Transcript Alabama Department of Archives and History

THIS IS A BUILDING THAT NO LONGER EXISTS.
WHAT WAS IT?
WHAT PURPOSE MIGHT IT HAVE SERVED?
It was a guard tower.
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 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.
All photographs thus far
are courtesy of the
Alabama Department of
Archives and History.
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.
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.
Photo # 1
Courtesy of the Alabama Department of Archives and History
Courtesy of Alabama Department of Archives and History
What do you see in this photograph?
Photo # 2
Courtesy of the Alabama Department of Archives and History
What do you notice in this one?
Photo #3
Courtesy of the Alabama Department of Archives and History
How about this one?
Photo # 4
Courtesy of the Alabama Department of Archives and History
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.”
Photo # 5
Courtesy of the Aliceville Public Library
What’s in this one? (The man in the photo is a prisoner.)
Photo # 6
Courtesy of Aliceville Public Library
What ‘s in this photo?
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:
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Alabama Department of Archives and History
Encyclopedia of Alabama
Aliceville Museum
Museum of East Alabama
Alabama Heritage, Issue Number 7, (winter, 1988)