Prisoners of the Home Front: German POWs and 'Enemy Aliens' in Southern Quebec, 1940–46 (review)

The German prisoners of war (POWs) of the Second World War were a truly transnational phenomenon. Hundreds of thousands of them were scattered around the globe, from Great Britain to Australia and Alaska to Siberia. About 38,000 of them were detained in Canada, including some 4000 German merchant seamen, civilians, and refugees. However, Great Britain remained responsible for these prisoners, and the treatment of the POWs was governed by the Geneva Convention of 1929, controlled by the International Red Cross, and eased by the YMCA and other aid organizations. On the other hand, the handcuffing of prisoners in Europe led to retaliatory action in Canada during the shackling crisis of 1942–3, and the POWs were returned to Britain after the war for rehabilitation work instead of being repatriated directly.

The sheer number of German POWs in that period, the multitude of camps in often isolated localities, the low priority of POW operations in the overall war effort, and the resulting low quality of many of the persons involved in them often meant that conditions on the ground were quite diverse. Local and regional studies are therefore important and indispensable to check the implementation and effects of centrally formulated policies and directives in specific camps.

Martin F. Auger's book, which is based on his MA thesis, examines five camps in southern Quebec: Farnham, Grande Ligne, Île-aux-Noix, Sherbrooke, and Sorel. After a brief history of internment, Auger deals with the history of these camps, which initially held civilian enemy aliens and later captured German soldiers. He skilfully highlights the connection between these two phases of the Canadian internment program, and the chapters on life behind barbed wire, labour projects, and educational programs are also well written and based on a wide range of Canadian sources and English-language literature. Auger provides a number of new details, which, however, do not change the overall picture of internment in Canada. In fact, Auger quotes frequently from the literature on this subject.

Despite the book's merits, there are a number of unfortunate inaccuracies, contradictions, and mistakes. Auger, for example, concludes that the Canadian internment program was 'in complete accordance to the Geneva Convention' (152), although he himself provides examples to the contrary. Food rations in POW camps, for example, were specified by the convention and not 'artificially high' (142) during the war. Their reduction after Germany's surrender, when the threat of retaliation was gone (not 'became less likely' [126]) was a clear violation of the convention. Auger claims that the convention prohibited officers from working (97) without mentioning that they could – and did – volunteer in many countries. Nor did the convention require the repatriation of the Germans to Germany (145). As in postwar France, they could have been released in the country of detention, to stay on as civilian workers. Some of these problems could have been avoided by consulting the substantial German literature and oral history projects on POWs in the Second World War. Auger, however, cites the experience of Jean Cazeneuve, a French POW in Germany, to explain the strains of captivity (52).

Mainly because they frequently lacked German-speaking personnel, camp authorities often had little clue what was happening inside the barracks and depended on informers from the fringes of camp society. Just relying on the sources of the custodial powers can therefore create problems, as demonstrated in Auger's treatment of the 'Harikari Club' at Grande Ligne. According to Canadian sources, German POWs at this camp formed the club to murder their political enemies and stage a suicidal mass-breakout with the purpose of committing sabotage and further slaughter in the camp's vicinity after Germany's ultimate defeat. Yet reports of similar plans suddenly came from numerous other POW camps in the United States, Canada, and France after the New York Times reported on 8...