Barbed Wire and Nazilagers

One of the nearly forgotten facts of World War II is that there was a German Prisoner of War (PW) camp at Hickory in eastern Murray County.

Actually the idea of camps for foreign-born aliens was not new at the beginning of the war. There was a plan drawn up years before WWII to concentrate those who were thought to be subversives in case of war. This did in fact happen to the Japanese citizens at the onset of the war.

To prepare for this contingency, a crash-building program was begun to build camps at Alva, McAlester, Stringtown and Tonkawa. There was also a temporary holding camp built at Ft. Sill. As the years of the war dragged on, more camps were built in Oklahoma and the central part of the United States.

The major portion of all the German PW Camps in the United States was in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Nebraska. It seemed that these locations were most suitable as it was a long walk to the ocean and possible pickup by a German submarine if a prisoner happened to escape.

Great Britain asked the United States to accept the major portion of the responsibility of housing the prisoners, as England was about to sink under the burden of so many American troops and war supplies in their tiny country.

As more and more Axis prisoners were captured, there were new camps built at Camp Gruber and Ft. Reno. At the height of the war, there were thirty-one camps in Oklahoma with about 22,000 prisoners according to Army records.

A few of the German prisoners were housed at the Federal Reformatory in El Reno for crimes committed at PW camps or for escape attempts.

The Army Corps of Engineers was responsible for the construction of the camps. As a general rule the camps were designed to house about 1,000 prisoners in each compound with one to five compounds per camp. Each compound was then divided into companies of two hundred fifty men.

Each compound contained barracks, mess hall, latrines, infirmary and other necessary buildings. The barracks were constructed to be about twenty feet wide and one hundred feet long and could hold fifty prisoners. There was also a temporary prefabricated pyramid shelter that could house thirty-five prisoners.

As the war ground on, more and more prisoners surrendered and were brought to America. The housing crunch was now so great that any unused facilities were pressed into action. Armories, CCC Camps, federal government and municipal buildings, schools, farmhouses and even tents were used.

Although the prisoners were all from German forces, the nationalities of the men were Russian, Polish, Check and Austrian. There is one story of a German soldier who was captured in the D-Day invasion that could not communicate with his American captors. The Americans tried to use Dutch, French, German and Russian interpreters to no avail. It was finally determined that the soldier captured was from Tibet. The Russian Army, who put a uniform on him and sent him to the eastern front to fight the Germans, had captured him. The Germans captured him and sent him to France in a German uniform to fight the invading allies. This poor guy should have received one heck of a pension from all those armies he served in during the war. It was very common to impress captured men into the service of the captors during the war.

The Geneva Convention says that enlisted men can be made to work in the war effort of the captive nation. Noncommissioned officers may be required to work in a supervisory role and officers may volunteer to work if suitable work in their field and rank can be found. The Convention says nothing about paying the prisoners for their labor. The United States did pay these men the sum of eighty cents per day.

The Geneva Convention also required that prisoners have access to a canteen. The wages paid to the prisoners was issued in script that was only usable at that camp's canteen.

If a civilian contractor used the prisoners in factories, farms or ranches, the contractor was charged the prevailing wage to the contractor.

The Geneva Convention also stated that the prisoners had to be feed at least the same quality and amount of food as their own troops. This became very difficult as the various nations were housed together. The culinary likes of the German, Italian, Polish, and Japanese were widely varied. The prisoners, who were not familiar with American food, wasted or threw away the items the disliked. There was finally an effort made to have a national meal menu for the various camps. This worked well as the food waste problem was eliminated and there was, in some cases, less cost.

Uniforms and shoes were usually outdates or worn American military supplies.

The Alien Internment Camp at Ft. Sill was used to house Japanese aliens beginning in the summer of 1942 and housed 700 persons.

The McAlester Alien Internment Camp held primarily Italian aliens who were thought to be a threat to national defense. The McAlester Camp held up to 4,800 prisoners at any one time.

The Stringtown Alien Internment camp held primarily German aliens and had a capacity of 500 persons.

The Hickory POW camp was located four miles east of town on the Horseshoe Ranch. The camp housed thirteen prisoners and was a branch of Camp Howze. There were no reports of escapes. My grandfather, Allie Waggoner of Hickory who owned the Hickory Store in the war years, related that the German PW came to his store often and he said most of them were good people who just wanted the war to end so they could go home.

Other camps located near this area were at Ardmore Army Air Field, Tishomingo, Pauls Valley, Konawa, and Madill.

Contributed by Dennis Muncrief - March, 2004.