Who Were the Prisoners Who Came to the Fort Mcclellan POW Camp?

Who Were the Prisoners Who Came to the Fort McClellan POW Camp?

The prisoners who came to Alabama after capture at various battlefields across the Atlantic Ocean were a varied mix, ranging from battle-hardened veterans to raw, wary recruits. Some were Nazis (a nickname taken from the sound of the first two syllables of the Nationalsozialistiche Deutsch Arbeiterpartei –in English, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party), melded to the philosophy of Germany’s ruling party; others were mere draftees, conscripted from the ranks of schoolboys and civilians. Some were not even German, but rather men from countries allied with or annexed to the Fatherland. They spoke Polish, Hungarian, Dutch, Czech, French, Finnish, or any of the Baltic or Balkan languages. Some were in their 30s, even 40s, but most were teenagers and young men in their early 20s. They tended to look the same – windswept, sunburned, fatigued from months or even years of fighting enemy artillery and the constant onslaught of intense combat conditions.

They were all individuals with aspirations and dreams, likes and dislikes, and loved ones back home, their lives suddenly interrupted in a manner they could not have dreamed of a scant few years earlier.

According to Steve Bakke, an Alabama expert on 20th-century international politics and warfare who has amassed a storehouse of military knowledge and memorabilia, “Most of the prisoners who ended up at Fort McClellan were what would be considered rank-and-file soldiers, not hard-core Nazi adherents. The ones who were known to be hardcore Nazis were separated out beforehand and were sent to other camps. Those camps were more like prisons. It was my understanding that the SS [for “Schutzstaffel” or “Guard Detachment,” an elite German quasi-army originally intended to safeguard the infamous Führer Adolf Hitler] troops were sent primarily to England for internment. I’m not saying there were no fascists in McClellan, but most, from everything I’ve studied, were primarily just Germans conscripted into the army.”

A December 1943 occupational summary of McClellan’s prisoner population identified 169 different professional backgrounds for the 2,994 men then in the camp. The professions included mechanics and carpenters, career soldiers, bakers and cooks, electricians and engineers, farmers and gardeners, mailmen, merchants, salesmen, teachers. There were architects and chemists, dentists and druggists, firemen, interior decorators, lawyers and medical doctors, musicians and artists of every kind.

German POW Christian Höschle, who later wrote an autobiography, wrote of McClellan as a reservoir both receiving and incubating talent. When he arrived on July 23, 1943, he quickly found an inordinately high number of professors, music teachers, engineers, language teachers, top athletes, artisans, and craftsmen. “Because we were an elite troop,” he wrote, “it was obvious that we would be occupied with culture, science, and crafts, and everyone could indulge his own hobby.” He also mentioned that German ingenuity impressed the Americans: “Soon there was a saying among the Americans – ‘If you give a German prisoner a tin can, he will immediately make a radio or a machine gun out of it.’”

McClellan foster many POW musical groups, understanding that the best way to maintain harmony in a POW camp was to encourage as much normality – under controlled circumstances – as possible for the internees. The camp’s largest, fullest, and most professional orchestra was “Sorgenbrecher” (a German name roughly translated as “Blues Breakers,” as in “Banishing the Blues”). At least two of the several dozen men who played in the orchestra over the years of internment included Otto Konhäusner, a clarinetist who, after the war became a recording artist, and Franz Fehrenbach, a trumpeter who later became a famous radio musician in Germany. Reinhold Güther, a graduate of the Berlin Music Academy, continued an operatic career with several prestigious postwar engagements in places like Bremen and Zurich.

Of the several thousand prisoners interned at McClellan through the camp’s three years of existence, almost all were German. The camp newspaper, P.o.W. Oase, published by the German POWs for the morale of their compatriots – with minimal censorship by the U.S. Army – continually featured excellent journalistic writing, including poems, in the words of a contemporary German scholar “good enough to be included in an anthology of WWII poems.”

McClellan also hosted POW art exhibits where the camp’s dozens of artists, sculptors, and illustrators were invited to display and sell their handiwork.

In the May 1, 1944 issue of the newspaper, artist AlbinSagadin explained his passion: “The subjects of the paintings can be quite different – landscapes, fantasy, portraits, symbolism. It’s hard to say which images are best. For an artist is always on a creative quest and must never be satisfied with his work.”

It was spoken more like an artist who just happened to be an imprisoned soldier, than a soldier who merely liked to dabble in painting.

Next: A Description of the Fort McClellan POW Camp.

This excerpt is from The Fort McClellan POW Camp: German Prisoners in Alabama, 1943-1946 by Jack Shay. It was published by McFarland & Company in 2016. It may be obtained from the publisher (800-253-2187 or or from Amazon or any bookstore.