The Swastika Tattoo

The Care and Treatment of German Generals

Geraldine Birch — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 02:37:24 +0000

There were thirty German generals and three admirals held by the United States as prisoners of war during WWII. A memorandum from the Special War Problems Division of the Department of State advised camp commanders in contact with high-ranking captives that a general’s status and prestige in Germany far exceeded that of an American general.

It was noted that once the war was over, these officers would be repatriated, and it was hoped by their care and treatment that they would return to Germany with a favorable impression of America. They were to be treated with the deference due their positions.

Educational material and films were made available to these prisoners from the Office of War Information, emphasizing the enormous economic strength and industrial power of the American war effort. These men were taken on tours of American shipyards and major ordinance depots. Their itineraries included cultural visits to Mt. Vernon, Williamsburg, various universities, and high schools that were deemed to be “distinctly American.”

Guards of these high-ranking generals were to be unmatched in character and appearance. An officer was assigned to teach them English, and they were each given a radio for their personal use.

Many of the generals were housed at Camp Clinton, Mississippi, where they lived in separate houses scattered over a large area to give the inhabitants a feeling of privacy and seclusion. They also had their own refigerators, POW gardners, and most had a pet.

Please read a chapter of my novel “The Swastika Tattoo” at http://amzn.to/H97K7h.

Next time: The great escape at Camp Papago Park, Arizona.

The Repatriation of German Prisoners of War from American Camps

Geraldine Birch — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:28:55 +0000

The War Department announced on November 21, 1945 that thousands of German POWs would be handed over to European governments for labor battalions to rebuild France, Belgium, and Luxembourg. The news burst over the POW camps like a skyrocket. These men long held in America thought they were going home after the war. They weren’t. Other countries that received prisoners were the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Greece.

The men were used for work in mines, construction, farms, and forestry. They were also used for clearing rubble from the devastation of the bombings. Depending upon the requirements of each country, the majority of POWs served in labor battalions for about four to six months, although many thousands of them were held much longer.

However, it was the American Military Government in Germany that used most of the repatriated Germans for work ranging from hospital technicians to day laborers. Finally, after much criticism from the home front, paticularly Christian organizations, the War Department began to pull itself out of the POW-labor program in Europe.

France held their POWs the longest, much to the dismay of the German prisoners. In fact by April, 1947, the French still held so many German POWs that the American government intervened. France was finally forced to offer all German prisoners under its control, with special exceptions, a choice between repatriation to war-torn Germany or remain in France as salaried, voluntary workers. Only 10,000 men volunteered to stay in France, and thousands were finally returned home.

Note: I have made a chapter from my novel The Swastika Tattoo available at http://amzn.to/H97K7h.

Democracy Training Sessions for German POWs

Geraldine Birch — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 20:50:49 +0000

In October 1945, the War Department announced its intention to send home all of the more than 370,000 German POWs by March 31, 1946. As a result of that decision, it was finally decided approximately 20,000 “cooperative” German prisoners of war would be put through a six-day training course that would educate the men about democracy.

After the more than 500 camps submitted the names of their most co-operative anti-Nazi POWs, approximately 24,000 men were selected, 2,000 men at a time for a total of 12 training sessions at Fort Eustis, a U.S. Army installation located at Newport News, Virginia.

The sessions included:

The Democratic Way of Life
The Constitution of the United States
Political Parties, Elections, and Parliamentary Procedures
Education in the United States
American Family Life
The American Economic Scene
American Military Government
Democratic Traditions in Germany
Why the Weimar Republic Failed - I
Why the Weimar Republic Failed - II
The World of Today and Germany
New Democratic Trends in the World Today

There were lectures conducted in both English and German with open discussions. Films were shown, there were more round-table forums, and lessons in English. The men were allowed access to church services, the library and the gym. There were also counselors on hand to help the men with problems concerning their families in Germany, many of the men feeling anxious about their safety because they were anti-Nazi.

According to “Nazi Prisoners of War in America,” the commandant of the school, Colonel Alpheus Smith, was forthright with the prisoners in his opening address. He admitted that democracy was not perfect, mainly because Americans were not perfect. There were, Smith said, bad Americans and bad things done in America, but that “democracy was the best thing there is in human society.”

Next time: Repatriation of German Prisoners of War

The Teaching of Democracy to German POW’s

Geraldine Birch — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 15:13:28 +0000

With more than 300,000 prisoners of war in the United States during WWII, the American government did not take the opportunity to teach them about democracy until 1945. According to information from Arnold Krammer’s book, “Nazi Prisoners of War in America,” there was concern that word would get back to the Third Reich that we were indoctrinating German POWs in democracy and that the Nazis would therefore indoctrinate American POWs in National Socialism .

The War Department struggled to find a way to re-educate the men under their control, and after examining the Geneva Convention for a loophole, it finally settled on Article 17 which states, “So far as possible, belligerents shall encourage intellectual diversions and sports organized by prisoners of war.” Thus, the War Department and the State Department came to a tacit understanding that there could be selected media that were made available for the prisoners. This included literature, motion pictures, newspapers, music, art and educational courses.

It was hoped that if these facts about democracy could be presented convincingly, perhaps the German prisoners of war would begin to understand historical and ethical truth as generally conceived by Western civilization. Through that, then perhaps they would come to respect the American people and their ideological values. Once that happened, then perhaps these precepts would be taken home with them to Germany to form the nucleus of a new German ideology and the rejection of militarism and National Socialism.

Books that began showing up in the concentration camp libraries were For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway, The Human Comedy by Saroyan, and several works by Thomas Mann, including The Magic Mountain. Movies included Young Mr. Lincoln, Going My Way, Wells Fargo, and the film version of The Human Comedy. In particular, Frank Capra’s film series, Why We Fight was shown to the POWs.

Finally, a newspaper called Der Ruf (The Call) was put together by a Special Projects Division team of university professors and hand-picked prisoners of war. Its first issue was in camp canteens on March 6, 1945, and the prisoners had to purchase it. Its aim was to have academic sophistication in intellectual matters and scrupulous honesty in reporting war news and POW problems.

What the camp authorities found through monitoring of the prisoners was that the newspaper became increasingly popular the longer it was published and that the appearance of the newspaper caused the prisoners to take sides which identified their views on Nazi ideology.

Next time: A 6-day training session in democracy for 20,000 German prisoners of war.

Note: An exerpt from my YA novel can be previewed here: http://amzn.to/wosWZa.

German Prisoners of War in the United States

Geraldine Birch — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 21:12:51 +0000

The idea for my YA novel, “The Swastika Tattoo” came to me more than ten years ago when I was doing research for my first novel, “City of Refugees.” I was doing research in the Arizona section of the Phoenix Library when I came across an article about a WW II German prisoner of war camp that was located in Papago Park, about seven miles east of Phoenix, in an area known today as Tempe, Arizona.

I never knew the United States had German prisoner of war camps, and so I began doing research about them. Amazingly, there were more than 500 camps in the United States during WWII filled with about 360,000 men who had been captured in the European theater of the war. What I found even more interesting was that Camp Papago Park was where German submariners or U-boat crewmen were sent. My mind began to picture these German men who were so close to the sea, stuck in the middle of the Arizona desert.

Almost all of the prisoners, with the exception of German officers, were used to fill the tremendous gap in labor needed in the United States because of the shortage of men. American farmers, lumber companies, paper plants, mills–not to mention labor needed on stateside military installations–signed contracts with the War Department to use the German prisoners of war. From the end of 1943 to the spring of 1946 when all of the prisoners were repatriated, the prisoners were employed on every major agricultural crop in nearly every state in the union. The POWs at Camp Papago Park were used mainly to pick cotton and citrus crops.

The men were paid 80 cents a day (paid in coupons, not American dollars) including 10 cents a day which every enlisted prisoner got for the purchase of toothpaste, shoe polish, razor blades, handkerchiefs, and tobacco at the camp canteen. For those who chose to save their meager 80 cents in coupons, they returned to Germany with several hundred dollars in their pockets. Most, however, returned with about $50, and that was considered a great deal of money in war-torn Germany.

While sitting in a prison camp was not what these men of Germany wanted to do, they took the opportunity to take classes which were held most every night in the concentration camps. They learned English, French, law, business, and history among many different course offerings. They had sports teams, produced plays, organized orchestras, and enjoyed a multitude of crafts. Many came away with fond memories of their time in America, having developed friendships with the farm families they worked with. That’s not to say all did, particularly those who were hardened Nazis and who hated everything America stood for–freedom, independence and the ability to question those in authority.

Next time: The teaching of democracy.

Approximately 1,100 WW II Veterans Dying Every Day

Geraldine Birch — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 17:55:21 +0000

As I was writing The Swastika Tattoo, I often wondered how many WW II veterans were dying every day. According to Slate, the number is 1,100. That’s info from the federal government.

The passing of these veterans is not only sad, but America’s history of the 20th Century is passing with them. I have no idea how many Germans are passing, but I assume it is probably at the same rate of Americans, considering that Germany has a great health care system.

That’s why I traveled to Germany in 2007 to interview Volkmar Koenig who served as a U-boat officer on the deadly U-99 with famed U-boat commander Otto Kretschmer. Kretschmer successfully directed his crew during eight patrols to torpedo 44 ships, sinking 38. Herr Koenig was but a young man when he served on U-99, but he was one of the survivors when the boat was scuttled off Iceland after being depth charged by a British destroyer. After that, Herr Koenig spent about five years in a Canadian prisoner of war camp. He died in August 2008, and his passing affected me deeply because of his many kindnesses during the time my husband and I visited him and his wife, Dorothee.

With much help from U-boat enthusiasts and experts–Ken Dunn, Jak P. Malmann Showell, and the U-Boat Archive in Cuxhaven, Germany, not to mention information gleaned from uboat.net., this book could not have been written. While I haven’t found a publisher (yet) for the first volume of the novel, I am publishing an exerpt from the second volume at amazon.com. This exerpt tells the story of a former U-boat prisoner of war who has spent 2 1/2 years in an American POW camp located near Phoenix. Rudolf Meier is now returning to his beloved Bremen on a train filled with other German POWs. I hope you find this exerpt interesting. http://amzn.to/wosWZa.

Why Did I Write “The Swastika Tattoo?”

Geraldine Birch — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 18:51:42 +0000

Although my novel is set during WWII in a prisoner of war camp located in Arizona, the main thrust of the book is to view intolerance and how it is passed from generation to generation.

My main character is Rudolf Meier, who is entralled with Adolf Hitler. He wants to join the Hitler Youth because it will enable him to get out from under the scrutiny of his grandmother who hates Hitler. This is a time of greatness for Germany–1936 when the country is rebuilding and everyone has food on the table after so many years of hunger and lack of work because of the reparations that Germany must pay because it lost WWI–and Rudolf wants to be part of that greatness.

But as Rudolf embraces everything German, he also embraces intolerance of anyone who thinks or acts differently.