationship that Anglo-American officials forged with Wehrmacht generals following the Second World War endured. While driven by common fears of Soviet communism, the roots of the relationship sprang from British and American admiration for the German military. In June 1947, following a study of the attitudes of the German officers in Britain’s remaining POW camps, London concluded that many British officers’ admiration for their German counterparts heightened the potential danger of a possible resurgence of German militarism. British officials saw the need to disabuse their military officers of the idea that the German generals had become their allies and warned that “the reputation of the German Wehrmacht remains high, and the sympathy shown for its senior officers by British officers seems to increase with time. If the core of the German Army is not to be resurrected as a factor to be reckoned with, the complacency existing in many [British] minds will have to disappear, and the notion that the German generals and General Staff are necessarily ‘on our side’ should not be seriously entertained.”35