full on socialism? Guess you had to be there. During the war years we had some of that. The Japanese guys who were interned kind of felt that way. And I do remember some who couldn’t own their own land-—had to lease it. Rationing was a large dose of socialism and I remember that very well. One of my jobs was separating the ration coupons for the folks. It took well into the 1950’s to shake off all that wartime “socialism.” Korea didn’t help and we slid back a little. One of my uncles was on a farm loan board and was able to explain in detail how a few couldn’t buy a farm.
About half way into WW II the army built a pow camp, for Germans, on the block behind our house. We wound up with gummint supplied labor when some of the farmers wanted to use the pow’s as farm help. That would qualify as “socialism.” A lot of those German pow’s elected to stay after the war was over because they knew their homes were trash. But it was into the 1950’s before they could buy land. Socialism? yeah, we’ve had it.
“About half way into WW II the army built a pow camp, for Germans, on the block behind our house. We wound up with gummint supplied labor when some of the farmers wanted to use the pow’s as farm help. That would qualify as “socialism.” A lot of those German pow’s elected to stay after the war was over because they knew their homes were trash.“
There was another German POW camp in Aliceville, Al. That camp housed Germans who had served under Rommel in Africa. Some of the men worked for my grandfather’s lumber mill, and after the war one wrote to my grandfather asking if he could send him things he could trade for food, such as coffee or cigarettes.