Attempts at denazification of the German POWs
When the camps were established a goal of the United States Army was to maintain military discipline within the ranks of the prisoners. This was accomplished by allowing the German officers and non-commissioned officers to retain their military chain of command within the camps. Although the officers were sequestered in different compounds within the camps for living purposes, they entered the enlisted compounds for inspections, hearing of complaints, sharing of news from Germany, and announcements of policy given to them by their captors. Internal affairs were managed by the Germans.
This led to the senior officers continuing to indoctrinate their men in Nazi policy, helped by the false information they provided their men that the Gestapo had infiltrated the camps with spies, and that those who failed to continue to support the party and Adolf Hitler would be reported to Germany. Reprisals against the families of men who failed to support the Nazis were certain. The Germans banned what was banned in Germany. Reports of German failures and American successes were suppressed. Those caught acting in ways considered detrimental to the Reich were disciplined.
The discipline was often in the form of beatings, administered by loyal Nazis. These were men who were for the most part among the earliest arrivals in the American camps, the Africa Corps captured in Tunisia, and paramilitary officials taken in Sicily. Violence among the prisoners began to increase in both the main camps and the branch camps established to support the compulsory labor program. In the early days of the prison camp system the War Department established segregated camps (there were eventually three) to which sworn anti-Nazi prisoners could be assigned, but by 1944 these camps were overcrowded and the Army recognized the need to take additional security measures.
In early 1944 the Americans began to remove the Nazis to segregated camps, and took a stronger hand in the day to day internal affairs of the prisoners. The imposition of discipline by German officers was severely curtailed, and required the approval of American officers before it could be imposed. The Hitler salute was proscribed. In addition to the careful selection of films for the prisoners viewing a program was initiated to describe the American democratic system. The War Department introduced the Intellectual Diversion Program (IDP), encouraging attendance with promises of priorities for graduates when the time for repatriation finally arrived.
The IDP was technically in contravention to the Geneva Convention, but was designed to remove the vestiges of Nazism from the Germans after years of being force fed its precepts. It consisted of classroom presentations, films, and lectures supported with printed articles, all designed for indoctrination into western democratic ideals and procedures. It was, in design and effect, a re-education program. How effective it was has never been accurately determined, when many of its graduates were repatriated it was to areas in Germany which came under control of the Russians. Isolating the hidebound Nazis from the prisoners helped ease some of the violence within the camps, as did the comfortable living conditions.