‘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 reportedly 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 parachutist 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 favourably reviewed by audiences who approved lifelike narratives over clumsy 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 observations of George Orwell in his infamous essay, The Lion and the Unicorn, published five months after the article in the press. He noted that characteristic traits of the English were ‘gentleness’ and ‘respect for constitutionalism 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 demonstrate 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 character 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 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 malicious 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 imprisonment. It examines how the issue of POW treatment intersected with other debates in British society and culture during and after the 1939–45 conflict. Exploring the contours of public opinion towards British POW policies, 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 treatment to the ideals which Britain was fighting for:
Here, the treatment of POWs was thought of as a marker of essential values. 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 during and after the Second World War. This representation did not, however, go uncontested, and in the following chapters, the comments and concerns 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 something to be championed or a mentality which would only serve to undermine 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.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 concentration camps.10
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 provided. 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 Britain. During the eight months of phoney war, beginning with the declaration 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, information 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 a...