Posted on 08/24/2020 7:51:35 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1945, the U.S. Army hanged seven German submariners for their “traitor slaying” of a Werner Dreschler at the Arizona POW camp they all inhabited.
Their victim Werner Drechsler had been captured when his U-Boat was sunk of the Azores. Having no great love for the Nazi government which had tossed his father in a concentration camp, Drechsler willingly went to work for the Americans as a mole in the POW camps, scavenging his captive countrymen for whatever particles of actionable intelligence they might be willing to blab to a fellow prisoner.
Parked in Fort Meade, Maryland, Dreschler’s war figured to be long over. However, a careless (or worse?) March 1944 transfer to a different POW camp at Papago Park, Arizona put the turncoat into a prisoner pool that included his former U-Boat mates, and these men knew that Dreschler was “a dog who had broken his oath.”....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
There is now a small military museum on the spot in Papago Park where this POW camp used to be. They have a diorama of the former camp and an exhibit detailing a famous POW jail break that occurred there.
During WWII, the US hosted some 400,000 POWs.
Once had a neighbor, retired USCG, that said he was part of raid on a German radio/weather station in Greenland. The raid was more of a rescue mission, the Germans having been cut off for months.
The POWs were taken to Portsmouth Naval Prison in Kittery, ME.
“Guests Behind the Barbed Wire” is a book about the German POW camp in Aliceville, AL. Most of the prisoners were with Rommel’s group in Africa before capture.
“Ruth’s second book, GUESTS BEHIND THE BARBED WIRE, was published in 2007 and won the Bronze Medal in History in the Independent Publishers Book Awards in 2008. It tells the story of German prisoners of war during WWII who passed their time at Camp Aliceville in Pickens County, Alabama. The book tells the stories of many of those POWs—their capture in North Africa, their Atlantic crossing, and their activities in Aliceville. It also chronicles the experiences of their “raw recruit” American MPEG guards and also the experiences of the civilian residents of Aliceville who often interacted with the POWs. The story goes beyond the war, to the many connections and friendships that developed down through the years.”
There is a museum there in Aliceville, also. Well worth a visit if anyone is ever in West Alabama - about 2 hours west of B’ham and an hour or so from Tuscaloosa.
German prisoners had it pretty damn good in the US. German POWS in South were allowed to go into whites only stores, sit in the whites only sections in movie theaters while blacks were discriminated against.
Interesting. How these enemies of the USA were treated should be compared with how the Soviet Union treated their German POW’s. A good source is AFTER STALINGRAD by Adelbert Holl.
Holl was part of the 6th German Army surrender at Stalingrad and spent over 7 years in Siberia. The majority of his comrades died in captivity or were never released. At one point during transport, he was living with thousands of others in an open field without shelter in the dead of winter.
Another comparison would be how Americans were treated in the Philippines by their Japanese captors. Two books come to mind: AS GOOD AS DEAD about the Palawan massacre of American POW’s and GHOST SOLDIERS, about the liberation of American POW’s in a raid behind enemy lines to prevent another massacre.
or how the Germans treated their Soviet POWs.
America has a good historical reputation of treating POWs decently.
It pays off many times.
I’ve only been in Alabama once - and that was on I-59.
But “two hours West of Birmingham”? Isn’t that in Mississippi?
German POWs were kept at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. They mostly worked the fields in Harford and Baltimore counties. One was a watchmaker and was allowed to open a repair shop in Bel Air, MD. The POW commander was provided a staff car and POW driver so that he could inspect working conditions out in the country.
These POWs are buried at Ft. Leavenworth, KS. A quiet ceremony is held yearly by the German Liaison Officer to honor these sailors as German veterans. They were executed for murder, nothing to do with their service in the German Navy. The United States has agreed to return the bodies to Germany, but we are requiring the German Government to pay for it. They have yet to do that.
Perhaps I should have said “southwest” of Birmingham. It takes two hours to drive from B’ham to Aliceville, and you mostly go west. The Mississippi line is about 30 minutes from Aliceville.
Another good book is “Back from the Living Dead” by Bert Bank, about the Bataan death march.
Thanks for the suggestions of the other books. My husband thinks he has Ghost Soldiers, but the other two he doesn’t.
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