[WWII Military Police (MP) Training Archive kept by a Soldier at Fort Custer, Michigan].

Riot Duty, Crowd And Mob Psychology, Vice Control & More

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A well-focused collection on Second World War military police training, in preparation for the military occupation of Europe, with over 1000 pages of printed and manuscript content.

The materials belonged to Private Swoope who enrolled in 1943 at the Provost Marshal General’s School at Fort Custer, Michigan.

Military police training manuals, course outlines (typically 2-6pp., apiece), completed class exercise sheets, and graded examinations, complement Swoope’s two notebooks and a plethora of classroom notes.

Subjects include the “Use of Firearms”; “Correlation of MP Units in Theater of Operations”; “Riot Duty, Crowd and Mob Psychology”; “Vice Control, Prostitution and the May Act”; “Town Patrolling”; “Sabotage Methods”; “Prisoners of War, Interrogation”; “Investigative Photography”; “Booby Traps”; “Sound Recording Devices” (planting microphones, phone “tapping,” etc.); various aspects of “Defense Against Chemical Attack”; and “Defense and Legal Aspects of Military Government.”

Some training materials were “Restricted” and classified —“Administrative Instructions to Civil Affairs Police Officers”; “American Military Government in Occupied Germany 1918–1920”; and “Methods of Supervising Public Officials and Employees in Occupied Territory.”

Proclamations No. 1 and No. 2 —also restricted— suggested the wording of decrees to be issued by the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territory (AMGOT), the latter concerning war crimes.

Another proclamation, issued by General Dwight D. Eisenhower to the people of Italy, discussed discrimination and stopping “...all laws which discriminate on the basis of race, color, or creed. ... They are the principles to which Axis leaders under German domination are opposed. You will be the beneficiaries of their defeat.”

Additional publications are Military Police Replacement Training Center For Custer-Michigan, Basic Training Notes (1943) and Riot Duty, The Provost Marshal General’s School, Fort Custer, Michigan, and a staggered run of 25 issues from 1945 of the 8-page weekly newsletter, Army Talk, Orientation Fact Sheet. One issue is dedicated to “Prejudice!—Roadblock to Progress.”

Private Swoope graduated in April 1944, prepared and ready for military police duties in occupied Europe.

Price: $2,500.00