Prisoners of the Home Front STUDIES IN CANADIAN MILITARY HISTORY The Canadian War Museum, Canada's national museum of military history, has a three- fold mandate: to remember, to preserve, and to educate. It does so through an interlock- ing and mutually supporting combination of exhibitions, public programs, and electronic outreach. Military history, military historical scholarship, and the ways in which Canadi- ans see and understand themselves have always been closely intertwined. Studies in Cana- dian Military History builds on a record of success in forging those links by regular and innovative contributions based on the best modern scholarship. Published by UBC Press in association with the Museum, the series especially encourages the work of new genera- tions of scholars and the investigation of important gaps in the existing historiography, pursuits not always well served by traditional sources of academic support. The results produced feed immediately into future exhibitions, programs, and outreach efforts by the Canadian War Museum. It is a modest goal that they feed into a deeper understanding of our nation's common past as well. 1 John Griffith Armstrong, The Halifax Explosion and the Royal Canadian Navy: Inquiry and Intrigue 2 Andrew Richter, Avoiding Armageddon: Canadian Military Strategy and Nuclear Weapons, 1950-63 3 William Johnston, A War of Patrols: Canadian Army Operations in Korea 4 Julian Gwyn, Frigates and Foremasts: The North American Squadron in Nova Scotia Waters, 1745-1815 5 Jeffrey A. Keshen, Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers: Canada's Second World War 6 Desmond Morton, Fight or Pay: Soldiers' Families in the Great War 7 Douglas E. Delaney, The Soldiers' General: Bert Hojfmeister at War 8 Michael Whitby, ed., Commanding Canadians: The Second World War Diaries ofA.F.C. Layard 9 Martin Auger, Prisoners of the Home Front: German POW5 and "Enemy Aliens" in Southern Quebec, 1940-46 Prisoners of the Home Front German POWs and "Enemy Aliens" in Southern Quebec, 1940-46 Martin F Auger UBCPress -Vancouver-Toronto © UBC Press 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the publisher, or, in Canada, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), www.accesscopyright.ca. 15 14 13 12 1110 09 08 07 06 05 54321 Printed in Canada on ancient-forest-free paper (100% post-consumer recycled) that is processed chlorine- and acid-free, with vegetable-based inks. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Auger, Martin R, 1974- Prisoners of the home front: German POWs and "enemy aliens" in Southern Quebec, 1940-46 / Martin E Auger. (Studies in Canadian military history, ISSN 1499-6251) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7748-1223-8 (bound); 978-o-7748-i224-5(pbk.) ISBN-io: 0-7748-1223-0 (bound); 0-7748-1224-9 (pbk.) i. German Canadians - Evacuation and relocation, 1940-1945. 2. World War, 1939-1945 - Prisoners and prisons, Canadian. 3. Prisoners of war - Germany. 4. Prisoners of war - Canada. 5. Concentration camps - Quebec (Province) - History - 2Oth century. I. Title. II. Series. D805.C3A94 2005 940.54*7271 C2005-905689-4 Canada UBC Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support for our publishing program of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), and of the Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Publication of this book has been financially supported by the Canadian War Museum. UBC Press The University of British Columbia 2029 West Mall Vancouver, BC V6T iZ2 604-822-5959 / Fax: 604-822-6083 www.ubcpress.ca Contents Tables / vi Foreword / vii Jeffrey A. Keshen Preface / ix Acknowledgments / xi 1 A History of Internment / 3 2 Organizing and Developing Southern Quebec's Internment Operation /19 3 Life behind Barbed Wire / 44 4 Labour Projects / 93 5 Educational Programs /116 6 Canada's Internment Experience: A Home Front Victory /147 Appendix /153 Notes / 159 Bibliography / 209 Index / 221 Tables 2.1 Number of parcels received in the camps, 1944-46 / 49 2.2 Number of successful escapes from southern Quebec camps, 1940-46 / 67 A.i Canadian permanent internment camps for German prisoners, 1939-47 / 153 A.2 Number of prisoners interned at Camp Farnham, 1940-46 /154 A.3 Number of prisoners interned at Camp Ile-aux-Noix, 1940-43 /155 A.4 Number of prisoners interned at Camp Sherbrooke, 1940-46 /156 A.5 Number of prisoners interned at Camp Grande Ligne, 1943-46 /157 A.6 Number of prisoners interned at Camp Sorel, 1945-46 /158 Foreword In so many ways, Canada's story in the Second World War was one of success. Its navy kept the sea lanes open in the North Atlantic; its air force played an indis- pensable role in Britain's Bomber Command; and its army assumed a seminal part in securing victory in the Italian and Northwest European campaigns. At home, Canada transformed itself into an industrial giant through the massive produc- tion of armaments. Public demand for services for soldiers and their families en- couraged an increasingly prominent federal government to usher in the modern welfare state. Despite the tremendous suffering of those years, the Second World War became known as the "Good War," a characterization born of the conviction that if there ever were a war that had to be fought, it was this one. How could it be otherwise? Did the Nazis not epitomize evil, as revealed by the concentration camps and the Holocaust? Had the lapanese not brutalized Allied prisoners of war through starvation, torture, and slave labour? But what of the Canadian record in this do- main? Did we, too, succumb to hatred of the enemy and commit violations of international law in our treatment of prisoners? Few Canadians today realize that nearly 40,000 Germans were interned or im- prisoned in Canada. Yet not one was killed or tortured. Although the internment system was initially unprepared for such numbers, and although significant ten- sions were experienced by the imprisoned, improvements took place steadily over time. By 1945, five camps were established in southern Quebec, and these are the focus of Martin Auger's study. Each camp was designed to house prisoners ac- cording to their service branch or according to the intensity of their Nazi beliefs. Martin Auger's work provides a comprehensive account of the administrative development of the Quebec camps and furnishes a significant contribution to social history by describing day-to-day life behind barbed wire. Although condi- tions in the camps conformed to the requirements of the Geneva Convention, Auger shows that psychological strain - among other difficulties - remained an integral part of POW life, and that outbreaks of violence and attempted escapes occurred. We also learn about the substantive efforts by Canadian authorities to make camp life more tolerable. One example is the off-site farm labour programs that relieved monotony for the inmates, enabled them to earn a little money to purchase extra provisions, and helped the local economy by providing desperately needed workers. Canadian authorities also implemented educational programs, including ones designed to impart the principles of democracy - an initiative that viii Foreword apparently altered the thinking of many former Nazis and led to several applica- tions to stay in Canada. Overall, Martin Auger has provided an exceptionally valu- able addition to local, military, and social history, and revealed yet another dimension of Canada's participation in the Second World War in which Canadi- ans can justly take pride. Jeffrey A. Keshen Professor, Department of History University of Ottawa July 2005 Preface Several years ago, my grandfather told us stories about a German prisoner of war who had worked on his brother-in-law's farm near Granby, Quebec, during the Second World War. He explained to us that this man was one of several inmates from a local internment camp to have volunteered for employment on local farms. The prisoner worked the fields by day and stayed in the farmhouse at night. He ate all of his meals with his employer's family. No armed guard supervised him. Ac- cording to my grandfather, communication was the major problem, as the Ger- man understood very little English or French. I remember him laughing when he told me that many people in the area feared that the prisoner might kill his brother- in-law and his whole family. Influenced by wartime propaganda that often por- trayed the enemy as savage beasts, local inhabitants assumed that because he was German this internee was a dangerous Nazi. They firmly believed that it was only a matter of time before he attempted to escape or committed acts of barbarity. Fortunately, no such thing happened, and the man was repatriated to Germany when war was over. This story is one of many about the German prisoners and the internment camps of southern Quebec during the Second World War. From that rainy July evening when the first trainload of internees rolled into the region in 1940 to the repatria- tion of the last inmate in June 1946, the five permanent internment camps located on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River at Farnham, Grande Ligne, Ile-aux- Noix, Sherbrooke, and Sorel held thousands of German internees. Fascinated by my grandfather's story, I began research on this topic in 1998 as part of my history MA thesis project at the University of Ottawa. I was surprised to find out that no historian, journalist, or other researcher in the humanities or social sciences had written an in-depth analysis of any of the internment camps of this region. Aside from first-hand accounts such as Eric Koch's Deemed Suspect (1980) and inclusion in broader studies dealing with the entire Canadian intern- ment operation like Yves Bernard and Caroline Bergeron's Trop loin de Berlin (1995), David J. Carter's POW behind Canadian Barbed Wire (1998), Chris M.V. Madsen and R.J. Henderson's German Prisoners of War in Canada (1993), and John Melady' Escape from Canada (1981), little has been written about the camps of southern Quebec. In fact, no thorough study of southern Quebec's internment facilities exists. Until recently many of the official government documents relating to Ca- nadian internment camps remained closed to public consultation. Only in the late