Hitler's Generals in America: Nazi POWs and Allied Military Intelligence

2. Hitler's Generals Come to America

53 2 Hitler’s Generals Come to America While the British hosted their Afrikaner generals at stately Trent Park, American authorities originally embarked on a similar process with the four generals sent to the United States in June 1943. Using what they had learned from the combined Anglo-American intelligence efforts in North Africa, U.S. officials initially attempted to emulate British practices. They placed the generals in a lavish environment enhanced with secret microphones and set about gathering information from the newly arrived prisoners. The first parcel of Wehrmacht generals to arrive in the United States consisted of Generals Gustav von Vaerst, Karl Bülowius, Willibald Borowietz, and Carl Peter Bernard Köchy. Colonel August Viktor von Quast accompanied General von Vaerst as his chief of staff. At the time of his capture, von Quast had notified both the British and American authorities that he was awaiting promotion to brigadier general. Indeed, within less than three months—on August 1, 1943—Berlin promoted von Quast to Generalmajor (brigadier general). However, due to the German military’s attempts to promote large numbers of its enlisted soldiers to noncommissioned officers (NCOs) both immediately prior to capture and during the course of their internment as prisoners of war in an effort to take advantage of the Geneva Convention’s prohibition against forcing NCOs to work, the U.S. War Department balked at most prisoners’ claims of last-minute promotion. These circumstances eventually resulted in the War Department’s issuance of Prisoner of War Circular No. 11 in December 1943, which stated that “no evidence of promotion of a prisoner which is received by the War Department after the prisoner has come into the custody of the United States or previous 54 Hitler’s Generals in America Allied detaining power, will be recognized by the United States as accomplishing the promotion of the prisoner of war.” Thus, while the German generals at Clinton repeatedly requested American recognition of “General” von Quast’s promotion and treated him as one of their own, American authorities did not consider him a general.1 Upon notifying the Americans of their intent to transfer these men to American custody, British authorities emphasized that in their experience the prisoners took “time to settle down” and that interrogation did not produce optimum results until “full realization of captivity and incipient boredom settle in.” The British also expressed their delight that British and American authorities saw “eye-to-eye on all these interrogation matters,” indicating that the Americans either intended to follow the British model of treatment for German prisoner-of-war generals or had at least led British authorities to believe that they did.2 Understandably, given the status of these high-ranking prisoners, American authorities utilized one of their top interrogators, Major Duncan Spencer, to supervise the exchange of prisoners and to assist in the initial formulation of American procedure in accommodating and interrogating these men. Spencer had been attached to MI19, the branch of British military intelligence responsible for prisoners of war, since March 1943. He was familiar with both the British “operational plan” and the prisoners’ “individual Generalmajor August V. von Quast (Courtesy of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum) Hitler’s Generals Come to America 55 characteristics,” and the British lauded his “efficiency” and “thorough grip of interrogation organization.”3 Besides utilizing their top personnel, U.S. officials also sought an appropriate location to place the generals once they arrived in America. In mid1942 American authorities had anticipated the need for secluded locations to interrogate prisoners of war of special importance, such as U-boat officers and enlisted men with special technical skills. Ideally, they sought two locations , one on each coast. Washington decided to house the most important German military personnel at Fort Hunt, Virginia, a former Civilian Conservation Corps facility located near Mount Vernon in the Washington, D.C., area. Particularly valuable Japanese prisoners would be sent to a renovated resort hotel at Byron Hot Springs, California, about fifty miles from San Francisco near the small town of Tracy. Because of Japanese cultural taboos against surrendering, however, the Allies captured a much smaller number of Japanese soldiers. Consequently, Byron Hot Springs had few occupants in the early stages of American involvement in the war. So the U.S. War Department quickly opted to use this facility to interrogate German POWs as well, including this first parcel of Wehrmacht general officers.4 Byron Hot...