Battleship Bismarck (68 page)

In those weeks confined to bed, with much time to read, I fastened upon an article on the Yalta Conference appearing in
The Nineteenth Century and After
for March 1945.
*
It was a uniquely passionate condemnation of the “Declaration” issued there, its content and its language. According to the author, it aimed at a “dictated” peace for the whole of Europe and a fundamentally anti-European order that could be upheld only by force. The concepts of “democracy” and
“democratic” were most shamefully misused. If the conference of the “Big Three” (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) at Tehran in November 1943 had already led to the misfortune of the projected division of Europe into occupation zones, the new declaration sealed its destruction as a cultural unit. The author was most especially moved by the fate that it set forth for Poland: “Poland has been sacrificed . . . the Anglo-Polish Treaty of Alliance was violated.” An urgent warning followed of the dangers to a democratic Poland of the “Lublin Committee,” already designated the “Provisional Government of Poland,” which had been founded under Soviet pressure at the end of 1944 with the aim of squeezing out the Polish exile government in London. Under the latter’s aegis, it suddenly came back to me—the destroyer
Piorun
had certainly not fought the
Bismarck
in 1941 for a Poland geographically shifted to the west, and a Communist one at that. The rousing indictment, which I read in complete agreement, ended with a demand “To undo the work done at Yalta.” That a journalist could fearlessly make such a massive attack on his own government in wartime was a wonder to me.

The article had been written by the long-standing editor of the magazine, F. A. Voigt, who had attracted my attention in the past months by his unsparing analyses of the actual political situation in the countries of southeastern Europe. Voigt had outstanding credentials for his assessments, having come to know the Continent, especially Germany, well in the course of his long career. Already in the twenties and early thirties he had written reports for the
Manchester Guardian
on German topics, on the SA’s Storm troops in Brunswick in 1932, the Nazi terror in Germany in March 1933, the position of the Jews in Germany in January 1934—to name only a few. He had also carried out lengthy assignments in Germany later. Very well educated, firmly convinced of the underlying unity of European culture and, as a result, that the Continental countries should always be viewed in a European context, in the thirties Voigt became the
Manchester Guardian’s
key European correspondent. At home in the intellectual and artistic life of Weimar Germany, a regular at the legendary Romanisches Café near Berlin’s Memorial Church, a close friend of the artist and social critic Georg Grosz—he ripened into an authority on European problems, who presented his views with great civil courage. But his attack on Yalta immediately revealed itself as the product of an ideal still based on the old, already historically defunct Europe—overtaken by the new constellation of great powers, a dream from the world of yesterday, the world of the European balance of
power once so dear to England. Voigt still knew nothing, many still knew nothing, of the determination with which the advancing Soviets carried Stalin’s postwar concept of a Communist eastern Europe in their knapsacks. The Western Allies not only had none of their own, so far they had still not even understood Stalin and would only later comprehend him. For the United States, some illusions would end in 1947. Arthur Bliss Lane withdrew from his post as the first postwar U.S. ambassador to Warsaw after recognizing the true character of the so-called “free” Polish parliamentary elections in January of that year. In his book,
I Saw Poland Betrayed
, he later expressed his deep disappointment in Roosevelt’s submissive policy towards Stalin.

Unfortunately, my sojourn in the Montreal Military Hospital lasted longer than originally expected. Happily, the regular and regularly changing company of comrades from the camp kept boredom from setting in. Among them were tellers of tales, anecdotes, and jokes, but most especially one, a true natural talent in depicting “happenings” from life; true or false, that was immaterial. He had merely to purse his lips and a roomful of people would wait in amused anticipation of what was coming next. They were never disappointed. In this way and with the help of a gramophone obtained somehow and records ranging from the classics to boogie-woogie, the time flew by. At the beginning of July, I returned to Grande Ligne, but only for two weeks. In the middle of the month, together with eight other officers, I was transferred to the Sorel camp.

The new, so-called “democratic” camp at Sorel, on the St. Lawrence at the mouth of the Richelieu River, was, so to say, a political experiment. In its composition it could hardly have been more heterogenous. Here colonels in the general staff, officers of all grades, noncommissioned officers, enlisted men, reservists of all ranks, academics, foreign legionnaires, railway men, locomotive engineers from the highest staffs found themselves together. The camp, used in the past for very different purposes, now served for the quartering and “democratic” schooling of prisoners of war. The living conditions were not bad. I was able to establish myself comfortably in a relatively large room in one of the many quite solid wooden barracks. Even the winter cold was no problem. Potbellied stoves provided adequate warmth in the living quarters, dining room, and classroom barracks.

Whereas in former camps decisions regarding internal problems
and controversial matters were more or less militarily made from above, in Sorel a “camp council” organized according to democratic principles sat and decided. Its speaker represented the camp to the Canadian commandant. One of his first successes was to persuade the commandant, an enthusiastic baseball fan, to increase the supply of inexpensive foodstuffs sold by the camp canteen at the earliest possible moment. For immediately after the day of the German capitulation, Ottawa had drastically reduced the prisoners’ ration level to 1,000 calories a day, a sudden drop from the previous 4,000. Some of our comrades were nearly floored by it and became quite apathetic. So in August 1945 the first abundant edibles from the canteen, fruit and sausage, were greeted with a happy hello. Our daily ration allowance also improved gradually.

From the beginning the camp council, occasionally supplemented by the entire camp assembly, strove to develop training and educational programs for the forthcoming winter. Classes of all sorts down to the smallest study groups were formed. Of subjects and sections there were English interpreting; a legal study circle for special areas such as corporate law; questions of Christianity; an Evangelical study circle; principles of democracy; constitutional questions for Germany; cultural history. Foreign guest professors also gave lectures on historical subjects as well as on the international organizations then being formed. Franz Schad, whom I had been delighted to encounter again upon my arrival here, once more engaged himself as a high-performance motor for the intellectual work. Convinced that so dissimilar a group of camp inmates could be held on a firm course only by intellectual “torch bearers,” he ceaselessly occupied himself with the organization of the educational program, including the library—a true missionary endeavor, as he himself once called it, in the face of the religious intolerance and ideological narrow-mindedness of the time, the inner need, and the deep insecurity of the individual with regard to the ultimate, decisive things.

Despite all this, sports and outdoor activities did not suffer. Ball games of every kind were played on the camp fields. Long walks through the extensive forests in the area alternated with bathing in the nearby Richelieu. I retain an adventurous mental picture from one of these walks. Our group, escorted by an Anglo-Canadian officer, approached a group of houses half hidden in the woods to the left and right of the path. All at once an extraordinary commotion appeared to be taking place in them. And it was. Out of the houses streamed men armed with every possible sort of clubbing and stabbing instrument
and perhaps with firearms, too; at that distance, it was hard to tell. Hello—we lived in and were now wandering through French Canada, with its ethnically tight-knit population that had not experienced an emigration from France since 1763 and whose rural regions had since then lived in almost airtight isolation from the outside world. And the latter had now produced something surprising. Our stroll, of which this settlement had received wind, was interpreted there as an “attack of the Teutons,” against which naturally the men had to defend. But as soon as our escort officer recognized the situation he reversed the direction of our march and the “Battle in the Forest” did not take place; the French Canadians remained behind as “victors.” A moldy scent of European history; France’s defensive attitude towards the growing power of Prussia in the eighteenth century, petrified and perserved in Quebec, had been stumbled upon by twentieth-century Germans in the forests of eastern Canada.

In camp, the coming and going was continuous. We witnessed new arrivals as well as the relegation of some individuals to “gray” or “black” camps and the early repatriation of groups with privileged status under international law. From the first, I was content to regard the stay in Sorel basically as a preliminary to the return to Germany and did not undertake any studies of long duration. I enjoyed devoting myself to a few selected areas. The level offered by our teaching staff was high, its substance fascinating. My violin also came into its own again. To be sure, I had to wait longer than I originally expected to say farewell to Canada, but a signal, at least, came in February 1946. We learned that all prisoners of war in Canada would soon—we at Sorel in the beginning of March—be transported to Great Britain, although to remain there until further notice. Nevertheless, it was a step in the desired direction. The pleasurable anticipation ruled our succeeding days.

At the beginning of March, it really came to pass. Packing, baggage inspection, chief baggage inspection, and after thirty hours on the train we reached Halifax on the evening of 5 March. We proceeded immediately to the
Letitia
,
*
upon reaching which we received an impressive boarding card: “Deck D, Cabin 3” stood on mine, but the accommodations were terribly crowded, nonetheless. We remained
in harbor until the ship finally sailed early on 10 March. The silhouette of the busy city and the contours of the New World, where we had been involuntary lodgers for four long years, slowly sank behind us. I accepted it as a small consolation that the time there had not been completely wasted. Memories returned of my voyage to it from England in the spring of 1942, the time-consuming zigzagging, the escorts to guard against German U-boats. Of all that, there would be no more—Hitler’s war was already almost a year at an end. Now new uncertainties occupied me, hopes for Germany …

*
Konstantin Hierl (1875–1955), a professional officer, was teaching at the War College in Munich in 1911. During the First World War, he served on the General Staff. In 1919, as a Freikorps leader on assignment from the Reichswehr Ministry, he played a leading part in the suppression of the Soviet government in Augsburg. Retiring from the army in 1924 as a colonel, he was active in Ludendorff’s Tannenbergbund, 1925–27. He joined the NSDAP in 1927 and became
Reichsorganisationsleiter II
in 1929 (from Brockhaus’s
Enzyklopädie
, Wiesbaden, 1969).

*
F. A. Voigt, “Yalta,” pp. 97–107.

*
The
Letitia
, 13,475 BRT, 15 knots, was placed under the Ministry of Transport in 1946. (She was a sister ship of the
Athenia
, torpedoed by the
U-30
on 3 September 1939.)

44    Featherstone Park Camp

An only moderately heaving Atlantic seemed to grant comrades without sea legs a merciful opportunity to escape seasickness. But it did not all go as they wished and in the following days a heavy blow came up.

After such a long intermission, I enjoyed the rough voyage immensely; it couldn’t be stormy enough for me. As was proper, we also practiced lifesaving drills,
“Schiffsrollen,
” as the seamen called them. We had to appear with life belts put on near the life boats on the upper deck. And it was on one such occasion that the storm claimed my old blue cap as a personal sacrifice to the Atlantic. A gust seized it and let it coast along at eye level, but already overboard, for a second before it slid away, as though under sail with a following wind. It was a painful but dignified leave-taking. On the fourth day of the voyage we received an unexpected passenger. A snow owl, evidently injured, lit high up on the mast. The object of universal sympathy, it remained there for a day before vanishing as mysteriously as it had appeared. And after a crossing spent mainly in reading and playing cards, on 18 March we reached Liverpool and, after midnight, a transit camp near Nottingham.