Whoever rules the waves rules the world.

--Alfred Thayer Mahan

U-595^[1]

Isolated. Imprisoned. Afraid.

On Sunday, 6 December 1942, just one year removed from the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, 20-year-old German submariner Matrosengefreiter (Seaman, 2^nd Class) Gerd Horn and 19-year-old Maschinengefreiter (Fireman, 3^rd Class) Werner Rast were about to be questioned by U.S. Navy intelligence experts. They were separated from their shipmates and in prison cells over 4,000 miles from home in the heart of their enemy’s territory. Both sailors believed that these American interrogators were like those in Germany, in particular the Nazi Party’s Secret Police, the Gestapo, who would most certainly torture them to get the answers they needed. In their minds there could be only two approaches to dealing with their American captors: If either sailor refused to provide more than “his true name, rank, or else his [serial] number,”^[2] he would risk bodily harm. If he collaborated with his enemy, cooperation with the Americans would mean being outcast, possibly even being murdered by their comrades, an act which did occur in prisoner of war (POW) camps in America during the war. How was it that these young, low-ranking German sailors found themselves facing such a predicament?

Only three weeks earlier, on 14 November, their vessel, the U-595, a 500-ton, Type VII-C unterseeboot (U-boat or submarine), was badly damaged on her third war patrol after a four-hour depth charge, bomb, and machine gun attack by seven British Lockheed Hudson aircraft.^[3] The devastation to the vessel was so severe that it forced her captain, Kapitänleutnant Jürgen Quaet-Faslem, to run the boat aground and to order her scuttled off Cape Khamis, 70 miles northeast of Oran, Algeria. His actions destroyed the year-old boat but saved her entire complement of four officers and forty-one men, including Seaman Horn and Fireman Rast. After swimming ashore and surrendering to a U.S. Army Tank Corps unit (undeniably the first naval victory in the history of the Tank Corps), Horn, Rast, and forty-two shipmates were processed, preliminarily questioned, and quickly sent to America aboard the USAT Brazil (a cruise liner converted to an Army troop ship) where they arrived in Newport News, Virginia on 30 November. The last crew member who carried out the captain’s scuttling order was picked up by a British destroyer and transported to England for internment. Aboard Brazil, a preliminary U-595 crew screening was conducted, but more intense interrogation sessions by Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Op-16-Z intelligence specialists began the next day at the Joint Interrogation Center (JIC), Fort Henry J. Hunt, Alexandria, Virginia eleven miles south of Washington, DC on the Potomac River. Ft. Hunt was also known by its unclassified name, P.O. Box 1142.

Three months earlier an agreement between the U.S. Provost Marshal General and British allies caused an initial 50,000 prisoners to be transferred to the U.S. to relieve Britain’s POW overcrowding problems. The U.S. then began a crash program of building, rehabilitation, and leasing of existing facilities. By the time U-595’s crew’s arrived at Ft. Hunt only 512 German POWs were interned in the Continental U.S., but within half a year, numbers of German POWs would surge to almost sixty-seven times to 34,161.^[4]

After the traditional prisoner problems of housing, messing, and security, the most serious issue with German POWs was understanding the “intensity of the prisoners’ ideologies and so to segregate those prisoners whose attachment to Nazism was transitory and opportunistic from those whose beliefs were deep-seated and unalterable.”^[5] Early attempts centered on separating POWs by nationality, rank, and armed service. But the most critical step in establishing and maintaining control in internment facilities was to isolate hard-core Nazis from anti-Nazis or ambivalent POWs. This meant interrogating prisoners to determine their political preferences.

Initially having space for only 60 POWs, Ft. Hunt quickly became overcrowded. As early as October 1942, the War Department recognized its need of a second east coast prisoner questioning site, and it selected Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp S-51-PA near Pine Grove Furnace, Pennsylvania for conversion to a POW holding and interrogation facility, serving effectively as a daughter camp of the JIC at Ft. Hunt.^[6] Although not scheduled for completion until 1 August 1943,^[7] the War Department made Pine Grove Furnace POW Camp operational on 15 May 1943, anticipating the massive influx of prisoners transferred from British hands and additionally from those taken in Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa.^[8] The Army also used a portion of the POW camp at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, which it called a “P/W Holding Enclosure,” as a temporary holding site for prisoners it transferred between Ft. Hunt, Pine Grove Furnace, and permanent internment camps around the nation. On 1 July 1943, seven months after their preliminary interrogation at Ft. Hunt, both Horn and Rast were transferred to the two-month-old Pine Grove Furnace POW Camp for interrogation, afterward to be returned to Ft. Hunt for additional questioning.^[9]

Few people knew of the destruction of U-595 and the disposition of her crew. The U.S. War Department did not notify the International Red Cross of the status of the prisoners because informing them would signal the German Navy that their secret codes might be compromised. The War Department wanted it that way. In August 1942, CNO Admiral Ernest J. King had notified Chief of Staff of the Army General George C. Marshall that “for the effect on morale of enemy submarine crews that information of the taking of prisoners from U-boats be not available to the enemy governments for approximately three (3) months following the actual capture.”^[10] Further, the United States would tell the Red Cross of the capture of prisoners only after they arrived at their permanent internment camps located around the country.

Command of the sea was key to winning the entire European campaign of the war. The Battle of the Atlantic, which lasted from September 1939 until May 1945, was the war’s longest continuous military campaign. During almost six years of naval warfare, German U-boats presented a formidable threat to Allied ships transporting military equipment, supplies, and troops across the Atlantic. The neutralization of the U-boat menace, which meant capturing men, boats, and equipment (particularly the top secret Enigma cipher machine and its code books) for their intelligence value, was critical to Allied success in sea control.^[11]

From the war’s beginning until mid-1942, the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) enjoyed what its sailors called the “Happy Times” with few U-boat losses each month and pronounced success in sinking Allied tonnage. New construction of U-boats easily exceeded losses and officers and enlisted men of the submarine force gained valuable experience at sea. The Allies slowly turned the numbers around until by May 1943, U-boat losses were unsustainable; one quarter of the U-boat fleet was destroyed in that one month alone. The loss of U-595 occurred at the beginning of the “Sour Pickle Days,” a time which would see an increased sinking of U-boats. Losses accelerated until war’s end due to increases in the numbers of Allied war ships and their intelligence successes, tactics improvements, and technology advancements. Germany lost 765 U-boats and almost 27,000 submarine sailors (a 75 percent casualty rate) during its 69-month participation in WWII. There can be little wonder why U-boat survivors are seen smiling in pictures taken shortly after their capture; they were the fortunate few.

WWII U-boat Losses^[13]

When Horn and Rast first talked to interrogators at P.O. Box 1142, Navy intelligence men were on the lookout for fervent, controlling Nazis and for compliant, cooperative German prisoners, even low-ranking ones, who provided quick and accurate answers and whom they could turn into collaborators. Horn’s questioner was probably pleased to describe him as, “Good. Prompt answers. Can be persuaded.” Interestingly, after further interrogation, the Navy identified Horn as a Nazi. He listed Horn’s home as 9 Erlen Strasse, Barmen, Germany (35 km east of Dusseldorf) where he had lived with his parents and one sister.^[14]

Rast appeared an equally good intelligence prospect whom his interrogator described as, “Definitely to be used. Hesitated only very slightly. Good possibility.” From 5 Feld Strasse, Raguhn (135 km southwest of Berlin), Rast’s waiting family consisted of father, mother, one brother, and two sisters.^[15] A much more detailed 33-page report of the joint interrogation of the pair of young sailors over the period of 28 December 1942 - 3 January 1943 followed. Both Horn and Rast seemed cooperative and eager-to-please. And, without a doubt, terrified. The Navy gleaned important information from the pair: they revealed, for instance, that Germany had fitted active sonar countermeasures devices (he identified them as “pill throwers”) and radar detection and radar and sonar signature reduction (stealth) coatings on their U-boats in 1942.^[16] Even though the information gleaned from these low-ranking sailors was most likely hearsay, it was important enough to the intelligence men to note it in their final reports. Neither Horn’s nor Rast’s capture had yet been reported to the Red Cross; this was true of all twenty-one of their U-595 shipmates, all enlisted men and one-half of the boat’s complement, who joined them at the new, secret POW facility in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.^[17]

U-595

Assembled Interrogations of: 1. UO-926/41S

2. UN-10845/41T

from Dec. 28, 1942 to Jan. 3, 1943

Prisoners UO-926/41S (Gerd Horn) and UN-10842/41T (Werner Rast) talk about “pill throwers,” an apparent sound masking or noisemaker device used by U-boats to defeat Allied sonar. These interrogations were conducted at Fort Hunt by Navy intelligence officers from 28 December 1942 - 3 January 1943.^[18]

Handwritten notes on secret Army documents referred to the Cumberland County camp simply as the Furnace, a designation used by some former Ft. Hunt intelligence personnel over sixty years later.^[19] It was called by various other names and titles to keep its location and purpose classified, among them Carlisle, the 3300^th Service Unit, the 3300^th S.U., P.O. Box 167, Pine Grove Furnace, and McGoohan. Because the installation was covert and the camp was to be used for intelligence gathering, not merely housing POWs, the Adjutant General ordered that all correspondence pertaining to it be classified as, “Secret.”^[20]

Horn and Rast were among prisoners whom the army shuttled in and out of the Furnace; new POWs arrived from and others left for Ft. Hunt or permanent internment camps around the nation, most often via Ft. Meade’s P/W Holding Enclosure. When Horn and Rast arrived at the Furnace, they were taken by an MP guard to the camp’s Intelligence Building, where Op-16-Z interrogators on temporary duty orders from Ft. Hunt questioned them to determine if they had “possibilities” and should be returned to Ft. Hunt for a more detailed interrogation. If they were judged to be “duds,” they would be transferred to one of the permanent, unclassified internment camps around the nation.^[21] Prisoners stayed at the Furnace just long enough to be interrogated for intelligence value and evaluated for their political inclinations, which could take from a few days to a few months. This rapid turnover meant little chance for the POWs to organize an escape attempt or for them to control the camp. A best guess is that at least 7,300 prisoners passed through the Furnace during its thirty months of operation.^[22]

During the Furnace’s existence, Op-16-Z officers questioned there no fewer than 141 sailors. Of those, a minimum of 78 were U-boat men from at least twelve, possibly fifteen vessels. U-595’s Horn and Rast were among the first U-boat sailors questioned. Men from a total of eight, perhaps nine boats were at the camp during the first eight months of 1944, signifying the Allies’ success that year in capturing submariners.

U-595 POWs Temporarily Held at Pine Grove Furnace^[23]

U-118

On 12 June 1943, almost exactly seven months after U-595’s scuttling, the 1,600-ton combination minelayer and refuel/resupply submarine U-118 was attacked and sunk by four U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo bombers and four Wildcat escorting fighter aircraft based aboard U.S.S. Bogue, an escort aircraft carrier operating in the mid-Atlantic Ocean west of the Canary Islands. Fifty-eight officers, midshipmen, and enlisted men were onboard U-118 when the aircraft caught the U-boat on the surface in daylight under clear skies, calm seas, and 15-mile visibility. The Navy’s after action report described the boat’s destruction: “It is not surprising [that the submarine sank] after having been hit with sixteen 325 pound depth charges, 4,410 rounds of .50 caliber, and 800 rounds of .30 caliber ammunition. . . All officers on board were killed in the conning tower at the time of the attack, four dead were left in the water, and 17 men were picked up by the U.S.S. Osmon[d] Ingram. One man later died on board.”^[24] The survivors were transported to Naval Operating Base, Norfolk where they arrived on 20 June 1943.

U-118 survivors had been preliminary interrogated aboard Osmond Ingram after they were fished from the sea and brought aboard. When they arrived in the U.S., the POWs were photographed, fingerprinted, medically examined, and sent to Ft. Hunt for a detailed interrogation. Because of the limited capacity of Ft. Hunt, some of these men were transferred to the Furnace to be interrogated and temporarily housed. The Army sent Oberfunkmaat Rudolf Wiemer, ISN 5G-56NA, a twenty-four-year-old Radioman First Class to the Furnace along with three of his U-118 shipmates--Bootsmaat (Coxswain) Hans Siebert, Oberbootsmaat (Third Class Petty Officer) Werner Reinl and Oberfunkmaat Josef Holler (or Hoeller). Radioman Wiemer, a prize catch whose duties aboard U-118 included the sending and receiving of radio traffic, decoding and encoding of radio messages on the Enigma machine, using the hydrophone (underwater listening) devices, detecting enemy radars, and using the boat’s own radar, proved to be very talkative during interrogation.

During questioning on 17 July 1943, Wiemer complained to his Pine Grove Furnace interrogators, “They now make 22 year old youngsters C. O.s [commanding officers], Lieutenants senior grade – no experience. Too bad . . . Kapitaenleutnant Mohr was drowned, a great fellow.”^[27] Later, in speaking of a time in port in France, he related about his U-boat, “[We] were lucky . . . 3 nights of bomber attacks on [our base at] Lorient . . . we didn’t get into the [submarine] pen . . . our 1,600-ton boat was too big.”^[28] Wiemer referred to a mid-January 1943 Royal Air Force air raid against Lorient in which U-118 received minor damage.^[29]

Five days later, POW Hans Siebert told interrogators, “You can remember what they told us: ‘If we can sink as many boats as they build, we will win the war.’ And we shall manage it, too.” Interrogated at the same time, his shipmate, prisoner Werner Reinl fearfully stated, “Many men from the navy are being used in Russia.”^[30] Playing on the German prisoners’ fear of fighting on the Russian front was an effective tactic used by U.S. interrogators to loosen POWs’ tongues.^[31]

Endings

From September 1944 until war’s end, records show only three U-boat men at Pine Grove Furnace. Internment Serial Numbers (ISNs) on prisoner transfer orders began to identify predominately German army prisoners taken in Europe, indicating a shift to interrogating POWs from the Allied invasion of that continent at Normandy.^[32] When U-boat sailors Horn, Rast, and Wiemer were finally transferred to their internment camps, Washington notified the Red Cross of their capture and location. Their status would now be known by both their anxious families and the German government, and the men could now receive letters and packages from home. It would be a matter of years, though, until these sailors again saw their loved ones.

U-595 Seaman Gerd Horn, a Nazi who initially seemed cooperative and collaborative, was interned at the Stringtown, Oklahoma POW camp, a War Department-leased Oklahoma state prison. Stringtown was primarily an internment camp for German army POWs; that a U-boat sailor would be sent there is curious. Perhaps his Nazi identification led to Horn’s transfer to Stringtown.

On 18 December 1943, the Provost Marshal General ordered U-595 Fireman Werner Rast to the POW facility at Camp Blanding, Florida. Camp Blanding was designated the permanent internment camp for anti-Nazi naval prisoners. In November 1944, the Army transferred all naval POWs at Camp Blanding to Papago Park, AZ, an internment camp for naval POWs, the majority of whom were submariners.^[33]

It is not known when or where U-118 Radioman Rudolf Wiemer went after leaving the Furnace. But because he was part of a U-boat crew, we can speculate that he spent time at Papago Park with other submarine sailors and officers. He was repatriated to Germany sometime after war’s end and visited with his U-118 shipmates and fellow POWs Herman Wiedemann and Werner Reinl in 1956.^[34]

With the war in Europe over, German POWs were repatriated, and the Furnace’s wartime mission was completed. It closed on 2 November 1945.^[36] Over eight months later at 3 P.M. on 22 July 1946, the last American-held German POWs were officially released and sailed from Camp Shanks, NY for home aboard the harbor boat General Yates; the internment of foreign prisoners of war on U.S. soil ended.^[37]

Reading these sailors’ stories reminds us that the men fighting the war were young, as they always are. They were real people, often from loving families, who had pre- and post-war lives. Reading interrogation reports written by the intelligence officers questioning them, who were about the same age as their prisoners, reveals an impressive set of strategies which had to be rapidly developed to gather information from the POWs.

The August 1942 War Department agreement with the British to accept 50,000 of their POWs had been the watershed moment which galvanized a largely unprepared military intelligence establishment into action. That pact spurred the U.S. War Department to create a system for interrogating, imprisoning, moving, and controlling hundreds of thousands of enemy prisoners. The original transfer orders, transfer requests, and interrogation reports, many of which exist only on flimsy green carbon-paper copies rubber stamped with red security classification markings and occasionally hand written notes, documents a slow start mushrooming into a monumental work. As the intelligence effort grew, Pine Grove Furnace’s part in the process matured from its original design as a simple holding facility for Ft. Hunt to an active interrogation site and Nazi screening location.