Introduction
Britain’s attempt to “re-educate” Prisoners of War (POWs) belonged to a suite of measures aimed at eradicating German militarism and Nazism. During and after the Second World War there was much discussion about the responsibility—even the guilt—of the entire German nation for supporting and participating in Hitler’s regime, its brutal war, and its many atrocities.[1] But most wartime planning and postwar policy distinguished between the regime’s leaders and the broader population, between Nazis and non-Nazis, or between two or more “Germanies”. The categorization of POWs as anti-Nazi “Whites”, ardent Nazi or militaristic “Blacks”, or acquiescent “Greys” reflected such distinctions. Many British officials felt that the Germans in general had much to unlearn, such as extreme nationalism, militarism, and political passivity, and much to learn, such as tolerance and respect for democratic processes. But they also recognized that some Germans (like the “Greys”) had greater need of “re-education” than others (like the “Whites) and would also likely be more receptive than others still (like the “Blacks”).[2]
Focused re-educational efforts in settings like POW camps were part of a wider attempt to transform Germany through reforms in areas such as education and the media. This attempt was grounded in the dual belief that there was much wrong with Germany, but that it was capable of rehabilitation.[3] Recent research has emphasized the pursuit of a positive agenda of “economic Reconstruction, political Renewal and personal Reconciliation” that came more readily to some British occupation officials than others, but eventually won over even those who had initially favoured a tough approach.[4] Highlighting positive, constructive, and cooperative dimensions is an important corrective to accounts that stress the negativity of Allied policies or that posit the absence of a positive agenda until the Cold War supposedly caused a re-think. Yet it is important not to lose sight of the occupation’s coercive aspects and to consider the relationship between the negative and positive dimensions of British policy. To that end, this article discusses one of the harshest measures taken in occupied Germany—the extrajudicial internment of German civilians (and some former members of the military)—and explores how re-education was viewed and pursued in this context.
Prosecution, Denazification, and Internment in British-occupied Germany
Like the other occupying powers, the British participated in the prosecution of major war criminals and Nazi organizations by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg in 1945–46. They likewise conducted their own additional trials and oversaw the prosecution of Nazi crimes by German courts.[5] Also like the other powers, the British sought to denazify German public institutions, the professions, and industry by vetting their personnel and dismissing Nazis from their positions. The British generally pursued this aspect of denazification less rigorously than the Americans and Soviets, prioritising key positions and preferring to retain compromised individuals rather than lose their skills and experience.[6]
A further denazification measure directed at certain groups of Germans was extrajudicial internment. According to the August 1945 Potsdam Agreement between the UK, the USA, and the USSR, “Nazi leaders, influential Nazi supporters and high officials of Nazi organizations and institutions and any other persons dangerous to the occupation or its objectives shall be arrested and interned”.[7] This might allow for the later prosecution of detainees, or to exploit them for labour, but these were not the main goals.[8] As the Deputy Military Governor of the British zone, Lieutenant-General Sir Brian Robertson, put it in July 1946:
The Arrest Policy . . . was, and still is, framed to ensure the security of the occupying forces, the liquidation of the German Intelligence Services, the disbandment and dissolution of the Nazi Party, its para-military and affiliated organizations, and the suppression of all Nazis or Militarists who could endanger the growth of a democratic Germany.[9]
If the British adopted a relatively lax approach to vetting German society more broadly, they took internment seriously. By October 1945 they had dismissed only 23,000 people from their positions but arrested a further 50,000.[10] Of more than 400,000 Germans (and a sprinkling of other nationalities) who were interned across occupied Germany, at least 91,000 were detained in the British zone.[11] They were held at ten major sites, which included former German POW camps like Sandbostel and the former Neuengamme concentration camp on Hamburg’s outskirts. Detention conditions were tough early on, but they improved significantly from mid 1946. Five camps were still operating in January 1948. The last closed in June 1949.[12]
Several thousand internees were held as suspects or witnesses to war crimes or because they were suspected of subversive activity during the occupation. However, the vast majority were subjected to “automatic arrest” because of their positions in the Nazi Party, its affiliated organisations, or the German intelligence, security, or state apparatus.[13] After initially following relatively severe Anglo-American directives, in September 1945 the British began to exempt some groups (such as civil servants and some local Party functionaries) from automatic arrest and instead detained people in these categories only if this seemed individually warranted. By the end of May 1946, recategorisations and security reviews led to the release of more than 25,000 people, or more than one third of British-zone internees to that point.[14]
Although prosecution was never internment’s main purpose, the indictment of entire organisations at Nuremberg lent additional justification to interning their members. The IMT’s October 1946 verdict declared the SS (Schutzstaffel), its Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst), the Gestapo, and the Nazi Party Leadership Corps to be criminal organisations, but acquitted the SA (Sturmabteilung) and the Wehrmacht General Staff and High Command. In response, the British began releasing some interned members of the latter organisations and established German-run summary courts (Spruchgerichte) to prosecute internees (and some non-internees) for belonging to the former. By the end of 1949, 74% of ca. 21,000 defendants had been convicted.[15]
The Allies nevertheless reserved their right to intern “Germans, who, though not guilty of specific crimes are considered dangerous to Allied purposes”.[16] In early 1947 the British began implementing plans to intern “dangerous” Germans who could not be prosecuted for individual crimes or for belonging to a criminal organisation. These plans indicate the longevity of thinking expressed by a Foreign Office paper that Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Anthony Eden, had presented to the War Cabinet in January 1945. It identified a “‘lost generation’, brought up to know no ideals and no career save those offered, no facts and no theories save those permitted by National Socialism”. It predicted that many of them “will no more be able to live out of the atmosphere of National Socialism than a snail can out of its shell”. As a result, only “drastic and severe remedies, such as prolonged internment or deportation or long labour service outside Germany in the reconstruction of devastated countries could hold out any hope of working them out of Germany’s system”.[17] In 1946, British officials explored options for deportation or isolation on various North Sea islands. Instead, in 1947 a “civil internment settlement” was created at Adelheide, southwest of Bremen, where up to 15,000 internees were to live with their families for up to ten years. Approximately 550 men—mainly General Staff officers and SA leaders (groups that the IMT had acquitted) and leaders of the Hitler Youth and other Party units (that the IMT had not indicted)—were interned there before the policy was abandoned in 1948.[18] Such policy reversals, but primarily ongoing security reviews, recategorisations, and summary-court trials led to the virtual cessation of internment in the British zone by the end of 1948.
Internment and Re-education
Initially, “Black” POWs were to be “segregated” from the others to reduce their negative influence and allow the re-education of “Whites” and “Greys”.[19] In similar fashion, internment isolated leading Nazis and allowed the broader population to be re-educated. That internees themselves might be re-educated was not discussed during internment’s wartime planning. This reflected not just the priority of other goals but also the assumption that internees were incorrigible. As the already-mentioned Foreign Office paper from January 1945 put it, “It is vain to hope that men such as the worst of these [members of the “lost generation”, AB] can be ‘re-educated’”.[20] The creation of the Adelheide settlement suggests that such views persisted or at least that little had been achieved in re-educating its anticipated residents, many of whom had spent considerable time in detention.
Political re-education was thus neither the purpose nor a main feature of British internment in Germany. Films documenting Nazi atrocities were shown early on in some camps (as they were in many British POW camps), but little else followed.[21] As a result, internees, who were generally relatively well educated, were largely left to their own devices. In autumn 1945, they began to organize talks on various topics and soon expanded their activities to include classes on foreign languages and other topics, as well as tuition for youthful internees who had not completed their schooling. This was in addition to an array of recreational and cultural activities, including musical and theatrical performances.[22] At Neuengamme, the classes became so extensive that in the second half of 1946 1,600 participants were “enrolled” for a three-month “semester” in the camp’s “community college” (Volkshochschule).[23] With internees largely left to themselves and often bitter about their treatment, both Britons and anti-Nazi Germans worried that the camps were more like “colleges of National Socialism” than sites of denazification and re-education.[24] Even the Christian churches were constrained by the priority given to isolation. In some camps, external Protestant chaplains were not appointed until spring 1946. Around the same time, church welfare organisations began trying to meet internees’ non-spiritual needs, by, for example, providing tools, musical instruments, and books for the internee-led cultural and educational activities.[25]
It is sometimes suggested that the British became concerned with internees’ re-education only in 1947, but there was some earlier interest, even if the term was not always used, the focus was often not political, and ultimately little eventuated. Raising doubts over whether the internee-instructors in Neuengamme were politically “clean”, in April 1946 a British Education Control officer for Hamburg approached the city’s educational authorities about organising lectures by external speakers.[26] In July, Education Control approved the inclusion of political topics but insisted they not be the “major item of any visit”.[27] A talk on Goethe was held in August and a list of lecturers and lectures—on topics such as “Epochs of Natural Science”, “The Basis of European Civilisation”, “The Democratic Movement in Germany since the Peasants’ War”, and “Problems of Modern Socialism”—was approved in September.[28] The planned fortnightly program faced numerous difficulties. It was suspended in winter due to insufficient heating, resuming only in May 1947, and was inhibited by speakers’ competing commitments and difficulties reaching Neuengamme, including due to petrol shortages.[29] Interestingly, correspondence about the program was generally titled “Adult Education”, reflecting Education Branch’s dislike of the term “re-education”, which was regarded as overweening and offensive to the Germans.[30]
Thus, when regional Military Governments raised internees’ “re-education” with German regional governments in early 1947, this was not a complete novelty.[31] What was new, at least for the Hamburg-Neuengamme context, was British use of the contested term: “It is the desire of Military Government . . . to encourage by all reasonable means the political and general re-education of internees in the duties and privileges of citizenship with the object of reducing their potential danger to democratic government in Germany on their eventual release.” Perhaps paradoxically, there was also new emphasis on vocational education, especially for younger internees and anyone who previously “found their livelihood in professions and political activities which will not be available to them in future” due to denazification and demilitarisation. Unlike re-education in POW camps, Military Government regarded general and vocational education as “essentially a matter for the German authorities”.[32]
Ultimately, little changed. In Hamburg, the Schools Office determined that its lecture series and Protestant chaplaincy should continue as before. It agreed to organise vocational training but was reluctant to devote much effort amid declining internee numbers and rumours Neuengamme would close. By September 1947, it concluded that the vocational-training plan was impracticable and that the British had lost interest.[33] In other regions, too, there seemed to be reluctance or competing priorities among various German and British agencies. Belated initiatives in 1947 to apply the experience and expertise of the British POW re-education division to the internment camps were similarly limited by inadequate resources and the increasing pace of internees’ release.[34]
Beyond formal educational programs, in late 1946/early 1947 individual British camp governors sought to create opportunities for internees to experience liberal-democratic principles in action during their confinement. They established internee newspapers 1947 to foster freedom of speech and open discussion of matters within and beyond the camps. At Sandbostel, internees developed a constitution for the camp’s internee self-administration, with separation of powers and elections.[35] At Neuengamme, however, some internees’ calls for elections were resisted by a centralised and self-interested camp leadership dominated by former senior Nazi Party and SS members, whose influence the British seemed unwilling or unable to diminish.[36] While this example suggests a complete failure of democratic re-orientation, leading Nazis’ self-interestedness, shamelessness, or otherwise poor behaviour within the camps delegitimised them in the eyes of some other internees.[37]
Conclusion
Quarantining Nazi leaders and other “dangerous” Germans was internment’s main contribution to denazification and re-education: it allowed the rest of Germany to move on without their direct influence, at least temporarily. This, and the fact that the British were sceptical about whether such committed Nazis could be re-educated, meant that attempts to re-educate internees developed only belatedly. Leaving internees to themselves in the meantime was generally not conducive to their re-orientation. To be sure, some took advantage of internee-led classes and some benefitted from having time and opportunity to reflect, to discuss, or to re-engage with Christian faith. But in the second quarter of 1947 a leading figure in the Foreign Office’s German POW division came to the assessment that British-zone internment camps closely resembled “Black” POW camps in Britain in 1945.[38] This was partly attributable to the lack of re-educational efforts. Yet it also reflected the nature of the cohort. Around the same time, an analysis from the large Munster Lager POW Camp claimed that “the majority of officers have not changed their attitude to their former enemies in any way”.[39] On the whole, internees resembled the Wehrmacht’s officers more than its rank and file, who had needed less re-education and were more open to it. By 1947, the remaining internees were not only aggrieved about their lengthy incarceration, but it was too late to establish effective programs in camps that were being, or were about to be, wound down.[40] A perceived need to detain a hard core of “dangerous” Germans remained strong enough to establish the Adelheide settlement in 1947. But the successive closure of camps and the settlement indicates that by 1948 the British felt confident that they, and the German institutions on whom they increasingly relied (whether to prosecute members of criminal organisations or to organise educational activities), could handle the freedom of former Nazis and militarists, even if they had not really been “re-educated”.
[1] A key text for the British debate was Sir Robert Vansittart, Black Record: Germans Past and Present (London: H. Hamilton, 1941).
[2] Kurt Jürgensen, “British Occupation Policy after 1945 and the Problem of “Re-educating Germany”’, History 68, no. 223 (1983): 225–244, at 230–231.
[3] See David Phillips, Educating the Germans: People and Policy in the British Zone of Germany, 1945–1949 (London: Bloomsbury, 2018).
[4] Christopher Knowles, Winning the Peace: The British in Occupied Germany, 1945–1948 (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 1.
[5] See David Cohen “Transitional Justice in Divided Germany after 1945”, in Retribution and Reparation in the Transition to Democracy, ed. Jon Elster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 59–88.
[6] See Jill Jones, “Eradicating Nazism from the British Zone of Germany: Early Policy and Practice”, German History 8, no. 2 (1990), 145–162; Cohen, "Transitional Justice": 76–78; Perry Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany: A History 1945–1950 (Stroud: Tempus, 2007), 83–117.
[7] “Extracts from the Report on the Tripartite Conference of Berlin (Potsdam)”, 2 August 1945, in Documents on Germany under Occupation, 1945–1954, ed. Beate Ruhm von Oppen (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), 42–47, at 43.
[8] See Andrew H. Beattie, Allied Internment Camps in Occupied Germany: Extrajudicial Detention in the Name of Denazification, 1945–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), esp. 28–44.
[9] Report on Persons Held in Internment Camps, sent by Robertson to Sir Arthur Street, Control Office for Germany and Austria, London, 2 July 1946, The National Archives (TNA), FO 938/345, 1.
[10] “Minutes of Military Government Conference Held on 12/13 October 1945 at Main Headquarters, Control Commission for Germany (British Element), Lübbecke”, in Documents on British Foreign Policy Overseas, ed. M. E. Pelly and H. H. Yasamee, Series I, vol. V: Germany and Western Europe, 11 August–31 December 1945 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1990), 224–225.
[11] Beattie, Allied Internment Camps, 107–110.
[12] Ibid., 148–153, 176–179, and 187.
[13] Ibid., 77–78.
[14] Ibid., 52, 78.
[15] Ibid., 82–84; Cohen, “Transitional Justice”, 71–72.
[16] “Control Council Directive No. 38: The Arrest and Punishment of War Criminals, Nazis, and Militarists and the Internment, Control, and Surveillance of Potentially Dangerous Germans”, 12 October 1946, in Documents on Germany, ed. Ruhm von Oppen, 168–179, here 168.
[17] "Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs", 10 January 1945, in Conditions of Surrender: Britons and Germans Witness the End of the War, ed. Ulrike Jordan (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997), 115–127, at 123.
[18] See Beattie, Allied Internment Camps, 82, 100–101.
[19] "The Re-Education of Prisoners of War", 26 May 1944, 3, TNA, FO 939/445, available via BOA at https://britishonlinearchives.com/documents/43454/fo-939445-war-cabinet-memorandum-on-political-re-education-policy#?xywh=-1603%2C-47%2C7352%2C3978&cv=12, image 13.
[20] “Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs”, 10 January 1945, in Conditions of Surrender, ed. Jordan, 123.
[21] Beattie, Allied Internment Camps, 174. See Ulrike Weckel, “Disappointed Hopes for Spontaneous Mass Conversions: German Responses to Allied Atrocity Film Screenings, 1945–46”, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute (Washington) no. 51 (2012): 39–53.
[22] Karl Hüser, “Unschuldig” in britischer Lagerhaft? Das Internierungslager No. 5 Staumühle 1945–1948 (Cologne: SH Verlag, 1999), 69–71, 108–109; Alyn Beßmann, ‘“Der sozusagen für Euch alle im KZ sitzt”: Britische Internierungspraxis im ehemaligen KZ Neuengamme und deutsche Deutungsmuster“, in Zwischenräume: Displaced Persons, Internierte und Flüchtlinge in ehemaligen Konzentrationslagern, ed. KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 2010), 35–54, at 43–44; Andreas Ehresmann, “Die frühe Nachkriegsnutzung des Kriegsgefangenen- und KZ-Auffanglagers Sandbostel unter besonderer Betrachtung des britischen No. 2 Civil Internment Camp Sandbostel“, in ibid., 22–34, at 29.
[23] Volkshochschuldirektor Hermann Vogts, Aktenvermerk über das Lager Neuengamme, n.d. [October 1946], Staatsarchiv Hamburg (StAH), 361–2 VI, 1274, 69.
[24] Beßmann, “Britische Internierungspraxis”, 44.
[25] Andrew H. Beattie, ‘“Lobby for the Nazi Elite’? The Protestant Churches and Civilian Internment in the British Zone of Occupied Germany, 1945–1948”, German History 35, no. 1 (2017): 43–70, at 54–55 and 57–61.
[26] Captain Bishop, Education Control, to Oberschulrat Merck, Schulverwaltung, Subj.: Visit to Neuengamme Camp, 20 April 1946, StAH, 361–2 VI, 1274, 13.
[27] Bishop to Schulverwaltung, Subj.: Adult Education in Neuengamme Camp, 25 July 1946, StAH, 361–2 VI, 1274, 44.
[28] Merck, Bericht über das Lager Neuengamme, 29 August 1946; Education Control to Merck, Subj. Adult Education in Neuengamme Camp, 7 September 1946, StAH, 361–2 VI, 1274, 55 and 60.
[29] Schulrat Jürgens to Senator Landahl, 21 March 1947, StAH, 361–2 VI, 1273. See also, StAH, 361–2 VI, 1274, 70–73 and 83–86.
[30] Jürgensen, “British Occupation Policy”, 226; Phillips, Educating the Germans, 1–6, 65.
[31] Cf. Heiner Wember, Umerziehung im Lager: Internierung und Bestrafung von Nationalsozialisten in der britischen Besatzungszone Deutschlands (Essen: Klartext, 1991), 172–173.
[32] Governmental Group, HQ Military Government, Hamburg, to Burgomaster Hamburg, 18 March 1947, Subj. Re-education of Internees in Civilian Internment Camps and Settlements, StAH, 361–2 VI, 1273.
[33] Jürgens to Military Government, 16 April 1947; Jürgens to Kulturbehörde, 10 September 1947, StAH, 361–2 VI, 1273.
[34] Wember, Umerziehung, 173–177.
[35] Ehresmann, “Die frühe Nachkriegsnutzung”, 27–29.
[36] Beßmann, “Britische Internierungspraxis”, 42–43; Wember, Umerziehung, 193–196.
[37] Wember, Umerziehung, 171.
[38] Ibid., 174.
[39] Intelligence Division, A Survey of the German Generals and General Staff, n.d., sent to the Foreign Office on 10 June 1947, TNA, FO 939/349, available via BOA at https://britishonlinearchives.com/documents/43441/fo-939349-internment-camps-re-education-and-reports-on-german-internees#?xywh=-1073%2C-51%2C6513%2C3525&cv=4, images 5–6.
[40] By this point, activities were declining in POW camps and democracy, rather than Nazism, was blamed for various ills. See "Current Tendencies in Re-Education in Camps", 22 July 1947, TNA, FO 939/349, available via BOA at https://britishonlinearchives.com/documents/43441/fo-939349-internment-camps-re-education-and-reports-on-german-internees#?xywh=-1054%2C-213%2C5458%2C2954&cv=14, images 15–17.