German prisoners of war in the United States
German prisoners of war in the United States were members of the German military interned in the United States as prisoners of war during World War I and World War II. By the summer of 1945, there were 425,000 German prisoners living in 700 camps throughout the United States.
World War I
Hostilities ended six months after the United States saw its first action in World War I and only a relatively small number of German prisoners of war (POWs) reached the U.S. Many prisoners were German sailors caught in port by U.S. forces far away from the European battlefield. The United States Department of War designated three locations as POW camps during the war: Forts McPherson and Oglethorpe in Georgia and Fort Douglas in Utah. The exact population of German POWs in World War I is difficult to ascertain because they were housed in the same facilities used to detain civilians of German heritage residing in the United States, but there were known to be 406 German POWs at Fort Douglas and 1,373 at Fort McPherson. The prisoners built furniture and worked on local roads. The few dozen who died while incarcerated as POWs were buried at Ft. Douglas, Utah, the Chattanooga National Cemetery, and Fort Lyon, Colorado.
World War II
Background
After the United States entered World War II in 1941, the Government of the United Kingdom requested American help with housing prisoners of war (POWs) due to a housing shortage in Britain. The U.S. Government was not prepared to accept the prisoners for several reasons stemming from the fact that the United States Armed Forces had only brief experience with a limited POW population in the last world war. Specifically, the United States was unprepared for basic logistical considerations such as food, clothing and housing requirements of the prisoners. Almost all German-speaking Americans were engaged overseas directly in combat efforts and the American government feared the presence of Germans on U.S. soil would create a security problem and raise fear among civilians.
The camps and the Geneva Convention
Camps holding German POWs were built in forty-six states, although an exhaustive list of POW camps in the United States may not exist because of the small and temporary nature of some camps and the frequent use of satellite or sub-camps administratively part of larger units. U.S. guidelines mandated placing the compounds away from urban, industrial areas for security purposes, in regions with mild climate to minimize construction costs, and at sites where POWs could alleviate an anticipated farm labor shortage. According to the Geneva Convention Prisoners of War could work on farms or elsewhere only if they were also paid for their labor. As the United States sent millions of soldiers overseas, the resulting shortage of labor eventually meant that German POWs worked toward the Allied war effort by helping out in canneries, mills, farms and other places deemed a minimal security risk. Newspaper coverage of the camps and public knowledge were intentionally limited until the end of the war, in part to comply with the Geneva Convention and in part to avoid the fear of an enemy presence in such large numbers.
Camp life and escape attempts
Life for Germans in American POW camps was "firm but fair" and the likelihood of an escapee returning to German forces overseas was very remote. German prisoners had friendly interaction with local civilians, luxuries such as beer and wine were sometimes available, and hobbies or sports were encouraged. Alex Funke, a former POW at Camp Algona wrote: "We all were positively impressed by the USA....We all had been won over to friendly relations with the USA." Prisoners were provided with writing materials, art supplies, woodworking utensils, and musical instruments and were fed the same rations as U.S. soldiers. German POWs were allowed regular correspondence with family in Germany, and movies were shown as often as four nights a week. Even so, several escapes were attempted. On December 23, 1944, twenty-five German POWs broke out of Camp Papago Park in Arizona, not far from the Mexican border, by crawling along a 178-foot tunnel. By January, the escapees were caught, in part because a river they intended to cross by raft turned out to be a dry river bed.
Post-war developments and media coverage
The camps in the United States are an "all but forgotten part of history," even though some former inmates went on to become prominent in post-war Germany. About 860 German POWs remain buried in 43 sites across the United States, with graves often tended by local German Women's Clubs. Even in the communities which formerly hosted POW camps for Germans, local residents often do not know the camps ever existed. Reunions of camp inmates, their captors and local townspeople such as those held in Maine and Georgia have garnered some press coverage and local interest for this unusual and infrequently mentioned aspect of World War II.
There is at least one recorded attempt by US authorities to extract information from German POWs through torture. The camps for Germans were cited as precedents for various positions or failures of U.S. detainee policy during the debate over detainees at Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp.
Georg Gärtner escaped from a POW camp in Deming, New Mexico on September 21, 1944, assumed a new identity, and lived quietly for decades until "surrendering" on the Today Show to Bryant Gumbel in 1985. Although wanted by the FBI for forty years, he lives in Colorado under his adopted name Dennis Whiles, and wrote a book about his experiences after escaping, Hitler's Last Soldier in America.
See also
References
External links
- Camp Atterbury, Indiana, Italian and German POW Camp
- Camp Algona POW Museum (Iowa)
- Smithsonian article on German POWs in America
- German U-Boat website with POW information
- Extensive overview of WWI POW life
- Article describing WWI POW camp at Fort McPherson, Munsey's Magazine, 1918
Retrieved from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_prisoners_of_war_in_the_United_States
