Working with the Enemy: Axis Prisoners of War in Iowa during World War II

Abstract

IN A RELATIVELY UNKNOWN and underpublicized military operation, German, Italian, and Japanese soldiers came to the United States during the Second World War. Without the help of these Axis prisoners of war (POWs), American farmers and manufacturers might not have met the growing wartime demand for food and supplies. The initial widespread capture of German and Italian soldiers came as a result of the Allies' successful 1942 North Africa campaign against Adolf Hitler's Afrika Korps. 1 The British, not able to accommodate the increasing number of POWs on their soil, called upon the United States to aid in POW internment. Thus, in late 1942 and early 1943 the U.S. government constructed dozens of camps in isolated areas of the South and Southwest. Between April and August 1943, prisoners of war totals in the United States grew from less than 5,000 to more than 130,000. As the number of Axis POWs in the United States increased, the federal government established camps beyond the South and Southwest. The U.S. Army supervised the construction and operation of these facilities. By the end of World War II, the United States interned nearly 400,000 Axis prisoners of war in more than 400 camps across the country. 3 Many American farmers turned instead to enemy prisoners of war. Sanctioned by the 1929 Geneva Prisoner of War Convention, prisoners of specified ranks also ameliorated labor shortages in lumbering, mining, construction, food processing, and other non-governmental work not directly related to the war effort.