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Worker shortage

3

37 chief

Well-known Member
During WW2 when Dad was farming there wasn't a lot of part time workers. Today stores like lows, and Home Depot have at least 15 people standing
around looking for work. Dad would get workers from the military. Where we live on the west coast there were a lot of military bases, I don't know
how the contacts were made. He said most young boys were from farms, from the mid west, and were good workers. Back east some people used
German prisoners of war for labors. Do any of you recall people using them? Stan
 
I wasn't around back then. However, I do know that there were several POW camps for Italians in New Jersey. When Italy switched sides, the die-hard Fascists were kept locked up, but many of the POWs gladly and willingly joined the Italian Service Units of the US Army and did all kinds of work around the state, including farm work. There were many vegetable farmers of Italian descent in South Jersey who spoke English and Italian so it was a natural fit.
 
There were several POW camps in Michigan that sent out prisoners to local farms. The German prisoners were by-and-large a well-behaved group with few escapes because they were well aware that being a P.O.W. in the U.S. was a Golden Ticket to survive the war. No prisoner wanted to risk their fairly comfortable internment here where they certainly had it far better compared to the horrors that there fellow soldiers were experiencing in Soviet camps or on the battlefields as the tide of the war turned in the Allies favour.

HOWEVER, There was a famous incident out of the camp in Owosso, Michigan where in 1944 two teen-aged girls stole a car and helped two Germans escape the camp there for a few days. After hiding out in the woods for 4 days they were caught, the Germans were returned to the camp and the girls actually spent some time in prison.

I'm not sure what job those girls needed handled so urgently to go to such extreme measures, but those POWs had 4 days & nights to git 'er done!
POWs gone wild
 
I wasn't around back then but I know the Fort lost in the woods as some call it was a POW camp during WW2. Stores go that the POW where to afraid to try to escape due to the crazy MO. farmers who always had guns. LOL
 
Dad used to tell about guys getting non violent prisoners from the Ionia State Prison. He said some treated them OK, other guys treated them worse than dogs.
 
My grandmother told us about a German POW that worked for a local farmer during WWI,he would come over with the farmer's family and play cards with them sometimes.
 
Here, today, I see county jail inmates in orange, picking up roadside trash, with rifle toting guards near by.
 
There is always been some sort of forced labor in the SE USA since before we was a country till the late 1940's
Anyone that disputes that does not know the history of the SE USA.

Before 1865 it was slavery.
1865 till the start of WW 2 it was Peonage.
During and after the war it was Germans and Italians.

And if you say Peonage was illegal; again you don't know the history of the SE USA.
 
There was a time when the Federal prison in TH was a farm where the they raised everything with prison help. Don't know who complained or why, but now they hire people to mow the fields.

One would think, they could contract a farmer to make hay in the fields and maybe make a profit.
 
I was born in 1949, so I don't have first hand knowledge, but I have heard many stories about German POWs working for the farmers in this area. I was told that they were treated well and got along well with everyone. The area that they worked in was made up mostly of farmers with German heritage.

This area that I'm referring to is the Mississippi Bottoms area of Jackson County, Illinois.
 
(quoted from post at 12:35:14 05/29/21) There is always been some sort of forced labor in the SE USA since before we was a country till the late 1940's
Anyone that disputes that does not know the history of the SE USA.

Before 1865 it was slavery.
1865 till the start of WW 2 it was Peonage.
During and after the war it was Germans and Italians.

And if you say Peonage was illegal; again you don't know the history of the SE USA.
Click to expand...
oday, instead of giving taxpayer dollars to forgive college loans, we ought to be using Peonage!
 
I now live in New Ulm, MN, a small city of about 14000. This town was settled by Germans from Ulm, Germany, in the middle 1800's and still has a lot of German heritage. We have a POW camp only about a block from the city boundary. During the war this was one place the Germans wanted to be as the people here still spoke German and the prisoners gladly worked on the farms around here. They felt so much at home that after the war ended some applied for citizenship, which was denied by our government.
 
I have hired work release prisoners. Some of the best construction workers Ive ever hired. They are always on time waiting to get picked up, never hung over and very happy to be at work. Down side is they have to be picked up and returned by a certain time.
 
My grandfather farmed just a few miles northeast of Greeley, Colorado. There was a German POW camp west of town on US 34 highway. My grand father raised corn, sugar beets, pinto beans and also grew Hubbard squash and cucumbers. The camp guards would bring the prisoners out in a bus and supervised them as they thinned, and weeded the beets. Onions were also worked, irrigation ditches were cleaned out and they continued to help thru harvest.

Grandmother was German, Grandpa Swiss and were able to converse with the prisoners in their own language. Sugar beets were all topped by hand and then forked on to the truck for unloading at a piling station. My Dad's 1941 Case was sometimes operated by one of the prisoners pulling a beet drag thru the rows. He also had a Case two row lifter on it.

Beagle
 
Seems to me I recall hearing stories about German POWs in WWII working for farmers in the Hastings, Nebraska area. I believe they actually boarded with the farmers they worked for.

For the most part, they worked hard and behaved themselves. They knew they had a cushy deal compared to being in a regular POW camp, or even still being in combat.

I understand some, if not most, simply stayed in the community here in the U.S. when the war ended. They had a better future here than back in what was left of Germany.

That being said, the flip side is Bob Braham, one of Britain's top fighter aces in WWII was eventually shot down over occupied Denmark 10 months before the war ended and spent the final months of the war in a German POW camp. His stay wasn't overly unpleasant.

The camp was staffed mostly with German soldiers who had been wounded in combat and relieved of combat duties. At that point, they knew Germany was not going to win the war, and prisoners and staff alike were all just marking time until the war ended.

History hasn't dwelled on it much, but there was a huge difference between the fanatical SS Storm Troopers and the German regular army soldiers whe were just doing their job.
 
The state park in New Ulm was actually a WWII prisoner camp for Germans.

Most of the town still spoke German into the 1980s, as the town was settled by Germans, many came fleeing from political unrest in Germany before and after WWI.

The prisoners were used for farm workers for the most part, and everyone got along fairly well from the stories. The Germans that were held here generally were more on our side than on the side that gave them uniforms and rifles...

After the war a couple came back to visit, I think even one or two came to live in the area.

So, yes, it was real common here.

Paul
 
My Daddy was a conscientious objector in WW2 and worked with the Civilian Conservation Corp in both Maryland and Mount Weather, VA near Winchester. He said the apple orchards had German POWs to pick the apples. They'd be tired of looking at apples and say all the time, these G'da!n apples! Most German POWs got fat over here versus our guys in German POW camps being hungry from what I've heard/read.
 
My family farm was near Letchworth State Park located in Western NY. During WW2 there was a POW camp in the park and prisoners would be sent out into the surrounding farms to help with the harvest. The only story I ever heard was that the Germans did not care for the food they were served on the farm during there work days there. There is nothing left of the POW camp, back in the 80's when I would hunt there some of the older guys would point out where it had stood. Just empty ground back then, probably grown over by now.
 
There were several POW camps in Northern Ontario. Story goes the prisoners worked in lumber camps with few guards.....after all, they were hundreds of miles from anywhere and there was only one road out. Those that tried to escape were driven back by one night in the bush with the blackflies....

Ben
 
Two German prisoner camps in my home town. My Grandpa used prisoners to work in his sugar beet fields.
Told me they were good working decent people that he got to practice his German speaking with.

Here is a good article from home town about life here and train and truck accident with 16 German pow,s killed.
wreck
 
I hired a driver a month ago. He told me right away that he had a felony from 35 years ago. I said no big deal. Then he told me he just got release from prison for his felony a month prior to me hiring him. I didn't ask him what is was for. So far so good. Bill
 
Stewartstown, PA had a POW camp here in WW2. They worked in the nearby orchards. My dad when a kid use to visit friends at Fort Howard, MD right after the war and remembers German POWs. I recently visited Fort DuPont in Delaware, it was a POW camp too. Obviously, they were literally everywhere.
 
Good for you on not asking but I would have wanted to know if nothing else to keep everyone around you safe. Thats along stretch of time in the penitentiary.

Vito
 
Just south of town the army built an airfield for ww2 and there was alot of German prisoners. They work on farms as most of the farmers are of German descent and the older one still spoke German. I was told that a ditch through some properties I own was dug by tve Italians pots and the bade just Noth of here they built a church and carved some statues out of marble.
 
There was a German POW camp in Frederick, Maryland. I grew up there but never heard about it until the newspaper did an article on it 15 years ago. The road it was on is still called Old Camp Road. The article said the prisoners were sent out to local farms. Lots of them in the area back then, orchards too. The help was needed with a lot of men away at war. They said the general consensus was the prisoners were happy here and especially happy to be away from the fighting. Also that they were considered good workers and seemed to enjoy hard, manual labor.

I remember that last part from the article in particular, because my ancestry is near 100% German from what I can find, and I thought that that described a lot of our family perfectly.
 
I should also note this base also was were all the captured emeny aircraft was taken and rumors said they has a German jet. At the end of the war the planes we bulldozed in to pits and buried. My family lost some land to bid the base but they got to farm some of it. My great uncle on returning from the war continued to farm the land as says he seen the burning and then buried some planes. Another note is the Tuskegee airman trained there and went I to whites only club. That was the start of desegregation of the military.
 
I had a couple of guys over the years that worked on my block plant crew that had served time for homicide,drinking and got into a fight situations became friends with both,good workers.
Still see one of them and talk from time to time,the other one passed away a few years ago.
 
Camp Meade, now Fort Meade, MD was a pow camp during the war. Some of the pow's worked at the Naval Academy dairy farm in Gambrills, MD doing field work during the day and returning to Camp Meade at night.
 
A little bit of a side note - during one of the world wars, the village of Campbell Hill, Illinois made a law that it was illegal to speak the German language in the town. One of the old Germans was belligerent and defied the law and was fined for it. There is a news article about the incident.
 
Some info from Wikipedia regarding WW2 German prisoners interned on US soil ....

The Office of the Provost Marshal General (OPMG) supervised the 425,000 German prisoners. They stayed in 700 camps in 46 states. A complete list may not exist because of the small, temporary nature of some camps and the frequent use of satellite or sub-camps administratively part of larger units. Other than barbed wire and watchtowers, the camps resembled standard United States or German military training sites.
 
Here's one that's out your way. At the base of the Imperial dam on the Colorado river is a monument built by Italian prisoners of war who were used to dig the new (then) All American canal. Those prisoners enjoyed the sunny skies of southern Arizona which reminded them of places in Italy. They developed a great deal of respect for the US Army Corps of Engineers and this picture is part of a monument they built honoring the Corps.
=https://www.yesterdaystractors.com/cvphotos/cvphoto90099.jpg>

cvphoto90101.jpg
 
You're right about that TF .... those were tough times and we had a good number of those camps in Canada as well (see the link below) for both POW's from combat and also interred Canadian citizens of German, Japanese and other ethnic descent. Still a bit of a sore spot for many years later of course. Germany made a remarkable recovery in the last 75 years and is now considered one of the great places to live on the planet for almost all facets of everyday life. One ironic thing about it all is that N A T Z I S M (spaced to avoid being poofed) movements and groups is/are less tolerated in Germany today than in your country or mine.
POW & internment camps in Canada
 
In the small town in eastern Colorado where I grew up, there was a chicken grower who used several long buildings on the edge of town. It seems these buildings were originally barracks for German POWs. Not many folks talked about this history, but I assume the POWs mostly worked on local farms; with so many men away in the service, I'm sure the prisoners' work was appreciated. There would have been some older folks who still spoke German, but those of my father's generation didn't as all things German became unfashionable during the first world war.

Most of the barracks/chicken barns were torn down back in the seventies, but one is still standing. I wonder how many folks know its history.
 

The Germans must have liked the US and Canada after WWII . A lot of German immigration for decades afterwards .
There were so many Germans in the US in the late 1800s that the choice for the USs
Official language barely won with English and Herman as a close 2nd .
 

In 1939 when war was declared . A young German tried to speak to my Uncle and his Father in Goderich Ontario .
The young lad had jumped ship and was trying to find his way to New Berlin which was renamed Kitchener during the WWI era .
They drive the young sailor to downtown Kitchener . The sailor spoke German to a few folks on the street and he was welcomed .
Last my Uncle and his Father seen of the sailor his and his fellow German decedents was them saying ThankYou and disappearing into the crowds
 
Here's an aerial photo of a POW camp in the Adirondack mountains. I remember reading about them. They were costructed the same as barracks and camps that housed US troops and were fed the same type of food.

cvphoto90122.jpg
 
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