Trial by Jeory

Shamelessly and ever so scandalously, I’m going to use this site to highlight some of the pieces I do for the Sunday Express. Sorry. Here’s the first:

And here it is copied below:

BRITAIN’S new Olympic site was once a prisoner of war camp for captured Germans including members of the SS and Nazi U-Boat crews, the Sunday Express has discovered.

Confidential documents held at the National Archives reveal that hundreds of German PoWs were held at the east London site during and after the Second World War. They were detained in huts in Carpenters Road, Stratford, just a few hundred yards from where competitors will bed down in the Athletes’ Village in two years’ time.

It was known as Camp 30 and was operational until 1948, when most German prisoners were deemed safe to return home.

The file seen by the Sunday Express at the Public Record Office in Kew, southwest London, details a series of inspection reports carried out by Foreign Office officials from 1945-48. The inspectors had been ordered to assess the mood, morale and the “re-education” of the Nazi captives before deciding whether they could be repatriated back to their homeland.

The documents show that despite being held in the heart of the Blitz-ravaged East End, the prisoners were warmly welcomed by local civilians. Their orchestra was invited to play in nearby Leyton public gardens, they played football against local club sides and were welcomed at council meetings in nearby Chingford.

During December 1947, many were even drafted in to work at local post offices to help with the Christmas rush. The camp was one of more than 600 in Britain. Prior to D-Day in 1944, Sir Winston Churchill had been reluctant to accept PoWs on British soil and most of those captured were instead shipped to huge camps in America.

However, by 1946, a year after the war, the numbers detained in Britain swelled to more than 400,000. Most hardcore Nazis were held in the remoter parts of Britain, but many ended up at Camp 30, including members of Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Corps Panzer brigades, who had been transferred from the US camps.

At its peak, Camp 30, whose main barracks were close to the now under-construction Aquatics Centre, housed more than 1,500 PoWs. They were made to work on nearby farms and help clear the devastation the Luftwaffe had wreaked on London.

However, such forced labour angered the PoWs, documents show. In August 1947, an inspector noted: “In one quarter, the view was expressed that the latest emergency measures taken by the British Government to secure maximum output in England smack somewhat of totalitarianism.”

Six months later, another quoted a prisoner as saying: “Who could like the British after they have retained us as slave workers for three years after the end of a war?”

However, most were said to be relieved to be in the hands of the British and not held by Stalin’s Soviet Union. The prisoners were kept under constant surveillance.

One inspector reported back to the Foreign Office that a group had been overheard plotting “sabotage in Germany and to work up an underground movement in Germany against the occupying powers”. One prisoner caused particular concern—the camp doctor, Hansen Silvester.

“A most unsatisfactory personality,” the inspector wrote. “Born in Copenhagen, he is half Danish and only took up German nationality in 1936. Though ostensibly non-political, he is impregnated with Nazi racial doctrines and is a great believer in the superiority of the Nordic race. He believes in euthanasia and sterilisation. He is a bad influence in camp.”

As well as working, the prisoners had to demonstrate they had shed any Nazi beliefs, which often involved learning English and taking an interest in democracy. Each PoW was graded A, B or C for their political views while huts were classified as white, grey or black.

The barracks in nearby Victoria Park, which will be used as an Olympic training ground, were designated category C and black, which was usually reserved for the SS. While the English lessons were not considered a success because the classes were held close to a fish manure factory —“ the stench of the environs may have had much to do with poor attendance,” an inspector observed—the interest in democracy was greater.

As well as being given radios and German and English newspapers, including the Express, to help learn about the outside world, and they were also taken to meet councillors in Leyton and Chingford, and members of the Methodist Youth Club in East Ham.

In what appears to be the final inspection report, in March 1948, the inspector, a Mr Hamilton, concluded: “With a few exceptions these men will return to Germany balanced in outlook and in the fullest realisation that a Third World War between Britain and Germany in unthinkable. The most important factor in their re-education has been the excellent civilian contacts and this in spite of the fact that the majority of the men have been stationed in the heart of the East End of London.”

Nick Hewitt, a historian at the Imperial War Museum, said: “It is a reasonable supposition that prisoners retained for a long period after the war were considered high-risk.”