In 2015 someone contacted me from Radiolab asking for help with research for the episode “Nazi Summer Camp“. This was quite a thrill because I’ve long been grateful to this fun and informative show for preventing my children from bickering on long car trips.
What they wanted was a summary of one chapter of a German book about POW camps in the US during the Second World War. They were still deciding which aspects to focus on, so they were gathering information from different sources. In the end, no specific information from my summary made it into the show, but I was happy to be part of the research process.
The chapter gave a detailed account of German POW life at Fort Hunt, source of many anti-torture anecdotes. When James Mattis told Trump, “Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I’ll do better” than the torturers, he was building on a tradition that goes back to the easygoing interrogators at Fort Hunt.
Although POWs were not tortured there, they were subjected to a lot of secret surveillance. Their cells were bugged and monitored by a team of eavesdroppers, many of whom were Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria. They worked in shifts and noted the POWs’ conversations by hand on forms, often in a sort of shorthand, but quite complete. When the conversations turned to especially relevant topics, the monitors started a tape recorder. With regard to what should be recorded, the adage was, “When in doubt, press button.” At the end of their shift the monitors transcribed important passages from their recordings. They learned precise coordinates of numerous bomb targets in Germany, technological details about various weapons, vehicles and machines, and much about the structures and practices of the Wehrmacht. What they learned the most about were the individual German soldiers.
I enjoyed translating the transcripts that were quoted in the book. Here is a soldier explaining to his cellmate what the formal interrogations are like:
G: So one of those guards comes charging in holding a piece of paper and calls out someone’s name, but always with English pronunciation. And then you have to go out, and then you go through the halls to a room and usually an officer is sitting there. And you can’t do a Hitler salute there.
P: No, no.
G: And then he asks a ton of questions. For example: Are you a member of the party? What do you think of Adolf Hitler? What do you think of the Jewish question? And then he wants to know other stuff.
Most prisoners felt they were treated fairly and enjoyed the plentiful food and relatively comfortable conditions. However, some reacted with deep distrust. Helmut Engelbrecht told his cellmate: “Like I just told you, this is how Nordic people squeeze it out of you. The Russians, they let you starve and then cold shower, hot shower, cold shower, hot shower, until you’re half mad and you’ll tell them everything willingly. But here they try it with devious tricks, nice on the outside and on the inside – the craziest techniques and listening systems and whatever other kinds of shit.”
Prisoners were not supposed to know they were being recorded, but some guessed. 22-year-old submarine lieutenant Peter Leffler from Braunschweig explained to his skeptical cellmate:
Leffler: They’re recording our conversation now.
Cellmate: Oh, I don’t believe that. The thing with recordings, that would cost a whole lot.
Leffler: What do you mean, it doesn’t cost a lot to make records.
Cellmate: OK, listen, it’s theoretically possible but pretty difficult in practice. Imagine, we’ve been here together for a long time, with a record running 12-15 hours?
Leffler: No, there’s someone sitting by it, listening, and whenever it gets interesting, he turns it on.
Cellmate: Oh, well that’s…I get it.
Leffler: In Danzig I was at a broadcasting studio once, and this is exactly what the rooms look like.
Meanwhile, SS Oberscharführer Fritz Swoboda willingly told his cellmate about how he and his men had shot unarmed American POWs on the western front. Shortly afterwards he thought to ask:
Swoboda: Could there be a microphone hidden in this room?
Cellmate: Yeah, nobody knows. But I have nothing to hide.
Swoboda: No, I just wondered. I don’t actually think there is one.
Officers, men with specialist technical knowledge, or soldiers who had been involved in intelligence were the most likely to suspect bugging. Their cellmates often didn’t believe them. One simple infantryman responded, “Where’s a built-in microphone here? Where would something like that be? […] You’re crazy, that’s a myth.” A marine lieutenant was sure it was impossible: “Here? No, there are no microphones here, I know. […] Look, some man would have to sit there all day, listening all the time. Or they have to broadcast it by radio, onto records. Wouldn’t work, you can’t do it.” Most discussions about eavesdropping came to that conclusion: “There’s no microphone here.”
They were there, and sometimes they picked up conversations that ran like a film script:
J: If only we could get out of this shithole and back to Germany.
H: They’ll get nothing out of me. They could keep me here a year and they wouldn’t know more than they do now. And in the meantime the war would be over and they’d have to let me go.
J: You know, last night I woke up suddenly and I thought, hey, what’s going on? I was at home. I saw it all so clearly.
H: Watch out. (guard going by)
J: He’s gone. You have to be careful here, like a lynx.
H: Yes, yes.
J: Open the window again.
H: Man, then it gets so cold in here.
J: It’s just as cold in here. When you touch the radiator, you stick to it. It’s that cold. Are you hungry?
H: It’s OK.
J: You’ll start to feel it tomorrow and the day after.
H: I believe you. When did they take you out?
J: Yesterday.
H: And you haven’t been back in?
J: No, and he asked me if I wanted to go to a Nazi or Anti-Nazi camp. Then I said it was the same to me – whether I was a Nazi or Anti-Nazi, as a German I wasn’t going to tell him anything. He could do whatever he wanted. Then he locked me up here. But let’s not get down in the dumps. We can thank God things came out this well for us.
H: Yes, I was lucky.
J: So was I.