 The Freeper Canteen Presents Papago Park POW Camp
*Papago Peak*
*Papago Peak Park*
The distinctive red sandstone geological formations of Papago Park were formed some 6-15 million years ago. One such formation, Hole-in-the-Rock, is a major landmark, thanks to the openings (tafoni) eroded in the formation over time. There is some evidence that the Hohokam—a now-extinct aboriginal tribe that once lived in the Phoenix area—used the openings and sunlight to track the solstices.
There are also some signs of Precambrian granite in the park. The bedrock is concealed by only a thin layer of topsoil.
Papago Park was designated a reservation for the local Maricopa and Pima tribes of aboriginal Americans in 1879. It became the Papago Saguaro National Monument in 1914, but this status was abolished by Congress in 1930; divided amongst the state of Arizona, the city of Tempe, the Arizona National Guard, and the Salt River Project. During WWII, the park housed a POW camp, and after the war it served as a government hospital and then an Army Reserve facility. The state owned portion of the park was sold to the city of Phoenix on February 25, 1959. A portion of the Tempe park was conveyed to that city in 1935, and a parcel within that portion was conveyed to the Salt River Project in 1955.
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Remembrance
When he closes his eyes, Heinrich Palmer can still see Phoenix from his home in Münster, Germany. "It was for me a very strange place," he says, his accent thick. "Hard to forget, because of the bright sunlight every day, all that sandy dust, and the big cactus that looked very odd and a little scary."
Former Papago Park POW Hans Lammersdorf in 1944 and at home in Seattle, 1993.Mostly, the visions that come to Palmer are of Camp Papago Park, the German prisoner of war camp where he lived from 1944 until 1946. He can describe in detail the barbed wire, the guard towers, even the latrine where a young German spy was hanged for trading secrets. He can conjure up the tidy white officers' huts that are today part of an apartment complex in Scottsdale, and the American officers' club that is now an Elk's Lodge near the intersection of 64th Street and Oak. Even more memorable to Palmer are the good times he had at Papago Park, which today hosts family picnics, but during World War II was the site of a POW Axis camp that housed 3,100 German prisoners of war.
Unlike POW camps overseas, where captured American soldiers were underfed and routinely tortured, U.S. camps were downright hospitable. And thanks to slipshod security and a program that emphasized leisure time, Camp Papago was among the most appealing to prisoners. "It was like a kind of resort," Palmer says. "I have many good memories of that place."
Former Papago Park POW Hans Lammersdorf in 1944 and at home in Seattle, 1993.
*Flight From Phoenix*
"The housing was only adequate, but living at Papago was like a vacation," sighs former Papago prisoner Hans Lammersdorf, in a phone interview from his home in Seattle. "There was no bitterness about the war on either side. The guards, the people we worked for, were all very nice. I would gladly have signed a life contract to stay in Arizona if I could have. But then the war ended and they made me go back to my homeland."
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About The CampCamp Papago Park was a prisoner of war (POW) facility located in the eponymous Papago Park National Park in the eastern part of Phoenix, Arizona. It consisted of five compounds, four for enlisted men and one for officers. The property now is part of the Arizona National Guard and the Phoenix Zoo.
Called Schlarafenland—the land of milk and honey—by its mostly U-boat-crew inmates, Camp Papago Park was very different from Axis POW camps, especially with regard to how prisoners were treated: Inmates were not required to work or study, though many chose to as a means of combating boredom (though mostly the latter, as there were only 700 volunteers for labor tasks). The camp had a theater where films were screened twice a week and the camp choir could practice. Much of this was discussed, along with anything else the prisoners who wrote The Papago Rundschau chose to include, in the camp’s newspaper.
All things considered, life was probably not too bad at the POW Camp, at least from what formers prisoners say in their visits to the Valley of the Sun. Yes, it was a little cold in the Winter and a little too hot in the Summer, but for 8 months of the year, the weather was great, the work easy and the food, bearable. Discipline was not too harsh, and sports and games were common to keep the POWs occupied. During the day, some POWs would leave the camp to work at local farms or do odd jobs for local inhabitants. They would write letters, admire the fabulous local scenery of Papago Park, including the butte nearby which they called "Die Schlafender Indianer" (actually Barnes Butte) and plan the rest of their lives. There are even stories of POWs having outside girlfriends and amorous encounters. Most records tell us that almost all POWs were German sailors, mostly from captured U-boats. However, I have been told by a long-time local, who remembers going down to the Recreation Hall to watch movies with the prisoners that one man would yell out the dialogue translation in German and another in Italian as the movie played. Laurel and Hardy movies were everybody's favorites. There are also stories that local kids even admired the Germans so much they would wear the letters 'POW' on their jackets, which caused the local guard officials to issue orders prohibiting this, so as not to confuse the guards. Even so, there were a few Germans that just had to cause trouble. These were put in a part of Compound 1 at the North end, conveniently located near the outer perimeter of the camp.
So what is left of the most famous World War 2 POW (Prisoner of War) camp in America? Remember, we are talking of a place where over 2,000 people lived in hundreds of building over an area of almost 1 square mile just 60 years ago (Notes: both the total number of prisoners and/or largest quantity at any one time vary considerably according to the source. I have seen these estimates: 1,700, 2,500, 3,600, 4,000 and 5,000).
The answer is: Not much, not much at all. On site all that remains of the hundreds of buildings, not counting shacks, sheds, outhouses, guard towers and miles of barbed wire fence is... exactly one building and the foundations of one guard tower, plus about ten thousand small chunks of concrete scattered over the desert. Even up until the 1970s, the skeleton remains of buildings and fallen abandoned barracks were still scattered around the park to the east of 64th street. Fifty years after it was deactivated, a person looking at the area would not know it had ever existed. Even for a person living in the area who has read much of the literature, it is difficult to imagine not only how it looked, but even where it was situated.
What was moved off site... In the 1950s people could buy a hut for almost nothing, if they were willing to move it themselves. Since most (if not all) of the construction was wood frame and sides, it was relatively easy to move the structure. Many of the barracks and officers quarters were bought by private owners and moved to nearby locations - the most famous and last of these were the five buildings on Scottsdale Road. Actually there were several more next to them at one time, where the McDonalds now stands. Some buildings were given to schools and other government organizations. Perhaps the two most famous buildings off-site and still in use are the Recreation Building, or Gym and another administrative building still in use as the Phoenix Zoo, also in Papago Park.
 By December 2005 the last three huts were gone. They were taken by the City of Scottsdale and will be renovated and relocated to McCormick Park where a POW exhibit is planned...
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The "Not-So-Great" Escape
The Geneva convention states that the prisoners of war have a duty to try to escape. Submarine Capt. Jürgen Wattenberg, then 43, took his duty very seriously. The Papago Prisoner of War Camp was so isolated in the desert that the American guards considered escape all but impossible. They were certain that the rocky, caliche ground was too hard for any attempt to escape by tunneling out. But that was just what the Germans did.
Kapitän zur See Jürgen Wattenberg 28 Dec, 1900 in Lübeck, +27 Nov, 1995
The German prisoners asked their guards for permission to create a volleyball courtyard. Innocently obliging, the guards provided them with digging tools. From that point on, two men were digging at all times during night hours. A cart was rigged up to travel along tracks to take the dirt out. The men stuffed the dirt in their pants pockets which had holes in the bottoms, and they shuffled the dirt out along the ground as they walked around. In addition, they flushed a huge amount of dirt down the toilets. They labeled their escape route Der Faustball Tunnel (The Volleyball Tunnel).
They dug a 178 foot tunnel with a diameter of 3 feet. The tunnel went 8 to 14 feet beneath the surface, under the two prison camp fences, a drainage ditch and a road. The exit was near a power pole in a clump of brush about 15 feet from the Cross Cut Canal. To disguise their plans, the men built a square box, filled it with dirt and planted native weeds in it for the lid to cover the exit. When the lid was on the tunnel exit, the area looked like undisturbed desert.
Wattenberg ordered the men in the adjacent compound to throw a noisy party the evening of December 23, 1944. They weren’t told why, but many of them guessed and silently wished their comrades luck. Besides, they were happy to celebrate the good news of Hitler’s final offensive, the Battle of the Bulge.
By Christmas 1944 the tunnel was complete and the POWs were ready. The prisoners held a loud, wild party to cover the getaway. In the late hours of December 22th, 1944, under cover of the sound of either Stille Nacht (Silent Night) or Lili Marlene, depending on the source, twenty-five Germans slipped out of the hole on the banks of the canal and disappeared into the night.
The plan was escape to Mexico, possibly by stealing a boat and floating down the Salt River. It would have been a great plan except there weren't any boats, and there was no water. As everybody in Arizona knows, just because a map has a something called a 'river' on it, it doesn't mean that it has water in it.
Well, the POWs escape and take off in different directions. Back in camp the party ends and everybody goes to bed. The camp guards settle down for a quiet night until the base commander starts getting phone calls from residents and police in Tempe and Phoenix. People were complaining about Germans knocking on their doors asking to be returned to the Papago Park POW camp.
It was at that time that the Army realized that they might have had an escape. Evidently it was a cold night and some of the POWs missed their bunks and blankets. There were some POWs, however, that were made of much sterner stuff. A few got as far as Gila Bend and the German leader managed to hide out for 32 days, probably staying in a cave near Camelback Mountain before being arrested in a hotel lobby in downtown Phoenix.
Thus ended the Great Papago Park POW escape. Well maybe, there are stories that more than 25 Germans escaped, and that was number only reflects the ones captured and this was used by the Army to hide their incompetence. Some say their were 35, 45 or even 60 fugitives. For years and even decades after the war, there were stories of escaped POWs that either lived out in the boondocks or had assimulated into the local population.
*Papago Park POW Camp*
EPILOGUE
On January 5, 1985, the Papago Park Prisoner of War Camp Commission held a commemorative observance at the campsite. The festivities were attended by mayors of Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Tempe. One of the special guests of honor was 85 year old U-boat Commander Jurgen Wattenberg. Looking back on his stay in Arizona, Wattenberg remarked how much he had enjoyed the SPAM dinners!
A banner over the camp meeting declared, "TO RENEW IN FRIENDSHIP AN ASSOCIATION COMMENCED IN ANGUISH."
Today a residential subdivison, a Saturn dealership and a baseball field cover most of what was once Papago Park POW Camp. The only remaining building which would have heard the voices of the German POWs is now occupied by the Scottsdale Elk's Club.
Thanks to Sandrat for the suggestion!
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