Jewish soldiers, Nazi captors: the experience of American and British Jewish POWs in German captivity in the Second World War

The topic of Jewish Prisoners of War (POWs) in German captivity during the Second World War is remarkable because of the contrast between Germany’s genocidal policy towards Jews on one hand and its relatively non-discriminatory treatment of Jewish POWs from western countries on the other. The radicalisation of Germany’s anti-Semitic policies entered its last phase in June 1941 with the invasion of the Soviet Union; during the following four years, nearly six million Jews were murdered. In parallel, Germany’s POW policies had gone through a radicalisation process of their own, resulting in the murder of millions of Soviet POWs, of Allied commando soldiers and of POW escapees, with Adolf Hitler eventually transferring in July 1944 the responsibility for POWs from the Wehrmacht to Heinrich Himmler, in his role as head of the Replacement Army (Ersatzheer). And yet, these policy changes did not filter into POW camps where Jewish POWs from western countries were kept; they were usually not discriminated against and were treated, in most cases, according to the Geneva Convention. Research covering POWs in German captivity and the study of the Holocaust are both extensive; however, the converging point of these two fields – the research on Jewish POWs in German captivity during the Second World War – has not received the same level of attention. Although there are individual stories of POWs, both Jewish and non-Jewish, which focus on different aspects of the Jewish POW experience, they have not been analysed in a systematic manner across all individual accounts and were not combined with information from various primary and secondary sources to provide a comprehensive interpretation of them. In addition, the explanations that appear in the literature as to the reasons behind the German policy towards Jewish POWs from western countries vary and are at times contradictory. A list of some of these explanations includes the German concern over reciprocity; the ‘national conservative value system’ of the Wehrmacht; and, towards the end of the war, the fear of retribution. However, a closer analysis of these arguments points to the conclusion that none of them alone provides a sufficient explanation for this phenomenon; rather, one can be found only by combining a number of explanations that were relevant during different stages of the war and by taking into account the interests of, and the interaction between, various bodies, both inside and outside the Wehrmacht. This dissertation combines existing studies with primary sources from archives in Britain, the United States, Germany, Israel, Switzerland, Poland and the Czech Republic, as well as POWs’ diaries, letters and memoirs, in order to bridge some of the existing gaps in the current research. Specifically, this study addresses the following questions: what was the experience of American and British Jewish POWs in German captivity; how were they treated by their captors; and why were they treated in that way? Its conclusions will help to reshape our understanding of the Holocaust and of Nazi Germany