I watched this program on Minnesota public television while on a recent vacation back to my home area, and was delighted to find that is is available on YouTube. It is an outstanding and uplifting program, and will be of interest to those outside Minnesota (I think a map in the video shows other POW camps scattered around the U.S.).
Somehow while growing up in the 50s and 60s I never learned that there were German prisoners-of-war living here and working on farms during the war. It was win-win for American farmers and for the prisoners. This video is well worth watching IMHO.
Addendum: A tip of the blogging cap to reader Doyle Stevick, who found a 2025 book on this very subject: The Fifteen: Murder, Retribution, and the Forgotten Story of Nazi POWs in America, by William Geroux.
"Today, traces of those camps—which once dotted the landscape from Maine to California—have all but vanished. Forgotten, too, is the grisly series of killings that took place within them: Nazi power games playing out in the heart of the United States.Protected by the Geneva Convention, German POWs were well-fed and housed. Many worked on American farms, and a few would even go on to marry farmers’ daughters. Ardent Nazis in the camps, however, took a dim view of fellow Germans who befriended their captors.Soon, the killings began. In camp after camp, Nazis attacked fellow Germans they deemed disloyal. Fifteen were sentenced to death by secret U.S. military tribunals for acts of murder. In response, German authorities condemned fifteen American POWs to the same fate, and, in the waning days of the war, Germany proposed an audacious trade: fifteen German lives for fifteen American lives."
I haven’t watched the video yet but I intend to. I wanted to comment right away though because I had no idea that there were any WWII POW camps on US soil until two years ago when my niece got married. The ceremony was at a little chapel in Glenview, IL where the Naval Airbase used to be. The base was closed many years ago and torn down for new housing, recreation and shopping areas. But the chapel was spared because it was built by German POWs and now has landmark status.
ReplyDeleteI live in Glenview! There is a really interesting history regarding the POW's who were here. The WPA had a camp established in the area that is Blue Star Woods/Harms Woods, in the 1930s. The majority of the workers who live there built the Skokie Lagoons. Pretty massive project. When they were finished, the camp was mothballed until the war happened. German POW's from Rommel's North African forces were brought there. Anecdotally, I have heard that the farmers of Glenview were German and could "check a prisoner out" for the day to work on their farm. The caveat was that they had to feed them. Not much remains in the woods from that time. A few old light posts and concrete foundation pieces.
DeleteYears ago, I stumbled upon a POW museum in Aliceville, AL. It housed thousands of German POW's. It was that accidental find that sparked my interest.
Thank you for posting!
Thank you. My father was at one such camp during WW2, IN Minnesota (yeah, he was on the wrong team).
ReplyDeleteThat's cool. I hope your father's experience was as positive as that of most of the stories told in the video.
DeleteMom was 10 when the war started. My grandfather had a farm in Middle Tennessee. She told me about the German soldiers digging potatoes and her helping her mother cook to feed them. In her one room schoolhouse she was given a card that had the silhouettes of planes on it so she could identify them from the ground. The days of conventional war are over. I wonder if today's parents could keep it together long enough to help their kids get through a war.
ReplyDeleteAmerica is nearly permanently at war. Parents are constantly keeping it together long enough to help their kids get through a war.
DeleteAll the Iraq and Afghanistan vets have parents that got them through the war. PTST is something else than being worried about foreign planes that only showed up in Pearl Harbor.
Wait, a bunch of German freeloader came to America and took jobs away from farmers and the then President didn't kick them out of the country back to Germany??? What a loser!
ReplyDeleteCame to America? They were brought to America. Many farmers were serving overseas in some sort of worldwide conflict. And the President during most of that conflict imprisoned a group of people who had broken no laws, many of them American citizens. Yeah, good times.
Deletehttps://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2025/06/too-many-people-just-cant-recognize.html
DeleteI think sarcasm in this case rather than satire, but the same principle applies. Read the room.
Camp Perry in Ohio was another camp that housed German and Italian POWs. The stories sound very similar, that the prisoners would work in local farms and orchards while they were here. Many of the prisoners emigrated to Ohio after the war.
ReplyDeleteI live next to Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina. 2000 German POWs were held in my neighborhood--one of the barracks they lived in was converted into a home and sits across from Forest Lake elementary school. The future civil rights crusader and federal judge Matthew Perry, during the war a GI stationed in Mississippi, was so troubled by seeing waitresses serve (and flirt with) Italian POWs inside a restaurant while he, serving his country and in uniform, had to wait by the back door to receive food, that he was driven to pursue a law degree (which required its own lawsuits to make possible.) A collection of POW letters and postcards from these German POWs at Fort Jackson are on display at the Anne Frank Center (annefrankcenter.com) on the University of South Carolina campus, the permanent partner site of the Anne Frank House in North America.
ReplyDeleteI've just learned that there's a new book on this subject: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/725017/the-fifteen-by-william-geroux/ "The revelatory true story of the long-forgotten POW camps for German soldiers erected in hundreds of small U.S. towns during World War II, and the secret Nazi killings that ensnared fifteen brave American POWs in a high-stakes showdown."
ReplyDeleteWe have several copies in our library system, so I've placed a request. Thanks for the heads-up, Doyle. And I'll move this info up to the body of the post. :-)
DeleteIt never really sank into me how many of these camps there were.
ReplyDeleteI regularly go past the camp in Germfask Michigan and I know of another in rural Arizona.
However the POW story that most amazes me was of an American in German captivity, Joseph R. Beyrle, the only person who fought against the Germans for both The Americans and the Russians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Beyrle
His exploits have not been well publicized and the Wikipedia article really doesn't do him justice but try looking at a few sources I think you'll find it's one of the more Amazing Stories of the war.
Major Larry Allen Thorne, formerly known as Lauri Törni, served in the armies of three countries: Finland, Germany, and the United States. He initially served as an officer in the Finnish Army during World War II, then joined the Waffen-SS (a branch of the Nazi German military) before eventually emigrating to the United States and enlisting in the U.S. Army. He became a Special Forces officer in the U.S. Army, served in Vietnam, and achieved the rank of Major.
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauri_T%C3%B6rni
My father, likewise was at a POW camp in Mn. I believe one of the camps was in Orton/Ortonville? (based on pencil scratchings on the back of some faded photos) He basically told us it was his best time, during the war (which he disliked speaking about). He returned to teh US in the early '50s, and settled down in NYC.
ReplyDeleteHere you go -
Deletehttps://www.pwcampalgona.org/branch-camps-new/ortonville%2C-mn
A nice riverside community on the border between MN and SD.
We had them here in California. Very vital to the agricultural survival of the area. https://www.davisenterprise.com/news/yolo-at-war-german-pows-helped-work-the-fields/article_733dc713-2633-5f79-8062-b9a9d2127ead.html
ReplyDelete