The Little Third Reich on Lake Superior: A History of
Canadian Internment Camp R
by Ernest Zimmerman
After a childhood in Cologne under the Nazis and the terror bombing of the war years, Ernest Zimmerman emigrated to Canada in 1953, eventually becoming head of the history department at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. After some students mentioned to him that at the start of the war there had been a prisoner of war camp in the town of Red Rock, just east of Thunder Bay, Zimmerman gave himself the task of learning all he could learn and documenting the place, known as Camp R. It turned out, surprisingly, not to hold any POWs at all, but
only German civilians. The research and writing extended over many years. In 2008 he told several of his students that, if
anything happened to him, he’d like them to finish the book, and a few weeks later
he suddenly died of a heart attack. The Little Third Reich on Lake Superior is Zimmerman's book, completed by two of his students who are listed as editors.
It is a thorough study, adding to the sizeable body of work
already done on Canada’s internment camps. Virtually all aspects of the Camp R are
described for its entire 17-month history, from the circumstances leading to
the first round-up of prisoners in Britain to the final closure of the camp in the summer of 1941 on
the grounds of its inadequate facilities. Even before the camp was opened, we learn of the purchase
and preparation of the site, and the voyage of the prisoners across the Atlantic.
On one ship swaggering Nazis, intoxicated by German victories in Europe, concocted
a foolish plan to rush the machine guns and attempt a takeover of the ship, hoping to steer it to Hamburg, somehow passing through the British blockade. Luckily for them, the were talked down by cooler heads. One ship was torpedoed with the loss
of 830 lives. One Camp R was up and running, with all its administration, guards and prisoners in place, there is extensive information on virtually all aspects of its operation, its routines, its personnel, supplies, health, morale, escape attempts, and much more.
What made Camp R special was, in addition to its holding only German civilians, the fact that it mixed committed Nazis with Jews and anti-Nazis who had
fled Germany. Such a volatile mix, a microcosm of the Third
Reich, inevitably led to constant tension and occasional violence. Internees at other camps in Canada
dreaded being transferred to Camp R, which had a reputation as a snake-pit.
For readers with no special interest in Canadian internment
camps or Lake Superior regional history, the most compelling part of the book is
probably the story of how these three hostile groups came to be thrown together
into the same camp. It was the result of shocking bad behaviour on the part of
the Churchill government, its panic in the early years of the war, its anti-Semitic
and anti-German racism, and its
chicanery in duping Canada into accepting three boatloads of prisoners labeled
as “dangerous enemy aliens,” knowing that some were refugees who clamoured to
join the battle against Germany.
After the war began in earnest and the German juggernaut
overran western Europe, Britain became terrified of a German invasion. Invasion
fears spawned rumours of landings by German parachutists and a widespread
belief in sleeper cells, a “fifth column” of agents waiting to rise up and assist
the invaders. Although no evidence existed of either parachutists or fifth columnists, the myths gripped the nation, and all 75,000 German nationals, including refugees from Hitler’s
Germany, who had been welcomed in earlier years, were declared “enemy aliens.” It seems clear that, whether the government believed the rumours of fifth columnists or not, it benefited from the idea because it distracted the public from
its own failures, no only its defeats on the continent, but also the loss of Norway, which was an enormous fiasco, the result of Churchill's incompetence. “Intern the lot” became the watchword, taken up by the public and spurred on by the country's leadership, by Churchill, parliament, the military, and the newspapers. Especially outrageous were right-wing periodicals and members of the aristocracy who had
previously led the call for appeasement of Hitler. The security services, eerily echoing
Nazi racial theories, warned that, even in the case of Germans who had lived in
Britain for many decades, “ancestral blood” would triumph over political
loyalties. Even German Jews, it declared, were unreliable because of their
German blood.
Everyone in Britain holding German citizenship had to appear
before a system of one-man tribunals, usually run by retired judges, some of whom were badly out of touch, prejudiced, or both. In the end,
most people were judged as Category C enemy aliens, allowed to go free but
required to report weekly to the police. However, some judges issued extraordinarily
arbitrary judgments. Refugees who had brought money to Britain as they fled Germany
could be branded as currency smugglers who had broken the laws of their
country, therefore sentenced to internment camp as Category A, “dangerous enemy
aliens.” Jews could be condemned because in fleeing Germany they showed “typical
disloyalty” to their home country. One man, when asked if he hated Germany,
replied no, that he only hated the current regime. The judge ruled that therefore
he desired German victory.
The British government put all the pressure it could muster on a reluctant and
unprepared Canada to accept about 8,000 prisoners, all of whom, it declared,
were “a bad lot,” dangerous enemy aliens and POWs—German parachutists, downed
Luftwaffe pilots, submarine crews. Yet among the 1,150 prisoners finally sent
to Camp R were no POWs, several priests, 78 Jews, including several rabbis, 144
boys under the age of 18, one boy only 15, an old man of 71, and 770 merchant
seamen, some of whom had fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War. About
100 prisoners were genuine Nazis. As Canada slowly began to realize how it had been deceived and sought to sort out the confusion, British
authorities held back the documentation that would reveal their own duplicity.
Camp R held one prisoner whose name will go down in history.
Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, a cultured, Harvard-educated businessman, was an
important member of Hitler’s inner circle before he came to power. Hitler was
smitten by Hanfstaengl’s American wife, Helene, and when the Beer Hall Putsch
failed, he fled to the Hanfstaengl mansion. Putzi was gone, having fled to
Austria. Hitler, injured and in despair, standing before Helen, took out his
revolver and made as if to shoot himself. She scolded him, took the revolver out
of his hand and buried it in a large flour bin. Thus Hanfstaengl became a name linked
with one of the great what-ifs of history.
