|
|
|
The
POW Experience: Myth and Reality (Keynote
address given at Muscatine, Iowa Conference on WWII-Era POWs, 6 October 2002) by
It is not
that we are ignorant; it's just that we know so much that isn’t so. Anonymous Oral History:
History from
the bottom up, as told by those who never expected their words to find the
printed page, or, indeed, to be taken seriously by anyone else. A literal
German translation for oral history might be mündliche Traditionen but I
prefer Geschichte von Unten.
Oral history
is a tool for democratizing the study of history. For example, the
experiences of Vietnam veterans, reported in several superb oral histories,
greatly affected the willingness of World War II soldiers to talk more
openly about their experiences, although to do so they had to overcome the
popular and military stigma attached to surrendering and becoming a prisoner
of war. (There's a general insisting that to become a POW represents a failed mission and
one wife wrote, "Even though you are a coward and a
failure, I still love you").
Oral history
can also be a liberating force. This is very important for POWs or for
members of any disenfranchised group, who are victimized by a profound sense
of guilt about their individual condition. For example, many of the POWs I
interviewed seem to have blanked out their moment of capture. After all,
John Wayne was never captured. John Rambo was, but only in order to escape
and exact his bloody revenge. Real individuals must develop a sense of
history, if for no other reason than to escape or at least illuminate the
myths that affect how they judge their own experiences.
The people we
interview become our teachers. After all, who better can tell us what it
means to be a soldier or a prisoner of war? (Raymond Lech refused to
interview former POWs for his Broken Soldiers: American Prisoners of War in
North Korea.) These men know first hand just how cheap life is in war and how
quickly the thin veneer of civilization is stripped away by combat or
captivity.
Such men also
understand that the capricious whims of Dame Fortune do not consistently
recognize or reward courage. Unlike most fictional portrayals of war in
which courageous soldiers create their own destinies, in real war it is
chance that often dictates one's fate in combat and in a prison camp.
I cannot
emphasize enough the innate intelligence to be found in those we interview.
Our popular culture often reduces the lower classes to a level of banality,
vicious baseness, or comic relief, but oral histories are filled with
profound insights, complexities of character, and intuitive understandings
of historical forces that could put many professional historians to
shame. Oral histories
have so much to teach us. Had superb oral histories such as Studs Terkel's
The Good War been available in 1950 or 1963 would Americans been so willing
to send their children off to Korea and Vietnam? The answer is probably yes,
because popular beliefs about sacrifice, courage, and national glory are so
deeply ingrained in the nation's psyche. President Bush's demand for unquestioning support for his apparently
inevitable war against Iraq is a case in point, although there are growing
numbers of Americans, as there were before his father's Gulf war and during
President Clinton's incursions in Bosnia, who pose poignant questions about
the human cost of such ventures. Popular Culture:
Popular
Culture is what most of us are exposed to most of the time when we aren't
sleeping. Our popular culture includes film, television, periodicals,
best-sellers, music, advertising, even photographs. For our purposes today,
we will pay particular attention to how our popular culture has massaged and
transmitted messages, and reinforced myths, on what it means to be a POW.
Consider for
a moment from whence we have learned about the POW experience.
Probably not from the New York Times or the Washington Post or even
die Frankfurterallgemeine or Suddeutche Zeitung, and certainly not from
scholarly treatises. And relatively few of us have been fortunate enough to
have talked to former POWs. In reality, the majority of us have gotten most
of our information from the popular culture that engulfs us, and, of course,
these messages continually change the way we view the past. A pre-Gorbachov
Russian explained this process so very well in his own country when he
cynically explained, "We know the future; it's the past that keeps
changing."
Let me
illustrate what I am talking about by briefly look at Hollywood's changing
portrayal of POWs over the past
three major American wars. Better than any other medium, Hollywood
understands how Myths reflect current values, assumptions, and expectations,
as well as antipathies, illusions, and anxieties, all of which affect how we
choose to depict our collective past.
The mythical
literary and film images of our POWs go all the way back to the crucible of
the Indian captivity stories (a fate worse than), and although the details
change, the overall message stays on track. Simply put, the POW experience
is reduced to a simple morality play in which courageous American boys
suffer terribly at the hands of uncivilized brutes who clearly represent an
alien culture. Such portrayals allow neither subtleties nor ambiguities,
only images of clean-cut, innocent, freedom-loving American youngsters
caught in the clutches of villainous enemies whose values stand in sharp
contrast to everything Americans hold dear. And if reality does not square
with such popular notions? Well, so much the worse for reality. Examples of
Changing Themes in POW Films:
WW II -
escape - Great Escape ([addition of Americans for box office appeal]; Steven
McQueen was not riding a motorcycle in the real escape, and the man James
Gardner played was actually a convicted murderer from Georgia, a fact
overlooked by the movie-makers. Three successfully escaped: two Norwegians
and a Dutchman, all of who could speak German fluently), Bridge on the River
Kwai (again the addition of an American, William Holden, although no
Americans were in the actual camp), and Alex Guinnes' Col. Nicholson,
(although there was no Col. Nicholson in the real camp and the enlisted men
did not worship their officers), Von Ryan's Escape, (with Frank Sinatra),
Victory (in which Sly leads the Allied POWs to victory in an improvised
soccer game and a Swede, Max von Sydow, plays the sympathetic German
Kommandant), and Stalag 17, again with William Holden.
Korean War -
collaboration - Manchurian Candidate (1963), POW, and a host of others,
including
P.O.W., starring Ronald Reagan as a phony POW, parachuting into
North Korea to investigate collaboration.
Vietnam -
revenge - Rambo and its imitators - (Make the point - the POWs were the
same, only external factors had changed). We lost this war, something that
we were not supposed to do, so revenge is so much a part of these films.
Popular myths
not only affect how a society collectively determines its past but also how
its individual members react to and later recall their own changing
experiences. After all, they have been exposed to the same mass-mediated
images, and they have taken these with them into captivity and into their
post-POW lives where the results have not always been positive.
This conflict between what we can call individual versus collective
memory has often made former POWs feel guilty about their own experiences,
but they need to understand how such myths affect their judgment of their
own experiences. A marvelous example of this occurred when returning Vietnam
POW Larry Guarino met John Wayne at a 1973 White House reception:
"Duke,"
I said. "I tried to think about how you might have handled the
interrogators." He listened intently. "So when they asked
questions I told ‘em to go to hell; and when they asked me to do
something, I told ‘em to stick it up their asses… And do you know what,
Duke? They beat the shit out of me!"
You see, our
culture demands that our young men always act heroically (the main
indictment of my Korean War generation). Yet, the vast majority of prisoners
in any war, regardless of nationality, do not spend most of their time
defying their captors or tormenting them or even trying to escape. Most
prefer simply to sit out their
captivity, trying to make the best of an often untenable situation.
Let me
illustrate this further by looking at the myth of name, rank, or serial
number. According to the 1929 Geneva Accord, that's all a prisoner is
required to give his captors, and, initially, most men I interviewed insist
this is all they did. Well, let me tell you a story told me by a World War
II U.S. Army sergeant who spoke perfect German and whose job it was to
interrogate captured Germans. He insisted he was successful in getting
approximately 80 percent of his prisoners to talk quite freely, although
this was certainly not true of SS types. One of the tricks he had learned
from his British counterparts was to stamp Nach Russland on the papers of
stubborn prisoners. Of course, the German equivalent when interrogating
American prisoners was to tell them they would be turned over to the SS or
the Gestapo. I asked this American interrogator what percentage of Americans
he thought gave more than the name, rank, and serial number. "Oh,"
he said, "about 80 percent." Other
Myths:
The myth of
the individual dominates American culture, and we often reduce war to the
exploits of a single individual or to a very small group of soldiers (this
is true even in such superior war films as Saving Private Ryan). Yet, it is
precisely one's individuality that is stripped away by war and certainly by
incarceration. In reality, the
POW must rid himself of the notion that he is an independent agent. If he is
to survive the hostile and often dangerous world of captivity, he must
accept and welcome the support of his fellow captives. (E.g., the American
POW who was so sick his first night in the permanent camp that he could no
longer control his bowels and a fellow prisoner, who was a total stranger,
had to clean him up. John Wayne did not do such scenes). This need for a
certain humility and dependence may appear obvious, but it is a difficult
lesson for most American men, who have been raised to believe it is a sign
of weakness to need the help of another human being.
America's
cultural heroes are always self-sufficient, larger-than-life individuals who
stand tall in the saddle, no matter what the odds. Consider the Marlboro
Man, alone, astride his horse, silhouetted against the sunset, ready to take
on all comers. Or reflect on John Wayne almost single-handedly fighting a
two-front war against the Axis powers. Nothing puts the lie to imagined
individual heroics more quickly than the reality of modern war, where the
individual becomes a faceless nonentity, battered by forces he often never
sees and certainly does not control. One of Kurt Vonnegut's other worldly characters in his
whimsical POW novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, put it best: "I've visited
thirty-one planets in the universe, and I have studied reports of one
hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will."
Vonnegut's
novel, which in 1972 was made into a successful film, paints an
unforgettable portrait of Billy Pilgrim, an American soldier and POW who is
the antithesis of popular culture's traditional hero. Billy is awkward,
inept, and non-involved. He has lost all sense of dignity and he escapes
only by taking fanciful flights back and forth in time. Bertram Copeland
Rumfoord, a retired Air Force Reserve officer, millionaire, and Harvard
history professor, is forced to share a hospital room with Vonnegut's
anti-hero. Disgusted by Billy's delirious mumbling about wanting to quit and
surrender, Rumfoord derisively tells him, "I could carve a better man
out of a banana." Perhaps, but Billy's combined use of apathy and
fantasy to escape the vicissitudes of a situation he cannot control might
seem perfectly normal to many ex-prisoners.
Related to
this point, is our collective contempt for those men who actually gave up in
the prison camps and turned their faces to the wall. In so doing, they
simply willed themselves to die. Our mythical heroes, of course, never give
up, regardless of how tough things might be. Yet, closing down one's system
when it can no longer function is not an irrational act. German prisoners,
by the way, had a very different attitude about this, especially those
interned in Russian prison camps. The Myth of Resistance and Escape:
Ceaseless
resistance and escape are constant themes in Hollywood POW films. Prisoners
are always baiting the dull, overweight, clownish guards or sabotaging the
best laid plans and spit-polished jackboots of the
Many of the
prisoners did contemplate escaping, but less than 2 percent ever attempted
an escape. David Westheimer, who wrote Von Ryan's Express which was about an
American escape from a German-run prison camp in Italy, was himself a World
War POW, but he also understood why it was much better
Like most
veteran prisoners, I'd have loved to escape if it were handed to me on a
platter but when it came to planning one I found the obstacles daunting… I
didn't know where I was except that it was deep in enemy territory with no
underground to help me, it was too cold to exist for long in open country, I
was in the wrong uniform, and my German would never fool anyone. Maybe most
important, when I was picked up, as I certainly would be, I'd have lost all
the food and clothing I'd accumulated so painstakingly over the long months.
There were also repercussions for those left behind; e.g., conditions
became worse for all the men, and the SS might take over their camp, as it
did after the Great Escape from Stalag Luft 3 Survival in a POW Camp:
Although fictional portrayals of POWs have invariably focused on the
excitement generated by attempted escapes, gloomy resignation and stifling
boredom more typically characterized a prisoner's daily existence. Rather
than attempting unrealistic and potentially dangerous escapes, it was far
more sensible for the prisoner to try and counter the negative effects of
his enervating environment. Keeping busy was all-important, either through
recreational, cultural, or educational activities or by just communicating
with one's friends. Religion worked well for some men, and especially for
those who took a strong sense of spirituality with them into the camps. Many
of those interviewed talked freely about praying, particularly when they
felt alone and forgotten, but, unlike the accounts published by some former
Vietnam POWs, which often led American audiences to believe that
imprisonment brought out the best in their fighting sons–including manly
courage, an enhanced love of country, and an unquenchable spirit of
independence, the men I interviewed never seemed to blend religion, God, and
America into some kind of holy trinity.
Surviving
Stress:
Boredom and
lethargy were the bane of all prisoners of war, and many had trouble
handling their enervating existence. When possible, prisoners tried to fill
their empty hours participating in plays and musical groups; studying,
painting, carving, reading, daydreaming, sleeping, walking; playing chess,
cards, and sports; and, most often, in endless conversations with fellow
prisoners. As I already mentioned, some prisoners became devoutly religious,
treating their captivity as a kind of spiritual crucible. Others became too
depressed to do anything. A few just lay on their bunks, refusing to talk or
even eat. Others had to be forcefully restrained from rushing the fence to
commit suicide. The more fortunate prisoners learned patience and tolerance,
as well as a deeper understanding of self and an appreciation for
friendship.
Enlisted men,
who were more likely to experience harsh treatment and debilitating
conditions, not surprisingly suffered more incidents of acute depression and
neuroses than did NCOs and officers. A lack of training, organization, and
leadership were important factors, but so too was the rigid and often
condescending class structure that existed in the military and in the prison
camps as well. The result was that among the lower ranks dispirited men
often exhibited less commitment to discipline and even survival than did the
higher ranks.
American-held
German prisoners suffered a different kind of stress. Relatively few were
overtly mistreated, and acute hunger, cold and a lack of sanitary facilities
were seldom problems in the camps. Nevertheless, they were prisoners, and
being incarcerated is an unnatural experience for any human being. They too
had to deal with enervating boredom. They also missed and worried about
their loved ones back home who lived in constant peril. Finally, because so
many of them faced additional years of internment in France, England, and
Belgium, the cessation of hostilities in 1945 did not end their agony.
Looking back,
the most important survival factor seemed to be friendship. Perhaps because
all experiences were magnified, possibly because there was such an obvious
need for an active support system, and certainly because prisoners were an
inescapable part of each other's lives, friendships became all important
(not necessarily true in Korea
with its extremely high POW death toll because you were too likely to lose a
friend and plunge into depression yourself)). Ex-prisoners can go
years–even decades–without seeing a former prison buddy and then restart
the friendship right where it left off in the camps. "Initially,"
said one former POW, "you tended to become very selfish because you
spent so much time thinking about yourself and your own predicament. It was
only when we got beyond that and started doing things for other people that
we became less depressed." But there were also times when a prisoner
just had to lower the curtain and be alone with his thoughts–to seclude
himself in his own little world. The key seemed not to be overly preoccupied
with one single thing, whether that single thing was yourself or counting
the barbs on the fence.
One former
prisoner targeted the following characteristics for survival: a good sense
of humor, fortitude, reliability, and a willingness to share. Another
suggested that "all people in positions of responsibility, politicians
particularly, ought certainly to have had schooling in the skills of being a
good POW. It causes you to look after yourself being aware that someone else
is looking out after himself and you mustn't damage him. You are both equal
when all is said and done." Another insisted, "Afterwards you felt
nothing was impossible. Whatever it was, you could do it, and you never
allowed yourself to be bored again." This man also talked about
discovering genuine goodness and courage in others as well as in himself. The
Aftermath:
Popular
cultural portrayals of the POW seldom addressed the long-term effects of
imprisonment, except in the action-packed Vietnam POW/MIA revenge films so
popular in recent years. To make heroes out of ex-prisoners, Americans
wanted to believe they came back better men--that captivity, as historian
Elliott [Time did not allow the speaker to deliver what follows at the conference:] Comparing and Contrasting the Experiences of World War II German and American POWs:
American and
German World War II prisoners shared much in common.
All were lonely, bored, and no longer capable of controlling their
individual destinies; most indulged in introspective examinations of self;
all suffered indignities, but many experienced an incident or two that
reinforced their belief in human decency; all had to learn patience and a
degree of tolerance; some became very self-confident after realizing they
could handle extreme adversity; others suffered what has become known as
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
But there
were also differences between the experiences of the two groups. Most German
prisoners in the United States were reasonably well treated; after all, they
looked like the majority of Americans, and they shared a common heritage
with many of their captors. German POWs had plenty to eat, a warm place to
sleep, and even such niceties as tooth brushes, soap, and sufficient
clothing. Many took classes, including some for college credit; others
played in orchestras, frequented camp libraries, and engaged in sports.
Those who
worked outside the camps gained an intriguing perspective on everyday life
in America. Of course, camp guards could be hostile, insulting, and, in a
few cases, physically threatening. German prisoners also had constant
worries about their families and loved ones back home, especially as news of
A few German
POWs encountered terrifying threats from their fellow prisoners. Initially,
hard-core Nazi officers ran many of the camps, sometimes with the full and
admiring support of American military authorities. These ardent fascists
demanded total discipline and unwavering allegiance to the Führer, and
often brutally attacked fellow prisoners whom they suspected of anti-Nazi
activities or of collaborating with American authorities. In several
instances they even killed the alleged offenders. After the war, the
For many
German prisoners in America the greatest surprise and shock came at the end
of the war. They naturally expected to be repatriated to Germany "with
all deliberate speed," as the Geneva Accord stipulated, but fewer than
75,000 of the 380,000 German POWs in the United States were sent home in 1945. Those
remaining continued to work in the United States, at least until July 1946,
when the U.S. Government returned its last German prisoner to Europe.
Unfortunately, because of negotiated agreements among the Allied Powers, the
majority of those shipped in 1946 ended up in France and England where they
spent up to three additional years as POWs.
The most
pressing problem for most American Kriegies (short for Kriegsgefangenen, the
German word for prisoners of war) was obtaining sufficient food, warm
clothing, minimum health care, and adequate shelter, especially during the
frigid European winter of 1944-1945 when many died of pneumonia. Some POWs
were deliberately and flagrantly abused, but in general American and British
prisoners received much better treatment than did their Russian counterparts
or the tens of thousands of slave laborers or concentration camp inmates.
Once they were on the ground and safely in the hands of military
authorities, U. S. Army Air Corps personnel suffered least because Hermann
Goering's Luftwaffe recognized a certain honor and respect among airmen.
Whatever the
conditions inside or outside the camps, a prisoner's cultural attitudes
could influence his general outlook and his willingness to adapt. While both
Americans and British soldiers believed they were products of superior
cultures, there were differences. As one Englishman put it, "Americans
thought they were the best but Englishmen knew they were." The British,
with their sense of tradition and imperial superiority, and the Americans,
with their belief in their own higher mission, both considered themselves
vastly superior to their enemies; consequently, they believed there was
little to be learned from their captors. In World War II, this attitude was
most blatantly directed toward the Japanese, although Germans could also be
held in contempt. Allied prisoners delighted in baiting and ridiculing their
guards, referring to them as “Goons,” while seldom making any attempt to
study the language or customs of their captors.
German
prisoners could also be insufferably arrogant, but many of them sought
opportunities to study life outside the camps, eagerly learned English, and
took a wide variety of classes, some even for college credit. Similar
educational opportunities existed in several of the German prison camps, at
least for the officers, but relatively few Americans took advantage of them.
A large number of the non-political German prisoners brought positive
feelings about the United States with them to the prison camps. Many had
read Karl May's Westerns or thought they knew about America from Hollywood
films, popular music, and travel literature.
Naturally,
there were those American prisoners who transcended cultural provincialism.
Some attempted to make friends with guards who treated them well. And many
Air Corps prisoners came to understand the outrage of German citizens who
had wanted to kill them when they hit the ground. Finally, the more
perceptive prisoners understood that the common people, including their
military counterparts, were also suffering the ravages of history's most
devastating war. In the final analysis, the common man, whether German or American, seldom picks his nationality, and he has few options when his political leaders determine he must serve his country. The experiences of such ordinary men, who did most of the fighting and dying and who dominated the prison camps on both sides of the Atlantic, illustrate that national distinctions fall away when human beings are trapped by circumstances they neither control nor fully comprehend. Through the telling of their stories these men achieve a dignity and importance not found in traditional history books. To be a soldier and a POW, and to survive to tell the story, is an act of heroism. These men's testimonies deserve the attention of those whose information has come either from the detached objectivity of scholarly discourse or from the commercial and myth-laden stories so frequently found in popular fiction, movies, and television. | Home | |