Perpetrators’ Frames of Reference. An Analyses of Recorded Con-versations of German POWs in American Custody 1942-1946.

Funded by Fritz-Thyssen-Stiftung

About 183,000 German POWs were brought to the US during the Second World War by the US Army. To broaden their knowledge about German society, military secrets and military forces the secret police had established a secret interrogation base at Fort Hunt. Around 3,300 German POWs spent a few days or weeks at this base in the vicinity of Washington DC. They were interrogated and – what the soldiers did not know – their cells were bugged. These recordings produced circa 102,000 pages of material. Many of those pages are interception protocols.

The documents allow insight into National Socialist Germany. They show how German soldiers thought about their society, what was obvious to them, what they had doubts about. The men talked about the war and their families at home. They discussed democracy and the future of famous Nazi leaders as well as women and Adolf Hitler. Their conversations included such topics as mobile gas chambers (Gaswagen), the behavior of SS-men, or what it meant to work in a concentration camp.

This research project analyses how the POWs talked about violence and war crimes. It strives to explore what the soldiers knew, how they thought about the crimes and how imprisonment and the course of war influenced their attitude.
The research project is supported by the Fritz-Thyssen-Foundation.