German POWs in Texas

[Fred]

Occasionally someone asks about German POWs in the United States
during World War II. The following article from the Handbook of Texas will
provide some background information on Prisoners of War who were in Texas
during the war.

Do not ask me for details on German POWs in the US; I do NOT do research on this subject. I only found this article and thought it may be of some use to
those who are interested.

Fred
San Antonio, TX

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The Handbook of Texas is a multidisciplinary encyclopedia of Texas history,
geography, and culture sponsored by the Texas State Historical Association and
the General Libraries at the University of Texas, Austin.

The following article was written by Arnold P. Krammer


GERMAN PRISONERS OF WAR. When the United States went to war in 1941, what to do
with enemy prisoners of war was among the last considerations of a country
reeling from a Japanese attack and preparing for war in Europe. The nation had
never held large numbers of foreign prisoners and was unprepared for the many
tasks involved, which included registration, food, clothing, housing,
entertainment, and even reeducation. But prepared or not, the country suddenly
found itself on the receiving end of massive waves of German and Italian
prisoners of war. More than 150,000 men arrived after the surrender of Gen.
Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps in April 1943, followed by an average of 20,000 new
POWs a month. From the Normandy invasion in June 1944 through December 30,000
prisoners a month arrived; for the last few months of the war 60,000 were
arriving each month. When the war was over, there were 425,000 enemy prisoners
in 511 main and branch camps throughout the United States.

Texas had approximately twice as many POW camps as any other state, first
because of the available space, and second, curiously, because of the climate.
The Geneva Convention of 1929 requires that prisoners of war be moved to a
climate similar to that where they are captured; apparently it was thought that
the climate of Texas is similar to that of North Africa. In August 1943 there
were already twelve main camps in Texas, and by June 1, 1944, there were
thirty-three. At the end of the war Texas held 78,982 enemy prisoners, mainly
Germans, at fourteen military installations: Camp Barkeley (Taylor County),
Camp Bowie (Brown County), Camp Fannin (Smith County), Camp Hood (Bell County),
Camp Howze (Cooke County), Camp Hulen (Matagorda County), Camp Maxey (Lamar
County), Camp Swift (Bastrop County), Camp Wolters (Palo Pinto County), Fort
Bliss (El Paso County), Fort Brown (Cameron County), Fort Crockett (Galveston
County), Fort D. A. Russell (Presidio County), and Fort Sam Houston (Bexar
County).

In addition, seven base camps were set up especially for POWs: Brady (McCulloch
County), Hearne (Robertson County), Hereford (Deaf Smith County), Huntsville
(Walker County), McLean (Gray County), Mexia (Limestone County), and Wallace
(Galveston County). The Hereford camp alone contained Italian POWs (2,580 men),
and a few Japanese POWs were kept in Hearne (323), Huntsville (182), and Kenedy
(560).

The main camps were generally built to standard specifications: they were
military barracks covered by tar paper or corrugated sheet iron; inside were
rows of cots and footlockers. A potbellied stove sat in the center aisle. Each
camp held an average of 3,000 to 4,000 prisoners. In fact, the only real
differences between these POW camps and any normal army training installation
were the watchtowers located along a double barbed-wire fence, floodlights,
and, at some camps, dog patrols. Guards were kept to a minimum number and were
usually GIs who, for reasons of health, lack of training, or psychological
makeup, were not needed overseas. The actual discipline among the prisoners was
rigidly enforced by German officers and sergeants themselves. However
uncomfortable, the POW camps were sometimes considered too good for the captive
Germans, and many a Texas community called its local camp the "Fritz Ritz."

Since the war had drawn most of the nation's young men overseas, the War
Department authorized a major program to allow labor-starved farmers to utilize
the POWs. Consequently, in addition to the base camps, Texas had twenty-two
branch camps, some containing as few as thirty-five or forty prisoners, to
provide labor to farms and factories located too far from the main POW camps.
The branch camps, like the labor program, were temporary and often housed in
school buildings, old Civilian Conservation Corps facilities, fairgrounds, even
circus tents like those erected for the Navasota branch camp. Grateful farmers
paid the government the prevailing wage of $1.50 per day, and the prisoner was
paid eighty cents in canteen coupons. The difference went to the federal
treasury to pay for the POW program. German officers, like their American
counterparts in enemy hands, were not required to work, and few volunteered.
German POWs worked on such projects as the Denison Dam reservoir and the
construction of state roads; they also served as orderlies at Harmon General
Hospital (now LeTourneau College in Longview). Their greatest contribution,
however, was to agriculture. From 1943, when the POWs arrived in large numbers,
until the end of the war in 1945, the POWs in Texas picked peaches and citrus
fruits, harvested rice, cut wood, baled hay, threshed grain, gathered pecans,
and chopped records amounts of cotton. Many Texas farmers recalled their POW
laborers with admiration and even affection; indeed, many farmers maintained
warm friendships with them, and periodic reunions often saw entire communities
turn out to renew those memories.

Daily life for the prisoners was basically the same at all base camps. Reveille
was at 5:45 A.M., and lights were turned off at 10:00 P.M. Between those times,
the prisoners worked, took care of their own needs, and entertained themselves
with a large variety of handicraft and educational programs. Every camp had an
impressive selection of POW-taught courses, ranging from English to
engineering, a POW orchestra, a theater group, a camp newspaper, and a soccer
team. Some prisoners even took correspondence courses through local colleges
and universities, and their academic credits were accepted by the Germans upon
their return. Apparently the majority of German prisoners who spent the war
years in Texas remembered their experience as one of the greatest adventures of
their lives.

A few prisoners wanted to escape despite the insurmountable odds against
success-the vast countryside, the language difference, and the absence of an
underground railroad or safe haven. The records indicate that only twenty-one
POWs escaped, the majority from Hearne and Mexia, and that every escapee was
caught within three weeks, most of them much sooner. Motivated by boredom, the
need for privacy, or a desire to meet girls, the prisoners often simply
wandered away from their work parties and were picked up within a few hours,
confused and helpless. Most escapes were comical affairs: a prisoner from Mexia
calling for help after having been chased up a tree by an angry Brahman bull;
three from Hearne who were found on the Brazos River in a crude raft hoping
somehow to sail back to Germany; and another from Hearne who was picked up
along U.S. Highway 79, near Franklin, heartily singing German army marching
songs. There is no evidence that any of the escapees committed any act of
sabotage while on the loose.

After World War II ended, the prisoners were readied for repatriation. They
were moved from the smaller branch camps to the base camps, and from there to
the military installations at forts Bliss, Sam Houston, and Hood. Beginning in
November 1945 the former POWs were returned to Europe at the rate of 50,000 a
month, though most were used to help rebuild war-damaged France and Britain
before their ultimate return to Germany. As the POWs left Texas by the
trainload, the camps began to close. In Hearne the campsite and its 200
buildings were put up for public auction; in the 1980s the space comprised a
small municipal airport and a proposed industrial park. The camp in Huntsville
became part of Sam Houston State Teachers College (now Sam Houston State
University); in April 1946 Camp Mexia became the site of Mexia State School for
the Mentally Retarded; and Camp Swift in Bastrop later comprised scattered
housing developments, a University of Texas cancer research center, a unit of
the Texas National Guard, and an $11 million medium-security prison for first
offenders.


BIBLIOGRAPHY: Arnold Krammer, Nazi Prisoners of War in America (New York: Stein
and Day, 1979). Arnold P. Krammer, "When the Afrika Korps Came to Texas,"
Southwestern Historical Quarterly 80 (January 1977). Robert Tissing, "Stalag
Texas, 1943-1945," Military History of Texas and the Southwest 13 (Fall 1976).
Richard Paul Walker, Prisoners of War in Texas during World War II (Ph.D.
dissertation, North Texas State University, 1980). Richard P. Walker, "The
Swastika and the Lone Star: Nazi Activity in Texas POW Camps," Military History
of the Southwest 19 (Spring 1989). Weekly and Semi-Monthly Reports on Prisoners
of War, June 1942-30 June 1946, Office of the Provost Marshall General (U.S.
National Archives, Washington).
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