Alfred Andersch abgehört. Kriegsgefangene Anti-Nazis im amerikanischen Vernehmungslager Fort Hunt

Abgehört – die Protokolle der Lauschangriffe auf gefangene Wehrmachtsgeneräle im britischen Lager Trent Park haben jüngst für Aufsehen gesorgt. Doch nicht nur Offiziere wurden vernommen und belauscht. Die US-Army schleuste Tausende „einfache“ Soldaten durch ihr Vernehmungslager Fort Hunt, unter ihnen den Schriftsteller Alfred Andersch und einige seiner Weggefährten. Die amerikanischen Dossiers geben neue Einblicke in ihre Biographien und Mentalitäten.
Abstract: For a few years research on the Wehrmacht in the Nazi state has received new impulses from a long forgotten source category: transcripts of tapped conversations made in Western Allied Interrogation Camps during the Second World War. Now another collection of files has been unlocked: over 100,000 pages of files from the secret US camp at Fort Hunt near Washington. This hitherto unknown collection contains protocols of tapped conversations, interrogation reports and biographical data on more than 3000 German prisoners of war made between 1942 and 1945. The high historiographical value of this collection is confirmed by the prisoner dossier on the writer Alfred Andersch contained therein. The eavesdropped conversations and interrogations exhibit new details of his biography: Andersch preoccupation with the fate of his previous half-Jewish wife, his views about German war society as well as details pertaining to his literary work. Additionally the file series contains dossiers about a number of his companions who, like him, had served in the Wehrmacht. The prisoner files reveal the main features of the contemporary thinking of these educated, Bourgeois Anti-Nazis and place Andersch into the context of a segment of the Wehrmacht that was critical of the Regime, but hardly non-conformist. The files reveal that many of these opponents of Hitler were decisively against Nazi rule, but simultaneously preserved a certain degree of identification with the nation and its military value system. Due to such convictions, even Anti-Nazis were able to integrate into the armed forces of the Nazi state - a decisive factor due to which heterogeneity and conformism did not have to contradict each other in the Wehrmacht.

Object Details

• Alternative title: Tapping Alfred Andersch. Prisoner of War Anti-Nazis in the US Fort Hunt Interrogation Camp
• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Alfred Andersch abgehört. Kriegsgefangene Anti-Nazis im amerikanischen Vernehmungslager Fort Hunt ; volume:58 ; number:4 ; year:2010 ; pages:563-598 ; extent:36 ; Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte ; 58, Heft 4 (2010), 563-598 (gesamt 36)

Contributors, Places and Time

• Creator: Römer, Felix

Further information

• DOI: 10.1524/vfzg.2010.0027
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2023040314231475275785
• Rights: Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 14.08.2025, 10:57 AM CEST