The Barbed-Wire College by Ron Theodore Robin

The Barbed-Wire College by Ron Theodore Robin

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.

"A compelling saga of well-meaning incompetence and inefficient oversight from aboveWhy [Robin] asks more in wonder than in criticism, did those in charge of re-education address the problem in such a limited manner? And how could these professors in uniform have later claimed resounding success for an operation that was clearly a fiasco?"---John Toland, Washington Times
"[A] ground-breaking study.... Robin's excellent book illuminates this unknown wartime chapter in American history." * American Historical Review *

Ron Robin teaches history at the University of Haifa in Israel. Among his books is Enclaves of America: The Rhetoric of American Political Architecture Abroad, 1900-1965 (Princeton).

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9780691037004
ISBN 10	0691037000
Titel	The Barbed-Wire College
Autor	Ron Theodore Robin
Serie	The William G Bowen Series
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Hardback
Verlag	Princeton University Press
Erscheinungsjahr	1995-04-23
Seitenanzahl	224
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
Hinweis	Nicht verfügbar