The Stanley Area Historical Society hosted a presentation on World War II POW camps in the United States on June 11, in the presentation room.

The first of three events planned for this year (a concertina presentation among plans), the June 11 presentation was presented by Matthew Carter of the Dakota County Historical Society in Minnesota.

Introduced by David Jankoski, Carter said he first became interested in the presence of World War II POW camps in the U.S. for enemy soldiers after learning of one in his hometown of Reedsburg while doing his thesis. He hadn’t heard or learned about it in high school. Now part of a park, the site at Reedsburg has a marker. So why POW camps in America versus overseas?

Rumors of a coming uprising in Europe with airdropped weapons from Germany, for one. A labor shortage in agriculture, for another. Although exempt from service through 1943 the continued calling up of men to war left a void in food related industries. So who were the camp POWs that came in place of regular workers?

“Many of them were just German soldiers, not hardcore Nazis,” Carter said, saying that the camp administration tried to separate these two groups. Most prisoners came from Rommel’s Afrika Corps in Tunisia, he said.

Once in the States, many POWs tried to escape for fear of being turned over to the Soviet Union after the war. This was their right under the Geneva Convention, as was the expectation of reprimand once recaptured. The Geneva Convention determined a lot of what could and couldn’t be done with regard to POW labor, with commissioned officers able to make a small wage for their work.

As to the camps themselves, Carter shared that they were divided into large “base camps” and smaller “branch camps,” the base camps feeding to branch camps. Two of the many branch camps were located at Reedsburg and Altoona respectively, with prisoners at Altoona sent to work at the Lange Canning plant in Eau Claire. The camp itself was at Altoona, a plan to put the camp on Mount Simon meeting opposition. Most modern sources put the number interned in such POW camps at 450,000.

With nine divisions or service administrations over the nationwide camp system, Wisconsin was in number 6, headquartered in Chicago. Sometimes abandoned camps from the Civil Conservation Corps (CC) were used, while the camp at Altoona was on county fairgrounds, the necessary changes to house POWs being made. In 1945 the POWs at Camp Eau Claire were moved to hold the county fair, with 75 later coming back to help harvest corn. And while no base camp was located in Wisconsin, the closest thing was Camp McCoy. This camp also housed “enemy aliens,” those deemed a threat based on German, Italian, or Japanese ancestry.

Also with the camps were reports projecting labor need and movement. A stood for peas, B stood for vegetables, C stood for corn, D stood for tomatoes, and E stood for fruit. Unions were often opposed to use of POW labor as a strategic factor, with employers required to show that they had tried and failed to find American workers before prisoners were sent to them, with reports and projected labor need helping to determine where prisoners were sent. But while sample lunch menus as one shared Sunday of a camp in Florida could be considered generous on paper, “we don’t really know” if people were served all the menus indicate, Carter said. One thing was certain: there was a public outcry when Americans learned and compared how camp POWs were treated in the U.S. compared to how U.S. soldiers captured overseas were. As a result, it was decreed that camp prisoners in the U.S. could no longer have beer or cigarettes, among other amenities. And there were returned overseas prisoners, who didn’t always take the disparity well.

One man who was a returned prisoner from overseas, reacted strongly when he saw a German POW and another person together in a downtown bar. Having recently been subject to starving, the man went home and got his shotgun, marching the German back to camp at gunpoint where he had words with the camp administration. No one was let downtown after that.

As to farm labor, divisions were largely broken down, with prisoners supposed to be kept separate, but often weren’t.

“Either they eat or nobody eats,” one farm wife was reported as telling a guard, the captured prisoners being let to the same table. With numbers captured ramping up with the war, a little over 5 million man days were worked by prisoners to help bring in the harvests, or $ 4 million in contract work. Part of the reason for the barrier breakdown on farms was due to the discrepancy between reports and reality, with one person who went to the train station expecting to see horns based on what he had heard of Germany and the war. The train arriving, that wasn’t the case.”

“They looked just like me and my brother,” he said.  As to the POWs, Wisconsin also reminded many of their home back in Europe, with Wisconsin having a high German population.

Planning for the postwar peace, meanwhile, camp administration allowed camp POWs to learn how to read, write, and speak English, as well as take courses to learn about American life and government versus what they had been told. As the Allies advanced in Europe, meanwhile, there were other reports, of Axis atrocities. When exposed to news of these many interned soldiers didn’t initially believe them, believing the stories to be propaganda. Others cried because they did believe, Carter said.

With the war’s end in the Allies favor, a fear of prisoner escapes and resulting havoc arose. A message was put out assuring POWs that those free of crimes under the law of war would be repatriated with time and a warning that Americans who had suffered at the hands of Axis powers could be expected to deal harshly with them, if found outside military custody. Not everyone was convinced to stay by this, with one example being Georg Gaertner, who memorized the train schedule and then made a run for it, fearing he would be turned over to the Soviet Union. No one knew who Gaertner was until 1985, when a fiancee made him an ultimatum: tell me about the past or we’re not getting married. Gaertner turned himself in on television, having eluded law enforcement for 45 years.

As for those wanting to learn more about the POW camps in the state of Wisconsin proper, Carter recommended Stalag Wisconsin by Betty Cowley. No longer in print with limited supply, demand for copies, could be high.

The book is available through the library system.