Courtesy Photo | A training chart showing the interrogation and processing of prisoners of war...... read more read more
Subscribe
by Michael E. Bigelow, INSCOM Command Historian
On February 28, 1945, Capt. Alphons “Al” J. Hackl, officer-in-charge of the Interrogator of Prisoners of War (IPW) Team #3, issued his monthly report. Largely based on his team’s interrogation and questioning, the report provided a useful description of the enemy facing the 5th Infantry Division over the past month.
The 28-year-old captain was born in Canada but moved to Maryland before enlisting in the U.S. Army in July 1941. After attending officer candidate school, he was commissioned as an ordnance officer. Fluent in German, he found himself in charge of one of the Military Intelligence Service’s six-man IPW teams. Given the low numerical designation (#3) of his team, it might have been one of the first of the 180 teams in the European Theater. He and his team joined their division in early March 1944 and would remain with it until the end of the war, fifteen months later.
By the end of February 1945, Maj. Gen. S. Leroy Irwin and his division had fought across France and began moving into Germany across the Sauer River. Captain Hackl and part of his team worked directly for Lt. Col. Donald W. Thackeray, the division G-2. Since landing in France, Hackl had issued 128 reports. These almost daily reports described enemy composition and disposition, headquarters and artillery locations, and morale gleaned from prisoners of war. The length of these reports reflected the number of prisoners processed during the day. This number ranged from 4 on December 11, 1944, to 312 on January 19, 1945, to 365 on February 26, 1945.
All of Hackl’s reports were clear, concise, and usually insightful. Hackl possessed a good tactical sense so that at the end of January, he could write “No definite [identification] could be established for the units in contact. The large number of unlocated units indicates that the enemy is forced to drop off whatever units he can for flank protection while the remainder is attempting to escape from the bulge.” He was also thoughtful concerning enemy morale. Rather than simply writing off the retreating enemy as having low morale, he noted “Although the prisoners have lost most of their arrogance, they are still confident of a German victory within a year or so.”
For his February report, he made a general assessment of the enemy facing the 5th Infantry Division. He stated the enemy were “used in a stopgap fashion to meet the US threats developing in the various sectors [and]…the end of the period found the enemy forces in sector broken up into the ever-recurring collection of Kampfgruppen of all sizes up to and including regimental status, scattered and disorganized.” With these tactical groups, Hackl concluded the enemy “is in no position now to offer more than scattered local resistance to a determined push in this sector.”
For most of his eleven-page report, Hackl concentrated on the five German—four volksgrenadier and one panzer—divisions that faced the 5th Infantry Division. After a general appraisal, he constructed a narrative of each of the enemy division’s activities, movements, and status over the month. He used specific dates and locations for the enemy’s subordinate units that lent credibility and support to his assessment. Although he largely relied on the data from his team’s interrogations, he consulted Colonel Thackeray’s G-2 to fill in gaps in his own information.
To end his report, he included tabular data on enemy casualties through three periods—February 1-15, February 15-20, and February 20-28—reflecting the 5th Infantry Division’s operational phases. He concluded with a list of forty-four targets he provided to division; these included eighteen command posts, ten supply installations, eleven artillery positions, and five troop concentrations.
Captain Hackl’s report provided a meaningful look at the enemy’s operations for his division’s senior leaders. His narrative gave the leadership a clear understanding of the enemy’s overall tactics and movement. Moreover, it converted the symbols on the map board into tangible formations of real men struggling to stage a defense against the division’s onslaught. So, it is not surprising the file copy of the report included the handwritten notation: “CG has seen.”
| Date Taken: | 02.27.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 02.27.2023 11:58 |
| Story ID: | 439266 |
| Location: | FORT HUACHUCA, ARIZONA, US |
| Web Views: | 65 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Capt. Hackl writes a monthly IPW report, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
