MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLsON
IWAS lecturing last week to the Wilton Park Training Centre for German prisoners: it was for me a curious and stimulating experience. So long ago as September, 1944, the Cabinet decided to entrust to the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office the task of segregating and re-educating the many thousands of German prisoners who were in captivity in this country. A careful survey of all prisoners was undertaken ; a card index was prepared ; and the prisoners were thereafter divided into three main categories. Within the first category were comprised what was known as "The Whites," namely those prisoners who from their antecedents and attitude were believed to be sincerely opposed to the Nazi doctrine and hierarchy. Under the second category of "The Blacks" were classified those prisoners who were known to have been members of the Nazi party or to have surrendered their personality without criticism or conscience to the Nazi idea. And in the third category of "The Greys" were placed all those who had either been uncon- nected with the Nazi party or whose connection with it had been due to purely fortuitous circumstances. It was felt that, whereas "The Blacks" were tainted beyond all redemption, and whereas "The Whites" might well become useful citizens in a future demo- cratic Germany, some steps should be taken to enable "The Greys" to substitute for the theories with which they had been indoctrinated from their childhood a more reasonable and more dignified con- ception of the relation between the individual and the State. A. scheme of re-education was therefore introduced into every camp in the country. It was soon realised, however, that a more intensive effort was required. With this in mind a Training Centre was estab- lished last January at Wilton Park, near Beaconsfield. Selected prisoners from the white and the grey categories were to be sent to this Centre for a course of some six to eight weeks. A resident tutorial staff was appointed under the charge of a very able Principal. The whole scheme was from the start described as "an experiment."
The purposes and the methods of this experiment were clearly defined. The P.I.D. conceived that the Training Centre should have four main objects. First to remove from the minds of the prisoners the last vestiges of their faith in the Nazi idea, and to convince them that it was untrue both in theory and in fact that might was always right. Secondly to show them that the German version of the history of the last fifty years was, both in regard to domestic and foreign policy, a completely untruthful version. Thirdly to fill the vacuum which would thereby be caused by inculcating a saner con- ception of the principles of democratic government. And fourthly to provide them with a clear and objective picture of the British Commonwealth and the British way of life, not as a model to be slavishly imitated, but as an example of how the democratic theory could, in highly complicated circumstances, find a practical expression. The methods by which these objects were to be achieved were also carefully considered in advance. It was realised that the majority of the prisoners who came within the grey category would, at least at first, be highly suspicious of all forms of re-education. It was expected that the impression of propaganda could, to some extent, be mitigated by mingling some of the older men belonging to the white category with some of the Hitler Jugend whose character and intelligence had qualified them for inclusion within the grey category. It was hoped that the presence of such older men might serve to soften the sharp contrast between captives and captors. The elements of compulsion and indoctrination were carefully to be excluded ; questions and criticisms were to be encouraged ; and attendance at lectures was to be completely voluntary.
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It was with intense curiosity that I went down to Beaconsfield the other evening to see for myself how far these purposes were being achieved and how these methods were working out in practice. It was dark when I arrived, and in the light of the hurricane lamp which guided me along the cinder path I saw the rain-drops glistening upon the barbed wire. The huts loomed large and black in the night mist, with here a square of light and there a square of light, and there a group of three prisoners peeling potatoes under the glare
of a naked bulb. When I entered the large hut which had been. set apart for a lecture hall three hundred prisoners stood up politely and remained standing until told to sit down. In the hot air of the room I detected that dry smell which is the smell of prisoners all the world over from Opocno to Wormwood Scrubs ; three hundred faces stared up at me, young faces and elderly faces, hard faces and soft faces, alert faces and numb faces, faces which were uniform only in that they wore the grey mask of unhappiness which captivity brings. I lectured to them for some forty minutes, and thereafter there were questions which lasted for almost an hour and a half. It must be realised that the Commandant of the prison camp was present, as well as the Principal and the tutors of the training course ; yet there was no sign whatsoever that the prisoners were deterred from asking leading questions by the presence of their gaolers. In fact one man asked me why it was, if we disaPproved of Prussian discipline and Nazi methods, that we ourselves adopted such methods in our prison camps. I knew that he was referring, not to the British officers in charge of the camp, but to the German N.C.O.s who in the earlier stages of the war were perhaps given too much authority. I ignored this distinction and asked him in my turn whether he would have dared to put such a question to a visitor in the presence of the commandant of Dachau or Buchenwald. The prisoners laughed heartily at this comparison.
* 4 The next morning, before returning to London, I visited several of the little stuffy class rooms in which instruction was being given or discussions held. In one room they were examining, under the supervision of a German historian, the circumstances in which the Nazi leaders were able to seize power ; the older prisoners were evidently delighted at seeing the whole fabric of the Nazi legend being picked to pieces bit by bit ; upon the faces of some of the Hitler Jugend I saw an expression of strained bewilderment ; from time to time the older men would intervene in the discussion and supply some telling fact. From there I passed to an English class where old and young alike were reading from a primer and trans- lating into German a passage upon the fresh-water fish of England ; even the instructor experienced some difficulty when it came to "pike, perch, tench, roach, carp and gudgeon." In another class the exact significance of the documents revealed in the Nuremberg trial was being carefully explained ; in another a lecturer was ex- pounding the nature of the British Commonwealth, of the United Nations Organisation and of the working of our municipal and parlia- mentary machinery. In other rooms again study groups were being conducted with the purpose of fitting selected prisoners for re- education work when they returned to their camps after the com- pletion of the course. They were being taught how to run camp newspapers, how to organise debating societies, art exhibitions, con- certs and so forth. It seemed to me that the aim was not so much to indoctrinate the prisoners as to train them to teach each other and themselves. I was much impressed.
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I returned with the conviction, not only that the experiment was worth while, but that it was being wisely and successfully conducted. My only doubt was whether it was not wasteful, once the course had been completed, to send all these prisoners back to their several camps. A certain proportion of them must certainly have displayed special aptitudes of mind or character and should be selected for a further and more specialised course, after which they could qualify as useful assistants in the Control Commissions in Germany. If we continue year after year to deprive Germany of her best potential citizens, then all hope of a self-governing and democratic Germany must be abandoned. I should add one word more. The physical conditions under which the prisoners live at Wilton Park Training Centre are the same exactly as those in the ordinary prison camps ; obviously they gain many moral and intellectual alleviations from the liberal atmosphere in which the course is deliberately conducted ; but to say that they are being "pampered" would be to-say some- thing stupid and untrue
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