The Barbed-Wire College [Hardcover]

Ron Robin (Author), Ron Robins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 3, 1995

This is the extraordinary story of the 380,000 German prisoners who filled camps throughout the USA during World War II. Using personal narratives, camp newspapers, and military records, the author re-creates in detail the attempts of prison officials to mould the daily lives and minds of their prisoners. From 1943 onward, and in spite of the Geneva Convention, prisoners were subjected to an ambitious re-education programme designed to turn them into American-style democrats. Under the direction of the Pentagon, liberal arts professors entered over 500 camps nationwide. Deaf to the advice of their professional rivals, the behavioural scientists, these instructors pushed through a programme of arts and humanities that stressed only the positive aspects of American society. Aided by German POW collaborators, American educators censored popular books and films in order to promote democratic humanism and downplay class and race issues, materialism, and wartime heroics. By the war's end, the curriculum was more concerned with combating the appeals of communism than with eradicating the evils of National Socialism. The re-education officials, however, neglected to account for one factor: an entrenched German military subculture in the camps, complete with a rigid chain of command and a propensity for murdering "traitors". The result of their neglect was utter failure for the re-education programme. By telling the story of the programme's rocky existence, however, Ron Robin shows how this intriguing chapter of military history was tied to two crucial episodes of 20th-century American history: the battle over the future of American education and the McCarthy-era hysterics that awaited postwar America.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Robin's well-researched academic study is about the indoctrination program initiated by the Pentagon for German POWs incarcerated in the U.S. during WWII. Known as the Special Projects Division (SPD), the program of "reeducation" was unsuited to the soldiers of the Third Reich, given the unreconcilable differences between democracy and National Socialism. Robin lays bare the ineffectuality of the college-style curriculum, which by war's end was more concerned with countering communism's appeal than with eradicating Nazism. Noting the absence of social scientists and other behaviorists on the SPD staff, Robin uncovered ulterior motives and a hidden agenda. He argues convincingly that the architects of the SPD took advantage of the program to validate the humanistic canon, as opposed to that of their academic rivals, the behavioral scientists, with an eye to assuring postwar parity of liberal arts in the academic community. Robin teaches history at the University of Haifa, Israel. Illustrations.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

[A] ground-breaking study.... Robin's excellent book illuminates this unknown wartime chapter in American history. -- Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (April 3, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691037000
• ISBN-13: 978-0691037004
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,570,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.