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British Character and
the Treatment of
German Prisoners
of War, 1939–48

a l a n m a l pa s s
British Character and the Treatment of German
Prisoners of War, 1939–48
 Alan Malpass

British Character
and the Treatment
of German Prisoners
of War, 1939–48
Alan Malpass
Sheffield, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-48914-4    ISBN 978-3-030-48915-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48915-1

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgements

It brings me great pleasure to thank all those who have supported me in

writing this book. I must begin by thanking my PhD supervisors, Matthew
Stibbe, Robbie Aitken and Tony Taylor. Their comments and advice
throughout my PhD as well as their continued support while I adapted it
into this book has been invaluable. While at Sheffield Hallam University, I
have been fortunate to work alongside excellent historians who have
helped me shape my thoughts and encouraged me throughout. For all the
conversations and help that they have provided over the years I am
indebted, especially to Merv Lewis, Peter Cain, Rodger Lloyd Jones,
Nicola Verdon, Kevin McDermott and Matthew Roberts. My thanks also
go to all the past and present members of the humanities postgraduate
group at Sheffield Hallam, in particular, Ben Wilkinson, Adam Gilbert,
Michael O’Donnell and Joe Stanley. I would also like to thank my editors
at Palgrave and the anonymous reviewer who helped me realise the broader
significance of my work and improve the overall quality of my manuscript.
For use of their archival material, I am grateful to the Trustees of the
Mass-Observation Archive, University of Sussex. My family, as always, has
been a constant source of support. Mum, Dad and Laura, thank you for
everything. Finally, I must express my upmost gratitude to Jess for her
tolerance and endless reassurance.

v
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 Characteristic Decency or Dangerous Sentimentality?

British Treatment of German POWs, 1939–43 31

3 Atrocities and the Limits of Civility: British POW

Treatment 1944–45 71

4 Rubbing Shoulders with the Ex-Enemy: Fraternisation and

Marriage107

5 ‘A Blot on Our Fair Name’? Indefinite Detention and

Exploitation147

6 After Liberation: Migration and the Memory of British

POW Treatment177

7 Conclusion197

Bibliography207

Index223

vii
 Abbreviations

ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross

LST Landing Ship Tank
MAF Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries
MO Mass-Observation
MOL Ministry of Labour
POW Prisoner of War
RAF Royal Air Force
SEN Save Europe Now
SHAEF Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force
TNA The National Archives
YMCA Young Men’s Christian Association

ix
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

‘So I walked quickly towards the German, who was limping alongside the
hedge in the direction of the house. When I got near him I put on my
fiercest frown and looked as stern as I could’.1 In July 1940, Mrs Evelyn
Mary Cardwell recounted how she had confronted a German airman who
had bailed out their Junker 88 and landed nearby the house on her farm.
Although the German towered over her, he was obviously shaken by the
ordeal. Cardwell ordered him to hand over his gun, hold up his hands, and
she marched him down the main road. Around half an hour later, a group
of soldiers took charge of the German. The story made front page news
and the following day it was reported that Cardwell would be awarded an
Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her services.2 Cinema audiences
applauded newsreel segments reporting Cardwell’s exploits, along with
other stories at that time of people ‘doing their bit’.3 Cardwell was report-
edly the first woman to have captured a German in Britain during the
Second World War; her story may have been the inspiration behind the
1940 propaganda short Miss Grant Goes to the Door. Sisters Caroline and
Edith Grant are forced to deal with two Germans when they arrive at their
cottage. Alone, the sisters manage to thwart a German spy masquerading
as a British officer after taking revolver from the wounded German para-
chutist lying dead on the sofa after bailing out during an air raid. Produced
by the Ministry of Information, the short dealt with the threat of invasion
and aimed to encourage calm and confidence in the public. It was favour-
ably reviewed by audiences who approved lifelike narratives over clumsy

© The Author(s) 2020 1

A. Malpass, British Character and the Treatment of German
Prisoners of War, 1939–48,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48915-1_1
2 A. MALPASS

propaganda.4 Perhaps also lending inspiration from Mrs Cardwell’s

exploits, the titular heroine of the hit 1942 American film Mrs Miniver
calmly confronts a German pilot near her home. Something about the
composure in which these women—both real and fictional—dealt with
the German enemy spoke to the character of the British people.
The connection between behaviour shown towards captured Germans
and ideas of Britishness was made explicit a few weeks later. On 14 August
1940, during the highpoint of the Battle of Britain, an exchange between
two British women and a German pilot who had been shot down in south-­
east England was reported in several newspapers. When approached, the
downed pilot asked Mrs Betty Tylee and Miss Jean Smithson: ‘Are you
going to shoot me now?’ Tylee answered, ‘No, we don’t do that in
England. Would you like a cup of tea?’.5 This article might well have been
lost within the wider reportage of enemy planes shot down and the
destruction suffered during the intense raids that day. Yet, this anecdote is
important to dwell on. It suggests a connection between ideas of British
character and the treatment of enemy prisoners of war (POWs). The offer
of a warm beverage implied a lack of animosity and an understanding that
the enemy, now captured, was out of the fight. The assertion that in
England, Tylee probably meant Britain generally, that captured enemies
were not shot out of hand by murderous civilians chimed with the obser-
vations of George Orwell in his infamous essay, The Lion and the Unicorn,
published five months after the article in the press. He noted that charac-
teristic traits of the English were ‘gentleness’ and ‘respect for constitution-
alism and legality’.6
Analyses of national character were numerous during the war. As Paul
Addison writes, ‘It was mainly through a ceaseless flow of anecdotes that
the English defined themselves: stories that were often funny, sometimes
true and frequently picked up and printed by journalists’.7 Reports of Mrs
Cardwell’s and Mrs Tylee’s meetings with downed German pilots demon-
strate how aspects of British character were exemplified in the treatment of
enemy prisoners. British Character and the Treatment of German Prisoners
of War, 1939–48 explores the connections between ideas of national char-
acter and the treatment of POWs in Britain during and after the Second
World War. Scholars working on other contexts have highlighted that how
nations handle captured enemies has been a marker of national identity
and differences between captor and captive. ‘The treatment of POWs’,
Rotem Kowner argues in his study of Japanese attitudes towards captured
enemies, ‘appears to be an excellent indicator of one’s identity since it
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

reflects self-images, the identity of one’s reference group and the attitude
to it, as well as the national priorities and ambitions in times of constraint’.8
David Dzurec has similarly observed that published narratives of the mali-
cious and callous treatment of American revolutionary POWs by the
British allowed those fighting for independence to differentiate themselves
from their colonial masters. The suffering of Americans in British captivity
was shorthand for the nations struggle against Britain.9
The focus of British Character and the Treatment of German Prisoners
of War is the varied attitudes held towards German POWs in Britain and
the public judgement of the government’s handling of their imprison-
ment. It examines how the issue of POW treatment intersected with other
debates in British society and culture during and after the 1939–45 con-
flict. Exploring the contours of public opinion towards British POW poli-
cies, how the public understood and reacted to the way in which the
government handled their captivity, this book resituates the figure of the
German POW and the issues relating to his captivity within the context of
wartime and post-war Britain. It demonstrates that the behaviour shown
towards the enemy was a reference point in which notions of what it meant
to be British were signified and questioned. In this way, this book is more
concerned with the attitude of the people rather than the views of policy
makers and the prisoners themselves. This is a cultural history of the
Second World War and post-war period, using the lens of POW treatment
to view attitudes towards Britishness, the German enemy, and the political
and social issues Britain faced during the period. It demonstrates how the
issue of POW treatment was not an isolated one, bound up in diplomatic
exchanges and confined to the perimeter of the camp, but rather how it
intersected with numerous broader debates and concerns.
From the outset of the Second World War there was a belief in Britain
that the nation treated enemies it captured with civility and had gathered
a reputation of integrity when dealing with POWs in its charge. Writing
for the Yorkshire Post in 1939 a journalist explicitly connected POW treat-
ment to the ideals which Britain was fighting for:

Our reputation for good treatment of prisoners of war is too valuable to

lose. Were we to abandon it, we should be renouncing those ideals of
humanity and fair play which we have gone to war to defend. Our camps for
prisoners of war must remain altogether unlike the Nazi concentra-
tion camps.10
4 A. MALPASS

Here, the treatment of POWs was thought of as a marker of essential val-

ues. It provided a concrete context in which abstract notions considered
to underpin British character and culture could be demonstrated clearly.
Britain was civilised in its treatment of the enemy, as evidenced by Mrs
Tylee who rather than attempting to kill the German pilot offered the
defeated enemy a cup of tea. Inspired by the exchanges described earlier,
this study concerns itself with how German POWs and the standard of
their treatment in British hands were represented. The purpose of relaying
this information to the British public in newspapers and newsreels was not
just to keep people abreast of the presence, condition and use of enemy
captives. The way in which their conditions, handling and situation were
portrayed fed into the border construction of British national identity dur-
ing and after the Second World War. This representation did not, however,
go uncontested, and in the following chapters, the comments and con-
cerns of the public are highlighted and evaluated. What becomes clear is
that despite disagreements, there was a general understanding that the
British dealt with captured enemies in a civil manner, one which was
rooted in ideas of essential British characteristics. Whether this was some-
thing to be championed or a mentality which would only serve to under-
mine the effort to effectively fight a second war against the German enemy
was a source of debate. Furthermore, the contrast between the British
treatment of German POWs and the treatment of British and
Commonwealth troops in German captivity was used as a marker of
national difference between the two nations during the 1939–45 conflict.
As such, the analysis of the debates in the pages of the press over POW
treatment provides a lens through which to explore social, political and
cultural values of the British people during the war and attitudes towards
the German enemy. The extent to which POW treatment was thought to
reflect British self-image and character, how attitudes changed over time
within the shifting wartime, post-war and emergent Cold War context is
the focus of the following chapters.

Axis POWs in Britain 1939–48

The presence and distribution of the Italian and German POWs held in
Britain has been the subject of numerous studies. Here, a brief outline of
the main development of British policy and movement of POWs is pro-
vided. Between the outbreak of war in September 1939 and the opening
of the Second Front in June 1944, there were few German POWs held in
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

Britain. During the eight months of phoney war, beginning with the dec-
laration of war by the western Allies and roughly ending with the German
invasion of France and the Low Countries in May 1940, Luftwaffe pilots
and Kriegsmarine crew were sporadically captured in and around the
British Isles. By 18 December 1939, there were 250 in British hands.11
Before being transported to camps, POWs were interrogated. The
Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC) was initially
established at the Tower of London, before moving to Cockfosters and
later Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. Over the course of the war, infor-
mation gathered from POWs became increasingly valued by intelligence
services.12 Pre-war planners anticipated that only a small number of enemy
POWs would be held in Britain, and two sites were initially requisitioned
by the War Office to act as POW camps. Officers were held at Grizedale
Hall in the Lake District, Cumbria, while of other ranks were accommo-
dated at Glen Mill, a disused cotton mill in Oldham, Lancashire.13 Policy
was altered in light of the catastrophic military defeats resulting in the
Dunkirk evacuation between 26 May and 4 June 1940 followed by the fall
of France on 25 June.14 The decision was taken, suggested by the newly
established Home Defence (Security) Executive, to remove enemy aliens.
POWs were also shipped to camps in the Dominions including Canada,
South Africa, Australia and New Zealand as they too were considered a
security threat at a time when invasion was feared.15 While the practice of
transporting enemy aliens was stopped after the Arandora Star sinking,
consignments of POWs continued to sail for the Dominions.16 Transported
to the extremities of the British Empire, the number of German POWs
held in Britain remained small.
In contrast to the flow of German POWs away from Britain, there was
a steady influx of Italian POWs from 1941.17 It is worth briefly discussing
policy towards Italian POWs as their fate was intertwined with their
German equivalents. On 10 June 1940, Italy joined the German invasion
of France during the latter stages of the campaign. Benito Mussolini’s
decision to declare war subsequently expanded the conflict into the
Mediterranean theatre. In North Africa, British forces successfully repelled
initial Italian advances into Libya. The copious numbers of Italian POWs
made for logistic and administrative problems. At the same time, labour
shortages in Britain were becoming acute. In an effort to alleviate both
these problems, Italian POWs were shipped to Britain and set to work in
agriculture. While German POWs were perceived as bellicose fanatical
Nazis, Italian POWs were considered docile.18 An almost insatiable
6 A. MALPASS

demand for their labour soon followed; noting the British ‘addiction’ to
their labour, Wylie quips that the Italians were ‘more useful to Britain’s
cause in the wheat fields than the battlefields’.19 The number of Italian
POWs employed increased steadily to 108,000 by D-Day and peaked at
162,000 in June 1945. With the capitulation of Italy in September 1943,
the use of Italian POW labour was complicated. Although the flow of
Italian POW labour was cut, Italian POWs already in Britain would not be
immediately repatriated. In order to continue to employ them, a ‘co-­
operator’ status was introduced. Italian POWs were offered this status,
and in exchange for their continued employment—their remit being
expanded beyond agriculture to work directly associated with the war
effort—co-operators were offered increased freedoms and payment.20 At
the same time, Italian co-operators were billeted directly onto farms,
reducing transport costs. Furthermore, removing them from camps cre-
ated space for prospective POWs taken during the forthcoming invasion
of Normandy.
During the Normandy Landings on 6 June 1944 and the subsequent
breakout, substantial numbers of German POWs were taken by Allied
forces. Initially, with no space to hold them in France, POWs were shipped
across the Channel to Britain. Having already agreed to share captures
between them under the August 1943 50:50 agreement, a number of the
German POWs were quickly transferred from Britain to the United
States.21 With future of Italian POW labour uncertain, the possibility of
employing German POWs was explored, an experimental group being put
to work in agriculture in two counties. The need for labour outweighed
security concerns and German POWs were increasingly employed from
summer 1944. Demand for labour would not recede with the end of the
war against Germany, and British-owned German POWs were transported
to Britain from camps in Canada, the United States and Belgium to bol-
ster the workforce.22 The security restrictions that had hampered the pro-
ductivity of German POW employment were scratched in May 1945 after
the unconditional surrender of Germany, and in August 1946, the num-
ber employed in the United Kingdom peaked at 381,000.
During the Potsdam Conference that took place between July and
August 1945, the aims of denazification and democratisation were agreed
by Allied representatives. In Britain, the need to design a programme of
political re-education for German POWs was already been made clear in a
cabinet memorandum circulated on 18 December 1939.23 However, with
the priority being winning the war, the issue was set aside until September
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

1944 when a scheme was approved by the cabinet. POWs were inter-
viewed to assess their political sympathies, a process known as ‘screening’,
and accordingly segregated into one of three groups: ‘white’ (anti-Nazi),
‘grey’ (in-between) and ‘black’ (ardent-Nazi). Re-education sought to re-­
orientate German POWs along democratic lines. The programme included
discussion groups, lectures, films and other activities which provided a
space in which the POWs could challenge their pre-existing beliefs rooted
in Nazism. In September 1946, the German POW population peaked at
402,200. At that time a scheme of general repatriation was introduced at
a rate of 15,000 POWs per month, later rising to 20,000. In July 1948,
apart from escapees still at liberty and serious infirm cases, the repatriation
of German POWs was completed.

Historiography
The product of conflicts from antiquity to the present day, Pieter Lagrou
reminds us that POWs ‘are a universal phenomenon of warfare’. Changing
military tactics which saw increased mobility led to a substantial rise in the
number of military prisoners taken during the two World Wars.24 Over
time, popular imaginings of POWs centred predominantly on heroic tales
of escape have been demystified. For decades after the Second World War
this image was perpetuated in Britain by the ‘Colditz industry’, but as
Simon Paul Mackenzie has demonstrated, the realities of British POWs in
Nazi Germany were far more complex.25 There is now a vast literature on
the experiences of POWs and how they fared within the camps of the First
and Second World Wars. In general, it is accepted that German POWs
held in Britain between 1939 and 1948 were treated by and large in accor-
dance with international law and fared far better than their counterparts,
notably those in Soviet hands.26 In their memoirs, ex-German POWs look
back on their captivity in Britain fondly, as a time when they forged friend-
ships and rebuilt their lives after the devastation wrought by war.27
Given the lack of attention paid to German POWs in Britain, the first
wave of studies concentrated on policymaking and the handling of POWs
by the British authorities. In his chronological overview of British policy
towards German and Italian POWs, Bob Moore pinpoints the turning
points which transformed the demographic of the POW population in
Britain. Moore argues that the usefulness as a labour source was a primary
factor shaping British policies towards them.28 Certainly, examining the
employment of German and Italian POWs, Johann Custodis demonstrates
8 A. MALPASS

that both groups ‘made significant contributions’ to wartime and post-war

agriculture.29 In addition to their economic output, studies have also
focused on re-education policy. In Group Captives, Henry Faulk, who was
a key figure in the process, outlines the British re-education programme.
Examining the results from a sociological perspective Faulk deems the
policy successful.30
Diplomacy has been placed at the forefront of recent studies of POWs.
In Prisoners, Diplomats, and the Great War, Richard B. Speed surveys their
treatment during the conflict in Europe and the United States. He con-
ceptualises the ‘liberal tradition’ of captivity, the view that captured ene-
mies are not chattel property but protected persons. This view was codified
in international law, notably in the two Hague conventions of 1899 and
1907. Despite the unforeseen pressures of total war, Speed contends that
Britain, France, Germany and the United States treated their POWs rea-
sonably well.31 Commitment to the liberal-tradition of captivity was dem-
onstrated by the ratification of the 1929 Geneva Convention.32 As in the
1914–18 conflict, the stipulations of international law were interpreted
differently during the Second World War and negotiations between bel-
ligerents sometimes broke down. Comparing their treatment across the
theatres of war during the Second World War, Mackenzie asserts that the
‘mutual hostage factor’ was an important restraint on POW mistreatment
in the western theatre.33 This influential essay inspired subsequent studies
to adopt a comparative approach, exploring negotiations between govern-
ments in an attempt to pinpoint the factors governing POW treatment.
MacKenzie’s argument that reciprocity was a key influence in POW rela-
tions has been nuanced in subsequent works. In Confronting Captivity,
Arieh Kochavi suggests that racial considerations played a role in Germany’s
treatment of captives. Notwithstanding times when it was breached, the
observance of the 1929 Geneva Convention regarding Anglo-American
POWs contrasts sharply to the brutal extermination policies carried out in
concentration camps. While Kochavi’s analysis of diplomatic correspon-
dence is sound, a deeper consideration of the cultural context of policy-
making is required to explain the disparity in the treatment of different
captive groups.34 Vasilis Vourkoutiotis similarly argues that the sufferings
of Allied POWs in German hands were not deliberately caused. The
German High Command was committed to the stipulations of the Geneva
Convention, but individual commanders, administrative breakdown
towards the end of the war and Hitler’s personal involvement resulted in
violations.35 Drawing on the field of international relations, Neville Wylie
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

analyses the intricate diplomacy Britain and Germany played to safeguard

their servicemen in enemy hands. He has shown that reciprocity could also
mean an escalation in POW mistreatment.36 In their assessments of the
1942–43 Shackling Crisis both Kochavi and Wylie note that the British
authorities had to be mindful of public opinion during the reprisal cycle,
and a public distaste of meting out punishments upon defenceless captives
eventually led Churchill to unchain German POWs. This suggests that
innate cultural aversions played a role. Although not concerned with
POWs, Jeffrey Legro has argued that the restraint shown between Britain
and Germany during the war was due to deep-rooted cultural beliefs
within their military commands.37 The cultural restraints and attitudes
expressed by the British public towards POW treatment is a central con-
cern of this study. Both Kochavi and Wylie suggest this in their assess-
ments of the 1942 Shackling Crisis whereby the British authorities had to
be sensitive to public opinion which would not condone the chaining of
German POWs in retaliation for the manacling of British POWs in
German hands.
The phenomenon of captivity was not confined to the wartime period,
and extended beyond 1945. Homecoming, reintegration and memory are
themes central to the essays in Prisoners of War, Prisoners of Peace edited by
Bob Moore and Barbara Hately-Broad.38 Immediate repatriation was just
one of ‘the spectrum of possibilities’ POWs faced at the end of hostili-
ties.39 In contrast to the immediate liberation of Allied POWs, the repa-
triation of German POWs from Britain was not completed until 1948.
During this time their continued employment intersected with the post-­
war migration and the recruitment of foreign labour, notably the arrival of
European Voluntary Workers.40 German POWs featured in Inge Weber-­
Newth and Johannes-Dieter Steinert’s socio-historical exploration of
German migrants in post-war Britain.41 Their study has shed light on atti-
tudes expressed by the British public and non-governmental organisations
towards German migrants. After outlining British policy towards German
migrants in the context of post-war labour needs, the study goes on to
explore several aspects of the migrant experience. Having interviewed ex-­
POWs and migrants, the authors examine conceptions of self and others as
well as recollections of their reception. They discuss the eventual relax-
ation of the fraternisation regulations near Christmas 1946 which created
the opportunity for ex-enemies to meet one another and forge relation-
ships beyond the workplace, noting that Christians and ex-military per-
sons were two particular groups which reached out to German POWs.
10 A. MALPASS

Focused attention is paid to gender issues in relation to encounters

between POWs and British women.
Recording the encounters between British civilians and German POWs
has been primarily conducted by amateur and local historians who usually
have some sort of personal connection with the captives. Pamela Howe
Taylor, author of Enemies Become Friends and The Germans We Trusted,
chronicled the friendships made between British civilians and German
POWs, her father having been a British priest, providing service to a POW
camp near their home in Lancashire.42 Studies of the POW presence in
particular counties and certain camps also offer some insight into the atti-
tudes of the locals to their POW neighbours, usually drawing on the mem-
ories of local people.43 Of particular note is Matthew Sullivan’s Thresholds
of Peace. Sullivan, himself having worked with German POWs in post-war
Britain, recounted the attempt of the captives to confront the political and
moral trials borne out of defeat in 1945. While focused on the re-­education
programme and the key individuals involved with it, Sullivan also described
the actions of British civilians who involved themselves with welfare and
aid for German POWs. He drew upon the philosophy of Iris Murdoch to
explain what he describes as ‘the myriad threads of peace’ knitted between
the British people and German POWs in post-war Britain. In The
Sovereignty of Good, Murdoch deemed courageous good deeds people per-
form against heroic odds a mystifying and central question in moral phi-
losophy. Following Murdoch, Sullivan suggests that those that sought to
do good for German POWs ‘did not see it as an act of will nor a moral
task’.44 That there were individuals and organisations in Britain that con-
cerned themselves with the welfare and conditions of German POWs out
of enigmatic inner virtuousness alone is not refuted. However, further
interrogation is required of this issue, especially the debates over what was
considered appropriate and the reasons people concerned themselves with
enemy captives.
There are few works that centre on public opinion and attitudes towards
German POWs during and after the Second World War. Their time in
Britain sits awkwardly with the conventional wartime/post-war chrono-
logical divide. German POWs, for instance, are absent in Paul Addison’s
The Road to 1945, while they are only mentioned fleetingly in Angus
Calder’s The People’s War.45 Furthermore, in studies of post-war labour
and migration, POWs are of secondary consideration. In regards to post-­
war histories of Britain, their presence complicates narratives of the
1945–51 Labour government. The retention of German POWs as forced
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

labour does not fit with the image of Britain moving towards a properly
constituted welfare state and work-force. Neither does this fit well with
the memory of the war. In his effort to dispel the ‘myth of the good war’,
James Hartfield writes that Britain, like the United States, ‘made defeated
Germans [POWs] slaves’.46 When the reason why German POWs were
kept after the conclusion of hostilities is highlighted—that Britain relied
on their labour, along with other foreign sources, in the early years of
post-war reconstruction—it complicates the self-image of the nation as the
liberator of Europe from dictatorship and tyranny. The logistics of repatri-
ating the hundreds of thousands of German POWs in Britain, in addition
to those held across the Empire, was a complex operation after the war.
Yet, the continued retention and employment of German POWs in post-­
war Britain was uncomfortable for many Britons at the time. The hypoc-
risy of preaching the virtues of democracy while the victorious nations
exploited the presence of the defeated enemy, setting them to work across
a variety of industries, was a contested issue in post-war Britain. People
expressed their concern that the use of ‘forced’ and ‘slave’ workers, keep-
ing men in captivity and separated from their home and loved ones for
months and then years after the conflict had ended, contradicted the val-
ues for which the war against fascism had been fought.

British Character and the Second World War

This study argues that the issue of POW treatment intertwined with
notions and debates of British national character during and after the
Second World War. ‘Wars’, Judy Giles and Tim Middleton note, ‘are obvi-
ous occasions when ideas about national identity become particularly vis-
ible’.47 The 1939 to 1945 conflict, in particular the events of
1940—Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz—is considered a time
when British cultural awareness reached a highpoint. The Second World
War, Richard Weight and Abigail Beach write, ‘heightened national con-
sciousness in Britain by creating the potentially inclusive, democratic sen-
timent of the “People’s War” and in doing so, it prompted a thorough
examination of what constituted British national identity’.48 Often, as
Barbara Korte and Ralf Schneider indicate, the idea of national unity needs
to be cultivated even after the fighting has stopped so that the involvement
of the nation in that conflict can be justified and the survivors can be com-
forted by the idea that their losses were not in vain.49 The Second World
War, Korte notes, ‘has engendered its own myths of Britishness’.50 These
12 A. MALPASS

mythological elements of the British Second World War narrative—par-

ticularly ‘standing alone’ against Germany in 1940, Britain’s ‘finest hour’
according to Churchill—have been interrogated by historians, most nota-
bly Angus Calder.51 More recently, the unravelling of British national
identity with the rise of nationalism in Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland
and England has been a central concern in studies of Britishness.52
The image of Second World War Britain as a liberal and tolerant society
has been questioned in studies of civilian internment. For a time, unable
to reconcile mass internment with the narrative of liberal Britain defend-
ing democracy, it remained a marginalised subject.53 Former Isle of Man
internee Ronald Stent and journalist Miriam Kochan offer positive inter-
pretations of the experiences of the captives.54 However, the greater part
of literature has been critical. Brian Simpson disparages the system of
detention without trial, while Neil Stammers has gone so far as to argue
that with the suspension of many civil liberties, following the introduction
of the Defence Regulations, including 18B and the internment of aliens,
Britain ceased to be a liberal democracy.55 The internment of enemy aliens
sat uneasily with British notions of justice, and the episode has been
explored by historians to complicate British self-image during the Second
World War. As the title of the collection edited by Richard Dove suggests,
the internment episode was and is considered Totally Un-English.56 In her
unpublished doctoral thesis Zoë Andrea Denness argues that although
internment has been regularly used as a controlling measure during times
of conflict between the South African War until today, it is consistently
seen as ‘un-British’.57 Historians of military captivity in Britain during the
two World Wars have suggested that similar cultural forces were at play in
debates concerning the treatment of POWs.
Jay Winter has argued that the First World War had ‘clarifying effects’
on British national identity. ‘Englishness’ and ‘masculine “decency”,
moral rectitude and martial virtues’ became tantamount. Germanophobia
was crucial in the process of redefining pre-1914 ideas of British identity
during the Great War. Across popular and material culture, ‘English
“decency” was juxtaposed to German “bullying”’ and ‘English “fair play
and morality” to German “atrocities”’.58 Brian Feltman has suggested that
this perception was not confined to the fighting front, but ‘carried over
into the British treatment of German prisoners’.59 Heather Jones’s study
of violence against POWs in Britain, France, and Germany during the First
World War highlights deep cultural differences between the belligerents in
their treatment of military captives. In regards to the radicalisation of
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

POW treatment which Jones charts, she observes a British

exceptionalism:

Yet if there is a Sonderweg to emerge from this study, it is actually Britain,

where, throughout the war, violence against prisoners remained far less
acceptable than in France or Germany and where cultural constraints acting
against radicalisation proved particularly powerful.60

Assessing a letter to The Times criticising the lenient treatment of German

POWs in October 1918, Jones comments:

Yet, significantly, even in a letter demanding harsher prisoner treatment,

such as this, there is still a strong cultural disapproval of beating German
prisoners or starving them; the language is very much the high Edwardian
rhetoric of ‘fair play’, closer to the cultural ideals of British honour espoused
by the famous poem ‘Vitai Lampada’ by Henry Newbolt than the rhetoric
of wartime extremes.61

The young cricketer of Newbolt’s poem, by the second stanza a soldier, is

stirred to heroic action through schoolboy memories. The line ‘Play up!
Play up! And play the game!’ symbolised the view that the same sporting
spirit should inform the battlefield as much as the cricket pitch. ‘In
European history’, James Mangan remarks, ‘war has served sport and
sport has served war’.62 During the First World War, Colin Veitch argues
that ‘Sport was to maintain its ascendancy in the forefront of British
thought and expression throughout the remaining years of the conflict,
and continued to be used to typify the genetic strength of British man-
hood’.63 Assessing the place of sport within British society, Derek Birley
argues that the Newbolt spirit which Jones alludes to persisted beyond the
First World War.64 The notion of fair play in connection with the treatment
of POWs is explored further. Building on the research into British culture
and the treatment of POWs during the 1914–18 conflict, this study offers
observations on the extent to which such attitudes persisted into the
1940s. Certainly, by the outbreak of the Second World War, Britain had
cultivated an image of a fair and liberal captor in times of war. This was
not, however, always the case.
Looking back to the conflicts of the nineteenth century, embarrassment
was expressed by the reviewer of the findings of Francis Abell’s 1915 study,
Prisoners in Great Britain, 1756–1815. Abell aimed to validate the
14 A. MALPASS

accusations of non-English writers who accused the British of POW abuse

during the American Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. ‘As an
Englishman’, Abell wrote in his introduction, ‘I much regret to say […] I
find that foreigners have not unduly emphasized the brutality with which
we treated a large proportion of our prisoners of war’.65 He singled out
the prison-ship system as a particularly barbaric and embarrassing aspect of
Britain’s treatment of POWs, writing that, ‘to the end of time this abomi-
nable, useless, and indefensible system will remain a stain upon our
national record’. The reviewer, writing during the Great War, was encour-
aged by the improvement in Britain’s treatment of POWs since the nine-
teenth century, which, he noted, ‘serves as a measure of the advance in
civilization made by the Anglo-German race in the last hundred years’.66
Britain cultivated an image of a fair captor state during the First World
War. The British treatment of POWs during the 1914–18 conflict upheld
what Richard Speed conceptualised as the ‘liberal-tradition of captivity’.
This tradition was codified in international law developed during the nine-
teenth century. Prior to the outbreak of the Great War, the fate of prison-
ers of war was thought to be a relatively happy time. In Europe, the view
of the prisoner of war was romanticised, and there was a distinct absence
of violence in artistic depictions of them.67 The excesses of total war tested
the liberal-tradition, Brian Feltman has examined how in the moment
between surrender and capture, a minority of British soldiers were not
beyond committing unlawful acts against German POWs.68 In 1919, two
scholars of POW treatment observed that the Great War had demon-
strated there was an urgent need to revise the status of prisoners of war
after the experience had highlighted the inadequacy of the regulations of
the Hague Convention.69
During the Second World War, everydayness and ordinariness were
central to the construction of British national identity and expressions of
character. Sonya Rose observed that ‘those who best represented Britain
at war were not exceptional individuals but rather were everyday, ordinary
people; those who were “doing their bit”’.70 John Baxendale similarly
argues that in the midst of all the destructiveness witnessed on the home
front, ‘the minutiae of ordinary life [became] all the more precious, a
source of national pride, and just as much as democratic instructions,
under Nazi threat’.71 Following the notion put forward by Rose and
Baxendale, that everydayness and ordinariness were central to representa-
tions of what it meant to be British, the physical gestures towards German
POWs recorded in newspapers and other materials can be read as
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

important symbols of Britishness. While donating a packet of Woodbine

cigarettes, cup of tea, or piece of cake to a German POW might well be
mundane at first glance, important messages are codified within them
which, when unpacked, can further understandings of the viewpoints held
by the ordinary citizen in wartime and post-war Britain.

Images of the Germans

An examination of how the treatment of POWs reflected British self-image
during and after the Second World War must also concern itself with the
counterpart entity which also defines the self: the other. ‘Britishness’, Paul
Ward notes, ‘has always been in a process of formation’.72 Acknowledging
the complexity of national identity, whereby numerous ongoing processes
result in conceptions of what it meant to be British being in a state of flux,
this study is concerned with the creation of Britishness in relation to the
German enemy. This is not to suggest that national identity is solely con-
structed against ‘the other’. The contributors in Fighting for Britain? have
highlighted the internal construction of national identities during the
Second World War between the various nationalities which make up
Britain, as well as those who arrived from the Empire. These differences
are not disputed. However, against Nazi Germany the British, Paul
Addison states, ‘fought as one nation’.73 While he acknowledged that ‘the
so-called races of Britain feel themselves to be very different from one
another’, George Orwell argued that the differences between two Britons,
say English and Scottish, quickly evaporated when they were confronted
by another European.74 As Wendy Ugolini and Juliette Pattinson note,
‘Much of British national character was also being constructed in opposi-
tion to the humourless and militaristic Nazi, with the perceived British
characteristics of tolerance, cheerfulness and stoicism being widely cele-
brated’.75 While the Axis also included Italy and Japan, it was Germany
which was the foil to Britain. Certainly, hatred was directed to the former
two nations, poet A.P. Herbert famously calling to ‘Sock the Wops, and
knock their blocks’. Yet it was Germany which was, Angus Calder notes,
‘first and always, the real enemy’.76 The German people came to represent
all that Britain was not: malevolent, degenerate, vicious, deceitful, cold,
dishonourable and mechanical. In exploring attitudes and debates towards
German POWs and their treatment, this study offers new insights into
how the British people perceived Germans during and after the Second
World War.
16 A. MALPASS

Sources
This book draws upon a range of materials including official documents,
newspapers, newsreels, memoirs and sociological reports. With the objec-
tive of exploring public opinion and individual attitudes, popular sources
and the voices of the British people are privileged over an intrinsic investi-
gation of official documentation. The general outline of British policy
towards German POWs and the diplomatic relations between Britain and
Germany has been explored in previous studies. The administration of
German POWs produced a vast amount of official material, camp reports,
psychological and morale examinations and diplomatic correspondence,
amongst others. While this study focuses on public opinion and debate,
the cabinet records and other governmental files are utilised to understand
the executive decisions taken by the successive wartime and post-war gov-
ernments regarding German POWs. More importantly, the verbatim par-
liamentary debates recorded in Hansard are examined to consider the
public face of official policy, in other words how governmental decisions
were communicated to the public. In order to gauge public opinion and
gleam individual attitudes towards German prisoners of war and their
treatment, three sources are central: newspapers, newsreels and Mass-­
Observation (M-O) material.
Regarded as the first draft of history, newspapers are one of the most
significant published primary sources for historians. This is particularly
true of mid-twentieth-century Britain. This was a time when, as George
Orwell observed, the typical Englishman would settle down with a news-
paper after their Sunday lunch. Mid-twentieth-century Britain offered one
of the most competitive newspaper markets across the globe. The daily
circulations of the Daily Mirror and Daily Express—over four million cop-
ies—were unmatched. Around three-quarters of the population read a
paper every day. Newspapers not only brought the presence of German
POWs in Britain and the conditions of their captivity into the everyday
lives of the British public, relaying information regarding their numbers
and policies adopted towards them, they also provided a space in which
attitudes towards their treatment could be expressed and debated.
During the 1940s, Mass-Observation recorded attitudes of newspaper
readers. Their panel of volunteers were periodically asked between 1940
and 1948 to rank opinion forming influences in order of significance.77
During their period, the influence of the press declined. Wary of wartime
propaganda, personal experience was considered increasingly more
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

reliable than newspaper content. By 1944, the opinions of friends and

family joined books, personal judgement and personal experience as the
most influential influencers of opinion. It was not only the reliability of
newspaper content which came into increasing doubt over, similar pat-
terns of changing opinion were found with radio and films. In the view of
M-O, the war had a clear impact on attitudes towards the press which was
thought to be biased and often regarded as sensationalist. As a result,
there was an increased wariness towards newspaper content. Despite the
trustworthiness of the press being bought into account, this was consid-
ered a minority group and M-O still regarded newspapers as a powerful
former of public opinion in 1949. The power of the press to shape opinion
lay in the subtle absorption of opinion by readers who engaged with the
content uncritically.
While the majority of newspaper content is written by journalists, col-
umnists and editorials, newspaper readers also contributed in the form of
letters. In their research into the attitudes of newspaper readers, M-O
assessed the readership of correspondence columns, also known as letters
to the editor. It was found that the popularity of letters was proportionate
to their light-heartedness. In general, beyond the Daily Mirror and Sunday
Express which took advantage of this relationship, only a small proportion
of newspaper readers admitted to reading the correspondence columns.78
Certainly, the subjects who write letters to newspaper editors are not rep-
resentative of the wider readership. They are often more engaged in the
subject of their letter than others—or with newspaper reading more gen-
erally—and had the time to spend composing their letter(s). In some
cases, an individual may have written only once on a topic that irked them,
others were habitual letter writers. Debates between two or more occa-
sionally broke out, with replies and rebukes exchanged over several weeks,
sometimes months. All letters were subject to the scrutiny of the editor
they addressed, and ultimately the majority sent were thinned out through
selection. Yet, as a source they are still important despite these consider-
ations. Within them are insights into how certain individuals responded to
the stories they read and the events in their everyday lives. They engaged
with broader issues, speaking to political, social and cultural debates then
in progress. The frequency and quantity of letters indicates the importance
to newspaper readers of the particular topic they are concerned with.79
Like their printed counterpart, newsreels are also records which can be
read to understand the narrative of events presented to the public. A prod-
uct of the growth of cinema construction in the early twentieth century,
18 A. MALPASS

newsreels—a collection of selected news items on a single film reel—were

released twice a week in Britain between 1910 and 1979. Typically, they
were broadcast prior to feature films at cinemas and in dedicated newsreel
theatres in major cities. The five major newsreel companies all imitated
each other to a considerable degree, and the style and delivery of newsreels
mimicked newspapers. In regards to their audience, statistical surveys sug-
gest that by 1940, the average weekly attendance at the 4618 cinemas
open—a small number were closed during the Blitz—exceeded 21 million
and that around half of the population watched newsreels. In the late
1930s, the highest concentration of cinemas was in industrial areas of
Scotland, the North of England, South Wales and the Midlands, while the
lowest was in the Eastern Counties, Home Counties and the West of
England. The availability of relatively cheap tickets—around 1 shilling at
most—and the kind of programmes shown fostered a special relationship
with the working class. During the war years, there was an increased
middle-­class acceptance of the cinema, but this special relationship contin-
ued. The regular cinema attenders were from lower income groups.80
Newsreels, as a source of primary information about the events they por-
trayed, are of peripheral value. However, as records of what a very large,
socially important, and relatively little documented section of the public
saw and heard, they are of historical significance. Newsreels document
popular obsessions, and are a useful barometer of social change and popu-
lar awareness.81 Historical understanding and value is also found when the
production process is considered. It is not just the content that can be
examined: assignment and commentary sheets, as well as shot lists survive
which illuminate editorial practice.82 During the war, they were indeed
censored. The Ministry of Information recognised that newsreels, like
short films and documentaries, were useful, more so than feature films, for
direct, immediate, short-term information and instruction, particularly on
the home front. As negative propaganda, that is the control of informa-
tion, newsreels are comparable to other news media such as newspapers
and radio.83 The Ministry controlled footage, shooting, editing and cen-
soring the material provided newsreel companies. However, the newsreel
companies could interpret the footage to a degree, which the different
commentary for the same footage testifies.
The M-O archive located at the University of Sussex and accessible
through a searchable online database provides an essential source base for
historians of Britain.84 M-O generated a vast amount of material. There
were two principal sources from which material was gathered. The first
 1 INTRODUCTION 19

source was the volunteer panel, the 500 or so individuals who sent off
their diaries and responded directly to questions in M-O directives and day
surveys. These diaries were scoured for entries concerning attitudes
towards and encounters with German POWs. Some diarists made only
one passing mention of German POWs. Others regularly wrote of those
they had befriended. The second source of material was collected from the
M-O investigators who were paid to visit a variety of places to observe
people’s behaviour and eavesdrop. The material gathered was analysed
and then summarised, written up as File Reports. These reports formed
the basis of M-O publications and are used to gain an insight into public
attitudes towards various subjects during the war and post-war period.

Chapter Outline
The first two chapters of this study focus on the wartime period. Chapter
2 begins with the reportage of the capture of German POWs within the
first weeks of the war. The issue of POW treatment as an important marker
of cultural distinction between the British and the German enemy from
the outset of the Second World War is explored. The first section analyses
news coverage of German POWs in British hands during the ‘phoney war’
of 1939–40, highlighting press emphasis on the contentedness of German
POWs in British hands. This emphasis fed into the construction of Britain
as a ‘liberal captor’, not only upholding international law but demonstrat-
ing the civility of the British towards POWs. The chapter discusses the
legacy of the First World War and the contested memory of captivity dur-
ing the 1914–18 conflict, analysing the disagreement over extent of abuse
that British POWs suffered in German captivity and the aggressive mental-
ity of the German ‘race’. Next, the liberation of British sailors aboard the
German tanker Altmark in February 1940 is assessed. The blurring image
of Nazis and Germans in reportage of the Altmark and the deportation of
German POWs across the Empire after the Fall of France is highlighted.
Following this, the mooted-exchange of British and German POWs 1941
is examined. Here, British decency towards POWs in their charge was
again contrasted with German spitefulness as the latter pulled out of nego-
tiations leaving them stranded each side of the British Channel. The chap-
ter moves on to examine attitudes during the Shackling Crisis
(October–December 1942). I argue that public distaste for reprisals
against POWs undermined Churchill’s defiant stance whereby German
POWs in British hands were manacled in retaliation for Hitler’s to chain
20 A. MALPASS

British/Canadian POWs. Highlighting the similar aversion towards the

bombing of German civilians, I suggest there was a distinction in the
minds of the public between ‘ordinary’ Germans and the Nazi leadership.
Reprisals ultimately harmed the wrong people, a miscarriage of justice that
was distinctly un-British. The government, and Churchill, recognised that
public opinion would not agree to the continued manacling of POWs.
While incidents involving German POWs in British hands between 1939
and 1943 have been studied in isolation, this chapter, for the first time,
highlights the themes which connect them, namely British national iden-
tity. POW treatment formed part of the project of national identity con-
struction during this period, especially during the uneventful first few
months of the conflict.
Continuing chronologically, Chap. 3 develops a critical discussion of
changing attitudes between the invasion of Normandy in June 1944 and
the unconditional surrender of Germany in May 1945. This period differs
for two principal reasons. First, the war began to swing in the Allies’ favour
and thoughts turned to the post-war treatment of Germany. Second, with
the disclosure of the execution of British POWs from Stalag Luft III and
the liberation of the Belsen concentration camp, the British public began
to realise the extent of the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. This
was a moment of crisis for humanity, one which tested the limits of British
civility and its reputation as a liberal captor. I argue that although more
vengeful ideas were expressed, cultural resistant towards POW abuse did
not break down altogether. While violent ideas, such as sterilising German
POWs, were articulated by some, the British knew they were unable to
carry out such acts. Understanding that France and the Soviet Union had
faced a far more brutal conflict and had been occupied by the enemy, the
British thought of themselves as too sentimental to mete out the real jus-
tice Germany deserved. Indeed, the combination of reports from Belsen,
British POWs subjected to horrific treatment during their ‘death marches’
across Eastern Europe, and the higher ration German POWs received over
British civilians resulted only in calls to set German POWs to work and to
cut their rations.
The study then turns to the two issues at the forefront of public debate
concerning German POW treatment. Chapter 4 focuses on the issue of
fraternisation between the British public and German POWs in post-war
Britain. It begins by considering the legislation which policed contact
between the British people and German POWs and how efforts to restrict
contact were made ever more difficult as the employment remit of German
 1 INTRODUCTION 21

POWs expanded after 1944. The German POW was re-humanised in the
gradual move away from the intense anti-German feeling of April–May
1945. Local newspapers reported on the activities in the camp and the
daily routines of the POWs. They were keen gardeners, loved animals,
enjoyed music and theatre. In many ways, they exhibited the characteris-
tics of Englishness which Orwell described, being pigeon fanciers and
flowers lovers. The confinement and continued expulsion of German
POWs from society was a significant divergence from the narrative that
Britain had liberated Europe from fascism. The treatment of POWs was at
odds with the values for which Britain had supposedly fought the war. In
the context of the Cold War and re-construction, concerns mounted over
the effect that continuing to ostracise German POWs would have on
German attitudes towards Britain and the corrupting influence of captivity
on British civil society itself. The chapter examines the increasing opposi-
tion towards non-fraternisation in press and parliament. The public
response to the sudden relaxation of the fraternisation ban at Christmas
1946 is assessed, including the Christian and humanitarian impulse implicit
in the invitations extended to German POWs to enter British homes to
share in the festive period. The analysis continues into 1947 when greater
freedoms were granted to German POWs to attend football matches and
cinema, and take unescorted walks into local areas. This chapter also
explores the news coverage of the trials of British women and German
POWs accused of breaking fraternisation legislation. The depiction of
young girls as foolish jezebels, tempting lonely POWs is highlighted.
Among those examined, this chapter focuses on the case of Werner Vetter
and Olive Reynolds and the public outcry his at 12-month prison sentence
pronounced in May 1947.
Chapter 5 turns to the second issue which vexed the British public:
repatriation. It begins by noting that despite the stipulations of the 1929
Geneva Convention, Britain was technically not obliged to carry out repa-
triation as a peace treaty with Germany had not been signed. While the
government refused to comment on repatriation plans, noting that the
POWs performed work of national importance, public opinion grew ever
more uneasy with the indefinite detention of German POWs. While there
were legitimate arguments that repatriation would take time organising
transport and that German POWs were materially better off in Britain
than in post-war Germany, the British public were troubled by the lack of
a repatriation scheme and the continued use of POWs as ‘forced’ labour.
The post-war treatment of German POWs was the antithesis of values for
22 A. MALPASS

which Britain had defeated fascism. Detaining German POWs indefinitely

was thought to be endangering future Anglo-German relations and, in the
emerging Cold War context, undermining the British image, pushing
German POWs and/or their families at home towards communism. In
particular, this chapter focuses on the work of Save Europe Now (SEN).
This post-war pressure group lobbied Prime Minister Attlee to draw up a
scheme of repatriation, arguing that the indefinite detention and contin-
ued exploitation of German POWs betrayed the values for which the war
against German had been fought. The chapter considers the role public
opinion played in influencing the Labour government to commence repa-
triation in September 1946. As tensions with the Soviet Union increased,
the post-war treatment of German POWs became a hotly contested issue.
With the first German elections being held at Land level in late 1946, it
was imperative that Britain project a positive image in Germany in order
to combat Soviet propaganda. Commentators including Harold Nicolson
argued that the indefinite detention of German POWs undermined the
position of Britain as the spiritual leader of post-war Europe. The indefi-
nite detention of German POWs and their continued use as ‘slave’ labour
undermined the image of Britain as a liberator and moral paragon to post-­
war Europe. It was thought that this vindictive treatment of POWs was a
symptom of the war’s corrupting influence on British society. The hopes
and fears for future peace in Europe were articulated in discussion of the
fate of German POWs. In the context of the emerging Cold War, the
indefinite retention and continued exploitation of POW ‘slave’ labour
undermined Britain’s role as the guardian of democratic values in post-­
war Europe.
The final chapter investigates the movement of ex-German POWs after
the completion of repatriation in 1948. Of the 25,000 who took up the
offer to work in agriculture for two years, around half decided to rebuild
their lives in Britain. The movement of ex-German POWs is placed within
the broader context of post-war population movements. I argue that
German POWs, like Displaced Persons recruited from European camps,
were an invisible migration. There was a far greater concern over the
arrival at the Port of Tilbury of the 492 Commonwealth migrants on-­
board the Empire Windrush in 1948. The chapter moves on to consider
the place of German POWs within British collective memory of the war.
Moreover, two films are analysed: The One that Got Away (1957) and The
MacKenzie Break (1970).
 1 INTRODUCTION 23

Notes
1. ‘A Woman Captures German’, Daily Mail, 9 July 1940, p. 1.
2. ‘Caught Nazi, She Wins OBE’, Daily Mail, 10 July 1940, p. 1.
3. MOA, FR 314, Memo. On Newsreels, 2 August 1940, p. 2.
4. Kristine A. Miller, British Literature of the Blitz: Fighting the People’s War
(London, 2009), p. 159.
5. ‘Hundred Escape at Southampton’, Daily Mail, 14 August 1940, p. 1.
6. George Orwell, Why I Write (London, 2004), p. 17, p. 21. Orwell’s essay
‘The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius’ was first
published in 1940.
7. Paul Addison, ‘National Identity and the Battle of Britain’, in Wars and the
Cultural Construction of Identities in Britain, ed. by Barbara Korte and
Ralf Schneider (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002), pp. 225–40, p. 237.
8. Rotem Kowner, ‘Imperial Japan and Its POWs: The Dilemma of
Humaneness and National Identity’, in War and Militarism in Modern
Japan. Issues of History and Identity (Folkstone, 2009), pp. 80–110, p. 102.
9. David Dzurec, ‘Prisoners of War and American Self-Image during the
American Revolution’, War in History, 20:4 (2013), pp. 430–51.
10. ‘Escape’, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Mercury, 12 December 1939, p. 4.
11. CAB 67/3 WP (G) (39) 157, German Prisoners of War in Great Britain,
18 December 1939.
12. Kent Fedorowich, ‘Axis Prisoners of War as Sources for British Military
Intelligence, 1939–42’, Intelligence and National Security, 14:2 (1999),
156–78; Kevin Jones, ‘From the Horse’s Mouth: Luftwaffe Prisoners of
War as Source for Air Ministry Intelligence during the Battle of Britain’,
Intelligence and National Security, 15:1 (2000), 60–80; Falko Bell, “One
of Our Most Valuable Sources of Intelligence’: British Intelligence and the
Prisoner of War System in 1944’, Intelligence and National Security, 31:4
(2015), 556–78. For an analysis of the transcribed covert recordings of
German POWs collected by British intelligence, see Sönke Neitzel and
Harald Welzer, Soldarten—On Fighting, Killing, and Dying: The Secret
WWII Transcripts of German POWs, trans. by. Jefferson Chase (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 2012).
13. On the development of the camp system, see Antony Hellen, ‘Temporary
Settlements and Transient Populations: The Legacy of Britain’s Prisoners
of War Camps’, ErdKunde. Archiv fur wissenchaftliche Geographic, 53:4
(1999), 191–219. On the history of Glen Mill see, Bob Moore ‘Glen Mill:
The International History of a Local POW Camp during World War II’,
Manchester Region History Review, 10 (1996), 48–56.
14. The armistice between French Third Republic and Nazi Germany was
signed on 22 June, coming into force on 25 June.
24 A. MALPASS

15. CAB 67/7 WP (G) (40) 170, Internees and Prisoners of War, Memorandum
by the Lord President of the Council, 2 July 1940.
16. CAB 66/12 WP (40) 379, Sending Prisoners of War Abroad, Memorandum
by the Secretary of State for War, 20 September 1940. CAB 65/9 WM
257 (40) 7, 24 September 1940. CAB 67/9 WP (G) (41) 75, Transfer of
German Prisoners of War to Canada, Memorandum by the Secretary of
State for War, 8 August 1941. CAB 65/19, WM 79 (41) 3, 11 August 1941.
17. On Italian POWs in Britain see, Lucio Sponza, ‘Italian Prisoners of War in
Great Britain, 1943–6’ in Prisoners-of-war, ed. by Fedorowich and Moore,
pp. 205–26. Bob Moore and Kent Fedorowich, The British Empire and Its
Italian Prisoners of War (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002); Marco Giudici, ‘A
“Positive Displacement?: Italian POWs in World War II Britain’, in War
and Displacement in the Twentieth Century: Global Conflicts, ed. by Sandra
Barkhof and Angela K. Smith (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 89–102. A
notable work which has unfortunately not been translated is but draws
upon Italian sources: Isabella Insolvibile, Wops: i prigionieri italiani in
Gran Bretagna (1941–1946) (Napoli: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 2012).
On the Italian community in Britain during the Second World War see,
Wendy Ugolini, Experiencing War as the ‘Enemy Other’: Italian Scottish
Experience in World War II (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2011); Terri Colpi, The Italian Factor: The Italian Community in Great
Britain (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1991); and Lucio Sponza, Divided
Loyalties: Italians in Britain during the Second World War (Bern: Peter
Lang, 2000).
18. CAB 67/9 WP (G) (41) 6, Italian Prisoners of War for Land Reclamation
Work, Memorandum by the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, 13
January 1941. CAB 65/17, WM 7 (41)8, 16 January 1941.CAB 66/16,
WP (41) 114, Military Policy for East Africa, Memorandum by the
Secretary of State for War, 29 May 1941. CAB 66/16, WP (41) 120,
Proposal to bring 25,000 Italian Prisoners of War to this country, Report
by the Lord President of the Council, 4 June 1941, CAB 65/18 WM 57
(41)9, 5 June 1941 On perceptions of Italian POWs see, Bob Moore,
‘British Perceptions of Italian Prisoners of War, 1940–7’, in Prisoners of
War, Prisoners of Peace: Captivity, Homecoming and Memory in World War
II, ed. by Bob Moore and Barbara Hatley-Broad (Oxford: Berg, 2005),
pp. 25–39.
19. Neville Wylie, ‘Prisoners of War in the Era of Total War’, War in History,
13:2 (2006), 217–33 (p. 224).
20. Kent Fedorowich and Bob Moore, ‘Co-belligerency and Prisoners of War:
Britain and Italy, 1943–1945’, International History Review, 18 (1996),
28–47; Sponza, ‘Italian Prisoners’, pp. 210–15.
 1 INTRODUCTION 25

21. In August 1943, Britain and the United States agreed that captures in joint
operations from 12 May 1943 should be equally divided in the theatre
after the POWs captured by a third power, such as France, had been
deducted. Furthermore, up to a maximum of 175,000 British-owned
POWs could be sent to the United States, a figure reached by February
1945. See, CAB 66/61 WP (45) 89, Disposal of Prisoner of War in
Captured in North-­West Europe, Memorandum by the Secretary of State
for War, 10 February 1945.
22. Around 27,000 German POWs were transferred to Britain from the
Channel Islands after their liberation on 9 May 1945, while 3200 were
retained for work. On the fate of these captives, see Charles Cruickshank,
The German Occupation of the Channel Islands (Stroud: Sutton, 2004),
pp. 311–31.
23. CAB 67/3 WP (G) (39) 157, German Prisoners of War in Great Britain,
18 December 1939.
24. Pieter Lagrou, ‘Overview’, in Prisoners of War, Prisoners of Peace, ed. by
Moore and Hately-Broad (Oxford: Berg, 2005), pp. 3–10, p. 3.
25. S. P. Mackenzie, The Colditz Myth: British and Commonwealth Prisoners of
War in Nazi Germany (Oxford: OUP, 2004).
26. Richard Garrett, P.O.W. The Uncivil Face of War (Newton Abbot, Devon:
David & Charles, 1988), pp. 166–84; Chris Christiansen, Seven Years
Among Prisoners of War, trans. by Ida Egede Winther (Ohio: OUP, 1994),
pp. 151–74. Bob Moore, ‘The Treatment of Prisoners of War in the
Western European Theatre of War, 1939–45’, in Prisoners in War, ed. by
Sibylle Scheipers (Oxford: OUP, 2010), pp. 111–26. Rüdiger Overmans,
‘The Treatment of Prisoners of War in the Eastern European Theatre of
War, 1941–56’, in Prisoners, ed. by Scheipers, pp. 127–40.
27. Stuart Crocker, Foreign Shores: A True Story (Leicester: Matador, 2010);
Werner Braun and David Coakley, Is the War Over? The Memoir of Werner
Kurt Braun (Milton Keynes: AuthorHouse, 2010); George Gebauer,
Hitler Youth to Church of England Priest: My Autobiography (George
Gebauer, 2014).
28. Bob Moore ‘Axis Prisoners in Britain during the Second World War: A
Comparative Survey’, in Prisoner of War and Their Captors in World War
II, ed. by Bob Moore and Kent Fedorowich (Oxford: Berg, 1996),
pp. 19–46.
29. Johann Custodis, ‘Employing the Enemy: The Contribution of German
and Italian Prisoners of War to British Agriculture during and after the
Second World War’, The Agricultural History Review, 60:2 (2012), 243–65.
30. Henry Faulk, Group Captives: The Re-education of German Prisoners of
War in Britain 1945–1948 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1977),
pp. 175–97.
26 A. MALPASS

31. Richard B. Speed III, Prisoners, Diplomats, and the Great War: A Study in
the Diplomacy of Captivity (London: Greenwood Press, 1990), p. 3. Brian
Feltman has problematised Speed’s evaluation of Britain’s adherence to the
liberal-tradition, demonstrating that a noteworthy minority of soldiers and
officers showed little concern for observing the law. Brian Feltman,
‘Tolerance as a Crime? The British Treatment of German Prisoners of War
on the Western Front, 1914–1918’, War in History, 17 (2010), 435–58.
32. Neville Wylie, ‘The 1929 Prisoner of War Convention and the Building of
the Inter-war Prisoner of War Regime’, in Prisoners, ed. by Scheipers,
pp. 91–110.
33. Simon Paul MacKenzie, ‘The Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War
II’, The Journal of Modern History, 66:3 (1994), 487–520.
34. Arieh J. Kochavi, Confronting Captivity: Britain and the United States and
Their POWs in Nazi Germany (North Carolina: NCP, 2005).
35. Vasilis Vourkoutiotis, Prisoners of War and the German High Command:
The British and American Experience (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003).
36. Neville Wylie, Barbed Wire Diplomacy: Britain, Germany, and the Politics
of Prisoners of War 1939–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
On the relationship between Britain and the Swiss Protecting Power see,
Neville Wylie, Britain, Switzerland and the Second World War (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003).
37. Jeffery W. Legro, Cooperation under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint during
World War II (London: Cornell UP, 1995).
38. Moore and Hately-Broad, Prisoners.
39. Rüdiger Overmans, ‘The Repatriation of Prisoners of War once Hostilities
are Over: A Matter of Course?’, in Prisoners, Moore and Hately-Broad,
pp. 11–22, p. 11.
40. Johannes-Dieter Steinert, ‘British Recruitment of German Labour,
1945–50’, in Germans in Britain Since 1500, ed. by Panikos Panayi
(London: Hambeldon, 1996), pp. 171–86. On the recruitment of foreign
labour more broadly see, Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and
Citizenship in the Postwar Era (London: Cornell University Press, 1997),
pp. 64–89.
41. Inge Weber-Newth and Johannes-Dieter Steinert, German Migrants in
Post-war Britain: An Enemy Embrace (London: Routledge, 2006).
42. Pamela Howe Taylor, Enemies Become Friends: A True Story of German
Prisoners of War (Sussex: Book Guild, 1997); The Germans We Trusted:
Stories that had to be Told… (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2003).
43. J. S. Arcumes and J. F. Helvet, Prisoner of War Camps in County Durham
(Durham: County Durham Books, 2002); Valerie Campbell, Camp 165
Watten: Scotland’s Most Secrative Prisoner of War Camp (Dunbeath:
 1 INTRODUCTION 27

Whittles, 2008), pp. 83–108; Gloria Edwards, Moota—Camp 103: The

Story of a Cumbrian Prisoner of War Camp (Cockermouth: Little Bird,
2005); Gloria Edwards, The War Years: Life in Cockermouth and the Moota
POW Camp (Cumbria: Little Bird Publications, 2009); Ken Free, Camp
186: The Lost Town at Berechurch (Stroud: Amberley, 2010), pp. 104–16;
Stephen Risby, Prisoners of War in Bedfordshire (Stroud: Amberley, 2011),
pp. 52–74; Ken Porter and Stephen Wynn, German P.O.W. Camp 266
Langdon Hills (ukunpublished, 2012), pp. 91–120; Ian M. C. Hollingsbee,
Inside the Wire: The Prisoner-Of-War Camps and Hostels of Gloucestershire
1939–1948 (Stroud: History Press, 2014).
44. Sullivan, p. 347.
45. Paul Addison, The Road to 1945: British politics and the Second World War
(London: Johnathan Cape, 1975); Angus Calder, The People’s War: Britain
1939–1945 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969) pp. 141, 323.
46. James Hartfield, An Unpatriotic History of the Second World War
(Winchester: Zero, 2012), p. 14.
47. Writing Englishness: An Introductory Sourcebook on National Identity, ed.
by Judy Giles and Tim Middleton (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 110.
48. Richard Weight and Abigail Beach, ‘Introduction’, in The Right to Belong:
Citizenship and National Identity in Britain, 1930–1960, ed. by Richard
Weight and Abigail Beach (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998), pp. 1–18, p. 8.
49. Barbara Korte and Ralf Schneider, ‘Introduction’, in Wars and the Cultural
Construction of Identities in Britain, ed. by Barbara Korte and Ralf
Schneider (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002), pp. 1–8, p. 3.
50. Barbara Korte, ‘Wars and British Identities–From Norman Conquerors to
Bosnian Warriors: An Overview of Cultural Representations’, in Wars, ed.
by Korte and Schneider, pp. 9–24, p. 9.
51. Calder, People’s War; Angus Calder, The Myth of the Blitz (London:
Jonathan Cape, 1991). Also of note is: Robert Mackay, Half the Battle:
Civilian Morale in Britain during the Second World War (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2002); Mark Connelly, We Can Take It!
Britain and the Memory of the Second World War (Harlow: Pearson, 2004).
52. Richard Weight, Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1949–2000
(London: Macmillan, 2002).
53. Panikos Panayi, ‘A Marginalized Subject? The Historiography of Enemy
Alien Internment in Britain’, in “Totally Un-English”?: Britain’s Internment
of ‘Enemy Aliens’ in Two World Wars, ed. by Richard Dove, pp. 17–28.
54. Ronald Stent, A Bespattered Page? The Internment of His Majesty’s ‘Most
Loyal Enemy Aliens’ (London: Andre Deutsch, 1980); Miriam Kochan,
Britain’s Internees in the Second World War (London: Macmillan, 1983).
55. A. W. Brian Simpson, In the Highest Degree Odious: Detention without
Trial in Wartime Britain (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994); Neil Stammers,
28 A. MALPASS

Civil Liberties in Britain during the Second World War (London: Croom
Helm, 1983).
56. Richard Dove, ‘A Matter Which Touches the Good Name of This
Country’, in “Totally Un-English”, ed. by Dove, pp. 11–16.
57. Zoë Andrea Denness, ‘“A Question Which Affects Our Prestige as a
Nation”: The History of British Civilian Internment, 1899–1945’ (unpub-
lished doctoral thesis, University of Birmingham, 2012).
58. Winter, J. M. ‘British National Identity and the First World War’, in
Boundaries of the State in Modern Britain, ed. by S. J. D. Green and
R. C. Whiting (Cambridge: CUP, 1996), pp. 261–77, p. 262, p. 268.
59. Briain Feltman, Stigma of Surrender: German Prisoners, British Captors,
and Manhood in the Great War and Beyond (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press), p. 71.
60. Jones, Violence, p. 376.
61. Ibid., p. 237.
62. J. A. Mangan, ‘Prologue: Combative Sports and Combative Societies’, in
J. A. Mangan (ed.) Militarism, Sport, Europe: War Without Weapons
(London: Frank Cass, 2005), pp. 1–9, p. 2.
63. Colin Veitch, ‘Play up! Play up! and Win the War! Football, the Nation and
the First World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, 20 (1985), 363–77,
p. 375. See also, Derek Birley, ‘Sportsmen and the Deadly Game’, British
Journal of Sports History, 3 (1986), pp. 288–310. Tony Collins, ‘English
Rugby Union and the First World War’, Historical Journal, 45:4 (2002),
pp. 797–817.
64. Derek Birley, Playing the Game: Sport and British Society, 1910–45
(Manchester: MUP, 1996).
65. Francis Abell, Prisoners of War in Great Britain (Humphrey Milford,
OUP, 1914).
66. Edward Porritt, ‘Prisoners of War in Great Britain, 1756–1815’, Political
Science Quarterly, 30:2 (1915), pp. 314–16.
67. Heather Jones, Violence, p. 33.
68. Brian K. Feltman, ‘Tolerance as a Crime? The British Treatment of German
Prisoners of War on the Western Front, 1914–1918’, War in History, 17:4
(2010), pp. 435–58, p. 438.
69. Geo. G. Phillimore and Hugh H. L. Bellot, ‘Treatment of Prisoners of
War’, Transactions of the Grotius Society, 5 (1919), 47–64, 47.
70. Sonya O. Rose, Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in
Wartime Britain 1939–1945 (Oxford: OUP, 2004), p. 5.
71. John Baxendale, “You and I—All of Us Ordinary People’: Renegotiating
‘Britishness’ in Wartime’, in ‘Millions Like Us’? British Culture in the Second
World War, ed. by Nick Hayes and Jeff Hill (Liverpool: LUP, 1999),
pp. 295–322, p. 300.
 1 INTRODUCTION 29

72. Paul Ward, Britishness since 1870 (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 3.

73. Paul Addison, ‘National Identity and the Battle of Britain’, in War, ed. by
Korte and Schneider, pp. 225–40.
74. George Orwell, ‘The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English
Genius’, in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell,
ed. by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (London: Secker and Warburg, 1968),
pp. 56–109, p. 64.
75. Wendy Ugolini and Juliette Pattinson, ‘Negotiating Identities in
Multinational Britain during the Second World War’, in Fighting for
Britain? Negotiating Identities in Britain During the Second World War,
ed. by Wendy Ugolini and Juliette Pattinson (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015),
pp. 1–24, p. 9.
76. Calder, People’s War, p. 489.
77. Mass-Observation, The Press and Its Readers (London: Art & Technics
Ltd, 1949), p. 91.
78. ibid., pp. 56–8.
79. Denise Bates, Historical Research Using British Newspapers (Barnsley: Pen
& Sword, 2016), pp. 32–3; Rose, Which Peoples? pp. 26–7.
80. Nicholas Pronay, ‘British Newsreels in the 1930s 1: Audience and
Producers’, History, 56 (1971), 411–18.
81. Nicholas Pronay, ‘British Newsreels in the 1930s 2: Their Polices and
Impact’, History, 57 (1972), 63–72.
82. Nicholas Hiley and Luck Mckernan, ‘Reconstructing the News: British
Newsreel Documentation and the British Universities Newsreel Project’,
Film History, 13:2 (2001), 185–99, (p.187).
83. James Chapman, The British At War: Cinema, State and Propaganda,
1939–45 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998), pp. 250–2.
84. For a history of the organisation see, Nick Hubble, Mass-Observation and
Everyday Life: Culture, History, Theory (London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2010), James Hinton, The Mass-Observers: A History, 1937–1949 (Oxford:
OUP, 2013).
 CHAPTER 2

Characteristic Decency or Dangerous

Sentimentality? British Treatment of German
POWs, 1939–43

Recollection of the destruction witnessed during the Great War combined

with the advancement of military technologies during the interwar period
produced the feeling that the ‘next war’ would be something approximat-
ing a prophetic end of times. Reviewing the August and early September
submissions of their voluntary panel of diarists, a Mass-Observation report
noted that ‘one is deeply aware of the sense of doom that lay over the
country’ as the likelihood of another conflict increased. There was a ‘feel-
ing that the end of all things is at hand’.1 With the upheaval of ‘total war’
having already been experienced, the British public in 1939 had, Robert
Mackay explains, a ‘fairly clear idea of what a major war would be like’.2
Zeppelin and Gotha bomber raids on London during the 1914–18 con-
flict blurred the fighting and home fronts, demonstrating the vulnerability
of British civilians in a future conflict.3 Cinemagoers could envisage the
destruction wrought on British cities in a future war as they watched the
razing of Madrid and Guernica during the Spanish Civil War and Shanghai
during the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 newsreels. The ‘next war’
was imagined in literature and film, most notably the 1933 novel The
Shape of Things to Come by H. G. Wells. The 1936 film adaptation opened
with the levelling of ‘Everytown’, an obvious parody of London, in 1940.4
The protagonists in George Orwell’s 1930s novels Keep the Aspidistra
Flying and Coming Up for Air daydreamed about the imminent arrival of
enemy squadrons overhead.5

© The Author(s) 2020 31

A. Malpass, British Character and the Treatment of German
Prisoners of War, 1939–48,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48915-1_2
32 A. MALPASS

Contrary to apocalyptic expectations, what followed Prime Minister

Neville Chamberlain’s broadcast on 3 September 1939 that a state of war
now existed with Germany was a period of limited military engagement
which would be dubbed the ‘phoney war’, the origins of the term later
being attributed to US Senator William Borah who stated in September
1939: ‘There is something phoney about this war’.6 Certainly, the out-
break of war was a restrained affair; at a meeting with Chamberlain,
Edouard Daladier, the French Prime Minister, stated that German soldiers
captured on the Western Front during a patrol ‘were not aware’ that their
countries were at war.7 While there was frantic activity, the public did not
descend into the mass hysteria which had been predicted. During the first
weekend of the war, government instructions were followed, children and
the elderly were packed off to the countryside, or further afield, while the
blackout curtains were prepared. Some, ill at ease about feeding them
when rationing would undoubtedly be introduced, and concerned with
how they would cope during bombing, thought it best to destroy their
cats and dogs. In London alone, around 400,000 family pets were killed.
Yet, this was not thought to be a kneejerk reaction borne out of panic.8 In
the actual event, reality did not match the end of the world expectations.
Masses of enemy aircraft loaded with an incendiary and poison gas payload
that would unleash Armageddon on British cities did not materialise. Air
raid sirens blared unnecessarily as some 3.5 million were evacuated to
escape the anticipated devastation, and evacuees slowly returned home as
the reality of the ‘Bore War’ set in. Although no bombs were dropped, the
first week of war saw lives thoroughly disorganised. ARP (Air Raid
Precautions) regulations and the blacking out of the house soon became a
nightly irritation. ‘The whole country’, Mass Observation later reflected,
‘had been keyed up to the highest pitch of tension and had undergone
tremendous emotional and material upheavals to meet a catastrophe which
did not come’.9 This eight-­month period of dormant conflict would be
later satirised by Evelyn Waugh in Put Out More Flags.10 The capture of
enemy POWs provided evidence that there was a war going on, some-
where out there.
The arrival of a group of U-boat captives at a British port was, Pathe
newsreel commentator Bob Danvers-Walker declared, ‘living proof that
once more an enemy vessel of war has been destroyed’.11 Reprinting a
Ministry of Information statement, newspapers reported that the first
German POWs arrived on 21 September. The short article noted that
POWs ‘laughed when a woman in a small group of spectators at a station
shouted, “Hard luck, mate,” to which a prisoner replied “Not so hard.”’12
 2 CHARACTERISTIC DECENCY OR DANGEROUS SENTIMENTALITY? BRITISH… 33

Subsequent articles in late 1939 portrayed a similarly cordial reception

and relaxed atmosphere between captor and captive, with POWs smiling
and waving to onlookers who had gathered to inspect them at ports, rail-
way stations and the roadside.13 Curiosity over the captured Germans was
evident at Glen Mill in Oldham, Lancashire, where the resident POWs
quickly became a local attraction. Accommodating other ranks, Glen Mill
was one of two initial camps along with Grizedale Hall in Ambleside which
held officers.14 A Daily Mail journalist reported that they had ‘joined the
hundreds of people who climbed the slopes overlooking a disused mill in
the hope of seeing 40 German prisoners of war’. Since the arrival of the
POWs, the crowds had scaled the vantage point each day to view the cap-
tives.15 The dominant reaction of the public towards German POWs was
curiosity rather than demonstration or anti-German protest. As well as
being a novelty during an uneventful conflict, these captives were perhaps
the first ‘real’ Germans the voyeurs on the Lancashire hilltop had seen in
the flesh.
The scenes at Glen Mill echoed those at Frimley Common 25 years
before, where, in 1914, German POWs were watched marching to the
camp.16 Assessing the reception of German POWs in Britain during the
Great War, Panayi notes that the dominant reaction of the public was curi-
osity.17 According to Brian Feltman British civilians were generally ‘rather
indifferent’ to German POWs, although some ‘occasionally received an
unexpectedly warm welcome to the U.K.’. This contrasted sharply with
the ‘frenzied excitement that sometimes erupted into violence’ witnessed
in France and Germany.18 Violence was certainly not absent from the
home front during the Great War with widespread anti-German riots in
the wake of the sinking of the Lusitania.19 Yet, as Heather Jones contends,
powerful cultural factors acted against the radicalisation of POW treat-
ment witnessed on the Continent. She suggests that the British notion of
fair play acted to restrain impulses towards POW abuse.20 The similar
atmospheres in 1914 and 1939 point towards a deep-rooted continuity in
British culture: the relationship between war and sport and the centrality
of the notion of fair play in ideas of POW treatment.
Throughout history, war and sport have functioned interchangeably.
Through playing, sports bodies were prepared and skills practiced for bat-
tles yet to come. In turn, military activities have turned into leisure pur-
suits: marksmanship being a more obvious example of the conversion of
an activity from the theatre of war to the sports ground. More than con-
ditioning bodies for performance against an enemy, sporting activities
34 A. MALPASS

have an ethical feature and have been used to articulate and instil dogmas.
Sports can foster an understanding of individualism and team spirit while
also, through following the rules of a particular game, giving form to
abstract notions of democracy and justice. In his 1942 booklet Britain
and the British People, Ernest Barker noted that:

The British are sometimes accused of turning politics, and even war, into a
game. What they really do is to bring the spirit of the game, and the idea of
the rule of the game, into politics and war. There is nothing childish or
frivolous in that. If the game has something of an artistic and something of
an ethical quality, there may even be said to be something fine and proper.21

The continued relationship between war and sport was observed by

M-O. The outbreak of war resulted in general disorganisation for most
sports, with limitations set on crowd capacity, the requisition of premises,
and the calling up of professionals being the main difficulties faced.22 At
the end of November 1939, M-O asked ‘sports followers’ if the war had
altered their interest in sport: 48 per cent answered that the war had less-
ened their interest; 9 per cent answered that it had increased their interest;
and, 43 per cent stated that they retained their peace-time interest.23 ‘The
people’, M-O suggested, ‘brought up on mass sports (where they sit and
watch without taking part) look to the war for a similar show’.24 Harrisson
and Madge speculated:

If the war had immediately become more dramatic, and displayed the same
elements of contest and conflict between two sides or moieties, which is the
dominant interest in most sports (where the spectator also identifies himself
with one particular side), then the sport habit might have been even much
more seriously reduced.25

The association between war and sport continued into the Second World
War, and the notion of fair play returned in discussions of the treatment of
POWs. For instance, commenting on the condition of a German pilot
captured in February 1940, the Yorkshire Post quoted the Chairman of
Grimsby Health Committee who stated: ‘I am informed by the doctor
that the sportsmanship of the Englishman is so apparent that the third
hand of the trawler which rescued them has visited the hospital and pre-
sented the wounded pilot with cigarettes’.26 Fair play was a central cultural
consideration in the treatment of enemy POWs in 1939 as it had been in
 2 CHARACTERISTIC DECENCY OR DANGEROUS SENTIMENTALITY? BRITISH… 35

the last war. More than this, the defence of a just, decent and fair world
was declared by some politicians to be a central aim of the war against
Germany.
Violence meted out on enemy POWs in 1914 was fuelled by xenopho-
bia. Hatred of the enemy was an integral part of national mobilisation and
the development of war culture. This, in turn, motivated violence against
POWs.27 In 1939, Chamberlain’s declaration of a state of war was not met
with a patriotic outpouring. ‘Never before in the whole history of man-
kind’, M-O reflected, ‘can a people have embarked on a major war with
such total absence of martial spirit as was displayed by this country on
September 3rd 1939’.28 While Arthur Marwick quipped that ‘Other coun-
tries had revolutions; Britain had a Coupon Election’, there was significant
fear that the First World War had brutalised society.29 Rioting in 1919,
violent crimes committed by ex-soldiers and the ferocity of the Black and
Tan war all provided evidence of a process of brutalisation. Yet, anti-­
militarist attitudes prevailed and, in contrast to German, violence was not
legitimised in post-war Britain.30 ‘Paradoxically’, Jon Lawrence argues,
‘apocalyptic postwar visions suggesting that civilisation had been undone
by the brutality of war served only to strengthen mythic views of Britain as
a uniquely peaceable kingdom’.31 Rejecting the militarism of the Great
War, ‘the British—rulers and ruled alike—found reassurance in the belief
that they were a uniquely peaceable people’.32 The watchword of the
1930s was ‘Never Again’, as David Reynolds reminds us.33 Even with the
outbreak of war, the commitment to finding a peaceful solution remained,
evidenced by 2435 joining the Peace Pledge Union in September 1939,
followed by another 2280 in October.34
In conjunction with the rejection of militarism, the inter-war period
witnessed the cultivation of a more courteous British self-image. Charting
the reformation of interwar English national character, Mandler argues
that the image of John Bull was unsuited to the modern Englishman.
Strube’s ‘Little Man’, appearing in the Daily Express, exemplified a new
national character which was less aggressive and more gentlemanly.35
Stereotypical masculine representations of the nation as great heroes and
adventures in foreign places tapered as the home and ordinariness became
pillars in the construction of national identity.36 During the Second World
War, a tempered British masculinity was refined and contrasted against the
hyper-masculine Nazi Other.37 Attempting to pin down their national
characteristics in 1941, George Orwell wrote, ‘The gentleness of the
English civilization is perhaps its most marked characteristic’.38
36 A. MALPASS

In addition to the ideal of fair-play and the lack of martial spirit, a final
factor helps explain the British publics’ reception of German POWs in
1939. Reportage of the reception of German POWs contributed to the
differentiation of ‘ordinary’ Germans from the Nazi leadership, Hitler and
his cronies being the principal enemy rather than the German people. For
instance, the atmosphere was amiable at the Scottish port where five offi-
cers and 38 crew of the U-35 disembarked a British destroyer on 3
December.39 Hundreds of Royal Navy sailors ‘cheered’ and ‘waved their
caps’ to the POWs as they alighted. Amongst the ‘good humoured sallies’,
British sailors encouraged the Germans to ‘Get a transfer’ and ‘Come and
join the Navy’. Singled out by the sailors, one particular POW received ‘a
special cheer’. Fluent in English, he ‘had made himself popular with his
captors’. A ‘flaxen-haired youth’, the German was greeted as ‘Blondie’.
Hurrying down the gangway, the British sailors sang ‘Good old Blondie’
in chorus. Last to go ashore, the commander of the U-boat, ‘a strongly-­
built young man’, made his way down the gangway, and was given a ‘warm
welcome’. Shaking hands with the British officers, his departure was
greeted with vigorous applause ‘as if in a token of some heroic act’. The
German POWs were ‘given a remarkably friendly send-off by their cap-
tors’. Having distributed cigarettes amongst the German POWs, the
British sailors cheered them as buses drove them to their camps.40 Pictures
accompanying such articles describing the disembarkation of the U-boat
POWs showed them smiling for the camera and sharing cigarettes with
British sailors. Newsreel commentators observed the camaraderie between
German and British sailors. ‘They may be enemies’, Leslie Mitchell of
British Movietone commented, ‘but the tradition of the sea is one of cour-
tesy between victor and vanquished, and Britain knows how to treat her
prisoners’.41 Pathe similarly observed ‘no enmity between them and jack
tar’.42 The cordial rapport between captor and captive emphasised in
reportage of the arrival of POWs underscored the lack of animosity
between them, feeding into the official view that the war was against Hitler
and the Nazi leadership, not the German nation.
Pamphlets published by the Ministry of Information in 1939 professed
that the Nazi leadership was the principal enemy being fought, and were
remorseful that war had broken out between Britain and Germany.
Providing an in-depth analysis of German history in Why We Are Fighting
Germany, D. A. Routh explained that once again the German people had
allowed their nation to be ruled by aggressive and ruthless individuals.43
The German nation was not beyond salvation if National Socialism could
 2 CHARACTERISTIC DECENCY OR DANGEROUS SENTIMENTALITY? BRITISH… 37

be overthrown. In Assurance to Victory, the German people were viewed

as victims of Nazi tyranny. Hitler had ‘trampled on’ their rights just as he
had done in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland.44 Similarly, Hitler and
the Working Man exonerated the German people from blame for the fail-
ings of National Socialism.45 This particular pamphlet was, according to
Ian McLaine, ‘symptomatic of the extent to which the spirit of appease-
ment still pervaded the Chamberlain government’.46 There was a backlash
against the camaraderie expressed during encounters between German
captive and British captor concerned a section of the public which viewed
the war differently.
‘Our lack of appreciation of the true character and mentality of the
Germans’, bemoaned Major-General Ernest Swinton in his weekly review
of the war in the Daily Mail, ‘is sometimes shown by our treatment of
prisoners’.

But when one thinks of the sinking without warning of merchant vessels,
the drowning of passengers and crews, the fate of widows and orphans, and
when one recalls the horrors of Vienna, Prague, Warsaw, and German con-
centration camps, any question of camaraderie with the perpetrators of these
crimes seems singularly out of place. A sense of proportion is required.
Neither during the war, nor after, can we afford to indulge in this kind of
camaraderie. This is not a sporting contest and there can be no rest for until
the enemy’s claws are drawn once for all. Well might we leave the greater
part of the framing of the peace to our French ally, whose sterner logic will
save him from the pitfall of a false sentimentality.47

For Swinton, the camaraderie expressed between the captured Germans

U-boat crew and their Royal Navy captors symbolised the failure of the
British people to grasp the reality that it was the aggressive expansionism
of the German nation, not just the ambitions of Hitler, which was being
fought against. The ‘nice distinctions’ between the German people and
Nazis, and idea that Britain had no dispute with the German nation was a
serious delusion. At the same time, Swinton stated: ‘I am no advocate of
brutality to prisoners of war. They should be properly housed and fed and
kept in good health’.48 Swinton was not alone and others shared his views.
Penning a letter to the Yorkshire Post, M. W. Oakwood asked, ‘How much
longer is this nauseating rubbish to continue of U-boat crews being wel-
comed on landing?’.49 Their brother-in-law, a merchantman captain,
Oakwood reminded readers that the British sailors shook hands with the
38 A. MALPASS

very men who had murdered innocent merchant seaman. Applauding

Oakwood, Tyekbor, was equally ‘sick’ after reading of the reception of
POWs at ports. ‘The statement that we are not fighting the German peo-
ple is at the bottom of much of this rot. We are fighting them all, till the
canker is definitely cut out of the German nation’.50 While the warm wel-
come of German POWs upset and confused some, it would be the condi-
tions afforded them in camps which would be considered truly insulting,
especially of the memory of those who had suffered in German captivity
during the Great War.

Too Lenient? Camp Conditions and the Trauma

of the Great War

It seemed from articles and newsreels that German POWs in Britain cov-
eted little and were adequately, if not generously, provided for, especially
in regards to food. Towards the end of September 1939, the Guardian
reported that their chief concern had been a lack of cigarettes, until a
British officer had kindly bought a supply for them. Their only desire now
was for their menu to include more potatoes and less meat.51 ‘It is well
recognized’, the caption to a picture of them playing football read, ‘that
the lot of the prisoner of war in this country is by no means unhappy’.52
The Daily Mail depicted a usual Sunday routine of the German POWs,
which included a trip to the camp barbers and a three course roast beef
lunch.53 A Pathe newsreel observed, during a shot of a POW carving meat
for other POWs, that ‘it’s at meal times they find the biggest improvement
on home. There’s a fair share of everything, and he’s just heard you don’t
have to spread guns on their bread’.54 ‘Well house and well fed’, Leslie
Mitchell of Movietone reported, ‘the German prisoners of war seem quite
contented with their luck’.55 Hore-Belisha, Secretary of State for War,
assured the Commons that German POWs having been ‘well fed and well
treated’ were ‘much impressed by the marked difference between actual
conditions in this country and the picture which they had been put before
them in Germany’.56
Attention focused on a particular camp in October 1939. The Dundee
Evening Telegraph described the comfortable conditions afforded the resi-
dents in detail:

German U-boat officers who have been taken prisoner by the British Navy
are now in captivity in what was once a hikers’ hostel on the rolling
 2 CHARACTERISTIC DECENCY OR DANGEROUS SENTIMENTALITY? BRITISH… 39

Westmorland fells. They are guarded by bemedalled veterans of National

Defence Companies, and they enjoy the conditions of an expensive spa than
that of a prisoner of war camp. The venue is hidden away several miles from
a railway station, says the Ministry of Information, and the local cottagers
have nicknamed the camp the ‘U-boat hotel’. It was once a country house
and was then converted into a hikers’ hostel. The massive stone building,
which dominates the few white cottages nearby, is closely protected by
barbed wire entanglements which can be floodlit at night. The German
naval officers have the benefit of a library in which is a full-sized ping-pong
table. They feed in a large oak panelled hall, and though the fare is not
exactly ‘ritzy’, it is good and obviously appreciated. One English-speaking
prisoner remarked after a heavy lunch, ‘this is better than being chased by
the British Navy’. […] Officers are voluntarily employed in what their cap-
tors call ‘Kaiser Bill’s hobby’—chopping wood. The prisoners have already
had a visit from the local bishop who is arranging a supply of German books
which will be censored, if necessary, by the Commandant. They also play
football. At present they have to utilise a tennis pitch which somewhat hand-
icaps their style, but they are hoping when they have made their own ground
to do better things ‘mit ball’. In the evenings they enjoy sing-songs around
the grand piano. The average age of the U-boat officers is about 24. All are
now fit and healthy, and the commandant declares that their discipline is
excellent.57

While the press was forbidden from revealing the location, it is clearly
Grizedale Hall. Publishing several pictures of the camp, the Daily Mail
invited readers to ‘Come with a camera to the north of England’, and view
the excellent conditions afforded German sailors and airmen at the ‘U-boat
Hotel’.58
German officers were shown enjoying a constitutional under slack
guard, warming themselves at the fire side in the lounge listening to BBC
broadcasts, and gathering round the piano in the evening. Grizedale was
considered much more akin to a holiday resort or spa than a POW camp,
with only the barbed wire fences and guards indicating it was the latter.
Similar to the famous camp for German Officers during the First World
War, Donnington Hall in Derby, anger was registered and complaints
made in press and parliament over the extravagant conditions afforded the
captives.59 In late November 1939, 21 German prisoners were held at the
camp, which could accommodate 200, at a cost of £50 per day. Outraged,
Colonel Josiah Wedgewood asked Hore-Belisha in parliament, ‘Would it
not be cheaper to keep them at the Ritz?’60 In the Yorkshire Post, the
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