Legion of Despair

Congressmen charged that the Army's handling of prisoners of war was a "national scandal"; a Senate committee had started an investigation. Reports from camps around the country had the U.S. people concerned. There were questions they wanted answered: 1) how are prisoners (particularly Nazis) acting; 2) how is the U.S. treating them; 3) what will be the results of U.S. treatment--will they simply be to return a cadre of well-fed Nazis to Germany after the war?

A TIME correspondent returned from a round-the-country tour of German P.W. camps last week with answers to the first two questions. The third question no one could yet answer. This was his report:

The Germans, who comprise 85% of the P.W. population,* think they are guarded excessively, and the more arrogant among them sneer: "That shows how they fear us." Some 1,300 have escaped from camps, but none "permanently" (for more than a year).

Army discipline, though it varies slightly with individual camp commanders (colonels and lieutenant colonels), is generally strict and according to Geneva Convention rules. The Army's chief concern is to give the enemy no excuse for retaliatory mistreatment of Americans in prison camps overseas.

Stories of prisoners enjoying special privileges are mostly baseless. Typical is the widely circulated story that girls from a nearby town went to a dance given by German P.W.s; actually the girls went to a dance held by prison guards. Another story: the Army had let a contract for 200,000 pairs of pajamas for P.W.s; the fact was that the Army ordered the pajamas for its own men in German camps.

P.W. Labor Pool. Basic policy of most camp commanders is to get as much work out of their prisoners as they are allowed under the Geneva Convention. The 350,000 P.W.s in the U.S. are a useful labor pool.

P.W. enlisted men--officers do not have to work, and few of them choose to--repair Army clothes, tools and noncombat Army equipment, build sheds, lay roads. The Army also hires them out as farm laborers, woodcutters, quarry workers. The prisoner-workers are paid 80-c- a day by the Army (in canteen coupons) and wages for their work, paid at prevailing rates, go directly to the U.S. Treasury. P.W.s have saved crops, released service troops for other jobs, and the U.S. Government last year rang up about $10,000,000 on the deal.

Soldiers Must Learn. Base camps, of which there are 135, are dreary barracks behind double fences of barbed wire. Branch camps (308), located near job sites, are winterized tents in which P.W.s keep warm around little pot stoves. Inside these various stockades the prisoners are bitterly waiting out the war.

In their meticulously tidy barracks, they hang up an occasional picture of Hitler. (U.S. prisoners in Germany enjoy the privilege of hanging whatever pictures they please.) More often the Germans have pictures of their families, the Goethe deathmask and Varga girls. They decorate their mess halls with elaborate paintings--the Alps, German heroes, busty girls. Across one day room an artist has painted a group of naked women, on the wall opposite the stern admonition "Ein guter Soldat muss verzichten koennen." (A good soldier must learn to do without.)

They are adequately fed on plain food. They do not care for corn ("Corn is for pigs") and turn up their noses at pumpkin pie.

Don't Fence Me In. For recreation the prisoners play soccer, make mess-hall and barracks decorations out of tin cans and other scrap, watch censored movies, organize orchestras and put on plays. Costumes are improvised from anything that comes to hand; no material for such goings-on is supplied by the Army. No recreational equipment is supplied by the Army, either. It is bought for them with profits from their PXs or they must rely on Red Cross packages.

Prisoners can listen to a radio (but not short wave). They like American jazz. It is not unusual to see a K.P. detail sitting around a potato pile singing The Trolley Song with heavy Teutonic accent while they peel. In one compound, Don't Fence Me In is a favorite.

Some have learned English, which is taught at the camps, and read U.S. newspapers and magazines. The New York Times, which prints German communiques in full, is a favorite. For the most part the prisoners think U.S. newspaper stories are accurate, although dyed-in-the-wool Nazis are deeply suspicious, and seize on the most trifling mistake as proof that the U.S. press is full of lies. They listen to news broadcasts with equal distrust.

The Nazis also cluck haughtily over pictures of a U.S. Congressman playing a guitar on the Capitol steps, of Hedda Hopper hats, of American adolescents doing the Lindy Hop as samples of "degenerate" life in a democracy.

In one camp Nazis tried to censor books in the prison libraries. They put books they did not want their prison mates to read on separate shelves and passed the word that these shelves were verboten. Army officials soon put a stop to that. But positive Nazi propaganda is hard to curb. Because of the scarcity of German-speaking guards, the Nazis can proselyte openly. In one so-called art class, conducted by a Nazi, students diligently repeated lessons right out of the Nazi book: the statue of a racially impure woman is unschoen (ugly); art should be Zweck-Kunst (art for a purpose).

Brot, Arbeit, Familie. The most uncooperative among the Germans (the Army hopefully believes) have been segregated in one camp in Oklahoma, where they try to strut past U.S. officers without saluting, rub the stenciled Ps and Ws off their clothes and get away generally with whatever they can.

Some, too outspokenly cooperative, have had to be put in separate compounds for their own safety. Murders have been committed at German camps, but not an extraordinary number by Army accounting : five political murders and two "forced" suicides. (There have been none since April 6, 1944.) A prisoner who thinks he is on the spot can appeal to a guard for protection. He will be whisked out of his camp immediately.

There are so-called "good," docile Germans who, though they once thought Naziism was the answer to their secret prayers, now espouse no cause.

There are the older men (mostly over 35) who are merely muede, muede, muede (tired, tired, tired) and only ask for Brot, Arbeit, Familie (bread, work, family). Close under the surface of their wooden faces is one emotion: deep, somber despair. All of them--old and young, disillusioned and arrogant--have one concern: "What is going to happen to us after the war?" The question uppermost in their minds: ''Will they turn us over to the Russians?"

* Germans (their numbers growing): 305,742; Italians (many of them now enjoying the restricted status of "co-belligerents"): 50,578; Japanese: 2,820.

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