During the tumult of World War 2 America sought secure locations to house the influx of captured German soldiers positioned at the heart of the nation.

Oklahoma emerged as the ideal refuge between 1943 and 1946.

The state became a temporary home to Hitler's stormtroopers.

There are about 22,000 prisoners of war in Oklahoma at the peak.

From the military fortresses at Fort Sill to smaller, quieter towns like Alva, Tonkawa, El Reno and Okmulgee.

P.O.W.

camps were scattered across the state, transforming the landscape into an unlikely home for Oklahoma's Nazi prisoners.

In early 1942, America was still reeling from Pearl Harbor "A date which will live in infamy."

Thousands of Oklahoma sons signed up and left for training.

The families and friends they left behind didn't know it yet, but they had a vital part to play in the war far from the battlefield.

As early as 1937, army planners were drawing up plans and, preparing for prisoners of war.

In July of 1942, Word spread round that we were going to have a military base, which would bring in more people and would boost the economy of Alva.

Rumors were going around also that it was possibly going to be a training center for pilots.

and then they found out that we were going to be housing German prisoners of war.

It was like a bomb went off in the community.

People were now scared and worried about what was going to take place in our town.

Eight base camps were located at Fort Sill, Gruber, Alva, Pryor, Madill, McAllester, Fort Reno, and Stringtown, with smaller branch camps.

Each held a thousand P.O.W.

31 camps in 26 counties.

Only German P.O.W.

were held in Oklahoma, although some Italians were sent to the state.

P.O.W.

Hospital at Okmulgee.

They wanted to build them in, the southern part of the country, they wanted to get them away from the coast where they might be able to get on a ship, get out of them, out of the country.

They wanted them in rural areas so they could be farm labor and away from cities and ports where there were strategic industries and businesses.

I understand they were paid a dollar an acre, for their farmland.

They believed that they would have a chance to get the land back when the camp was dismantled.

Didn't happen.

Construction began in 1942.

Most of the camps that were built in towns, not the ones on the military bases, but the ones that were built in towns like Tonkawa and Alva.

It was they worked, 24 hours, seven days a week to get these camps up.

I remember talking to one of the men that was a carpenter, and he worked on the guard towers, and he said those came in...

It was like fitting a puzzle together.

it was great for the local economy.

at Tonkawa at one time to appear at the camp.

They had 900 people building the camp.

And so they, employed practically every, every farmer in the country to come in and work on these camps.

there were four companies, a military policeman and one company of what was called a service company.

And so that brought about 4 or 500 more soldiers to the community, and they all got paid and spent their money in a local community and so forth.

May 1943 The German Afrika Korps, under the command of General Erwin Rommel, was cut off at Tunisia in North Africa.

They had no ammunition, no supplies, and no way to escape.

Rommel was Hitler's favorite general and a national hero.

He was spirited back to Berlin, but 250,000 men of his command were left behind in the desert.

The British asked their ally, the United States, to take over the internment of some of their captives.

They couldn't take them back to England because they were being bombed.

They were there in the desert.

It's my understanding that they put them in tents until they could get the prisoner.

The camps built over here in America.

They were sent by ship to America in their desert uniforms with a small sack of their belongings.

The four day train ride from New York would be enlightening.

They had been told in Germany that American cities were being bombed, and the German Americans were, and the country was in disarray from that.

Well, there was no such thing.

And they could see that the factories were working.

People were going to work their daily routine was not disturbed at all by the war.

And this was an omen.

An ominous omen.

To the to the prisoners.

You know, this country is not on the verge of collapse, but it's it's it's going strong.

The first train load of peel was pulled into the station in Madill, Oklahoma on April 29th, 1943.

They were destined to spend the remainder of the war behind barbed wire.

All the prisoners came by train.

The first group that came, there was only 19 P.O.W..

So, records show that they put them in the back of a truck and drove them the three miles out to the camp.

After that, they were coming hot and heavy.

A train load at a time.

So they would make them march.

the, the P.O.W.

would get off the train of the depot and go up college Avenue, straight up the street.

And, town people would park along the sides, and a lot of them would stand at the end of their cars and watch the parade of the German prisoners.

Now, there were armed guards along that parade route, but there's also a lot of the Alva people wanting to see, what a German prisoner look like.

I remember hearing people that lived here then looking out the window and seeing them, and that really frightened them when they got here, then they'll They gave them some old American uniforms and, but they stamped on them front and back.

Hardline Nazi Party members, members of the SS, S.A. and Gestapo were ferreted out and separated from the enlisted men.

All of them were sent to an Oklahoma camp.

The prisoners, nicknamed Alva Traz.

Alva got the nickname from soldiers, probably P.O.W.

soldiers, as, Desert Island.

They were also calling it, Alcatraz.

Because we had the worst of the worst.

Nobody wanted to be sent to Alva Camp Alva, was the maximum security camp for the entire prisoner of war program in the country.

All the troublemakers, all the people that they could track down was Nazi agents.

Not all German soldiers were Nazis.

Most of them or not.

But every unit had a Nazi in it, and.

And they could intimidate.

They could scare people.

There were more escapes from Camp Alva than any other camp in Oklahoma.

I think there was a total of 27 escapes.

I talked to a guard, who had, been a guard at, at Camp Tonkawa, and he was sent to Alva for about, oh, a month, month and a half to fill in there, a short of help short of soldiers.

And he said it was it was night and day.

Said the prisoners there would not cooperate.

When the Afrika Korps surrendered in 1943, the U.S. acquired responsibility for about 250,000 prisoners.

After the invasion of France in 1944, that number swelled to over 400,000 as the allies pushed further into Europe.

The larger camps became a city under themselves, where prisoners maintained military order.

Franklin Roosevelt, wanted these camps to adhere strictly to the 1929 Geneva Convention concerning prisoners of war, hoping that if they were treated well, our enemies would reciprocate.

The Americans were very careful to treat the prisoners with respect.

The the POW's got, the same ration that the American Guard troops got fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy products, butter, eggs, so forth.

And meat.

They provided soccer fields for them.

They were allowed to exercise.

I think they even had movies for them.

They worked in the They worked in the infirmary.

They worked in the bakery.

The laundry, they had their own laundry so they could work there.

each compound, of a thousand men had a recall, and there was pool tables.

They could play cards.

They had books for them to read.

Newspapers to read.

And, they also could get a beer there.

There were many talented tradesmen and artists among the captives.

American officials kept them supplied in order to keep them busy.

The gebbia were allowed to make, art objects.

They were allowed to paint, they made furniture.

They were very good at woodworking.

One of the most, historical pieces that they did, was done in the officer's club.

It is a a large eagle statue out of wood with, a wreath and the swastika emblem in the middle of it.

The eagle that's on display at the museum at Alva is is an incredible example of woodworking, artistic woodworking.

I think it was an act of defiance.

I mean, there's nothing more hit Leary in than a an eagle sitting on a swastika The only time the P.O.W.

was were allowed outside the camp was to work.

One small group operated the ice plant for the Santa Fe Railroad, and prisoners with medical training treated P.O.W.

at the Glen and General Hospital in Okmulgee.

They picked crops, cared for livestock, and worked on roads and bridges.

The local people saw them out as work details, not only on the farms, because the farmers could request prisoners of war.

They had to do it through the county agent and then the county agent, then would contact the P.O.W.

camp and say, we need X number of prisoners for this person or that person.

there was a camp at Tishomingo and Powell, Oklahoma, down on the Red River.

And those P.O.W., work.

There were 300 at a Tishomingo.

They worked at clearing the the basin for Dennison Dam.

A few German officers masqueraded as enlisted men and stirred up trouble.

They had listed men were allowed to work to make money, to buy items at the parks, and the German officers believed that working was helping the American war efforts and therefore didn't want the men to work.

George Fan, guard at Camp Tonkawa.

They would take the prisoners that worked for the farmers.

They would take them in a buggy, horse drawn buggy, as if were prisoners ever overcame the guards.

They weren't going to get very far in a buggy.

The P.O.W.

didn't especially care for Oklahoma's 3.2 beer with a wealth of expert craftsmen and materials.

They were able to secretly distill their own spirits.

Even the American officers wanted to offer us $100 for one bottle.

If we would tear them where the distillery was, and we would not get punished.

Max Wölfel.

Max Wölfel was a personal attache to Field Marshal Rommel, his chauffeur.

Whatever was needed.

I understand he was even a pilot.

But he was at this camp, too.

He was not an officer, With his connection to Rommel.

Max Wölfel was an important figure among the prisoners.

In 1943, he was witness to the killing of a fellow prisoner, Johannes Kunze.

Corporal Kunze, Johannes Kunze, was a member of the 999th Brigade in the Africa Corps.

And he was captured, with other Afrika Korps soldiers for 250,000 plus or captured a Cape Bon in, Tunisia in April 1943.

And he was brought to Camp Tonkawa.

And in November of 1943, November the 3rd, actually, he was called before a kangaroo court of about 200 German soldiers in a mess hall at camp Tonkawa, other soldiers saw him talking to these American officers.

He was accused of having informed American officers about secret installations in Hamburg, about the camouflage of the Hamburg railroad station, the Allied forces bombing raids.

Until then it couldn't be located.

But two days after that, information it was reduced to rubble by general secret ballot.

Kunze was found guilty and beaten to death.

Max Wölfel.

a couple of P.O.W.

came to the guard house told the guard there that one of the prisoners needed medical attention.

And, they went in and found this fella, and he was dead right away, they locked the camp down and they took into custody five noncommissioned officers who had the most blood on their uniforms.

trial was held at, there at Camp Gruber, And these five men were convicted of murdering Kunze.

And, in July of 1945, they were hanged at, Leavenworth military prison.

Prisoners were rotated on a regular basis, so they couldn't form conspiracies to organize large scale breakouts.

Considered it their duty to try to escape.

According to newspapers around the state, there were about 80 recorded escape attempts.

None were successful.

Alva was the only camp in Oklahoma that actually killed a POW.

One afternoon, there was a young P.O.W.

running toward the fence.

The outside fence now, there were 13 guard towers besides the men on that on the ground.

And when they were alerted that this P.O.W.

was running toward the fence, they opened fire, and over 60 rounds of ammunition were were spent.

And one bullet put him down.

He had a bullet wound to the chest when he died.

The other thing that happened periodically, at P.O.W.

camps is there were mysterious suicides.

Men were found having committed suicide in the showers and particular hanging.

And there was a great deal of su murdered, by some of the other prisoners In Tonkawa, it soon became obvious that among the prisoners, murder also took place, where threats and blows were not sufficient.

Executions and forced suicides happened.

Max Wölfel.

When they first brought them here in 1943.

Some came with war wounds.

They were injured men.

And then, of course, some of them, got sick and died.

There are 75 POWs or enemy aliens buried in Oklahoma.

Most at the post cemetery at Fort Reno.

Three are buried at Oak Hill Cemetery at McAllister.

And two more are buried at Fort Sill.

The ones that were buried at the camps, like Kunze and others were removed to the, National Cemetery at El Reno.

And they're a separate part of the cemetery.

There's a stone wall around, around the area with a device that offsets them from the, part of the cemetery where American soldiers and sailors and other people associated with the military are buried.

In May 1945, with Russian soldiers closing in.

Hitler committed suicide at the bunker.

Germany surrendered.

And the war in Europe was over.

They start sending the prisoners back to the railroad to go back to the East coast.

Within a few weeks of the end of the war.

But it took until, the end of December to get the camp cleaned out.

But by January 15th, the camp was empty.

My family had just moved to talk about that time, and I remember seeing I several open the backs, open of trips, and they had the men seated in there bringing them back to the depot to ship them out.

and that was in August of 1945. every one of them?

Were put on ships and sent to Europe.

Now, what happened to those prisoners after they left the United States?

Was is many of them were diverted to England and France and they were and they were used as work parties to help clean up, and rebuild from the damage done to those countries during the war and many, many, many prisoners, even though they left the United States in 1945, didn't get back to Germany until 1948.

In order to clean the camp out, the government said so everything.

So there were, like, 256 buildings in camp, 100 in the officers quarters, and then the hundred and 56 were in the three compounds.

all of the camp structures and everything went back to the city.

To the town.

So the town was they auctioned off a lot of the buildings and some of the assets out there, local people were buying buildings.

There's a lot of, buildings that were in this area, some still in use today.

one of the biggest buildings that was moved.

Yes, across the border into Kansas.

And it's our town hall.

They gave Camp Alva to the city for their use.

And the city then, used it for airport.

It used it for state highway department.

And also the Woods County Fairgrounds in the 1980s, as many of these German former prisoners of war begin to retire from their jobs and professions in Germany and were members of the German Afrika Korps veterans association.

They then came to the United States they started coming back in groups and the town just went like Chamber of Commerce, just went all out for them, had a a big dinner for them, and really honored them.

8 or 9 former P.O.W., came back.

I think they might have been invited by the mayor.

Because when they came back, they were greeted by former guards or former employees of the POW w camp.

On July 4th, 2002, a group in Tacoma dedicated a permanent marker to ensure that that moment in the town's history would not be forgotten.

We decided that that needed a marker of some kind needed to be placed at the very entry.

What was the entry into the camp?

Just to recognize it as a historical site, part of World War two one individual prisoner, former prisoner, made the trip to the United States with his family, he wanted to show them where he was, when he was a prisoner.

He was proud to show them where the camp had been.

He took them to the museum to show some of the things that they, had done while they were at camp building the furniture and artwork and whatever.

The remnants of the camp are now barely more than whispers of the past.

A crumbling cement foundation where a water tower once stood.

Its wooden reservoir now a forgotten memory.

In the distance, a lone smokestack remains, a silent sentinel to the days when it billowed smoke over one of the camp's bakeries.

And what was once the officer's club has been transformed into the Alva VFW Hall.

Across Oklahoma, museums carefully preserved the remnants of that era.

Old photographs, personal items, artworks and echoes of the men who spent their days under guard prisoners in a foreign land.

These artifacts stand as a reminder of the vital role played by rural communities in the war effort, and are the last tangible connection to Oklahoma's Nazi prisoners.