Internment by Stages
Much happened on the British mainland before the barbed wire ringed the first Manx camp, and much of it caused bitter and sustained criticism. This book confines itself to examining the life in the camps and what the internees meant to the Isle of Man; it tries not to debate the political or moral issues involved in the fact of internment itself.
However, certain facts are basic and should be given as objectively as possible. There were approximately 75,000 people of Germanic origin in Britain at the outbreak of war. Roughly 60,000 of them were refugees from Hitler, mostly Jews from Germany and Austria, the majority of whom had fled to Britain in 1939, when British authority had shown something of its old liberality towards refugees. Calculated anti-Semitism by the Nazis had risen to a shocking climax in November 1938. Men read the news sadly as the now stateless members of an ancient civilization swarmed west to escape destruction; consciences which had been conveniently silenced for some years were suddenly reasserted.
Years earlier the War Office in London had worked out a plan to take care of enemy aliens in the event of a war. It grouped them into categories, A and B. The first was for officers and gentlemen, men of position, who could afford to pay what amounted to modest mess bills, while the second was for other ranks. It was a naïve approach, and it was quite hopeless for dealing with whole hordes of refugees. It was overwhelmed. A yardstick was needed to apply to thousands.
After war broke out, it was decided that all Germans and Austrians, male or female, should appear before local Enemy Alien Tribunals and be classified into three categories: A would be doubtful risks posing potential security threat, to be interned at once. B category was where loyalty was suspect, but these could yet remain at liberty, subject to various restrictions. The C category would be for those who posed no risk and satisfied the tribunal.
Grading this mass of aliens was a rough and ready business at first. The tribunals were set up geographically, without enough regard being taken of the local population. This could result in curious imbalances; one tribunal might have to study hundreds and even thousands of cases, while another had only a few score. This meant that classification was more thorough in some places than in others; it could mean, too, that a man who would have been classified A, say, in Edinburgh, could have been classed as C, say, in Exeter. The system was later improved; the country was divided into twelve defence zones, each with an Alien Advisory Committee. But the urgency was great and the pressure from Whitehall increased as the War developed. However careful the arrangements, it was impossible to guarantee the uniformity of the grading throughout the country.
By the end of February 1940 roughly 73,000 cases were examined. It was a very imperfect and temporary end to a vast task. The result: 569 A risks, 6,782 B and about 66,000 C, where no security was involved. Rather more than 55,000 of the Cs were registered as ‘refugees from Nazi oppression’ and of them nine in ten were Jewish.
Such was the first stage of the internment problem. It had not proceeded without strong criticism; in a democracy nothing in the crisis of war ever does. There were complaints that within a few hours of war some of the comparatively few who had been collected for immediate internment included Jews who were violently anti-Nazi and who found themselves physically threatened when mixed with an intake of German merchant seamen who were violently anti-Jewish. The pattern was to be repeated all too often.
The early days, however, were relatively orderly. The chaos of mass internment was to come with the sweeping Nazi invasion of the Low Countries in the spring of 1940, when the direct threat to Britain became acute and it was decided that all male Germans between sixteen and sixty were to be interned at once. These internments began on 15 May. The administrative machinery to control them was primitive. So heavy had been the influx of refugees, it had been impossible to prepare for the numbers involved, and above all else the nation had the crisis of survival on its mind. Confusion then increased.
On 11 June 1940 the large colonies of Italians in Britain changed instantly from alien to enemy aliens. The administrative chaos was immediate. Whereas most of the Nazi refugees had not been in Britain more than a few months or at best a year or two, the Italians had usually been there for some years and were very much part of the British scene, many of them talking English and thinking British.
With the Italian entry into the war, Winston Churchill instructed the Home Secretary, Sir John Anderson, to intern all adult male Italians immediately. Desperate measures were now demanded in a dire national emergency.
Two days later the Home Secretary was able to tell the House that 10,869 had so far been interned and that this figure included all men and women in the B category.
After another week the Chiefs of Staff were calling for even more urgency. By now 12,000 had been interned from 76,000 male and female Germans and only 4,500 Italians out of 15,000. This would not do. It was simply not enough. The Home Policy Committee of the Cabinet thereupon decided to order immediate internment of all male enemy aliens between sixteen and sixty.
The wholesale rounding-up started on 25 June. Invalids, the very young and the over-60s were exempted, but so overburdened was the machine that error after error was made; schoolboys and the seriously sick were too often picked up and interned. Men were taken from their background without warning. The allegation of callousness was levelled time and time again. The attitude of the police varied, according to the local interpretation of the rules laid down and to the facilities available.
The general order to take into internment had to be acted on, but the instructions were frequently carried out in a haphazard way and it was said that in one camp more than a third of the inmates were unfit.
A typical case among hundreds was Dr Hermann Scholz, who lived in a small flat in Westminster near the Cathedral. It was convenient for the large London hospital where he seemed to be spending most of his life. Hermann Scholz was a houseman at a leading central London hospital. He was German, young, strongly anti-Nazi and tired, as was normal with housemen, who expected to be forever overworked. He had qualified in his native Berlin and had put himself in danger from the young army of brown-shirted hysterics for speaking up against the rising Hitler.
A medical professor at Cambridge had heard of him and his troubles and invited him to Britain. He came over in the mid-19308 and continued his studies. The way to specialization was through a junior post at one of the many teaching hospitals, most of them in London. Like dozens, if not hundreds, of German and Austrian doctors who preferred British tolerance to Nazi thuggery he stepped down to plant his feet firmly on the bottom rung of the medical ladder. He settled in London and worked the long, long hours of the junior hospital doctor.
The young Dr Scholz had many German-speaking colleagues, for the escape from the Nazis had gained in pace throughout the year. But unlike most of them he was not Jewish. He was that man whom Hitler himself saluted, an Aryan; German through and through, and proud of it. He abominated Hitler, convinced the man was a sickness that would pass, but he had nothing but admiration for his native land.
When the war came, he went before a tribunal and was promptly graded as a C-category alien. His record was clear and good: he had settled down in Britain; he had guarantors of eminence in the medical faculty, and his work at the hospital made him a valuable member of the community. The mere idea of internment was ridiculous.
Had he been engaged on any sort of war work, the doctor would have stopped immediately. He disapproved vehemently of Hitler and everything about the Nazis, but Germany was Germany; he would do nothing to help her enemies. Healing the sick, however, was different. He could carry on with a clear conscience.
Hermann Scholz carried on. But not for long.
At six o’clock one June morning there was a knock on his door and he found himself being sent to Rochester Row police station by a Scotland Yard detective. At the station he found a bewildered desk sergeant, whom he knew, and a small crowd of even more bewildered Italians who jabbered nervously and ceaselessly. He had with him a case holding the shaving kit and the toothbrush he had been advised to pack, and nothing else. He then found himself being herded into a police van, of the type used for delivering prisoners to court for the hearing of their cases, known affectionately to Londoners as a Black Maria. This took them to the Oratory School in the Brompton area of west London, where an interrogation unit had been set up.
Scholz was able to explain himself. He was a German; he would do nothing against Germany. He abominated the Nazis, but he was still a German. War work? He could do nothing against Germany. The attitude was clear-cut. It is reasonably certain to have earned the young doctor a new rating.
From Brompton he went on to Kempton Park, whose racecourse buildings had been converted into a transit camp for enemy aliens. In the early days the word ‘transit’ was theoretical; it was known for them to stay at Kempton for many weeks.
Not so the doctor. After a few days he was moved on, to Huyton, the large camp near Liverpool, converted from a half-built housing estate.
Hermann Scholz had started the journey to the Isle of Man.
The effect of internment on the Italians was one mainly of frightened bewilderment. So many of them had been born and brought up in Britain. Hundreds of them worked in the catering trade, while others were in industry in cities like London and Glasgow. Many spoke English with strong Scottish and northern accents. Wherever there was a job to be done and not much in the way of wages to pay for it, the Italians had been there for years, grateful for a chance to make a living.
With the Jews of Germanic, Polish and Central European extraction, the position was much more complex. They had flooded westwards in a great wave in the months before the outbreak of war, their numbers making uniform classification almost impossible in the circumstances. But they were only part of the Germanic/Jewish population of the country. Many had fled to Britain right from the start of the rise of the Nazi party. The Reichstag fire lit up the writing on the wall. Unlike the refugees who came in the desperation of 1939, many of them had had time to establish themselves as men of position, valuable to the country as a whole. They were doctors, surgeons, writers and art-dealers, publishers and theatrical producers, musicians and scientists. Some were already middle-aged and leaders in their professions; some grew old in the security of Britain. But mostly they were on the young side, doctors taking up appointments in London to train for additional medical degrees; teachers, musicians continuing their studies. Many did not even change their nationality from the country of their birth which under the Nazis was now disowning them. Many thought of themselves as belonging to no particular country, proud of their profession or calling, proud of being Jewish.
At first few people argued about the policy to intern the aliens. It was even said that the move was for their own safety as much as for national security. The majority of newspaper readers accepted that the risk of a Fifth Column in Britain could spring from the freedom of thousands of enemy aliens who might include Nazi agents and saboteurs. The popular Press was not on the side of the aliens. They were an easy target. It made good copy.
The SS Marzocco was homeward bound from Newcastle upon Tyne carrying a cargo of 9,000 tons of coal. She was registered in Genoa, where she was bound, and her life was spent normally in the coal trade between Italy and the Baltic ports. All that had changed. The Nazi obliteration of Poland had abruptly stopped such traffic, the British now blockaded the entrances to the Baltic, and the Italian colliers now traded in British ports and bought British coal.
It was not an easy trade. The British Navy had established shipping lanes that had to be followed by all or disobeyed at peril. Yet the Western Front had collapsed and the British Army had escaped back home in disorder. Britain faced inevitable surrender in a few weeks. The French were routed and soon Il Duce would lead a victorious Italy into a short mopping-up war alongside the invincible Germans. So thought Captain Giuseppe Marini of the Marzocco as he left Newcastle on the tide, a British pilot aboard just as in normal peacetime. Other ships could be seen astern as he steamed northwards from the river to the North Sea.
Down below Giovanni Moneta sat in the crew’s recreation room, reading an old Italian newspaper. He spoke barely a word of English and he was far behind on the world news. The crew’s radio, which was not the best of sets even when they were in home waters and reception was easy, was busy with Neapolitan songs, which came through fitfully, interspersed with Morse and static.
Moneta was a ship’s engineer, a young man of rising twenty-five. His family came from Milan in the north of Italy, but he had been brought up on the island of Elba, where he had lived until he joined the merchant navy. He was quiet, a good worker, and he knew his engines. Had he gone through university, he would by now have been a ship’s officer, but such was the Italian system that as a working engineer further promotion was barred him.
Suddenly he heard the news on the radio.
The waiting was over. The Duce had said the word. Italy was now at war. They had left Newcastle while to them it was still a neutral port. Now, quite simply, it was an enemy.
Moneta dropped the old newspapers and ran up to the bridge. Captain Marini took the news calmly. In any case he had been expecting it daily. He realized at once that a Fascist ship’s captain could not continue sailing under enemy pilotage. There were on board thirty people, a British pilot and a ship’s company of twenty-nine. There were two lifeboats. The pilot was given one and they cast him off.
They continued northwards, all twenty-nine of them, the minefields to starboard. The captain knew that it was only a matter of time. Aberdeen was below the horizon astern to port when a British aircraft sighted them and it became necessary for him to give his final orders. Moneta went below and smashed the ship’s condensers. She was heavy in the water, and her engine-room started flooding almost at once. There were explosions as great billows of steam and water burst amidships.
The crew took to the remaining lifeboat in orderly fashion. The SS Marzocco was never to fall into the hands of the British. She broke in two and went down quickly.
The crew beached on Salt House Mead in one party.
Within the hour twenty-nine Italians were inside the forbidding pink granite of Peterhead’s convict prison, built by its inmates in the grim 1880s.
They had started on the long tack to the Isle of Man.
The crew of the SS Marzocco did not stay in Peterhead more than a week. They were taken by coach to Edinburgh, were interned in the castle and were behind barbed wire for the first time. The wire was a commodity that had not been needed in the convict prison on the headland in the far north. They were together as a party and so were to remain for a long, long time.
Edinburgh’s historic castle housed them for three weeks. They were not in cells or any sort of solitary confinement but were kept together in one large room, which suited them. Moneta makes no criticism of the British officers who, he says, had had no opportunity to get things properly organized. The only remembered complaint is that the toilets were inaccessible at night, and the only convenience was a dustbin placed for the night in the centre of the room where the party lived.
At the end of three weeks the Italian seamen were transferred. In common with all the other internees temporarily held in the castle, they were medically examined and questioned as to their birthplace, their work and so on; in their case the interviews were short and to the point. They were enemy merchant seamen, young and suitable for maritime service to the Italian Navy. As such they very decidedly came into the A internment category. Theirs was likely to be a long war.
The only doubt was whether they should be sent to the Isle of Man or trans-shipped to Canada.
They were lucky. Landing at Douglas, they were marched off to the Metropole Camp, Captain Marini at their head.
The disorganization in the control of internment was at its worst following the massive collections of B- and C-class internees in June 1940, and it remained so during July.
Nowhere was it more chaotic than in the transport of some thousands to the Dominions, which had agreed to take very limited numbers.
In all, approximately 11,400 Germans and Italians were sent to Canada or Australia, more than 400 of them setting sail twice, as they were torpedoed on their first trip, brought back to Britain and then sent off a second time. Five ships were involved, four sent to Canada, of which one was lost, and one to Australia.
First of them was the Duchess of York, which sailed on 21 June, with a complement of 2,100 A-class German internees which included approximately 1,700 merchant seamen and 500 prisoners of war.
The second sailing was the Arandora Star, which left Liverpool in the early hours of 1 July with roughly 480 A-class Germans and merchant seamen and 730 Italians of seemingly mixed and doubtful classifications; official figures differed. The ship was sunk the next day. Of the total complement of 1,200 only 530 were saved.
Two other ships took aliens to Canada, the Ettrick, which took 1,300 B- and C-class Germans and approximately 1,350 German prisoners of war, and the Sobieski, with 400 Italians, nearly 1,000 B and C Germans and 450 German POWs.
Only one ship went to Australia, the troopship Dunera, carrying nearly 2,300 B- and C-class Germans, 200 Italians and nearly 250 A-class Germans.
Conditions varied; in at least one ship they were disgraceful. The voyage of the Dunera was a sad page in modern shipping history. Built to take 2,000 men, she carried a total of nearly 2,900 including crew and escort. The precise figures have been argued but it has been accepted that 1,150 were B and C German internees from Huyton, 830 from the Isle of Man and 300 from Lingfield. There were also approximately 440 survivors from the Arandora Star, consisting of 200 Italians and 240 German A-class which included some seamen.
The voyage took eight long weeks. Australian officials meeting the ship at Fremantle were said to have been deeply shocked at the living-conditions the internees had endured. Ill-treatment had varied from beatings to robbery with violence. Cases of belongings had been claimed as the men boarded the ship, were piled up on deck and ransacked during the next few weeks. Personal possessions such as rings, fountain pens and wrist watches were snatched by the ill-disciplined escort. Even safety razors were confiscated. The internees mostly lived in largely unfurnished holds in the depths of the ship where the heat and the stench were very bad. They had only brief periods on deck, guarded by troops with fixed bayonets. The food was poor, and for days on end the seasickness in such conditions added to the utter squalor.
News of the conditions aboard took a long time getting back to Britain, but slowly the letters came through from the internees in their new land. Protests were immediate but action was slow. Eventually there were inquiries, and the Government decided to give the internees compensation for their losses. There were also three court martials, starting on 20 May 1941, one of which resulted in an RSM getting a year’s imprisonment and being dismissed the service.
To the larger British public the voyage of the Dunera was at best an item in the small print. The loss of the Arandora Star became public almost at once and caused a sensation.
She was a famous luxury cruise liner, pressed into war service, still not fitted out as a troop carrier and not suitable for large consignments of internees. So her complement was only 1,200 and the conditions were nothing like as horrific as those on the Dunera proved to be when she set off nearly a fortnight later. What was to cause so much public distress after her loss was the doubt about the identity of who, and who was not, aboard her, for to keep father with son or pal with pal, men had swapped place with place in the camps from which the internees were being transferred, some wanting a transfer to they knew not where, while some were frightened of the unknown and only too anxious to stay put. Identities were temporarily exchanged; Pedro was called but Castellani turned up. Officialdom was too busy to do more than count heads.
The ship was torpedoed in the dawn of 2 July. Nearly 500 Italians were lost. So were 175 Germans. The horror of the sinking, the last hours of the lost, the ordeal of the survivors, have all been told many times.
The fact was that there was no really accurate record of the ship’s complement.
Soho suffered its agonies of suspense, awaiting details and identities. But the ship itself was lost, swastika pennant below the red ensign at its masthead and all. The pennant indicated that she carried prisoners of war. She did; but in the ensuing weeks of confusion nobody seemed to know exactly who had gone down and who was saved. Soho was severely shocked, and mourned. The restaurant world of London lost its gaiety.
When eventually the four ships had delivered their human cargoes, the Australian and Canadian authorities seemed surprised. They had expected boatloads of Germans and pro-Germans. They could not understand that so many men wanted Kosher food. They could not understand that so many spoke good English, that so many had been born and educated in Britain. To people in the Dominions it just did not make sense.
Criticism of the transporting of aliens to the Dominions was sustained and intense. The A-class German internees sent abroad had mainly been collected early in the war: it was the sending of B- and C-class that caused the bitterness.
Writing so many years later, it could be said that the criticism seems deserved for many reasons. The Italians on the Arandora Star, many of whom were lost, were too often indiscriminately selected and not properly documented. In all cases where German As and POWs travelled on the same ship as refugees, the enemy servicemen had better accommodation and conditions. Refugees, especially Italian ‘British’, were attacked by Nazi Germans who should not have been allowed contact with them. Jewish refugees, who seem strange selections for transportation anyway, were similarly manhandled by the Nazis aboard. It was unnecessary for the refugees to be consigned to the holds of ships without deck exercise; their living-standards almost always seemed needlessly bad, that of the POWs uniformly good. In at least two instances—on the Dunera and the Ettrick—refugees had their belongings systematically stolen, and in the second case the Canadian Defence Department eventually admitted liability.
Exactly the percentage of refugees from Nazi oppression who suffered in all this is uncertain; what is certain is that the inefficiency and mistakes of war made it absurdly high.