THIS IS A BUILDING THAT NO LONGER EXISTS. WHAT WAS IT?

WHAT PURPOSE MIGHT IT HAVE SERVED?

This particular guard tower was part of a World War II prisoner of war (POW) camp, but the camp was NOT located in Europe.

It was a guard tower.

It was located in Aliceville, Alabama, a small city in Pickens County (highlighted on the map.) The prison camp opened in late 1942, although the first prisoners did not arrive until the spring of l943.

Why build a POW camp in the United States, much less in Alabama?

PRACTICAL REASONS

The Allies captured a lot of soldiers during the war, and there wasn’t enough room overseas for all the camps that would have been needed. When the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff decided to build POW camps in the States, they chose to locate many of them in the South and Southwest because of milder winter temperatures. That meant greater savings on heating costs. (Air conditioning wasn’t common at the time, so it wasn’t part of the expense equation.)

How many camps were built in the United States, how many POWs were eventually held in them?

A SURPRISING NUMBER!

By the end of the war, 700 camps (some large, some quite small) had been built across the United States. They held approximately 425,000 POWs. Alabama had four main camp sites: one at Aliceville (it was the largest in the state), along with others at Opelika, Fort McClellan and Fort Rucker. Out of a total of 16,000 prisoners who were sent to Alabama during the war, 6,000 of them wound up in Aliceville. And at the time, the town had a population of only 4,800 people!

How did the people of Aliceville feel about a camp being built near their little town?

THEY FELT A MIXTURE OF CURIOSITY AND GRATITUDE

When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began construction in the fall of 1942, residents didn’t know what was being built, although they thought it might be a military base. Fortunately, construction required the hiring of local labor and since all the workers pumped money into the local economy, Aliceville citizens enjoyed close to 100 percent employment, along with increased prosperity. However, when the town newspaper finally published an article saying the facility would house prisoners of war, they began to get nervous.

Who were the first prisoners and when did they arrive?

The first prisoners, about 1,000 of them, arrived in Aliceville by train in May of 1943. All were German soldiers, members of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel’s elite Afrika Korps, which had been fighting with the Italians against the Allies in North Africa. In 1942, when the Allies finally defeated the German and Italian forces there, they captured 275,000 enemy soldiers, who were held in temporary detention camps. That was when the United States agreed to build POW camps on American soil.

Interesting side-note: Rommel, later disillusioned with Hitler and Nazism, joined the conspiracy group who tried to assassinate Hitler. He was captured and forced to swallow poison.

How did Aliceville residents feel about these prisoners?

SOMEWHAT NERVOUS

Aliceville was a small rural town and this was the 1940s, a time when the average person didn’t do much global traveling. Most of the citizens in Aliceville had never met a native German. They had, however, seen a lot of war time propaganda about the Nazis. They thought the soldiers arriving in their midst might be frightening “Nazi supermen!” But they were curious too. Aliceville citizens turned out in droves when the first trainloads of POWs arrived.

Here are some of the German POWs being marched from the train station to the camp. Notice the armed soldiers on the right hand side. Several companies were stationed along the route, and soldiers were armed with rifles, machine guns, shotguns and pistols. No one was taking any chances.

All photographs thus far are courtesy of the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

HOW MANY AMERICANS WORKED AT THE CAMP?

1,000!!Most of these were military personnel. The camp, with its 6,000 prisoners and 1,000 employees ,was larger than the city of Aliceville itself, which had only 4,800 residents.

Once the POWs settled in, what kind of life did they have?

Let’s try to answer that question by looking at seven photographs taken inside the prison compound.

Examine each photo CAREFULLY. Jot down all the specific things you notice in each one, so we talk about what those observations suggest about life in the camp.

What do you see in this photograph?

Courtesy of the Alabama Department of Archives and History

Photo # 1

Courtesy of Alabama Department of Archives and History

Courtesy of the Alabama Department of Archives and History

What do you notice in this one?

Photo # 2

How about this one?

Courtesy of the Alabama Department of Archives and History

Photo #3

And this one? BTW: that’s a lighthouse you see on the lawn, and the words at the bottom (in German) say, “Through German character, the world will be healed.”

Courtesy of the Alabama Department of Archives and History

Photo # 4

Courtesy of the Aliceville Public Library

What’s in this one? (The man in the photo is a prisoner.)

Photo # 5

Courtesy of Aliceville Public Library

What ‘s in this photo?

Photo # 6

Courtesy of East Alabama Museum

And this last one?

To start our discussion about life in the camp, write down your answers to each of the questions below:1.Do any of the POWs in these photos appear to be malnourished?2.Do any of them look like they’ve been tortured?3.Does their clothing seem adequate?4.Do prison facilities appear to be clean and safe?5.Does it seem like prisoners were kept in their barracks most of the time? Heavily guarded most of the time?6.What about recreational, educational or social activities? Were any available?7.What surprised you about what you saw in these photographs?

Remember our question: What was life like for the prisoners at the Aliceville camp? Write two complete sentences describing that life. (Don’t just say it was “good” or “bad.” Explain.)

Without offering any additional comments, each of you is to read one of your two descriptive sentences. Then we’ll take another look at the seven photographs to see how they support your conclusions.

In general, conditions at the Aliceville camp (and all the other POW camps) were remarkably humane and civilized. Some prisoners at Aliceville did try to escape (all were recaptured), but most were content to wait out the war in relative safety and comfort. One German POW even described the Aliceville camp as a “golden cage.” Prisoners • had their own newspaper• formed their own symphony, bands and glee clubs• organized academic classes• put on plays and puppet shows• competed to win beautification awards for sprucing up the the grounds around their barracks• wrote poetry and painted• sometimes made friends with the guards• occasionally made friendly contacts with locals if they went went out on work details

Why did the United States set such a high standard for the treatment of these prisoners?

FIRST REASON

The United States signed a treaty after World War I called the third Geneva Convention (convention is another name for treaty and there were two earlier Geneva Conventions). This treaty was the first one in modern times to address the question of how prisoners of war should be handled. Every signatory agreed to certain moral “dos” and “don’ts.” All prisoners had to be given the same food, shelter, medical care and living space as the military personnel of their captor’s , they couldn’t be compelled to do any sort of degrading or dangerous work, and they had to be paid for any work they did. There were other rules, but these give you an idea of the kind of standard they set.

OTHER REASONS

If POWs were well treated, they could serve as workers and help ease the labor shortage produced by the war. Most camps were located in rural areas where there often weren’t enough men to harvest the crops or run the saw mills. Small groups of volunteer prisoners could be sent out on work details (always under guard) to fill this need. They were paid 80 cents a day.

Another significant reason the United States chose to adhere to the Geneva standards was that by doing so, it demonstrated a moral commitment to preserving the dignity of each individual. American treatment of Axis prisoners stood in stark contrast to Nazi treatment of their prisoners.

Two interesting questions:

1.What does life at the Aliceville POW camp suggest about human nature?

2.Why do you think the quality of life there turned out to be so good? What might account for its generally positive and creative characteristics?

Credits:

• Alabama Department of Archives and History• Encyclopedia of Alabama• Aliceville Museum• Museum of East Alabama• Alabama Heritage, Issue Number 7, (winter, 1988)