View source for Featherstone Prisoner of War Camp

'''A summary of the talk given by Colin Mills 13th March 2024'''

Last August, Colin was in the Library when he was disappointed to learn that there was nothing available on the Featherstone Prisoner of War camp. He had ‘stuff’ on his computer from a project, facilitated by the Haltwhistle Partnership in 2013 and led by Alison Higgs, to record and digitise a box of records about the camp.  Lots of separate documents were a bit of a jumble and needed to be sorted into a chronology to make a readable narrative. The result was a file of 80 pages of A4 sheets plus photographs!

When the Haltwhistle History and Heritage Group asked him to deliver a talk, it was necessary to  condense this material into a 40 minutes talk. Not easy.
If you weren’t living at the time, it is very difficult to appreciate today the circumstances of the 1940s. In post-war Britain, many people had come to hate anything German.  Having German prisoners of War on your doorstep was going to be difficult to take. The situation within Germany was equally problematic. Hitler’s Nazi party was discredited and any people who had been closely associated were not wanted back soon– especially Officers, some of whom might have been the enforcers of that brutal regime. Noone was quite sure who was who.  What followed is  the story of how that dilemma was handled at Featherstone and how up to 5,000 members of Germany’s elite military were persuaded to disown their previous allegiances and adopt the ways of a free, democratic society.

That claim to success was not a bit of British boasting.  It is what the camp inmates themselves testified. That was why Colin chose to relate the rest of the story not in his words but in the actual words written by the Featherstone camp inmates themselves. It is their testimony that it turned out to be a life-changing experience.

The camp site was large.  There were 302 camps in Britain for 400,000 prisoners, averaging 1,300 per camp. Featherstone was set up for 5,000. In 1943-4, it had been a transit camp for Italian and early German prisoners, then used by American forces during the build up to D-Day.

By 1945 it became apparent that in some of the Camps in Britain, senior German officers had tried to take over control of their camps away from the British authorities by coercing junior ranks into non-cooperation. At Comrie in Scotland they even condemned one of their own to death.  Those responsible were tried legally under the Geneva Convention and executed. Against this background, in many camps such  officers had to be segregated, then transferred to specialist camps like Featherstone. That is how over 4,000 of potentially “difficult” officers were gathered together at Featherstone along with up to 700 German orderlies to look after them, and the British camp guards. The population of the Camp was bigger than the whole of Haltwhistle!

It was decided to try a re-education programme that was almost unthinkable for those times. Colonel Vickers was brought in to take overall charge of the Camp. In order to be effective, he needed the co-operation of the inmates. You cannot force people to learn. It was necessary to persuade, not compel, and that required sympathetic leadership on the German side. He asked for General Heim to join them. He outranked other German officers and that was important in the German miliary psyche. Heim had been condemned in his own country for ordering his troops at Stalingrad to lay down their arms to prevent useless loss of life. Not a Nazi party activist, he was a soldier’ soldier.  

Vickers also asked for Herbert Sulzbach to be the head Camp Interpreter. Sulzbach had also been a WWI decorated German officer who fell foul of the Hitler regime because he was a Jew. He had escaped Germany with his family in the 1937. After war was declared, he was interned on the Isle of Man as an ‘enemy alien’ but was released and had volunteered to join the British army.

These three men devised the rehabilitation programme for the Camp. The programme was designed to promote re-education for the now redundant and unemployed former soldiers, in the hope of changing attitudes. Those in charge were risking their careers and reputations with this approach.

English newspapers were freely available. Films depicting the German atrocities at Auschwitz and Belsen were shown. In 1945, an inmate named Schmitt (ex-1st officer on Uboat 1105) wrote in his diary that this was when most of the Prisoners of War learnt for the first time about what had happened in the concentration and extermination camps. 

After their initial interviews, Prisoners of War were graded on their level of risk, determined by how committed they had been to the Nazi regime, of which they had all been at least card-carrying members. Category A prisoners would be the first to go home. We have a 1946 camp audit showing there were about 4% of these I the Camp. They wore white patches.

Category B wore grey patches and were the second to go home. Just over half were of this grade.

Category C wore black patches and were considered the most suspect. There was about 34% of these (i.e.1000+) and they remained at least three years in the Camp.
The government had allocated German-speaking Polish Jews to conduct these interviews at Featherstone. The inmates were unhappy about their attitude. After complaints were made, these interviewers were withdrawn and replaced by a team chosen by Sulzbach. This was a big first step as it showed the inmates that they were being listened to.

Boredom began to take over. Within the camp huts, informal talks were  shared and as there was nothing to write on, notes were taken on toilet paper! Gradually, books, theatre, lectures, etc were introduced on a more camp-wide, organised basis.

The inmates produced their own newspaper, written in German, which was printed by the Hexham Courant. It was never censored and extra copies were circulated to other camps and  sent back to family in Germany.

In 1946, the new Colonel Hugh McBain approached the officers saying that he couldn’t force them to work but they needed to be fit and healthy when they returned home to help rebuild their country. He needed 1,200 volunteers to bring in the harvest. He was inundated with men coming forward and the exercise was a huge success.

The commandant wanted to show thanks and General Heim asked for a Carol Service in Hexham Abbey. The prisoners were missing their families at Christmas.  Despite the logistics involved, arrangements were made. The inmates conducted their own service with their organist, minister and choir of 80. The Abbey was full with about 800 prisoners. Apparently, some inmates admitted to have wept during the singing of Stille Nacht.

As a gesture of goodwill, the massive barbed wire around the Camp was taken down, except for one strand to keep the cows out!

Talks helping to develop decency and a democratic society were given and these were backed up by the locals who, despite rationing and so on, were welcoming and kind. The Germans also saw the older generation doing whatever it took to keep the local community going.

At this time, it was still against the law for British families to invite a German into their home. In April 1947 it was published in the national newspapers that it was now okay as long as they vouched for the Germans and got them back to the camp before dark. By that date it was probably the  C grade inmates at the Camp that were mainly affected as many of the A and B grades had returned home or were about to be returned. 

One inmate wrote that he it had been so long so long since he had spoken to a woman or held out his hand to a child, his hand shook when he drank tea from a proper china cup.

As the remaining inmates prepared to return home, results of exams sat in the camp were credited in Germany and meant that any subsequent educational qualifications were reduced by one year.

One of the camp’s theatre groups group stayed on beyond their release and performed one of the York Mystery plays at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Ties with the local communities remained and when the locals learnt of the terrible conditions in Germany, some sent clothing parcels to the families.

Some prisoners decided to stay here permanently, and one of these is buried in Haltwhistle Cemetery.

Later, the Featherstone Park Association of former Inmates was formed. Meetings were held mainly in Germany but they retained links with this area. The Associations’ constitution states that its purpose is to foster the Spirit of reconciliation and friendship that flowed from their experiences at Featherstone Camp.  The Association also erected a plaque in recognition of the contribution that their Life-President Captain Sulzbach made, and it can still be seen on the remaining gate pillar at the Camp entrance. By the time the Association finally ended as all were getting old, it was clear that the members had become valued citizens in Germany, as ambassadors, judges, city mayors, university professors, making a valuable contribution to the re-establishment of their Country.

Colin’s file is with the Haltwhistle Library, where the Library management is considering how best to make it available for the public to read.

==Notes from the editor==
For further information on General Heim refer to the wikipedia entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Heim

There is a very small reference to featherstone POW Camp (Camp 18) on wiki under Featherstone Castle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Featherstone_Castle It is surprising that a more extensive entry does not exist.

One infamous inmate of the camp was Gunter d'Alquen about whom you can read more on wiki at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunter_d%27Alquen The work of  Herbert Sulzbach is used as a reference for this entry https://www.jstor.org/stable/43752009 . I can find very little else online about Herbert Sulzbach.

The story about the escape from Camp 18 to which Colin referred is told at Northumberland Archives https://northumberlandarchives.com/2019/02/15/escape-from-camp-18/

A description of hw the camp looked recently can be found here https://fabulousnorth.com/featherstone-park-prisoner-of-war-camp/ 

The Imperial War Museum has a small online entry here https://www.iwm.org.uk/memorials/item/memorial/78285 

Newcastle University has some images online at https://co-curate.ncl.ac.uk/featherstone-prisoner-of-war-camp/ 

The main source of information is "War on the Banks of the Tyne" a project and accompanying book from the Haltwhistle partnership. The sub website requires attention but can be found here https://haltwhistle.org/wotbott/index.html