Early in 1944 the U.S. Army’s Special Projects Division of the Office of the Provost Marshal General was established in order to take on the enormous task of re-educating 360,000 German prisoners of war. Months before the Allies had landed in France it was clear to them that the Germans would soon be blitzkrieging back to the Fatherland and in order to make smooth the process of rebuilding that nation, a few Germans would be needed who understood the virtues of a republican form of government. In order to properly see the job through, two schools were built at Fort Getty, Rhode Island and Fort Eustis, Virginia.
This article was written by Robert Lowe Kunzig (1918 – 1982) who was not simply an instructor at Fort Eustis, but also accompanied many of these men back into the smoldering ruins of Germany and recorded their reactions as thew saw what twelve years of Nazi rule had left for them.
Trained as a lawyer, Kunzig remained in Germany and worked as a prosecutor for the Civilian War Crimes courts of the U.S. Government.
When the Soviets attempted to convert their German prisoners into faithful Marxists it didn’t go so terribly well; click here to read about that…
Read our article about the treason of Ezra Pound.
Click here if you would like to read about a World War One German P.O.W. camp.
Click here to read additional articles concerning W.W. II prisoners of war.
