Colditz Castle

After the outbreak of World War II Colditz castle was converted into a high security prisoner of war camp for officers who had become security or escape risks or who were regarded as particularly dangerous. Since the castle is situated on a rocky outcropping above the Mulde river, the Germans believed it to be an ideal site for a high security prison. It was named Oflag IV-C (Oflag being a contraction of Offizierslager).

In April 1945, US troops entered Colditz town and, after a two-day fight, captured the castle on the 16^th April 1945. In May 1945, the Soviet occupation of Colditz began. Following the Yalta Conference it became a part of East Germany. The Soviets turned Colditz castle into a prison camp for local burglars and non-communists. Later, the castle was a home for the aged and nursing home, as well as a hospital and psychiatric clinic. For many years after the War, forgotten hiding spots and tunnels were found by repairmen, including a radio room set up by the British POWs, which was then "lost" again only to be re-discovered some ten years later.

Following on from the Yalta Conference, relations between the East and the West deteriorated somewhat from their 'entente' as allies during the fighting.

A new situation developed and on the 16th April 1947, the financier Bernard Baruch is credited with coining the term 'cold war'. He said in a speech to the South Carolina Legislature, Columbia, South Carolina:

Let us not be deceived — we are today in the midst of a cold war. Our enemies are to be found abroad and at home. Let us never forget this: Our unrest is the heart of their success. The peace of the world is the hope and the goal of our political system; it is the despair and defeat of those who stand against us.

In fact the term had been used earlier by George Orwell in a piece he wrote for the Tribune and published on the 19th October 1945:

...looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the re-imposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity. James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications — that is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of ‘cold war’ with its neighbours.

Had the atomic bomb turned out to be something as cheap and easily manufactured as a bicycle or an alarm clock, it might well have plunged us back into barbarism, but it might, on the other hand, have meant the end of national sovereignty and of the highly-centralised police state. If, as seems to be the case, it is a rare and costly object as difficult to produce as a battleship, it is likelier to put an end to large-scale wars at the cost of prolonging indefinitely a ‘peace that is no peace’.

                         

There is something prophetic in the piece by Orwell - There is more to come on Baruch, his mother was a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy - not too dissimilar to the DAR (see entry Etiquette and Bigotry 9th April) More of this anon