Much has been written about America's World War II Japanese internment camps, but you
probably don't know about the POW camps that housed combatants from Europe.
Here's how they earned a notable place in the war's history.
As documented by the Society for Military History, because of the United States' limited
experience dealing with POWs, the country chose to follow the edicts of the 1929 Geneva
Convention.
The foundational objectives of the Convention were to, quote, "prevent indignities against
enemy soldiers" and to ensure that American POWs would be equally protected when held
by enemy nations.
Unfortunately, while the U.S. generally honored the Convention, neither Japan, which never
signed the agreement, nor Germany, which chose to ignore it, did.
The far-reaching 1929 Convention covered such things as camp location, punishments for escapes,
and restrictions regarding POW labor.
Among the many protections and guarantees provided to POWs were adequate food, housing,
medical care, "protection from violence, intimidation, insults, and public curiosity," prohibition
against medical experimentation, and reciprocal military rights and status.
To create rights and status equal to the American military, German officers above the rank of
captain were assigned their own POW orderlies, and generals were housed in private huts.
American soldiers were compelled to salute higher-ranking POWs, and the infamous Nazi
salute was even permitted.
The Convention allowed the display of swastikas, and some POWs were buried in local military
cemeteries with Nazi flags and with swastikas engraved on their headstones.
Undoubtedly the biggest source of conflict in the POW camps were the ardent Nazis.
Because the Geneva Convention limited how differently one POW could be treated from
another, camp authorities initially made no distinction between soldiers with different
ideological stances.
Ergo, fanatical Nazis were thrown in with anti-Nazis.
Furthermore, Article 43 of the Convention required the appointment of POW administrators,
and Nazi officers would often assume this role, becoming in effect camp commandants.
They ruled with an iron fist, ordering work stoppages and holding kangaroo courts.
The hard-liners doled out harsh discipline and attacked fellow prisoners for their lack
of patriotism, among other offenses.
There were documented occurrences of murder, forced suicides, a general camp riot, and
other acts of violence.
Nazi perpetrators usually received minimal or no punishment, as they were protected by
the Convention.
Some were transferred to a special camp for Nazi incorrigibles in Oklahoma.
The War Department eventually acknowledged the problem and began to enact reforms.
As all the work done by POWs was forced labor, a major concern of the Geneva Convention was
the matter of work regulations, including details like job locations, hours, hazards,
and pay rates.
POWs were put to work right from the start, although their assignments were limited due
to fears of escape, sabotage, and overseas exploitation.
But when labor shortages due to enlistment hit the American economy, the War Department
rethought its strategy and greatly expanded POW labor.
The camps supplied local industries and businesses with laborers while still adhering to the
Convention.
In Texas, for example, POWs picked cotton, harvested fruit, and chopped sugar.
Over in Kansas, they stacked hay and did masonry.
And in New England, they harvested peas, cabbage, and apples.
They also reportedly worked in hundreds of other positions, including mechanics, sign
painters, tailors, and lumberjacks.
"Yes!
A lumberjack!"
All enlisted men were required to work, and they were paid 80 cents a day, the same rate
that American privates received.
To keep them from accumulating enough cash to bankroll an escape, prisoners were paid
in canteen coupons.
Over time, the POWs not only proved themselves capable workers, they also earned the trust
and admiration of many of their private employers.
As a result, their supervision was relaxed, sometimes to the point of being unguarded.
As detailed in The Washington Post in 1997, the War Department went above and beyond when
it came to POW food, education, and entertainment.
Not only did POWs dine well, they took college courses, set up libraries, and formed orchestras
and soccer leagues.
Leisure activities included Ping-Pong, chess, card games, and the screening of movies and
cartoons.
Some camps even had printing presses that churned out newsletters penned by POWs.
Additionally, POWs mounted theatrical productions and played concerts that were regularly attended
by American officers.
Also, there were circus and acrobatic instruction taught by professional circus performers.
Educational programs were varied.
Some classes were taught by the POWs themselves, while others were conducted as correspondence
courses.
The level of instruction was so high that some German universities offered full credit
to returning POWs.
Although some in Congress decried this apparent "coddling" of the POWs, the War Department
remained confident that news of the benefits enjoyed by the POWs would reach Germans still
fighting overseas and encourage their surrender.
When the first wave of POWs from Germany's elite Afrika Korps arrived in Mexia, Texas,
the townspeople were reportedly dumbstruck.
They stared as the POWs marched in orderly rows to the camp.
Similar scenes played out across rural America, but over time, many of these small communities
adjusted to the POW presence.
Some even began to appreciate the novelty of it all, as reported by The Washington Post.
Many locals recognized the vital role that the POWs played in their local businesses,
and quite a few even befriended their captive employees and continued relationships after
the war.
In Kansas, for example, some farmers invited their POW workers for meals and allowed them
to go hunting or pony riding unattended.
However, not all towns and townspeople were happy hosts.
In Texas, some residents reportedly feared having Nazis nearby and locked their doors
and cautioned their daughters.
Other citizens wrote angry letters and staged protests.
As the war dragged on and American casualties mounted, stories about cushy POW camp life
and vicious crimes committed by Nazi prisoners enraged many Americans.
The War Department was sensitive to public perception and aware that POWs were actually
eating better than many civilians, so they cut back severely on the POWs' rations.
Although the total number of escape attempts from American camps was proportionately low,
some POWs did make a go for it.
The 1929 Geneva Convention recognized that it is the duty of prisoners to attempt escape,
so it contains numerous regulations limiting the severity of punishments for escapees.
Consequently, the POWs had little concern about getting caught.
Some did so out of homesickness, some out of patriotism, and others out of fear of being
returned to their altered homeland.
Methods of escape were as varied as the reasons for trying.
POWs built secret tunnels, slipped away from inattentive guards, constructed dummies of
themselves, and impersonated American officers, among other tricks.
Once outside, they hopped trains or stole cars, or they simply took off on foot.
The most elaborate escape attempt occurred in 1944 at one of the more spartan camps in
Texas.
Using a secret 60-foot tunnel equipped with lighting and air bellows, 12 German officers
slipped away from their barracks and went separately toward Mexico armed with tissue-paper
maps.
Each man had food and a change of clothing.
Despite their careful planning, ten were captured within days far from the border, while two
were caught by an El Paso railroad detective just before reaching the border.
The majority of escapees were captured quickly and without incident.
Back at camp, fellow POWs hailed them as heroes.
As chronicled by the Associated Press, on a September night in 1945, POW Georg Gaertner
escaped from New Mexico's Camp Deming by slipping under a fence and hopping a train bound for
San Pedro.
Gaertner had decided to escape because he knew that upon his release, he would be repatriated
to eastern Germany, where his family lived and which had fallen under Russian control.
As a former Nazi, Gaertner feared he would be sent to a gulag.
From San Pedro, Gaertner traveled north undetected, taking a series of odd jobs on the West Coast
as a fruit picker, logger, and ski instructor.
In Oakland, he landed a steady salesman job, and in 1964 he met his wife Jean.
Now going by the name Dennis Whiles, Gaertner told Jean that he'd been raised in an orphanage.
Gaertner remained under the radar for years, and eventually authorities stopped looking
for him.
Jean was unaware of his secret until impending retirement required that she obtain his birth
certificate.
He finally confessed, and Jean, determined that he should turn himself in, began researching
the POW camps.
Her research led her to Arnold Krammer, who ended up writing a tell-all book with Gaertner.
In 1985, Gaertner surrendered to the INS and as a publicity stunt on NBC's Today.
Of the 2,222 German POWs who attempted escape, he's the only one to have eluded capture.
"The fact that he kept it a secret for 40 years is what's amazing."
Until 1948, the U.S. military was, like much of America, a segregated institution.
Black soldiers experienced institutionalized discrimination both at home and overseas.
Their prejudicial treatment occurred at the hands of not only white Americans but white
POWs as well.
In Southern POW camps, some facilities were segregated by race, and Black servicemen were
given the worst jobs.
Blacks in the military expressed outrage that after risking their lives fighting Nazis,
they were considered beneath their white enemies back home.
The journal article "Icons of Insult: German and Italian Prisoners of War in African American
Letters During World War II" recounts numerous instances of racist encounters involving white
Americans and POWs.
In one incident, Black servicemen were barred from entering a restaurant at a Texas train
station while POWs were invited with their white captors.
Another episode involved entertainer Lena Horne, who became enraged while performing
at an Arkansas camp when she saw that Black servicemen had been seated behind the POWs.
In 1944, as Allied victory appeared imminent, American officials began to plan for a post-war
Germany.
Out of the ruins of fascist defeat, the U.S. and its allies hoped to plant the seeds of
democracy.
At the same time, stories about Nazi violence and influence in the POW camps were beginning
to circulate.
When a group of female columnists informed First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt about the situation,
she vowed to investigate and take action.
The result of this initiative was the Prisoner of War Special Projects Division, led by Lieutenant
Colonel Edward Davison out of Fort Kearney in Rhode Island.
To ensure its success in the camps, the project was kept top secret.
A handpicked group of intellectual American officers joined forces with anti-Nazi POWs,
and the democracy-promoting strategies of The Factory, as it became known, were devised.
The Factory's first step in the POW camps was the distribution of books banned by Hitler.
Complementing that were screenings of carefully selected movies, including horrifying footage
showing the liberation of Nazi concentration camps.
The Factory also created Der Ruf, a German-language newsletter that was written by and for German
POWs.
To disguise its purpose, The Factory POW staff interspersed pro-democracy tracts with fiction
and other entertaining fare.
Although Nazi POWs reportedly denounced Der Ruf as Jewish propaganda, most POWs loved
reading it, and its effectiveness at changing hearts and minds was indisputable.
After Germany's surrender in May 1945, the process of POW release and repatriation began.
But many in America, especially farmers, didn't want them to go.
Labor unions, on the other hand, regarded them as competition for returning American
forces and demanded their expulsion.
President Harry Truman ordered them sent back to Europe.
As a result of this order, many POWs ended up in France and England.
The last batch of them sailed from New Jersey on July 26, 1946.
Although America's treatment of POWs earned high marks from most German prisoners, its
repatriation policy was widely criticized.
Many transferred POWs reportedly died in France while performing forced labor.
According to the journal article "Returning to America: German Prisoners of War and American
Experience," of the more than half million Germans who immigrated to America between
1947 and 1960, several thousand were former POWs.
Having experienced the American way of life, some POWs sought U.S. sponsors or worked for
American occupational forces in Germany in order to return to the United States.
"Welcome back."
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite stuff are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.