Prisoners of America

Robert K. Sutton’s Nazis on the Potomac details the intelligence operations that took place in Virginia’s Fort Hunt during World War II, including the interrogation of German prisoners of war. The POWs’ stay in Fort Hunt was usually short, lasting only as long as it took to interview them before being transferred to another long-term POW camp. Those that were cooperative and possibly had important information were treated to special privileges that were not afforded most POWs. The presence of German, Italian, and Japanese prisoners of war in the United States is an often overlooked aspect of World War II history.

The vast majority of POWs arrived in the United States through either the Port of New York or Virginia’s Port of Hampton Roads. An estimated 17,000 German POWs were interned in Virginia camps alone, while the whole administrative apparatus that oversaw the transfer and care of POWs was located in Virginia as well.¹ During the United States’ participation in the war, there were an estimated forty-one locations holding prisoners of war in Virginia besides Fort Hunt, including twenty-three camps as well as other provisional work details.²

One of the largest camps in Virginia was Fort Eustis (now Joint Base Eustis-Langley), located in Newport News. Fort Eustis hosted a re-education center for German POWs. According to the U. S. Military, “there was an effort at Fort Eustis to De-Nazify POWs. The program gave 26,000 Germans a six-day course in democracy.”³

Re-education could cover everything from watching footage of concentration camp liberations, to English classes, to spreading racist anti-Japanese propaganda.⁴ The course at Fort Eustis was broken down into 12 topics:

1. The Democratic Way of Life
2. The Constitution of the United States
3. Political Parties, Elections and Parliamentary Procedures
4. Education the in the United States
5. American Family Life
6. The American Economic Scene
7. American Military Government
8. Democratic Traditions in Germany
9. Why the Weimar Republic Failed – I
10. Why the Weimar Republic Failed – II
11. The Word of Today and Germany
12. New Democratic Trends in the World Today⁵

There was the hope and expectation that those who completed the course would take what they had learned and apply it to German government and culture once they were repatriated, thereby becoming a weapon in the next war: the Cold War with Russia.

Many camps were temporary branches of larger base camps, convened for a few months in a specific location in order to make sure of prisoner labor. Prison labor contracts were short-term, only three months, and were used to replace the labor lost by American soldiers being drafted to fight in Europe and the Pacific. Located in Rockingham County, Timberville Camp (initially a branch of Camp Pickett) was created on a farm owned by Herman L. Hollar, and originally intended as a contract labor camp focused on forestry.⁶ During the harvest seasons of 1944 and 1945, the camp housed approximately 250 German POWs who spent August through November working in various local businesses, including the Rockingham Poultry Marketing Cooperative and Zigler Canning Cooperative.⁷ According to Harrisonburg’s Daily News Record, the men also processed the local fruit harvest, cut corn, and helped fill the silos.⁸

Local farmers could also pay a fee to the camp to rent out prison labor. Paul Roller recounted in 2001 that he had “arranged to get 4 men, with no guards. My responsibilities were to pick them at up 8 AM and take care of them through the day and get them back at camp by 4 PM.”⁹ After a day spent cutting corn, Roller and his wife provided dinner for the four young men. After dinner, the men were returned to the camp, and placed behind “a barbed wire fence 8ft high.”¹⁰ After the harvest season, the men returned to Camp Pickett in Nottoway County near Blackstone, Virginia.

The conditions and treatment of POWs in the United States differed depending on their nationality, rank, and their potential usefulness to the United States in the future. Sutton recounts how some of the high-ranking German POWs at Fort Hunt were taken out to dinner at local restaurants and allowed to make shopping trips for their families back home. However, eight feet of barbed wire encircled them all, restricting their freedom while they were taught about democracy in the United States.