German POWs on the American Homefront

Thousands of World War II prisoners ended up in mills, farm fields and even dining rooms across the United States

  • By J. Malcolm Garcia
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German POW marching From 1942 through 1945, more than 400,000 Axis prisoners were shipped to the United States and detained in camps in rural areas across the country.

Nebraska State Historical Society

 

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    In the mid-1940s when Mel Luetchens was a boy on his family’s Murdock, Nebraska, farm where he still lives, he sometimes hung out with his father’s hired hands, “I looked forward to it,” he said. “They played games with us and brought us candy and gum.” The hearty young men who helped his father pick corn or put up hay or build livestock fences were German prisoners of war from a nearby camp. “They were the enemy, of course,” says Luetchens, now 70 and a retired Methodist minister. “But at that age, you don’t know enough to be afraid.”

    Since President Obama’s vow to close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp erupted into an entrenched debate about where to relocate the prisoners captured in the Afghanistan War, Luetchens has reflected on the “irony and parallel” of World War II POWs and Guantanamo inmates. Recently, the Senate overwhelmingly rejected providing funds to close the U.S. military prison in Cuba, saying that no community in America would want terrorism suspects in its backyard.

    But in America’s backyards and farm fields and even dining rooms is where many enemy prisoners landed nearly 70 years ago. As World War II raged, Allies, such as Great Britain, were running short of prison space to house POWs. From 1942 through 1945, more than 400,000 Axis prisoners were shipped to the United States and detained in camps in rural areas across the country. Some 500 POW facilities were built, mainly in the South and Southwest but also in the Great Plains and Midwest.

    At the same time that the prison camps were filling up, farms and factories across America were struggling with acute labor shortages. The United States faced a dilemma. According to Geneva Convention protocols, POWs could be forced to work only if they were paid, but authorities were afraid of mass escapes that would endanger the American people. Eventually, they relented and put tens of thousands of enemy prisoners to work, assigning them to canneries and mills, to farms to harvest wheat or pick asparagus, and just about any other place they were needed and could work with minimum security.

    About 12,000 POWs were held in camps in Nebraska. “They worked across the road from us, about 10 or 11 in 1943,” recalled Kelly Holthus, 76, of York, Nebraska. “They stacked hay. Worked in the sugar beet fields. Did any chores. There was such a shortage of labor.”

    “A lot of them were stone masons,” said Keith Buss, 78, who lives in Kansas and remembers four POWs arriving at his family’s farm in 1943. “They built us a concrete garage. No level, just nail and string to line the building up. It’s still up today.”

    Don Kerr, 86, delivered milk to a Kansas camp. “I talked to several of them,” he said. “I thought they were very nice.”

    “At first there was a certain amount of apprehension,” said Tom Buecker, the curator of the Fort Robinson Museum, a branch of the Nebraska Historical Society. “People thought of the POWs as Nazis. But half of the prisoners had no inclination to sympathize with the Nazi Party.” Fewer than 10 percent were hard-core ideologues, he added.

    Any such anxiety was short-lived at his house, if it existed at all, said Luetchens. His family was of German ancestry and his father spoke fluent German. “Having a chance to be shoulder-to-shoulder with [the prisoners], you got to know them,” Luetchens said. “They were people like us.”


    In the mid-1940s when Mel Luetchens was a boy on his family’s Murdock, Nebraska, farm where he still lives, he sometimes hung out with his father’s hired hands, “I looked forward to it,” he said. “They played games with us and brought us candy and gum.” The hearty young men who helped his father pick corn or put up hay or build livestock fences were German prisoners of war from a nearby camp. “They were the enemy, of course,” says Luetchens, now 70 and a retired Methodist minister. “But at that age, you don’t know enough to be afraid.”

    Since President Obama’s vow to close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp erupted into an entrenched debate about where to relocate the prisoners captured in the Afghanistan War, Luetchens has reflected on the “irony and parallel” of World War II POWs and Guantanamo inmates. Recently, the Senate overwhelmingly rejected providing funds to close the U.S. military prison in Cuba, saying that no community in America would want terrorism suspects in its backyard.

    But in America’s backyards and farm fields and even dining rooms is where many enemy prisoners landed nearly 70 years ago. As World War II raged, Allies, such as Great Britain, were running short of prison space to house POWs. From 1942 through 1945, more than 400,000 Axis prisoners were shipped to the United States and detained in camps in rural areas across the country. Some 500 POW facilities were built, mainly in the South and Southwest but also in the Great Plains and Midwest.

    At the same time that the prison camps were filling up, farms and factories across America were struggling with acute labor shortages. The United States faced a dilemma. According to Geneva Convention protocols, POWs could be forced to work only if they were paid, but authorities were afraid of mass escapes that would endanger the American people. Eventually, they relented and put tens of thousands of enemy prisoners to work, assigning them to canneries and mills, to farms to harvest wheat or pick asparagus, and just about any other place they were needed and could work with minimum security.

    About 12,000 POWs were held in camps in Nebraska. “They worked across the road from us, about 10 or 11 in 1943,” recalled Kelly Holthus, 76, of York, Nebraska. “They stacked hay. Worked in the sugar beet fields. Did any chores. There was such a shortage of labor.”

    “A lot of them were stone masons,” said Keith Buss, 78, who lives in Kansas and remembers four POWs arriving at his family’s farm in 1943. “They built us a concrete garage. No level, just nail and string to line the building up. It’s still up today.”

    Don Kerr, 86, delivered milk to a Kansas camp. “I talked to several of them,” he said. “I thought they were very nice.”

    “At first there was a certain amount of apprehension,” said Tom Buecker, the curator of the Fort Robinson Museum, a branch of the Nebraska Historical Society. “People thought of the POWs as Nazis. But half of the prisoners had no inclination to sympathize with the Nazi Party.” Fewer than 10 percent were hard-core ideologues, he added.

    Any such anxiety was short-lived at his house, if it existed at all, said Luetchens. His family was of German ancestry and his father spoke fluent German. “Having a chance to be shoulder-to-shoulder with [the prisoners], you got to know them,” Luetchens said. “They were people like us.”

    “I had the impression the prisoners were happy to be out of the war,” Holthus said, and Kerr recalled that one prisoner “told me he liked it here because no one was shooting at him.”

    Life in the camps was a vast improvement for many of the POWs who had grown up in “cold water flats” in Germany, according to former Fort Robinson, Nebraska, POW Hans Waecker, 88, who returned to the United States after the war and is now a retired physician in Georgetown, Maine. “Our treatment was excellent. Many POWs complained about being POWs—no girlfriends, no contact with family. But the food was excellent and clothing adequate.” Such diversions as sports, theater, chess games and books made life behind barbed wire a sort of “golden cage,” one prisoner remarked.

    Farmers who contracted for POW workers usually provided meals for them and paid the U.S. government 45 cents an hour per laborer, which helped offset the millions of dollars needed to care for the prisoners. Even though a POW netted only 80 cents a day for himself, it provided him with pocket money to spend in the canteen. Officers were not required to work under the Geneva Convention accords, which also prohibited POWs from working in dangerous conditions or in tasks directly related to the war effort.

    “There were a few cases when prisoners told other prisoners not to work so hard,” said historian Lowell May, author of Camp Concordia: German POWs in the Midwest. Punishment for such work slowdowns was usually several days of confinement with rations of only bread and water.

    “One prisoner at Camp Concordia said a good German would not help the Americans,” May said. “He was sent to a camp for Nazi supporters in Alva, Oklahoma.”

    Of the tens of thousands of POWs in the United States during World War II, only 2,222, less than 1 percent, tried to escape, and most were quickly rounded up. By 1946, all prisoners had been returned to their home countries.

    The deprivations of the postwar years in Europe were difficult for the repatriated men. The Luetchens, who established a “lively” letter exchange with their POW farmhands, sent them food and clothing. Eventually Luetchen and his parents visited some of them in Germany.

    Recently Luetchens considered those experiences in the context of current controversies about Guantanamo detainees. “It was less scary then,” he concluded, but he expressed hope for understanding others, even your designated enemies.

    “When you know people as human beings up close and understand about their lives, it really alters your view of people and the view of your own world.”


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    Comments (67)

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    My grandfather was in a POW camp in either Chicago or Detroit, my mother doesn't remember where and returned to Austria in 1946 to be reunited with his family 3 girls of which he wife had died in 1936 before the Germans marched into Austria and demanded each available man to fight for them. I am dying to find out were his camp was. If their were records kept of the soldiers that were kept at the POW Camps. I just do not know who to contact for this.

    Posted by Evelyn Sotosek on January 30,2012 | 03:47 PM

    Looking for anyone who was at or knew anyone who spent some time at Camp Hortonville Wisconsin during WWll.Local residence with stories welcome.

    Posted by Auggie Sierra. on January 6,2012 | 09:32 AM

    yeah, i agree. the germans would act sincere, honest, and understanding to the americans because 1.) they are western europeans and have a closer understanding of democratic society with the Allies than with the USSR 2.) they are Christians as well 3.) they are thousands of miles away from home with no intent on escaping 4.) the anti-nazi Germans (non-SS) were the ones who were interred into these work forces rather than the Fallschirmjaeger and Waffen-SS who were interred in northern scottland, completely isolated.

    Posted by cameron L. on December 18,2011 | 01:44 AM

    I cant tell if the author of this article is naive or trying to push an agenda. Respectfully thats how ridiculous I think this idea is. As a vet who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think they are right where they need to be. Comparing muslims to Germans, is an insult. Can anyone picture jihadis helping to harvest crops and interact with the locals? They are more likely to behead a child, than hand out candy and play with them. German POWs served because a sense of duty to their country, instead of making a pact with god, to kill themselves and take as many infidels as they can with them. At the end of the day, you knew Germans wanted to live in peace.

    Posted by Brian Atlanta GA on December 13,2011 | 02:10 PM

    Does anyone know if POWs from Beale (near Marysville/Yuba City, CA) were hired out to local farms and orchards as they were in other places? I'm working on historical fiction set in 1945 in that area and would love to know if that was the case.

    Posted by Uma Krishnaswami on December 12,2011 | 05:31 PM

    I am looking for any information on a German prisoner of war held at Fort Niagara, New York. After the war he went out west and painted some wonderful watercolors. His name is M. Vollert.

    Posted by Rox~ Boyer on December 9,2011 | 08:02 PM

    This is in reference to Jim Cote's note about the painting that was given to his mother, while she worked at Ft. Devens. I have some paintings that where done by a german gentleman. My father was stationed in France and he met him. This man said that he was a prisioner of war and held at Ft. Devens, Mass. I just wonder if they are done by the same person. He signed them on the right lower corner and it says KODEDA. Would be interested in finding out any information.

    Posted by Theresa Stafford on August 12,2011 | 07:52 PM

    A German POW during WWII named Adolf Schulte worked on my father's farm in Coffee County, Ga. He was housed in Fitzgerald, Ga.and was trucked to the farm daily. They became friends and corresponded with each other after the war. I would like to make contact with him or his family if I can find some info on where he lives or lived in Germany. Any directions in the search would be greatly appreciated.

    Posted by Billy Cliett on August 12,2011 | 05:14 PM

    This is in response to Gene Russel's post or anyone else who may have information regarding the German POW camp in Arbuckle, CA, Colusa County: I am very interested in learning more about this camp and especially any photos that may be out there somewhere. My father was in the migrant camp next to the POW camp and always told stories about the German prisoners and the guards. He now lives a half block from where the old camp once was and I would love to show him some old photos before his time comes and maybe jog some old memories before his time comes. He used enjoy talking about the experience and I got the impression he made friends, both prisoners and guards. Anything anyone may have would be greatly appreciated
    Thank you

    Posted by Richard on June 6,2011 | 04:57 PM

    I was in charge of German POWs at four (4) Army Posts in the U.S.: Camp White, Oregon: Tule Lake, CA.; Madera, CA.; and Ft. Ord, CA. In addition to my other administrative responsibilities,one of my duties was to see that the Geneva Comvention rules and regulations related to POWS was strictly adhered to - and it was at all times

    The POWs did various jobs on farms and worked in other capacities such as repairing military assets returned from Alaska and made ready for use in other theaters of war. For the most part, there were no discipline problems. Also, it was a good place to learn the German language.

    Posted by Dr. Calvin C. Turpin on April 11,2011 | 12:36 PM

    I am currently undertaking some local history research into a couple of working POW camps in my hometown of Crewe, Cheshire, England. Fortunately, I have been able to interview some exPOWs who are still alive and live in my area.
    One of those gentlemen gave some details of his life as a POW in a camp in Idaho - he said it had 4 crossroads and a big warehouse with lots of consumer goods. Which was a revelation to a German prisoner from Europe where everything was in short supply.
    Can anyone, from this regretably short description id the camp and provide any information on it.
    Thank you.

    Posted by Mark Tyrrell on March 16,2011 | 04:49 PM

    This information is very informative and interesting. In the 1940's the harvesting of potatoes and sugar beets in southern Idaho was very labor intensive. I recall that my parents brought at least a dozen POWs on a daily basis to our farm to pick potatoes. My job was to steer the truck between the rows of potato sacks while my dad and others loaded them on the truck. As I steered down the row, I remember looking at the POWs and wondering what they had done that required a guard with a rifle at each end of our potato field! It was very strange and kind of scary to feel this way on my parent's farm. However, at the age of 6-7, it was difficult for me to fully comprehend the war and the presence of POWs from Germany in our rural Idaho community. Since this is in the heart of south central Idaho's potato country, I assume there must have been many POWs in the area. I am writing some family and Burley, ID area history and would like to have more details about the number, their housing, how they were fed, their time in the area, and who was in charge of them. POW pictures from this area would be invaluable. I should note that the Minidoka Internment Camp or "Hunt Camp" for Japanese was about 50 miles away, but my parents did not know about it! I believe it was still occupied by Japanese, some of whom worked in the harvest.

    Posted by Gene Allen on March 7,2011 | 06:14 PM

    My father was an MP guarding German and Italian prisoners. My mother said he was in several POW camps. My sister has a painting done by an Italian pow and I have a plane made from melted silverware. Do not recall if it was made by a German pow or Italian. I believe it is a replica of a B-28.

    Posted by George Siecko on January 18,2011 | 09:44 PM

    My comments here are addressed to a post by Mike Carrasco on February 12, 2010/12:17, regarding a German Prison Camp located at the Bercut-Richards Cannery/Sacramento Army Depot during WWII. I am an artist and former employee at the Sacramento Army Depot, having worked there between 1968 and 1979. During the period 1976-79, I painted a series of murals for the depot's Administration Building for the U.S. Army's Bicentennial celebrations. One of the 3 murals I painted was one entitled, "The Sacramento Army Depot Story," a pictorial depiction of the evolution of the depot up to that time (1978). In the mural I depicted a scene of the German Prison Camp, apparently referred to at the time as "Tent City" German Prison Camp based on an old photograph. When I painted the mural (in a representational style), I gleaned reference materials from old photographs and even snippets off old movie film that were available at that time in the depot's Public Affairs Office. Anyway, I still have a copy of that particular scene of the mural if you (or anyone else interested in this topic) would like a .jpeg copy (in full color), I would be more than happy to forward it to you as a photo attachment. Just e-mail me at . Best regards, Dean Gleisberg

    Posted by Dean Gleisberg on December 10,2010 | 03:44 PM

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