Western Allied Intelligence and the German Military Document Section, 1945-1946

Journal of Contemporary History Copyright ! 2011 The Author. Vol. 46(2), 383–406. ISSN 0022-0094.

DOI: 10.1177/0022009410392408

Derek R. Mallett

Western Allied Intelligence andthe German Military DocumentSection, 1945–6

AbstractIn the year following the end of the second world war in Europe, various high-ranking Wehrmacht officers agreed to work for a co-ordinated US, British, andCanadian military intelligence operation called the ‘Hill Project’. This endeavor,which eventually expanded to almost 200 German prisoners of war, conductedresearch and analysis of the German Military Document Section at CampRitchie, Maryland, and produced over 3600 pages of reports for the WesternAllied governments. The Hill Project constitutes a little-known aspect of theinteresting postwar relationship between the West and their former enemies.

This article examines the main goals of this program and the kind of infor-mation these research projects provided to Western Allied military intelligence.It contends that during its operation at Camp Ritchie, the main body of workcompleted by the Hill Project studied Wehrmacht methods as a means to poten-tially improve the structure and procedures of the Western Allied armies.Moreover, a select group of the Hill Project prisoners later transferred toFort Hunt, Virginia, and assisted in preparing a defense of Western Europeagainst a potential invasion by the Soviet Army.

Keywords: Camp Ritchie, Fort Hunt, Reinhard Gehlen, German generals,German Military Document Section, Hill Project

On 25 September 1945, a little over a month after the Allied victory in thesecond world war, 27 German officers and 11 German enlisted men boardedthe SS West Point bound for the United States.1 These prisoners of war hadagreed to work for a co-ordinated US, British and Canadian military intelli-gence project. Kept secret from the American public, as well as from their otherAllies, the ‘Hill Project’ eventually expanded to almost 200 prisoners of war

This Journal of Contemporary History article derives from a larger manuscript which is currentlybeing revised for submission to an academic press.

1 Memorandum from Colonel R. L. Hopkins to Colonel Sweet dated 24 September 1945, Record

Group (RG) 319 – Records of the Army Staff, Entry 47C – Army Intelligence Project Decimal File,

1941–1945, Box 1294, National Archives at College Park, Maryland (Henceforth ‘NARA’).

who produced over 3600 pages of documents for the Western Allied govern-ments. The story of these ‘hillbillies’, as their Allied captors frequently referredto them, is a little-known aspect of the interesting postwar relationship betweenAmerican military intelligence and various high-ranking Wehrmacht officers.

An informal agreement between Major General Clayton Bissell, the AssistantChief of Staff, G-2 (Military Intelligence), of the US War Department, andMajor General John Alexander Sinclair, the Director of Military Intelligencein the British War Office, created the Hill Project as ‘a skeleton GermanGeneral Staff organization formed for the purpose of conducting such researchfor the War Department General Staff and the British General Staff as may bedirected.’ This agreement placed the operation at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, andreceived the approval of the US Army Chief of Staff on 22 April 1945. Exactlyone month later, on 22 May 1945, the two allies formally concluded theSinclair-Bissell Agreement. This Anglo-American military intelligence accordobligated General Bissell and the US War Department to ‘provide necessaryfacilities near Washington (near the German Military Document Section) forthe handling of key enemy specialist personnel’ and delineated a 15-pointresearch agenda entitled ‘Subjects for Research of German Documents’.2

Before the work of the Hill Project could begin, however, the documentslibrary had to be assembled. This job fell to the US Army’s Document ControlSection in Frankfurt, Germany, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel S.Frederick Gronich. Gronich and his staff collected and catalogued the majorityof the German documents captured in the closing months of the war in Europe.Gronich’s operation maintained a ‘detailed card index for all captured docu-ments in Germany’, allocated ‘priorities for research by various agencies’,shipped large volumes of documents to either London or Washington – laterto Camp Ritchie – and oversaw the operations of the US Third Army, USSeventh Army, and Austrian Document Centers as well.3 Because of hisinvolvement with the exploitation of captured German documents, Gronichquickly became involved in the US relationship with the German prisonersworking for the Hill Project as well.

As early as 1943, British and American military intelligence agreed to collectand maintain captured enemy documents. The armies in the theater of opera-tions immediately used important captured documents for ‘timely and accurateinformation regarding the German order of battle and related intelligence data’.The Allied militaries then transferred the documents to the Military IntelligenceResearch Section (MIRS) in either London or Washington for safekeeping and

2 Memorandum, Establishment of German Research Group Near Camp Ritchie, Maryland,

1 August 1945, RG 319, Entry 47C, Box 1292; GMDS, Report for the Month of January

(1946), RG 242, Entry 282BC, Box 135; Memorandum to Commanding Officer, Camp Ritchie,Maryland, 15 November 1945, RG 319, Entry 47C, Box 1294, NARA.

3 Headquarters, U.S. Forces European Theater, Report of Operations, Period 1 July–30

September 1945, RG 498 – Records of Headquarters, European Theater of Operation, United

States Army (World War II), Entry 681 – Historical Division Program Files, USFET, G-2,Operations Reports, 1945–1946, Box 1, NARA.

384 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 46 No 2

further, detailed research. In the spring of 1945, the London MIRS wasrenamed the London Military Document Section and basically became a‘records control and transmission organization’. The Washington MIRS,soon to be renamed the German Military Document Section, became the pri-mary ‘records depository’.4

On 14 July 1945, two months after the formal German surrender and theconclusion of the war in Europe, the US War Department and the British WarOffice jointly established the German Military Document Section (GMDS) atCamp Ritchie, Maryland. The camp’s fairly secluded location along theMaryland–Pennsylvania border about 65 miles northwest of Baltimore allowedthe GMDS to remain out of the public eye. Its mission was to ‘establish andoperate a library of captured German documents and publications’ and to‘conduct such military document research as is mutually agreed upon’ by theDirectorate of Military Intelligence of the British War Office and the AssistantChief of Staff, G-2 (Military Intelligence) of the US War Department.5

The initial library holdings consisted entirely of previously captured Germandocuments transferred from the Washington Branch of the MIRS, actuallylocated at Fort Hunt, Virginia. The initial American staff of 19 officers and53 enlisted men at Camp Ritchie occupied themselves in the summer of 1945with setting up the library and learning to file documents according to theGerman filing system, or Einheitsaktenplan, albeit with several ‘extensive’American adaptations. GMDS personnel even received the ‘full approval’ ofDr Luther H. Evans, the Librarian of Congress, and his chief of processing,Herman Henkle, for their efficient filing system.6

The following month, the GMDS staff continued their efforts in the ‘sortingand filing of captured German documents, publications, and periodicals, inpreparation for future intelligence research on the German armed forces’.The prisoners needed for the research project and the German General Staffdocuments that constituted the main focus of the operation, however, were yetto arrive. At this early stage, the GMDS began circulating some of the Germandocuments and publications already on hand to other US Government agen-cies, including the Air Technical Service Command, the State Department,Army Ground Forces, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and even theSurgeon General, and the FBI attached a permanent liaison officer to theoperation.7

For most of the month of September 1945, the American, British, andCanadian personnel occupied themselves conducting practice searches for‘materials on specific subjects which [were] likely to be important fields ofstudy’ in order to ‘train new personnel in tracing a subject through the

4 Seymour J. Pomrenze, ‘Policies and Procedures for the Protection, Use, and Return of CapturedGerman Records’, in Robert Wolfe (ed.), Captured German and Related Records: A NationalArchives Conference (Athens, OH 1974), 14–16.

5 GMDS, Report for the Month of June–July (1945), RG 242, Entry 282BC, Box 135, NARA.

6 Ibid.7 GMDS, Report for the Month of August (1945), RG 242, Entry 282BC, Box 135, NARA.

Mallett: Western Allied Intelligence and the GMDS, 1945–6 385

documents library and to test the current filing and indexing systems’. TheGMDS staff still awaited the arrival of both German documents and POWresearchers, which were scheduled to be shipped to Camp Ritchie sometimeduring September. Not until the last day of the month, however, did the fiverailcars arrive full of captured German documents from the Heeresarchiv(German Army Archive), the Oberkommando des Heeres (German ArmyHigh Command) and the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (German ArmedForces High Command).8

The GMDS staff did not have adequate time to catalog these valuableGerman General Staff papers before the prisoners arrived as well. Among the27 German officers who had been assembled at Camp Bolbec in Le Havre,France, and made their way across the Atlantic Ocean were four general offi-cers. The senior prisoner and nominal leader was General Walther Buhle, chiefof the army staff within the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW). Buhlehad previously served under Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg and had beenpresent on 20 July, when the Count’s bomb had demolished the ‘wolf’s lair’but left Adolf Hitler largely unharmed. Following the 20 July Plot, Buhle hadcontinued in the service of Hitler’s general staff and had eventually earnedpromotion to Lieutenant General for his ‘energetic’ work.9

His fellow general officers included Hellmuth Laegeler, who taught tactics atthe Kriegsakademie and held various staff positions before assuming the posi-tion of chief of staff for the Replacement Army near the end of the war.As members of the OKW, he and Buhle appear to have been the more impor-tant of the first four general officers to join the Hill Project. Franz Kleberger,director of the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) and Chief Quartermasterand finance officer for the German Field Army, and Rolf Menneking, a memberof the OKH staff, served less important functions.10 Clearly, however, all ofthese men would have had intimate knowledge of the newly-arrived generalstaff documents and could offer valuable experience, having served in Hitler’shigh command organizations.

Yet the Western Allies compromised to a degree in choosing these men forthe project. These officers had attained high enough positions in the generalstaff to have experience and expertise of value to the Hill Project. But they were

8 GMDS, Report for the Month of September (1945), RG 242, Entry 282BC, Box 135; RG 319,Entry 1206 – Military Intelligence Training Center, Box 1; The collections held by the GMDS also

eventually included Wehrkreis Libraries V, VII, and XIII, as well as the Nazi Library – Documents

Shipped and Ordered Crated for Shipment, Report of Operations, July–September 30, 1945, RG

498, Entry UD 681, Box 1, NARA.9 Roster of Officer Escorts for Prisoners of War Enroute to War Department, Washington, D.C.,

20 September 1945; The ‘Hill Project’, 6 November 1945, RG 319, Entry 47C, Box 1294, NARA;

Peter Hoffmann, Stauffenberg: A Family History, 1905–1944 (Cambridge 1995), 131.10 Roster of Officer Escorts for Prisoners of War Enroute to War Department, Washington,

D.C., 20 September 1945; The ‘Hill Project’, 6 November 1945, RG 319, Entry 47C, Box 1294,

NARA; Personalakten: Das deutsche Militarwesen – Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1949–1990

(PERS 1), ‘Laegeler’ (Files 103928 and 2885), Bundesarchiv-Militararchiv, Freiburg im Breisgau(Henceforth ‘BA-MA’).


lower-profile officers selected in part because they were unlikely to be tried forany war crimes or seriously questioned by the other Allies after their work hadconcluded. Lieutenant General Adolf Heusinger illustrates this point.Heusinger, a high-profile Wehrmacht officer, served as chief of the operationsbranch of the OKW for most of the war. He was originally scheduled to jointhe Hill Project in November 1945, but Allied lawyers called him to testify atthe Nuremburg trials and he never made it to Camp Ritchie.11 Thus WesternAllied intelligence was compelled to choose perhaps less valuable officers inorder to find men available for the operation.

Eight colonels, 11 lieutenant colonels, two majors and two captains,almost all of whom were General Staff officers, completed the first parcel of‘hillbillies’ coming to Camp Ritchie. A few days before their arrival, ‘arrange-ments [had] been made for the prisoners of the Hill Project to have the sameration and laundry service as enlisted personnel of the [US Army] to permitthem to perform more effective intelligence research work.’ Indeed, on 27September 1945, the US Provost Marshal General’s Office transferred 22German POWs already interned in the United States to Camp Ritchie toserve as support staff for the Hill Project. These men assumed responsibilitiesas supply sergeants, canteen operators, latrine orderlies, firemen, painters, offi-cer’s orderlies, and general clerks.12 Between October 1945 and April 1946,dozens of additional enlisted German POWs found themselves at Camp Ritchieserving the growing number of German officer prisoners working for theexpanding intelligence operation.

Prior to the prisoners’ arrival, Allied authorities also sought to ensure thatany reports produced by the Hill Project and the GMDS would be of ‘maxi-mum usefulness to the using agencies’. Officers from the US War DepartmentPersonnel Division (G-1), Military Intelligence Division (G-2), Organizationand Training Division (G-3), Supply Division (G-4), Special ProjectsDivision, New Developments Division, Army Ground Forces and the ArmyService Forces formed an informal panel of advisors ‘to give the research per-sonnel at GMDS guidance in their effort’. This advisory panel planned to meetwith the researchers at Camp Ritchie once every seven to ten days to discussany new research questions they wished the operation to address and receiveprogress reports on existing research projects.13

Brigadier General R.C. Partridge, one of the panel members from ArmyGround Forces, had studied at the Kriegsakademie in Berlin for almost ayear, from November 1938 until August 1939, as part of an exchange with

11 The ‘Hill Project’, 6 November 1945, RG 319, Entry 47C, Box 1294, NARA.

12 Memorandum to Commanding Officer, Camp Ritchie, Maryland, 15 November 1945, RG

319, Entry 47C, Box 1294; ‘Prisoners of War’, Memorandum to Colonel Tollefson, Office of theProvost Marshal General, 27 September 1945, RG 389 – Records of the Provost Marshal General,

Entry 461 – Enemy POW Information Bureau, Reporting Branch, Subject File, 1941–1946, Box

2482, NARA.

13 Memorandum from Colonel Alfred McCormack, Director of Intelligence, MIS, 25 September1945, RG 319, Entry 47C, Box 1294, NARA.


the US Army’s Command and General Staff College. Partridge could onlycomplete one year of the curriculum, since the outbreak of the second worldwar abruptly curtailed his studies. Yet his experience provided him uniqueexpertise and made him ‘especially helpful in developing reports of value tothe War Department and the Ground Forces’.14 Curiously, Partridge departedthe Kriegsakademie only a few years before Laegeler began teaching at theGerman military school.

Following their arrival at Camp Ritchie on 8 October 1945, the prisoners,under the direction of Allied officers, quickly set to work. The organization ofthese earliest research projects illustrates a remarkable level of collaborationbetween Allied officers and German prisoners of war, as well as between theAllied officers themselves. The major projects initiated in mid-October includeda study of the German General Staff Corps led by American Captain Robert C.Fitzgibbon. Canadian Lieutenant Colonel George Sprung and BritishLieutenant George Mowatt supervised a massive study of the German HighCommand involving General Buhle and 25 other German officers. CanadianCaptain Clarence Doerksen and American Lieutenant Michael Tsouros direc-ted a project dealing with German military personnel administration andGerman military training. Each project relied on the expertise of German offi-cer prisoners, as well as research in the GMDS documents by both GermanPOWs and Allied officers and enlisted men.15

Another intriguing feature of the Hill Project research was that some of thereports were prepared at the behest of one of a number of Allied governmentagencies. For example, the GMDS prepared the first two special reports on‘Officer Efficiency’ and ‘Officer Candidate Selection and Training’ in responseto queries from the US Adjutant General’s Office, and the first translations ofGerman documents were specifically prepared for study by the US Army Staff.This arrangement, where military or civilian agencies made requests for specificresearch studies to be conducted by German prisoner of war researchers andwriters, later featured prominently in the US Army Historical Division’s use offormer Wehrmacht officers in Germany in the late 1940s and 1950s.16 Withboth the Hill Project and later the Historical Division, these agencies madespecific requests because they were seeking specific information that could beput to use immediately.

The high level of collaboration between captors and captives as well asbetween the representatives of the three Allied governments continued for the

14 Timothy K. Nenninger, ‘Leavenworth and Its Critics: The U.S. Army Command and General

Staff School, 1920–1940’, Journal of Military History 58 (April 1994), 214; Memorandum fromColonel Alfred McCormack, Director of Intelligence, MIS, 25 September 1945, RG 319, Entry

47C, Box 1294, NARA.

15 GMDS, Report for the Month of October (1945), RG 242, Entry 282BC, Box 135, NARA.16 Ibid. For more on the use of this procedure and its implications, see Kevin Soutor, ‘To Stem

the Red Tide: The German Report Series and Its Effect on American Defense Doctrine, 1948–

1954’, Journal of Military History 57 (October 1993), 653–88; and James A. Wood, ‘Captive

Historians, Captivated Audience: The German Military History Program, 1945–1961’, Journal ofMilitary History 69 (January 2005), 123–48.


duration of the Hill Project. Work began on several more major research proj-ects in November, including a series of bibliographical studies charting thepossibility for further GMDS research projects led by British Major HortonSmith and American Captain Homer Schweppe. The Hill Project and theGMDS staff also initiated research projects on ‘German Manpower andMobilization’, ‘Logistics on the High Command Level’, ‘GermanFortifications and Defense’, ‘Organization and Methods of the German ArmyArchives’, ‘German Military Administration’, and ‘German OperationalIntelligence’, directed by four American officers and two British officers.17

The rapid expansion of the Hill Project’s research agenda necessitated arestructuring of the program’s administration as well as a significant increasein the number of personnel involved, both Allied and German prisoners of war.As of 1 January 1946, a new command structure supervised the program’sactivities. A new Deputy Chief of GMDS, British Lieutenant Colonel D.A.Prater, took over direct supervision of GMDS operations, and the co-ordina-tion of all research projects now came under the direct supervision of theResearch Chief, a new position awarded to Canadian Lieutenant ColonelGeorge Sprung.18 This new command structure highlighted the multinationalnature of the project, with a Canadian research chief reporting to a Britishdirector of GMDS, who in turn reported to Colonel George F. Blunda, theAmerican commanding officer.

The structural reorganization of the project was accompanied by the contin-ued expansion of its personnel. On 20 December 1945, eight German officersand nine enlisted men from the Pikesville, Maryland, prisoner of war campjoined the GMDS effort as translators. These men had been ‘screened for secu-rity and willingness to work and their translation ability [had] been checked bya written examination’. Less than three weeks later, on 8 January 1946,another 11 German officers and 13 enlisted men from the prisoner of warcamp at Camp Forrest, Tennessee, transferred to Camp Ritchie to serve astranslators and lithographers.19 The Hill Project researchers prepared all oftheir reports in German, since this was the prisoners’ native language andthe language of the documents in which they were conducting their research.Thus it fell to a large number of subordinate officers and enlisted men totranslate these manuscripts into English, necessitating the transfer of dozensof qualified prisoners to Ritchie to serve in this capacity.

By January 1946, the number of German officer prisoners actively engagedin the research agenda of the Hill Project had grown to 41, including the arrivalof two additional generals and 12 lower-ranking officers. The roster of ‘hillbil-lies’ now included Major General Herbert Gundelach, chief of staff for engi-neering and fortifications in the OKH. Gundelach brought additional expertise,

17 GMDS, Report for the Month of November (1945), RG 242, Entry 282BC, Box 135, NARA.

18 GMDS, Report for the Month of December (1945), RG 242, Entry 282BC, Box 135; GMDS,

Report for the Month of January (1946), RG 242, Entry 282BC, Box 135, NARA.

19 Procurement of PWs for GMDS, 20 December 1945; Procurement of PWs for GMDS,8 January 1946, RG 319, Entry 47C, Box 1294, NARA.


having previously served as Chief Quartermaster of the First Army and chief ofstaff for the generals in Albania. In addition to Gundelach, Major General Ivo-Thilo von Trotha, chief of the operations branch of the OKH, also transferredto Camp Ritchie. Von Trotha had excelled in various general staff positions.His experience in the Ukraine and later as chief of staff for Colonel GeneralGotthard Heinrici and Armee Gruppe Weichsel on the Eastern Front wouldhave made him especially important to Western Allied intelligence.20

The final general officer to join the Hill Project arrived in the spring of 1945.Lieutenant General Wolfgang Thomale, one of the few ‘hillbillies’ who was nota member of the general staff, had extensive knowledge in panzer warfare. Heserved for the last two years of the war as chief of staff for Colonel GeneralHeinz Guderian, after Guderian had been appointed Inspector General ofArmored Forces in 1943. Thomale, whom Guderian described as a ‘phenom-enal panzer officer’, contributed significantly to the project’s research on panzertraining and armored warfare.21

The final tally of hillbillies – the German prisoners directly involved with thework of the Hill Project – included 35 officers holding the rank of captain orabove. All of these men had been chosen because they possessed ‘special knowl-edge’. The list also included 22 more officers, largely lieutenants and captains,who were ‘selected for English language qualifications’, 14 noncommissionedofficers included because of their ‘familiarity with the available archives andrecords’, and 108 enlisted prisoners chosen for ‘technical and language quali-fications’. Hundreds more German prisoners of war were transferred to CampRitchie to service the camp’s POW enclosure and the requirements of the HillProject inhabitants, but did not actually take part in the research. The numberof support staff members grew from 646 prisoners after the GMDS reorgani-zation in January 1946 to as high as 1572 prisoners at the end of March 1946,when the project was nearing completion.22

The most important question surrounding the Hill Project, and the focus ofthis paper, regards the program’s purpose. What were the main goals of thisprogram and what kind of information did these research projects provide toWestern Allied military intelligence? The Sinclair-Bissell Agreement’s projectoutline offered three stated purposes for the Hill Project and the GermanMilitary Document Section: (1) research on ‘subjects which will aid in preserv-ing military security in Europe’; (2) research ‘in prosecuting the war againstJapan’; and (3) research ‘in improving intelligence organization and techniques

20 POW Roster PW Camp, Camp Ritchie, MD, 10 January 1946; Brief Notes on the Career andBackground of the Twelve German Staff Officers Selected to Remain with GMDS, 9 April 1946,

RG 319, Entry 47C, Box 1294, NARA; MSg 109, ‘Gundelach’; MSg 109, ‘v. Trotha’, BA-MA.

21 POW Roster PW Camp, Camp Ritchie, MD, 10 January 1946; Brief Notes on the Career andBackground of the Twelve German Staff Officers Selected to Remain with GMDS, 9 April 1946,

RG 319, Entry 47C, Box 1294, NARA; MSg 109, ‘Thomale’; ‘Thomale’, PERS 1/957, BA-MA.

22 The Hill Project, 15 June 1946, RG 319, Entry 47C, Box 1294; Prisoner of War Camp Labor

Reports, Camp Ritchie, Maryland, 15 January–31 March 1946, RG 389, Entry 461, Box 2484,NARA.


and to other selected matters on which important lessons can be gained fromstudying German methods in detail’.23

At the time the agreement was concluded in May 1945, obtaining informa-tion to aid the prosecution of the war against Japan had likely been paramount.But considering that the Wehrmacht POW officers who comprised the HillProject did not arrive in the United States until early October 1945, almost amonth after the official Japanese surrender, this was obviously not one of theproject’s goals by the time its work began. In weighing the other two options, itis important to evaluate how the Allied agreement might have defined ‘subjectswhich will aid in preserving military security in Europe’. Since no further def-inition was provided, one must suppose that preserving military security inEurope meant either the demilitarization of Germany to prevent the recurrenceof yet another world war, or, perhaps equally likely, preparation of an ade-quate defense against a potential invasion of western Europe by the Soviet RedArmy, something about which German General Staff officers would have hadconsiderable expertise to offer. Regardless, the documents produced by HillProject researchers suggest that the third option was the primary focus; that of‘improving intelligence organization and techniques and. . . [other] matterson which important lessons can be gained from studying German methodsin detail’.

Western Allied admiration for the prowess and efficiency of the Germanarmed forces motivated them to emulate the German military model. The HillProject and the GMDS at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, produced, published, anddistributed 15 studies to numerous military schools and commands, includingHeadquarters, US Forces European Theater (USFET); Headquarters,Mediterranean Theater of Operations, US Army (MTOUSA); the British JointStaff Mission, the United States Military Academy, the US Command andGeneral Staff School, the US Air War College, the US Naval War College andthe US Office of Naval Intelligence, among many others. The majority of thesedocuments were procedural studies that evaluated various aspects of the secondworld war German army and highlighted lessons learned and successful prac-tices that might be adopted by the Western Allied armies.

At least one of the studies found deficiencies in the German military system.The collection of publications included A Study of German OperationalIntelligence, focused solely on the German intelligence effort against theWestern Allies. This study detailed a variety of reasons for the ‘mediocre’ per-formance of German intelligence in the second world war. The authors con-cluded that ‘there [was] little the Allied intelligence services [could] learn fromthe Germans’, but that ‘this general discussion of German methods [could] haveat least the negative value to Allied intelligence of lessons in weaknesses’.24

23 German Military Document Section (GMDS), Report for the Month of January (1945), RG

242 – National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, Entry 282BC – Studies, Reports,

and Reference Material, US Military Publications, GMDS, Box 135, NARA.

24 German Operational Intelligence: A Study of German Operational Intelligence, 138, RG 242,Entry 282BC, Box 105, NARA.


Other publications continued to laud ‘the high military efficiency of theGerman Army as a whole’, while observing some peculiarities in the Germancommand system that Allied leadership should not attempt to reproduce. Forexample, a study of The German General Staff Corps found both strengths andweaknesses in this command structure. The report found that the Germangeneral staff corps had emerged in Germany during the Napoleonic Era anddeveloped over a century and a half, but had no direct equivalent in Alliedarmies. Likewise, a publication entitled The German Army Quartermaster andFinance Organization studied the Heeresverwaltung, or German ArmyAdministration, which was responsible for all quartermaster and finance func-tions, including ‘all cash transactions, rations, quartering, barracks and officeequipment’ and other responsibilities. The authors of this publication con-cluded that the Army Administration was ‘remarkably successful’, despite thefact that it operated independently of the Army command structure. Yet theyagain observed that ‘however well [the Army Administration] may have servedin the German Army, [it] could not be imitated successfully by an Army withother traditions and habits’.25

The Hill Project documents also included two operational studies. The first,entitled The German Operation at Anzio, examined German defenses againstthe Allied invasion of the Italian coast west of Rome from January to May1944. The second operational study, Armored Breakthrough, was the onlyone of the documents that dealt specifically with the German war against theSoviet Union. It was a translation of the war diary of the First ArmoredGroup, which later became the First Panzer Army, during the planningphase of Operation Barbarossa. It focused on the first 18 days of the cam-paign, when the First Armored Group was responsible for ‘following up theinitial breach of Russian frontier defenses and effecting the strategicbreakthrough’.26

The main body of studies formally published and circulated by the HillProject through the Military Intelligence Division in Washington, DC, offered‘important lessons’ and a detailed view of German methods that the WesternAllies might use to improve their own military organization and techniques.The ‘highly efficient mobilization of [German] forces in the summer of 1939’particularly impressed Allied researchers and their POW colleagues. GermanArmy Mobilization detailed the development of German mobilization plansfrom 1921 through their implementation in 1939. The structure of thesystem, initially reminiscent of Frederick the Great’s cantonal arrangementfor recruitment, featured the same number of corps as Wehrkreise (military

25 Ibid.; The German General Staff Corps: A Study of the Organization of the German GeneralStaff, RG 242, Entry 282BC, Box 106; The German Army Quartermaster and FinanceOrganization, 1–4, RG 242, Entry 282BC, Box 119, NARA.

26 The German Operation at Anzio: A Study of the German Operation at Anzio Beachheadfrom 22 January 1944 to 31 May 1944, RG 242, Entry 282BC, Box 111; Armored Breakthrough:War Diary of German First Armored Group, 5 February–10 July 1941, i, RG 242, Entry 282BC,Box 122, NARA.


districts) with corresponding territorial administration. This allowed Wehrkreisheadquarters to ‘direct the mobilization of all parts of the wartime Army to beformed in their areas’ and made them ‘responsible for notifying all troops andArmy installations within their areas’.27

A special unit, the mobilization group, led by a general staff officer, tookresponsibility for the Army mobilization plan. The group annually supple-mented the existing plan with further detailed orders that ‘outlined the person-nel and material plans for the current mobilization year’. The Wehrkreisheadquarters transmitted periodic reports to the mobilization group to aid indeveloping these orders and to regulate the personnel and supply situation byarranging transfers of men or material from one Wehrkreis to another to ‘sat-isfy the requirements of the overall plan’. Timely briefing of personnel andregular mobilization exercises in which the essential elements of the processwere rehearsed complemented the efficient planning and preparation. The onlyflaws in the German mobilization plan noted by the report – a lack of trainingin certain sectors of the field army and shortages of material – were not crit-icisms of the system itself; rather problems associated with the rapid activationof the Army.28

A study of German Training Methods also found much of interest in theWehrmacht procedure, the system of wartime training in particular. ‘All fun-damental training problems for the entire army (Field Army and ReplacementArmy) were worked out by the Training Branch of the General Staff of theArmy.’ This branch prepared training manuals that they disseminated through-out the various arms of the German military, which were largely based on thecombat experiences of its most decorated veterans. Moreover, in the interest ofproviding essential new information to the troops as quickly as possible, themanuals were regularly supplemented with ‘instructional pamphlets, traininghints, illustrated weapons pamphlets, and film and lantern-slide lectures’. Theindividual military branches also issued monthly bulletins with specialized,branch-specific instruction, pertinent combat experiences to spur further train-ing ideas, and information about new weapons and methods of combatemployed by the enemy.29

German Military Transportation provided a detailed analysis of the wartimeGerman transportation system. The Germans largely relied on railroads,although they utilized inland waterways to some degree as well. This hadmuch to do with historical development. Beginning with the Austro-Prussianand Franco-Prussian Wars of the 1860s and 1870s, Germany built extensiverail networks and connected their four main rivers – Rhine, Weser, Elbe andOder – through a system of canals. Given that all of their major rivers rungenerally south to north and that German fears of a two-front war necessitated

27 German Army Mobilization: A Study of the Mobilization of the German Army, iv, 10, 34, RG

242, Entry 282BC, Box 112, NARA.

28 Ibid., 19, 36–7, 46.

29 German Training Methods: A Study of German Military Training, RG 242, Entry 282BC,Box 116, NARA.


rapid east–west transportation, the rail network took precedence from thebeginning. Furthermore, 35,000 miles of mostly state-owned railroads by1938 and an abundance of coal and iron meant that even Hitler’s ‘motoriza-tion’ of Germany in the 1930s could not surpass the railroad as the primarytransportation medium; especially given German’s lack of oil and naturalrubber.30

Germany’s dependence on rail meant that the transportation system itselfoffered few insights for the Western Allied governments, who relied much moreheavily on automobiles and maritime transportation. However, what WesternAllied intelligence did take an interest in was the manner in which German‘civilian and military railway officials managed to cooperate very effectively’.While noting weaknesses, such as ‘the inability of lower echelons to makemajor decisions’ and the ‘uncertain relationship between the OperationsBranch of the Army High Command and the military and civilian transporta-tion authorities’, the study concluded that the ‘German military transportationsystem functioned efficiently’. In the east, the movement of troops and suppliesremained relatively functional until near the end of the war. And even in thewest, where American and British bombing pounded German rail networks,troop and supply trains continued running, although it required ‘ruthlesslycutting down civilian traffic’.31

A series of seven special reports rounded out the publications of the HillProject. Two of these reports, Officer Efficiency Reports in the German Armyand Officer Candidate Selection and Training in the German Army, wererequested by the Classification and Replacement Branch of the US AdjutantGeneral’s Office in Washington, DC. The British Army of the Rhine asked for astudy of Ration Administration in the German Army, and the Officers Branchof the US War Department General Staff’s G-1 Division sought informationconcerning German Officer Courts-Martial and Screening of German EnlistedPersonnel for Officer Appointments. Of the final two special reports, Infantryin the Sixth Year of the War was a translation of an internal Wehrmacht studyof the 29th Panzer Grenadier Division’s experience in Italy. German ChemicalWarfare compiled a bibliographical accounting of all important documentsconcerning German chemical warfare then in the collections of the GermanMilitary Document Section.32

In addition to these 15 published studies and special reports, Hill Projectresearchers initiated 10 other studies during their tenure at Camp Ritchieas well. Yet, for whatever reason, the Military Intelligence Division chose notto publish these manuscripts and essays. Some of them were never even trans-lated into English. Although at least one of them, a lengthy study entitled

30 German Military Transportation, RG 242, Entry 282BC, Box 116, NARA.31 Ibid., 55.

32 Officer Efficiency Reports in the German Army; Officer Candidate Selection and Training inthe German Army; Ration Administration in the German Army; German Officer Courts-Martial;Screening of German Enlisted Personnel for Officer Appointments; Infantry in the Sixth Year ofthe War; German Chemical Warfare; RG 242, Entry 282BC, Boxes 121–122, 124, NARA.


‘German Manpower: A Study of the Employment of German Manpower from1933–1945’, was later circulated on a very limited basis, despite not beingformally published.

The Hill Project prisoners and their Allied supervisors and co-workers com-pleted all 25 of these studies and reports by early April 1946. The only problemthat intruded during their roughly six months at Camp Ritchie was the healthof General Buhle. For unspecified health reasons, Buhle was transferred to thehospital compound at Fort George Meade, Maryland, in mid-March, where heremained until his repatriation to Germany in late April. In his absence,General Laegeler became the senior officer, and thus the prisoners’ leaderand spokesman.33

With most of the Hill Project’s work completed as anticipated, the operationwas officially terminated and the bulk of the prisoners repatriated to Germany,beginning on 15 April 1946. The prisoner-of-war enclosure at Camp Ritchie,established solely for the Hill Project and its support staff, was emptied andshut down by the end of the month, and Allied authorities co-ordinated pro-cedures for returning the prisoners to civilian life in Germany. Considering thatthe ‘hillbillies’ had been part of a top secret military intelligence project and, asmostly former members of the German General Staff, were high-profile pris-oners, Allied military intelligence considered them a ‘potential security menace’.Consequently, the prisoners’ military personnel files, which included ‘as muchdetail as possible about family and business associations, residences, politicalaffiliations, and a short security estimate of [each] man’, were circulated toAmerican and British military intelligence authorities in the EuropeanTheater. Allied operatives then kept these men under surveillance throughouttheir occupation of Germany. Allied officials also feared that information mightbe leaked by their own personnel who had worked with the GMDS at CampRitchie and took steps to impress upon these men the importance of keepingtheir work secret as well.34

The lengths to which American and British authorities went to stem any‘potential security menace’, not to mention the benefits they provided theseprisoners of war during the course of the operation – including caring for theprisoners’ families in war-torn Europe – testify to the Hill Project’s impor-tance to Western Allied military intelligence. This high level of secrecy alsosuggests that authorities in Washington, London, and Ottawa had greaterconcerns than simply gathering information for the war in the Pacific, orimproving Western Allied military operations. The Hill Project and theGerman Military Document Section were not simply historical endeavors.Had the operation been initiated simply to chronicle the German conductof the war, there would have been little need to keep the project’s existence

33 General Buhle, P/W Camp Fort Meade (Hospital), 24 April 1946, RG 165, Entry 179, Box

456, NARA.

34 Discontinuance of Prisoner of War Camps, 9 May 1946, RG 389, Entry 461, Box 2484;

Procedures to be taken in connection with return of Prisoners for Hill Project to Germany, 5 April1946, RG 319, Entry 47C, Box 1294, NARA.


so confidential. The US Army Historical Division’s Operational History(German) Section, which utilized former Wehrmacht officers to write a com-prehensive history of the second world war, roused little if any resistancefrom the American public or local German citizens, once the programbecame public knowledge in the years after the war. So why the shroud ofsecrecy surrounding the Hill Project?

Allied authorities feared that public knowledge of the German prisoners’participation in the Hill Project might have compromised both captor andcaptive alike. In early March 1946, the Directorate of Military Intelligence inLondon learned that word of the operation might be brought before the Houseof Commons in a debate over a defense measure. This possibility stirred dis-cussion among American and British authorities about the prospect of releasingan article themselves detailing the ‘proper story’ to the public to ‘vitiate possibleadverse criticism’. No evidence of such an article was found, suggesting thateither the matter was dropped before it reached the House of Commons, andthus no article was necessary, or the War Department simply decided againstsuch a pre-emptive public relations strike.35

Curiously, the proposed article would have contended that the Hill Projecthad been ‘undertaken from a strictly scientific point of view in order to deter-mine the cause for the success of the German Military Operations in order thatwar in the future might be prevented.’ Yet, despite the ostensibly ‘scientific’nature of the endeavor, Allied personnel feared that the prisoners involvedwould be branded as traitors by the German public, had information aboutthe Hill Project been released.36

A letter from General Buhle to Colonel Lovell dated 23 January 1946 sug-gests that the ‘hillbillies’ did harbor some qualms about working directly for anAllied intelligence project. Buhle describes the prisoners’ quandary by sayingthat ‘the situation which emerges from this unorthodox and unparalleledmethod of work is as difficult to comprehend for our own officers as itwould be for the officers of any other nation and it requires constant controlover our minds to vindicate our conscience.’ This supports the notion that theclandestine nature of the Hill Project was intended, at least in some measure, toprotect the reputations of the German prisoners involved.37

Despite the prisoners’ concerns about working with their recent enemies, anumber of reasons can be offered to explain their willingness to participate inthe program. Given the choice between languishing in hastily prepared and

35 Intra-Office Memorandum from Chief, MIS to A.C. of S., G-2, 14 March 1946, RG 319,

Entry 47C, Box 1294, NACP; No newspaper articles can be found that directly mention the HillProject. Only one can be found that mentions the German Military Document Section at Camp

Ritchie, Maryland, and it makes no mention whatsoever of the Hill Project or the use of German

General Staff officers: see ‘Secret Nazi Papers Bare Economic Plans’, New York Times, 9 February1946, 7.

36 Intra-Office Memorandum from Chief, MIS to A.C. of S., G-2, 14 March 1946, RG 319,

Entry 47C, Box 1294, NARA.

37 Letter from General der Infanterie Buhle to Colonel Lovell, 23 January 1946, RG 319, Entry47C, Box 1294, NARA.


often overcrowded prisoner of war camps in war-ravaged Europe or workingfor the Allies in a well-furnished camp in the United States with plenty ofamenities, many a prisoner would have easily chosen the latter. Furthermore,the ‘hillbillies’ gained a great deal from their service to the Allies, particularly inthe manner in which the US Army located and cared for most of their familymembers. The prisoners probably saw the potential to benefit their families andthemselves early on and made continued attempts to better their situationsthroughout their time in the United States.

For instance, the former members of the German General Staff appear tohave feared conviction as war criminals by the International Military Tribunaland insinuated that the Americans should correct any ‘misconceptions’ aboutthe ‘criminal-of-war question’. Buhle expressed concern because ‘the gravestindictments [were] being raised in the public during the Nuremberg trial’against various elements of the German High Command and that ‘the claimhas been uttered that they are to be considered collectively as criminal organi-zations’. He continued by asking Colonel John Lovell, who was assigned to theWar Department’s Military Intelligence Division in Washington, DC, andserved as overall chief of the GMDS operation, if it would be possible, ‘onyour journey to Nuremberg, to influence the appropriate officials to correct theview on war guilt of OKW, OKH and General Staff officers as a whole, whichwe feel is a misconception, so that a conviction of these groups will not beeffected’.38

The International Military Tribunal chose not to pursue the idea of collectiveresponsibility for the German High Command organizations, and it is doubtfulwhether Colonel Lovell could have influenced them either way. But Buhle’srequest illustrates that self-interest also lay at the core of the hillbillies’ willing-ness to participate in the program, despite their contention that their ‘onlymotive’ was ‘the desire to throw light on the pertinent and historic developmentof German military leadership and organization’ and to ‘contribute to worldpeace and thus save Europe and [their] country’.39

The Western Allied general staffs also fostered the secrecy of the projectbecause they did not wish for it to appear as if they and the German generalstaff ‘were collaborating in preparation for a future war’. This fear was pred-icated on a longstanding distrust between the Western Allies and their Russiancounterparts in the Grand Alliance. Moscow harbored fears that American andBritish anti-communism would eventually compel them to turn against theSoviet Union, possibly even siding with nazi Germany if it best suited theirinterests. Considering the nature of the Hill Project, Soviet fears may not havebeen completely unfounded.

38 Letter from General der Infanterie Buhle to Colonel Lovell, 15 December 1945; Letter from

General der Infanterie Buhle to Colonel Lovell, 23 January 1946, RG 319, Entry 47C, Box 1294,

NARA.

39 Letter from General der Infanterie Buhle to Colonel Lovell, 23 January 1946, RG 319, Entry47C, Box 1294, NARA.


The overwhelming majority of the Hill Project publications offered ‘impor-tant lessons’ and a detailed view of German methods that the Western Alliescould use to improve their own military organization and techniques. This, ofcourse, satisfied the third item on the research agenda for the Hill Project. TheJapanese surrender had relieved the program of any need to address the agen-da’s second stated goal, that of research that would aid the war in the Pacific.This left only the first item, research on ‘subjects which will aid in preservingmilitary security in Europe’, to be addressed. While a few of these documents,the study of the German General Staff Corps in particular, provided a greaterunderstanding of the structure and command of the German Army that mighthave proved useful in the process of the Allied demilitarization of postwarGermany, only one, Armored Breakthrough, specifically examined theGerman war against the Soviet Red Army, and it dealt exclusively with theearliest stage of the German invasion in 1941.

Consequently, it might appear that the first goal of the program had goneunaddressed. With most of the Hill Project’s work completed as anticipated,the operation was officially terminated and the bulk of the prisoners repatriatedto Germany, beginning on 15 April 1946.40 Yet, unbeknownst to the ‘hillbil-lies’ at Camp Ritchie, research into preserving security in Europe was beingconducted nearby, and a handful of these prisoners found their route homediverted through Fort Hunt, Virginia.

Lieutenant Colonel Gerald Duin, who was sometimes listed as the command-ing officer of the prisoner of war guard detachment at Camp Ritchie and othertimes as the Chief of the Hill Project, oversaw the camp’s POW enclosure. Hestated that

Colonel Lovell’s idea in assembling the German Documents Center Project was to collect a

representative German General Staff group and put them to work writing a comprehensive

history of German Army experiences on the Eastern Front in all sectors and all branches of

the service. Results of their work were to be complete studies of combat under all types ofcircumstances and conditions.41

Duin had first served in the second world war as Chief Interrogator at the USInterrogation Center at Fort Hunt, Virginia, codenamed ‘PO Box 1142’. TheFort Hunt staff interrogated the majority of the most important German pris-oners in American custody during the second world war, giving Duin invalu-able experience for working with the ‘hillbillies’ at Camp Ritchie. After ‘furtherwartime interrogation work in North Africa and Europe’, and then serving asChief Interrogator for the 12th Army Interrogation Center, Duin was

40 Discontinuance of Prisoner of War Camps, 9 May 1946, RG 389, Entry 461, Box 2484;

Procedures to be taken in connection with return of Prisoners for Hill Project to Germany, 5 April1946, RG 319, Entry 47C, Box 1294, NARA.

41 ‘Statement of Lt. Col. Gerald Duin’, in Kevin C. Ruffner (ed.), Forging an IntelligencePartnership: CIA and the Origins of the BND, 1945–49: A Documentary History, vol. I (CIA

History Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence, European Division, Directorate of Operations,1999), 36, NARA; italics added by the author for emphasis.


eventually assigned to the Hill Project at Camp Ritchie in October 1945.Clearly, Duin assumed a great deal more responsibility than simply command-ing a POW guard detachment. He organized the entire Allied relationship withthe prisoners and had been placed in this role because of his extensive militaryintelligence experience.42

Most revealing are Duin’s statements about the connections between the HillProject and the American relationship with the Gehlen Organization. GeneralReinhard Gehlen served as chief of Fremde Heer Ost (German Eastern FrontIntelligence Service) from April 1942 until near the end of the war. Presciently,he and his staff had hidden their most important documents before surrender-ing to the Americans on 22 May 1945. Gehlen transited through five differentlocations, from Fischhausen south of Munich to Wiesbaden west of Frankfurt,before American Captain John Boker took in interest in him. Boker reas-sembled Gehlen’s staff, retrieved a significant number of the hidden Germanintelligence documents, and alerted his superiors to Gehlen’s potential value toUS intelligence.43

Boker’s argument about the merits of working with the Gehlen Organizationmust have been convincing. General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s chief of staff,General Walter Bedell Smith, provided a plane to transport Gehlen and severalof his subordinates to the United States in August 1945. The general and hismen were placed at Fort Hunt, Virginia, for almost a year, where US MilitaryIntelligence directly interrogated them, as well as bugging their rooms andrecording what valuable information they could glean from these prisoners.44

Reinhard Gehlen utilized the intelligence network he built as Hitler’s Chief ofEastern Front Intelligence during the second world war to provide first the USArmy and later the Central Intelligence Agency with information about theSoviet Union and Soviet-occupied East Germany during the early years ofthe Cold War. He parlayed his control of this organization, along withsome powerful connections within the leadership of the new West Germanstate, into the highest position in West German intelligence: Chief of theBundesnachrichtendienst. In exchange for a decade of substantial support,Gehlen provided the US military and CIA with information, as well as offeringthe United States intimate knowledge and contacts within the new WestGerman intelligence apparatus.45

The focus of Gehlen’s work at Fort Hunt was providing the US WarDepartment Intelligence Division with information about the Soviet Unionand the Eastern Front during the second world war. In ten months at FortHunt, Gehlen and his staff, who came to be known as the BOLERO Group,under the supervision of American Captain Eric Waldman from the Pentagon,

42 Ibid., 35.43 Mary Ellen Reese, General Reinhard Gehlen: The CIA Connection (Fairfax, VA 1990),

40–52.

44 Ibid., 52–8, 74.

45 See Reese, General Reinhard Gehlen; and James H. Critchfield, Partners at the Creation: TheMen behind Postwar Germany’s Defense and Intelligence Establishments (Annapolis, MD 2003).


produced numerous reports regarding various aspects of Soviet military capa-bilities. These included ‘Methods of the German Intelligence Service in Russia’,‘Development of the Russian High Command and Its Conception of Strategyduring the Eastern Campaign’, ‘Fighting Methods of the Russian Armies Basedon Experience Gained from the Large-Scale Russian Offensives in the Summerof 1944 and the Winter of 1945’, and ‘Development and Establishment of theRussian Political Commissars within the Red Army’, as well as studies of theRussian Army order of battle, surveys of Russian Army units and equipmentand the organization of Russian commands and troop leadership. Havingdirected Hitler’s intelligence network against the Russians for three yearsduring the war, Gehlen now provided the same service for the US WarDepartment at the war’s end.46

Duin described numerous links between the work of the GehlenOrganization at Fort Hunt and that of the Hill Project at Camp Ritchie.First, Captain Boker, who was so instrumental in co-ordinating theAmerican relationship with Gehlen, had once served as a subordinate officerto Lieutenant Colonel Duin when the latter had been Chief Interrogator at FortHunt. Thus these two men, highly involved in the two respective projects, hadat the very least a longstanding working relationship. In addition to Boker, theGMDS ‘Record of Visitors’ lists both Lieutenant Eric Waldman, the Americanofficer in charge of the Gehlen Group at Fort Hunt, as well as his superiorofficer, Lieutenant Colonel Dmitri Shimkin, as guests of the German MilitaryDocument Section at various times. Furthermore, the GMDS transferrednumerous documents to Shimkin’s custody during the course of theiroperations.47

Significantly, Duin revealed that the bulk of the German Eastern Front intel-ligence documents that Gehlen had spirited away at the end of the war andBoker had later retrieved and brought to the United States had been transferreddirectly to Camp Ritchie for use by the Hill Project. ‘Twenty packing cases ofdocuments had accompanied [the Gehlen group] to the US’, according to Duin.These documents included ‘daily Eastern Front operational reports, daily situ-ation maps, G-1, G-2, G-4 estimates, orders and reports, etc.’ Duin related that‘Colonel Gronich after some argument had permitted the group to keep certaindocuments which they considered the most important.’ However, the ‘majority’of these documents went to Camp Ritchie. When the Hill Project completed itswork, these documents, along with the entire German Military DocumentSection, were sent to the basement of the Pentagon, where a member ofGehlen’s group was allowed access to the documents and ‘permitted to select

46 Report of Interrogation, No. 5725, 28 August 1945, Gehlen, Reinhard, vol. I, RG 263, Entry

86, Box 17, NARA; Reese, General Reinhard Gehlen, 52–8, 71–5; Ruffner (ed.), Forging anIntelligence Partnership, op. cit., xii–xxix (Preface), NARA.

47 ‘Statement of Lt. Col. Gerald Duin’, ‘Debriefing of Eric Waldman on the U.S. Army’s

Trusteeship of the Gehlen Organization during the Years 1945–1949’, 30 September 1969, in

Ruffner (ed.), Forging an Intelligence Partnership, op. cit., 35, 45; GMDS, Reports for theMonths of September, October and November (1945), RG 242, Entry 282BC, Box 135, NARA.


and take those documents which were of interest to 1142 [Fort Hunt interro-gation personnel] for use by the Gehlen staff.’48

During the Hill Project’s operation ‘a very strict security wall was maintainedbetween the group at 1142 [Gehlen’s group] and the one at Camp Ritchie [HillProject]’ according to Duin. ‘It was specifically desired to keep the two groupsfrom learning about the presence or work of each other, particularly the Ritchiegroup from knowing anything about the Gehlen [group] in order to preventany information from reaching the Soviets in the event that any of the Germanselected to enter the Soviet zone after being returned to Germany.’49 Americanmilitary intelligence viewed the ‘hillbillies’ as the graver threat, solely becauseof their numbers. Gehlen’s staff at Fort Hunt consisted of only a handful ofmen, whereas the Hill Project roster reached close to 200, plus the numeroussupplemental POWs not directly part of the secret project.

Further solidifying the ties between Gehlen and the Hill Project, Duin statedthat on 18 April 1946, following the completion of the operation and theclosure of the POW camp, he personally escorted most of the prisoners fromCamp Ritchie back to Germany. However, a few remained behind when thebulk of their colleagues were repatriated. These ‘hillbillies’ were transferred toFort Hunt for the purpose of continuing research in special areas of expertise.Upon his return to America in May, Duin assumed the position of chief of theinterrogation and research unit at Fort Hunt, which included the Gehlen group.The prisoners of war under Duin’s supervision at Fort Hunt now included theseformer members of the Hill Project who had been ‘attached to the Gehlengroup’ on 15 April 1946.50

The eleven prisoners obtained from Camp Ritchie included three generalofficers. General Thomale possessed special experience ‘in the field of training,organization, and development of equipment’. In this regard, US WarDepartment personnel viewed him as ‘probably the best qualified officer inthe German Army’. They sought his expertise in writing several further proj-ects, including a ‘German appreciation of United States armor’. GeneralLaegeler, because of his previous experience teaching tactics at the GermanKriegsakademie, was considered a ‘valuable consultant in matters of majortactics and staff procedure in the field army’. General von Trotha remainedin the United States because of his ‘extremely wide experience in the field’ as astaff officer and because the Americans viewed him as ‘without doubt one ofthe ablest young generals in the German Army’.51

48 ‘Statement of Lt. Col. Gerald Duin’, in Ruffner (ed.), Forging an Intelligence Partnership, op.cit., 39–41; ‘Final Report on GMDS’, dated 1 April 1947 lists the ‘Foreign Armies East documents’

as part of the German Military Document Section collections, however no date for their arrival is

given, RG 242, Entry 282BC, Box 135, NARA.49 ‘Statement of Lt. Col. Gerald Duin’, in Ruffner (ed.), Forging an Intelligence Partnership, op.

cit., 38, NARA.

50 Ibid., 37.

51 Data Concerning POWs To Be Retained, 15 April 1946, RG 319, Entry 47C, Box 1294,NARA.


Accompanying these men were four colonels, two lieutenant colonels, amajor and a captain. Fort Hunt obtained these prisoners for various types ofexpertise, including ‘knowledge of the German Staff College’, ‘most able andexperienced staff intelligence officer available’, ‘expert on all questions of theorganization and methods of basic training’, ‘specialist in chemical warfareweapons’, specialists in organization and personnel, and an ‘invaluable’ con-sultant on ‘all questions of the constitutional status of the Germany Army’.Duin claimed that two of these men, Colonel Kurt Rittman and Major WalterLobedanz, had been members of Gehlen’s organization prior to the end of thewar in Europe, and that another ‘hillbilly’, Colonel Johannes Haertel, had alsobeen a member of Gehlen’s group but for unspecified reasons was repatriatedrather than being retained at Fort Hunt.52

The studies to be completed by these former members of the Hill Project nowat Fort Hunt illustrate that the focus of the research now involved Americanpreparation for a potential war against the Soviet military. Thomale, seeminglythe most important to the project of the men retained, prepared two papers on‘Panzer Warfare in the East’. The first studied the effect of the ‘special charac-teristics of war on the Eastern Front’ on the organization, handling, tactics,design, armor and technical demands of panzer units and formations. Thesecond dealt with issues of supply for armored troops on the Eastern Front.Thomale also undertook a ‘German appraisal of U.S. Armor’ and a study in‘Panzer Casualties’, while Laegeler analyzed the German ‘Casualty ReportingSystem’ and von Trotha examined ‘Tactics with an emphasis on the last phasesof the war’.53

The work of these men at Fort Hunt was kept secret, much as it had been atCamp Ritchie. When United States Forces European Theater (USFET) cabled inlate April to ascertain the names of any German general officer prisoners of warthen interned in the United States, the Provost Marshal General’s Office con-cealed the work of the former ‘hillbillies’ still in America. The PMGOresponded by including Laegeler’s, Thomale’s and von Trotha’s names onthe roster they provided to USFET, but listed them as being interned at FortGeorge Meade, Maryland, a common point of arrival and departure forGerman prisoners of war in the United States, rather than at the secret inter-rogation center at Fort Hunt, Virginia.54

Eventually, in June 1946, the US State Department demanded that allGerman prisoners of war in the United States be repatriated by the end ofthe month. Despite protests by the War Department Intelligence Division,which wished to retain the Gehlen Organization and the attached ‘hillbilly’researchers, in-coming Secretary of State James F. Byrnes would not budge,

52 Ibid.; ‘Statement of Lt. Col. Gerald Duin’, in Ruffner (ed.), Forging an IntelligencePartnership, op. cit., 36, NARA.

53 German Military Document Section, MB 867, the Pentagon, 7 June and 19 April 1946, RG

242, Entry 282BC, Box 134, NARA.

54 German General Officer Prisoners of War Interned in the United States, 7 May 1946, RG 549,Entry 2202AC, Box 3, NARA.


insisting on the original deadline. Consequently, the 11 former members of theHill Project, along with the members of the Gehlen Organization held at FortHunt, were returned to Germany at the end of June 1946.55

Following their repatriation, American officials feared their appearancebefore mandatory denazification and demilitarization courts in Germany.In November 1946, Lieutenant General Clarence R. Huebner, USFET Chiefof Staff, informed Lieutenant General Lucius D. Clay, the US MilitaryGovernor in Germany, that ‘possible disclosure of certain information bythese people, which would be detrimental to United States interests, might benecessary should they have to appear before a German Court’. Huebner wasalso concerned that ‘these persons might or might not succeed in obtainingpardons’ if they actually went to trial. Consequently, in the spring of the fol-lowing year, General Clay granted amnesty to the returning ‘hillbillies’ for‘service in the interests of [their] own people’.56

The American’s primary concern in this circumstance was protecting USnational security interests. Presumably, this meant keeping the Soviets fromlearning about a secret project designed to better prepare the US Army to protectWestern Europe from any potential invasion by the Red Army. It is also note-worthy that the official rationale for granting amnesty was service to the Germanpeople. Given that the nature of the Hill Project focused on opposition to theSoviet military, and that Europeans, especially Germans, feared a Soviet invasionin the immediate postwar years, the ‘hillbillies’’ work would have indeed been inthe service of their own country. It is also curious that American occupationauthorities were unsure whether their recent prisoners would be acquitted indenazification or demilitarization proceedings. Apparently German courtsapplied stricter standards than did Western Allied military intelligence.

During its operation at Camp Ritchie, the Hill Project produced over 3700pages of documents for American, British and Canadian military intelligence(see Appendices A and B). Interestingly, when the American Captured RecordsSection compiled a ‘List of GMDS Studies’ in January 1954, the titles previ-ously listed as being prepared by the ‘hillbillies’ at Fort Hunt from mid-Apriluntil the end of June 1946 were not included.57 These reports were either notsatisfactorily completed or, more likely, were highly classified and not availablefor circulation at that time. Even without these documents, the studies preparedby the Hill Project at the German Military Document Section represent animpressive body of work, especially for prisoners of war employed by theirrecent former enemies and completed within only six months.

55 ‘Statement of Lt. Col. Gerald Duin’, in Ruffner (ed.), Forging an Intelligence Partnership, op.

cit., 36, NARA. Curiously, James Byrnes did not take office as Secretary of State until 3 July 1946,

three days after the imposed deadline for the repatriation of German prisoners of war.56 Letter from General Huebner to General Clay, 20 November 1946; Letter from General

Keating to General Huebner, 9 May 1947, Records of the United States Occupation

Headquarters, World War II (RG 260), Office of Military Government for Germany, Records of

the Executive Office, The Chief of Staff: Denazification Correspondence (Box 20), NARA.57 List of GMDS Studies, 29 January 1954, RG 242, Entry 282BC, Box 137, NARA.


The published manuscripts circulated fairly widely throughout American andBritish military channels. Yet, there is no evidence that these documents hadany impact on American strategic or operational planning in the immediatepostwar world. Indeed, the impact of these documents on American militarypolicy cannot be demonstrated in the way that the influence of the Germanmilitary history series can on the US Army in the 1950s. Moreover, despite thefact that several of the studies are still available in the libraries of places like theUS Army Command and General Staff College, the Joint Forces Staff College,US Army Europe, the US Army Field Artillery School, the US Naval WarCollege, the US Air Force Academy, and the Australian War Memorial, thereis also no evidence that any of these documents ever appeared as part of thecurriculum for the training of Western Allied military officers.

Thus it appears that these documents had very little long-term impact. Yetthe significance of the Hill Project and the German Military Document Sectionbecomes clearer when considered in the context of the developing Cold War.That Western Allied military intelligence utilized former Wehrmacht officers,even General Staff officers, after the conclusion of the second world war to gaininformation about the Soviet Union and how to prepare a potential war againstthe Red Army is not new. Moreover, the Werner von Braun Center and theMarshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, stand as testaments tothe American utilization of former nazis to gain an advantage – in this case inthe space race – against their former Soviet Allies. The Hill Project was just onepreviously unknown component of the larger postwar American effort to pro-tect its national security interests.

Following the termination of the project, Colonel Richard L. Hopkins,Deputy Chief of the War Department’s Military Intelligence Service, evaluatedthe German Military Document Section, which now included not only capturedGerman documents but also the studies prepared at both Camp Ritchie andFort Hunt by the Hill Project and the BOLERO Group respectively. His assess-ment illustrated the collection’s importance to Western Allied intelligence.Hopkins’ evaluation stated that the GMDS documents were ‘our richestsource of factual intelligence on the U.S.S.R.’, and that ‘much of this informa-tion [could] never be secured from any other source’. He concluded that ‘if theU.S. were to be forced to conduct strategic air operations against the U.S.S.R.the German document collection would constitute the chief source of intelli-gence upon which to base such operation.’58

The 11 former ‘hillbillies’ and the members of the Gehlen Organization werereturned to Germany at the end of June 1946.59 During its operation at CampRitchie, the main body of work completed by the Hill Project studied Germanmethods as a means to potentially improve the structure and procedures of theWestern Allied armies. By contrast, the ‘hillbillies’ and their counterparts in the

58 ‘Evaluation of GMDS Collection,’ summary sheet, Col. R. L. Hopkins to Chief of Staff, RG

242, AGAR-S, No. 1377, NARA.

59 ‘Statement of Lt. Col. Gerald Duin’, in Ruffner (ed.), Forging an Intelligence Partnership,op. cit., 36, NARA.


BOLERO Group at Fort Hunt assisted in preparing a defense of WesternEurope against a potential invasion by the Soviet Army. In this fashion, bothof the Anglo-American agreement’s remaining goals for the German MilitaryDocument Section – research ‘in improving intelligence organization and tech-niques and to other selected matters on which important lessons can be gainedfrom studying German methods in detail’; and research on ‘subjects which willaid in preserving military security in Europe’ – were met.

US military intelligence had little interest in Wehrmacht general officers, atleast the ones in American custody, throughout most of the second world war.Yet, as the war in Europe concluded, new questions emerged. As Americanfocus shifted to the war in the Pacific, US military intelligence sought moreinformation about Japanese military capabilities. As cracks appeared in theGrand Alliance, Washington prepared for the possibility that their formerSoviet ‘ally’ might now become a formidable enemy. And with the nazithreat defeated, the prowess of the German military could be assessed andlessons gleaned from their successes and failures. Wehrmacht general officershad a great deal to say about all three of these questions, and US militaryintelligence listened eagerly.

Appendix A

List of German Military Document SectionStudies (Published)

German Operational Intelligence: A Study of German Operational Intelligence(164 pages)

The German General Staff Corps: A Study of the Organization of the GermanGeneral Staff (276 pages)

German Army Mobilization: A Study of the Mobilization of the German Army(91 pages)

The German Operation at Anzio: A Study of the German Operation at AnzioBeachhead from 22 January 1944 to 31 May 1944 (128 pages)

German Military Transportation (77 pages)German Training Methods: A Study of German Military Training (316 pages)The German Army Quartermaster and Finance Organization (199 pages)Special Report No. 1: Officer Efficiency Reports in the German Army

(26 pages)Special Report No. 2: Officer Candidate Selection and Training in the German

Army (18 pages)Special Report No. 3: Ration Administration in the German Army (20 pages)Special Report No. 4: German Army Officer Courts-Martial (7 pages)Special Report No. 5: Screening of German Enlisted Personnel for Officer

Appointments (10 pages)Special Translation No. 1: Infantry in the Sixth Year of the War (18 pages)


Armored Breakthrough: War Diary of German First Armored Group(121 pages)

Bibliography No. 1b: German Chemical Warfare (11 pages)

Appendix B

List of German Military Document Section Studies (Unpublished)

A Study on Anti-Partisan Warfare (10 pages)German Appraisal of US Armor (7 pages)German Army Mobilization, 1921–1939 (656) [not translated]German Manpower: A Study of the Employment of German Manpower from

1933–1945 (270 pages)German Permanent Fortifications (305 pages)German Administration of Occupied Territories (265 pages) [not translated]Hitler as Supreme Warlord, 1939–1945 (10 pages)Program ‘Otto’ (10 pages)Tactics (‘Taktik’) (240 pages) [not translated]The German High Command (492 pages)

Derek R. Mallett

is currently an Assistant Professor of Military History at the USArmy Command and General Staff College, Redstone Arsenal

(Alabama) Campus. His previous publications include: ‘Who wasthe ‘‘Enemy Among Us?’’: Missouri’s World War II Prisoners of

War’, Missouri Historical Review 103(4) (July 2009).


Western Allied Intelligence and the German Military Document Section, 1945-1946

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Transcript of Western Allied Intelligence and the German Military Document Section, 1945-1946