German Prisoners of War in America (Artifacts of WWII) | American Artifact Episode 80
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 พ.ค. 2023
- After the initial contact with the Germans in North Africa in WWII, citizens across the U.S. started seeing POW camps pop up all over the country. One of them was even placed on the fields of Pickett's Charge in Gettysburg! In this episode, we're taking a look at a few artifacts at The Gettysburg Museum of History that are connected to the prisoners who found themselves working in the U.S. during WWII.
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There was a POW Camp in Maysville, KY. Maysville is along the Ohio River. My grandparents had a large dairy farm in Southern Ohio about 40 minutes from Maysville. The German POWs came to help with putting up hay and thrashing. My mom was a teenager and helped serve them lunch. My Grandma was fluent in German, having German parents, and mom always said when she started speaking in German to them they all got really quiet and all at once starting talking to her. They were so happy to be able to speak to someone who totally understood them. My Grandmother taught me German but died when I was 6. i still can speak some German . My mom said i picked it up naturally and would switch from English to German as a young child. I still have some of my Grandma's family in Germany that I keep in touch with.
I have a female first cousin, who's dad's parents were fluent in German. After the fall of communism, she learned of the origin of her dad's family in what was East Germany.
She went over to Europe about 20 years ago to check out the country. She said it looked like it never had a bomb dropped on the land.
Her dad's side didn't come to Texas until the 1870s, but the ancestors settled about 70-80 west-northwest of Houston.
Take care and GOD bless.
My Grandfather Voedisch (Mom's Dad) grew up speaking German as a youngster. They had a POW camp near Fort Devens, MA and my Grandfather served as an interpreter sometimes. He was given a beautiful watercolor painting by one of the prisoners at the end of the war. My mother inherited it and later passed it to me.
Wish you could post a picture here of the painting
@JimmyJames62 If I remember when I get home, I will post here. I am a truck driver and on the road right now.
I have a sketch of a ballerina done by a German POW who was. "sweet" on my 16 year old aunt . He was interred in a camp near Georgetown Delaware . Sadly she passed away in 2015 but I still have the sketch framed and dated August, 1945
My grandmother lived next to a small camp of German POWs who maintained and repaired farm machinery for the locals. She said there were regular events where the locals and POWs would sit down to a harvest feast.
My dad was a camp guard for German POW's. He said they had strong work ethic and were very industrious. They liked working on the local farms and they were always making things out of scraps. Some would make all wood coo-coo clocks to sell to camp personnel or the locals they work for.
Sounds about right we love carpentry
There was a small "satellite" camp in Mitchell, Nebraska in an old school building.
The prisoners worked as hired hands for the farmers in the area. They were treated very well...in fact, some of them remained in the area after the war and were welcomed into the communities as respected neighbors and friends.
I love that Erik covers all aspects of WW2 in his museum.
Me too!
My German Swiss grandfather farmed cotton in Central California during WW2. He couldn't get enough workers to harvest the cotton so he went to a POW camp near the farm and talked to the officer in charge. They sent out German POWs to pick the cotton. Grandpa was a friendly guy and missed speaking his native language. He brought the workers cold drinks and strudel and was having a chat in German with the prisoners. The guards didn't like that and told him not to talk to the prisoners or give them food. Grandpa tried to tell the guards he was Swiss but they didn't care. They thought he was a spy.
Is that why your last name became Americanized? Miller is the American version of Müller
@@floatahhh That was our family name. When my Grandfather went through Ellis Island the Immigration officer told him, "This is America, we don't do umlauts," and wrote Miller on his papers. That's why.
My father was captured at Cherbourg and sent to Camp Opelika in Alabama. He stayed there till 1946 when he was repatriated to Germany. We visited the area in the 70s and found a structure or two.
Wow!
Prior to going overseas to Europe in Jan 45, my father was the First Sergeant of a company which guarded POW's at a camp if memory serves in Kentucky. There was a oil painting hanging in our basement of classic WWII wooden army barracks which he told me was painted by a German prisoner. At that age I didn't appreciate the uniqueness and coolness of that artifact. Unfortunately the last time I saw it was when I went into the service in 1967. I can still see the painting in my mind's eye. Gosh I wish I knew what happened to it. As always good stuff JD
Interesting!
That’s so damn cool man. If by the grace of God you ever find it, please show us.
My grandpa was a POW guard and driver since he was colorblind..he HATED whistling...the German POWS always whistled...it bothered him til he passed in 2018 at 101 years old..I miss him..he was at camp Dodge iowa and took trains regularly to move them around..thank you for great memories of him..
Thanks for sharing that!
Great work! In my small town we had a German POW camp. Many of the prisoners would make crafts. One prisoner made a dollhouse out of tongue depressors. He ended up staying in our hometown and living a productive life.
My mother-in-law was in elementary school during WWII and had a pen pal in York, England. Their letters would be highly censored. They remained pen pals their whole lives and visited each other.
I was blown away when I first learned we had POW camps here in the US and one was nearby in Opelika, AL. Cool to see the wooden piece with Opelika on it. Heard that the German prisoners lived somewhat better than the US civilians enduring rationing.
I grew up in Holdrege, Nebraska and there was a POW camp in nearby Atlanta (NE). The prisoners served as farm labor while our men were overseas. There was a story of one POW who was accidentally left behind at a farm and he walked back to the POW camp voluntarily! The work might have been hard but it beat freezing your butt off in Stalingrad!
Winter is no joke in Nebraska either, ain't nothin' betwixt the State and the North Pole but a couple strands of bob wahr.
I learnt how to spell barbed wire from a small glossary in National Geographic magazine, which a feller was walking across America. A couple of words he heard in the panhandle of Texas were tan pannies=a dahm & bob whar.
I was a teenager in the '70s when the magazine came in the mail, it just stuck in my mind because l am from Texas down near Houston. It struck me funny at the guy phonetic spelling.
My Mom said when she was small remembers German Plows near the Corsicana area which is about 50 miles south of Dallas.
Sorry about the misspelling, meant it to read German POW's. Should of proofread first!
My dad was in the army in WW2, stationed on Attu island for 2 years. When he returned to the lower 48, he was assigned to guard German POW's in NM until his discharge. I think one of the things that brought that on, was he understood some German, being brought up in an area of the US where there were many German had settled. He had some interesting stories to tell about that time, and also his time on Attu. I thought it strange at the time that he would be in NM, when we had 21 POW camps here in the state of Nebraska, housing mostly German and some Italians. A very good book on the Nebraska camps that I have read is one called Nebraska POW Camps, by Melissa Marsh. It talks about life in the camps, the way the prisoners were treated, religion, labor and the "IDP" or Intellectual Diversion Program. This was a program to "de - program" the prisoners and show them how the Nazi way compared to Democracy. It must have worked, as there were a good number of POW's who returned to Germany, who quickly made the trip back to the heartland of the US to put down roots.
There was a German POW camp for Rommel's Afrika Korps members here in Lake Charles, which is in SW Louisiana. Apparently they worked on nearby farms and never attempted an escape. Maybe they were thankful to be out of the desert war. If you look really hard, there are a few almost invisible remnants of some building foundations, but are hard to spot. The camp was less than a mile from my grandparents' home. Apparently they were model prisoners.
Rommel was born and grew up in my fathers home town, there's a busts of him there. My father was captured in the fall 1944 Normandie he was in a fallschirmjäger divison Luftwaffe. He was in a camp in the US 2 years and 1 year in UK.
I am a serious 'old' student of the Civil War and have been to Gettysburg dozens of times. I am ashamed to admit I never knew that there was a POW camp there! Thank you for educating me!
Always learning!
same for me too!
I’m another commenter that had family involved with German POW camps. My great-grandfather volunteered at the camp in Aliceville, AL. He worked with POWs on carpentry projects they would do for “work” for local businesses. Nothing large scale, but it kept them busy as a craft exercise and provided some goods for the local government and businesses there. The prisoners would get cigarettes and other treats for their work.
He also did music activities with them. There was an old piano setup there and the local Americans would share piano music together with the German prisoners.
My great-grandfather became friends with a prisoner who was a decent artist and painted him a photo of a wolf catching prey in a German forest. He gifted it to him before he left the camp. He marked his name and the date and maybe some other notes on the back. It’s currently hanging on the wall in the living room of our family farm house not too far from the old camp.
I’ve always known it was something that my grandfather cherished but after he passed and the years went by it’s significance was a bit lost and most in the family had no idea there was anything particularly interesting about that painting. I got curious as I got older and investigated to find out about its specialness from my grandmother, who has always been our family “historian”.
This is my little story of how my family was involved with WW2 and the German POW camps. Thanks for your work on producing these excellent videos. They are very entertaining and stoke interest in the details of these important times gone by.
Randall
Fifteen years ago, I wrote a magazine story about the POW camp near Atlanta, Nebraska. I was able to communicate with several of the former German POWs. Most of them worked for area farmers or in area undustries. They all had good things to say about the way they were treated here; some even returned to the Nebraska 50 years later for a reunion with the people they met.
There was also a German pow camp north of Concordia, KS. Quite a few throughout the country, worth a hunt for them.
We had German POW camps in TX when I was a child there during WWII. I remember people saying that the prisoners were happy to be picking cotton and to be out of the war.
A lot of us were put in prison including my uncle Friedrich. During ww1 they put him in prison until the war ended because he wouldn’t fight his own kin. When he came out he was never the same. America did a lot of horrible shit.
I text this because l see your last name and you're from Texas.
My Mom was a Shelton who's family settled in Henderson County south of Athens. My Grandfather was born near a community called Crossroads in 1880.
His dad was in the 15th.Texas lnfantry and survived The War Between the States. After Great Grampa Shelton died in '84-86, the family moved to Navarro County west of the Trinity River.
All of my Mom's generation was born there and picked cotton up until 1950, then moved to the Houston area. My mom said she felt like she died and went to heaven to leave those cotton fields. Even without air conditioning was better than being in those fields.
Just saw your message. Shelton is not that uncommon a name. Indeed there were so many in Pittsylvania County, VA, that they called it Shelton County. My Shelton ancestors came from TN and settled near Corsicana. My first job, at age 5 was picking cotton for my grandfather there.
@@carywest9256
We had a pow camp up at Fort Custer! 6 were killed in a freak train wreck when they shipping out for home! Their buried in the national cemetery up there ! Some were sent up around Midland to work on the farm families whose members were deployed! Read where some didn't want to go back home after the war!
Yes, they were housed at what is now MBS airport between Midland and Saginaw. Most of the farmers in the area are of German descent and spoke German. The POWs had a decent time there and I think a few did stay.
During WW2 my dad was the commanding officer at a POW Camp in North Carolina. We have POW paintings given to my dad by prisoners. (During the Korean Campaign he was a staff officer in the Alaska Command.)
I have always been fascinated by the POW German war camps in the United States during WWII. The first time I discovered that they existed from reading an article in a magazine about a German POW camp in a small town in Kansas.
My father was a couple of years in a US camp and one year in UK. He worked on farms both places. He was a fallschirmjäger and was captured in the fall 1944 Normandie. He fought in Russia (Stalingrad/St.Petersburgh/Smolensk/Neva River etc.) They where known as "Die grüne teufel" because of the green parachutes made of green silk. He was 19 when he dived from the sky over Creece/Crete 20 mai 1941 in the first wave 0800 o'clock with the rest of 7 Flieger Luftwaffe Division.
We had a POW camp here in Crossville, Tn. It held Italian and German officers. I had talked to a man several years ago and he said the Italians and Germans would taunt one another.
The blocks that held the towers are still there along with the chow hall. Interesting place.
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James, where exactly in Crossville was it? I live in TN and would like to come out and see the site if possible
@@brucebendler3023 go west on US 70 past the airport. Take a left at the end of the airport runway. You will see the lights right beside the highway. It is called POW Camp Road. If you come to a T you are setting right next to the pillars that held one of the guard towers. I believe it’s now a 4H camp but they have all kinds of stuff from that era. Also if you go to our courthouse. Right across the street is a military museum with a model of what the camp looked like during WW2. One more tidbit of information. My county, Cumberland County, is the only county in Tennessee that neither seceded from the Union or stayed with the Union. It was a dead on the money tie. Made for a lot of guerrila fighting in this area.
My in-laws live right there at the old camp. Some kin of their’s used to work at the camp. There is an old brick chimney there right on POW Camp Road that was part of the laundry building.
@@jameskrontz4246 you are exactly right. I hadn’t been that way in awhile. The chimney’s are there from the barracks or laundry. Not sure about that. There was a lot more to look at 40+ years ago, but am thankful so much still remains.
Very interesting. I didn’t know there was a POW camp at Gettysburg. Thank you for another great video.
Well, now you know!
Always a little bit of a surprise to find a POW camp in various places across the US. Interesting time in US and war history. Thank you for sharing these insights.
I saw somebody mention Camp Atterbury Indiana. Spent quite a few summers for 15 days with my Ohio National Guard unit. Also went there in the fall for range fire qualification of your M16 rifle. Our unit in the late 70’s and early 80’s went to another POW camp in Ohio on the shores of Lake Erie, Camp Perry. We stayed in little 2-4 man huts scattered throughout the one side of the post. Didn’t realize until years later that those huts were built to house German POW’s. Our unit did its annual training there along with range fire in the fall. My father was a tanker in WWII and when the war was winding down he was in charge of guarding German Officers in a barracks set up. What was really bizarre was that one of the German officers, a Major, had stayed a year in my dads home town of Dayton, Ohio working with technical personnel at NCR, National Cash Register, before the war started.
My father grew up on the Eastern shore of Maryland. He was a teenager during WW 2 and I remember him sharing stories of seeing buses go by with German POWs to work in the fields. What is remembered was frequently hearing them sing songs in German. The camp had to be in Somerset (Camp Somerset) county since my father grew up in the adjacent Wicomico county.
This is why I love history. Always something to learn. Went to Gettysburg on a trip in the 5th grade and never learned about any of this.
My Dad returned from England (B-24 Officer) in June 1945...discharged in August 1945. Our small Montana town had a small contingency of German POW's who provided farm labor for the local farmers. Mom had to feed them one meal per day when they were working on the farm. Dad said he felt sorry for them, a pitiful looking bunch...mostly young kids who were fortunate to be captured by the US instead of Russia.
Great episode JD and Erik! The POW camps in the US are not well known, yet it’s very interesting history
There’s several former WW2 German POW camps throughout Michigan as well. Fort Campbell, KY also has a cemetery of German POW’s
Where at in mi?
It's at Fort Custer outside of Battlecreek
Another fascinating video! I'm from Westminster, Md and it's my understanding that there was a camp here, as well. They were put to work on some of the local farms. From what I've heard, they were treated quite well during their time here.
Many thanks for an interesting video. I'm from Britain an interesting place to visit is Eden Camp in North Yorkshire which was also once a German POW camp and is now a museum. Well worth a visit if your over in Blighty. Thanks again.
Very interesting. I was unaware of a POW camp at Gettysburg. I’m learning every time I watch.
Right there on the battlefield. People would flip if they did something like that today.
JD & Erik, you're always informing us - revealing little known facts & history! Thank you!
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Another Great Museum Artifacts of WW II. Loved the Book of Drawings. Thanks.
“That guy would probably evacuate his bowels!” Ba ha ha great line!
😅
Always the best history vids...Thank you so much...
I don't think people realize how many POW camps there were in the states. Pretty interesting once you start looking into it. Some great artifacts 👍 Thanks JD and Erik.
BTW, I should be getting a package from Erik today or tomorrow with a very unique stahlhelm pin in it 😅
Just amazes me how all these places are around and no one hardly knows about them. Great video y'all thanks. 👍👍👍👍👍
Both of my grandfathers were WW2 veterans. One of them guarded German POWs in Washington state I believe and the always asked about if he had any sisters. There was also a local camp near my hometown in South Georgia. They worked on road maintenance. My great Aunts (teenagers at this time) would go down to the camp fence and flirt with the prisoners. Apparently, this was a common thing as all the other guys were otherwise engaged.
There are so many stories of local women and German soldiers in Europe and the U.S. There were estimates of thousands of babies born between the local women of different European countries and German soldiers. Apparently they loved the German soldiers and their stylish uniforms. In the U.S. and Canada their are quite a few stories of local area women trying to sneak onto the German P.O.W. camps to try to flirt or start relationships with the soldier prisoners. A lot of it was in Europe and the U.S. because a lot of the German soldiers or P.O.W's were young, handsome, good looking men and the women were attracted to them.
Great content as always. 👍
That's truly amazing!
I did hear about these camps but their locations unknown thanks for this learning is always great things to know what you heard about but never know about.
Seems there were POW camps throughout the US. Wouldn't it be nice to see a book publication available for purchase of all of those. I know we had one in northern Maine that little is known about. And, sadly, we are rapidly losing the generation of people who could provide history in that regard.
I went to basic training at Ft. Lost-in-the-Woods (Ft. Leonard Wood) Missouri. Long story short, I got injured & was in a hold-over company for about 5 weeks after getting out of the hospital. While there, we were detailed to clean out a 12x12 wooden shed near one of the tank museum storage warehouses. Our Sgt. called me over..."Hey college boy, look here." On the walls of this shed we'd cleaned out was German writing & names & old magazine pictures glued to the walls. It was a classroom/rec room for German POWs & the museum guy & his son were going to take it apart over the weekend to save it before it was bulldozed by the Army Monday morning... That was January 2000...
Wow!
Glider training took place at the Army Air Corps base near my Hometown of Stuttgart, AR and they kept German POW's there. The town was founded in the 1880's by German immigrants and there were still quite a few families that spoke German at home. In fact, the Lutheran Church had at least one service a month in German. Oddly few stories about the German's housed there and few German artifacts remain while there are many photos and Air Corps artifacts in the museums there. It is said that the POW's were surprised at the number of Americans in town that spoke such good German.
Again, learned something new today. Didn't know of this POW camp either. Thanks JD and Eric!
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my mom worked at the pentagon dring ww2 and they used to go to walter reed and a lot of pows worked there
Absolutely awesome. I live in Maryland and visit Gettysburg once or twice a year. I never knew about the German POW camp there! Excellent video!
Ft Oglethorpe Ga and the adjoining Chickamauga Battlefield was in operation from 1902 to 1946 and housed POWs from both world wars. Most of the battlefield was used as barracks and training grounds, remnants of the base is still in the park itself along with officers and married NCO barracks, horse stables, and a portion of a hospital just outside the park. When Ft Oglethorpe was decommissioned it was purchased by a group of citizens and incorporated it as a town that is still going strong. One of the POW camps is now a park with a playground and public pool.
Ft Knox had a POW camp too. There are several structures that have an Afrika Corps insignia on the chimney. The current FKHS football field was the original soccer field for the POWs
Cullman Alabama was a hot spot during the war. They used POW's during the war to build the roads. My grandmother was a Speer, she would translate for the soldiers to the guards.
Did they stay after the war and become Klansmen. Cullman was also a hotspot for Klansmen, I'm sure they treated those POWs better than black people back in those days. Good ole sundown town Cullman
Just yesterday, l was reading about Cullman. It's named after a German who came to America after The War Between the States. I learnt this from Wikipedia!
I thought I knew history,but I never knew about this,thanks
I have a deeper understanding of what you have to do. Your videos are wonderfully made. I'm making videos for school right now. Not easy.
You should visit camp McClellan in Anniston Alabama. It’s at risk of being demolished as it’s falling apart but is a huge complex of WW2 training barracks that are still super impressive.
In Camp Atterbury, Indiana, which is still a working National Guard camp, they have a chapel that was built buy Italian POW's from WW2 that has been preserved. Very small, the congregation sat outside while the officiant was under cover. If you google "camp atterbury pow chapel", you can see several things about it.
Been there many times. Nice rural area. The chapel is very quaint.
Good video JD . You showed that guy ,, love your videos my friend THANK YOU FRANK FROM MONTANA.....
Thanks for sharing.
Unfortunately, the Army and the Federal government haven't always shared the same reverence for battle sites that we do. For that matter, neither do Walmart, McDonalds, and housing developers far and wide.
I was shocked by the location of Camp Colt, especially when my introduction to the reality was a picture of an M1917 tank tearing up the battlefield terrain.
Makes General Pickett's Buffet seem tame by comparison.
Poor old Pickett's Buffet. the perennial whipping boy of GNMB. lol. that dern mickeyD's has never once gotten an order right! but I sure do love me some GettisBurg!
LOL. Perhaps General Pickett's Buffet isn't the worst offender in town. It is in a somewhat picturesque old building, but it's location next to Cemetery Ridge, and next to an old motor lodge that was removed some years ago, makes it low hanging fruit and a frequent target.
Yes ... but he sure would have 'whipped them Yankees if he had those tanks' back in the day.
But history isn't like that.
What happened, happened, what is the truth, is the truth.
History just is ...
Love this channel!! It is awesome. Interestingly my in-laws live in Crossville, TN. Their house is right across the street from what is now a 4H camp, but during the war it was a German POW Camp. The museum in town has a model of the original camp built by a prisoner there as well as a good many artifacts and letters from the prisoners. It would be awesome to see you do a video there.
It is amazing how talented some of these men were as craftsmen and artists. The Germans actually treated British POWs fairly well. I don't think that was always the case with American POWs and certainly not the case with Russian POWs. One thing that became popular amongst both British and German POWs during WWII (as a way to pass the time) was model boat building.
Some of these men became very good at model boat building. During the war, wherever it was possible, men would even have model boat races on ponds and such. After the war, many of these men continued with their model boat building. Some even gained notoriety and even made a living selling their model boats. It is amazing what kind of a motivator boredom can become and what some people can do with that motivation.
For your information, when the German prisoners of war was released here in America. They started the, ( American Communists League United). They have changed the name of it several times, but a leopard can't change it's spots. It is still the American Communists League United, the ( ACLU ) today.
I remember stories that my Mother told me about watching the German POW coming off the submarines at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth NH. They had a prison there that housed them before they were taken to the camps. Chances are some of the ended up at Gettysburg. She was only a teenager at the time. 👍😊
There was one on the northwest side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My mother remembers it as she was a child and lived in that neighborhood. It was still an active army base when I was a child and there was a Nike missile housed there as well.
Although I was born after the war I spent half my youth near Plymouth WI that had a seasonal POW camp where they worked in many of the local canning companies and helped on many of the farms. One of the nearby farms was owned by a German WW I vet and although he usually wanted to talk about his WW I experiences he would sometimes talk about his interactions with the WW II POWS and how many of them wanted to come back to WI after the war. And although I never got to meet any of them he said several did and married local girls they had met during the war.
There is also Camp White in White City Oregon that was used as a German POW camp.
I'm fascinated by the Camp Colt-POW camp era of that section of the battlefield. I know that the trend with battlefields lately is best possible restoration to the state that existed during the war, but when you think about it, the fact that the ground on which Pickett's Charge took place was repurposed, for not only commercial (trolley line) but government/ military purposes, tells me that that trend is a relatively recent conceit. Interesting.
It makes me wonder how much of what we call battlefield "restoration" consists of mitigating damages from previous uses like Camp Colt, the trolley line, etc.
All the more reason that your preservation of these relics is important. Thank you!
Awesome! That hat is embroidered with the town I was stationed in while in the Army. Bad Kreuznach. Home of the 8th ID.
I love history and never knew about the US Pow camps holding Germans or Italians.
Fascinating
Ahhhhhhh Early mornin' artifacts
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Amazing; history learnt each episode; would never imagine POW camps in the USA; wish we could have administrative documentations from the military as to day to day operations.
I had an old Japanese Internment Camp near my home in Los Angeles but never any POW camps. Very interesting.
German POW's were put to work at the Cook Ranch near Odebolt, IA. The fellas were seemingly treated right. Mr. Cook was glad to have those hands.
I’ve seen video of pow’s in South Dakota. Local family took the video. The prisoners were very polite and it was said they particularly liked the food served.
Also El Reno, OK had a German WWII POW camp, there is a cemetery and museum located in El Reno.
There is an old POW camp down the road from me in an old fort. Some are buried in the national cemetery across the road.
Camp Glenn at Fort Benjamin Harrison (now Fort Harrison State Park) in Indianapolis housed German and Italian POWS. The concrete pads that served as floors for their tents are still there.
Fort El Reno (OK) has a history of WWII pow camp. It has a grave yard with German and Italian graves. Some of the housing are still standing and several families moved there to be close to captives. Good trip if you get out there. Gen. Sheridan was out of that fort post Civilwar too.
Interesting!
its interesting that the artwork is in the style of us cartoons similar as used in us training manuals and the like.
i live a few blocks from a fairgrounds that was used as a pow camp during ww2.
I bet the ghosts that haunt the battlefield scared the crap out of those German POW's. I wouldn't want to have to sleep there in that area. lol
There was a POW camp at Childersburg, AL.
Across Talladega creek is a working grist mill, built in 1864...good corn meal.
Interesting. Very cool 👍🏼😎
POW camp on cape cod as well
Enjoyed the video mate it was really interesting mate can't wait for the next video mate your best
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One interesting thing I heard about 30 years ago in regards to this is that there was a German POW camp in North Carolina and the prisoners were clothed in Confederate uniforms that had been warehoused near the POW camp. Could be apocryphal, but interesting nonetheless given what those Civil War uniforms would be worth today.
There was one near Villisca, IA
very cool, seen the guy at 2:00 in other videos before haha
My grandfather worked for the ASCS office in Okmulgee, OK. He assigned where German prisoners would go when they volunteered to work on farms in the county. My dad would go with him, in 45 he was 9. They had a large black sgt guarding them but of course they weren’t going anywhere. A few times when working on my grandfathers farm dad would see them, he always remembered when one asked him if he had an older sister. Took him a few years to figure out what he meant.
Camp Perry, Ohio, home of the Civilian Marksmanship Program and the National Matches was a prison of war camp in WWII for both Italian and German POWs. The first contingent were captured in North Africa and later Germans from the Normandy invasion. They worked on the farms and canneries in the local area. Sunday after church was a soccer match between the Italians and Germans. They had a theatre, commissary, and a bank. They were paid for their work. No escapes were successful.
Those camps were all over the place. I was driving through the southern half of Nebraska a couple summers ago and in the middle of nowhere I saw a couple brick chimneys. Tall. 3 stories, maybe 4. Nothing else, way off in the distance. I found out later it was a WWII German camp that housed several thousand prisoners. There is a main east/west rail line right near there and most of the state is a giant Aquifer and easily drilled for water wells so it made perfect sense.
2 big POW camps one South of Indianapolis at Camp Atterburry and one outside of Battle creek at Fort Custer.
The POW's that were taken from the U-505 U-boat on June 4, 1944 were sent to the POW camp in Ruston La. They were not allowed to send letters home, in direct violation of the Geneva agreement, as the US did not want Germany to know that the boat was lost but the crew was saved, along with the valuable enigma machine and code books. They were finally repatriated in 1947.
Some strange peculiars........
German POWs were shipped back to Germany in US army surplus uniforms. So they ditched their HEER unis in the USA.
German POWs were paid for their labor and their money influx helped restart the German economy post 1945.
German POWs in the southwest lodged a complaint how the US forces treated Mexican and African American camp laborers.
A German POW lodged a complaint to the Red Cross/Geneva for being mistreated, he said his train seat was uncomfortable.
Many German POWs wanted to stay in the US they had been on American farms working and getting to know many locals, some married into US families after being sent to Germany and returned back to the US.
Georg Gaertner was the last POW, escaped from Deming, New Mexico, on September 22, 1945 as he did not want to go home. He surrendered in 1984 to Bryant Gumbel on the Today Show.
There used to be a ton of German camps around the area where I live they even had a baseball team and the San Joaquin county fairgrounds still has to this day some of the original buildings now used as Barnes that they kept the Japanese Americans in.
Such cool stuff. I hope Erik gets more things from the Camp. I have family, 2 daughters and ex wife, in Germany. I can ask them to ask all their friends to ask around as well.
Thanks!
So interesting to learn the connections of Gettysburg's fields & WWI & WWII. I am interested in knowing how they got the POWs across the oceans to USA camps & back again. Thank you.
There was a German POW camp in Weeping Water Nebraska along with many more. Many of the prisoners stayed in Nebraska after the war was over. Another big one was at Ft. Robinson in Nebraska. Just FYI
There was also one in Mitchell, NE, and several prisoners stayed after the war in that area, as well.