Reeducation and the War's End

The United States, as with many of the other Allied countries, was very concerned that they might be returning POW Nazis to Germany only to allow fascism to rise again. In the last year of the war, each Allied country developed reeducation programs that they believed would help convert the Nazis, or at the least, train some willing Germans to return and become leaders in democracy, assisting in creating a strong democratic Germany. The U.S. POW policy on reeducation was extensive, and this chapter discusses how it was created, enacted, its successes and failures, and how it was applied in Germany. This chapter also discusses another post-war policy that flew in the face of the Geneva Convention. Many German soldiers didn’t make it back to Germany until 1947, 1948, and even 1949. Instead, the United States handed German soldiers over to countries like Belgium, the United Kingdom, and France to be used as a form of “slave” labor in rebuilding their countries. This will be discussed at length.