So, I was on wikipedia today, and saw in the "did you know" section that German POWs at Camp Aliceville in Alabama during WWII had to opportunity to take college classes taught on site by professors from the University of Alabama, and that the credits were accepted by the Third Reich's Ministry of Education accepted the credits.
So, my question is this: how was this managed logistically? How did the University of Alabama get in contact with the MoE to negotiate this, and how did the transcripts get sent back to Germany so that they could be given credit back home?
As a side question, are there any other situations like this WWII (or any modern conflict), or is this unique?
Thanks in advance!
This sounds extremely interesting, as I have focused on education in the Third Reich before. The Wikipedia article cites a book ("Forth to the mighty conflict" by Allen Cronenberg), which itself doesn't give much more information and doesn't give any reference to where this information has come from.
However, there's an article ("We... Are the Most Fortunate of Prisoners": The Axis POW experience at Camp Opelika during World War II" by Daniel Hutchinson, in: Alabama Review 4 2011) which extensively describes the way german POW in this camp lived and also mentions the wide range of courses taught to them:
An Army report noted that POWs enrolled in courses as varied as mathematics, history, languages (German, English, Latin, French, Spanish), sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, metallurgy), vocational courses (agriculture, auto mechanics, bookkeeping, shorthand), as well as preparatory classes for students seeking postwar careers in medicine, law, electrical engineering, and architecture.
However, the article doesn't describe those transcripts being sent over to Germany. The only thing it mentions that would seem plausible is this:
German students also enrolled in correspondence courses from the nearby Alabama Polytechnic Institure (the future Auburn University) and distant universitites like the Universities of Michigan and Chicaco.
There might have been some sort of exchange between universities in the US and in Germany, even in times of war. However, to me it seems more plausible that those german students received some kind of certificates they planned to take home or, even more likely, they didn't receive any acknowledgement of taking those classes at all, but took them to gain more knowledge. But this is just my educated guess, because I've never heard of cooperation between the Reichserziehungsministerium and US universities regarding POWs before.