In northwest Nebraska, German POWs were interred at Fort Robinson, a military base used during the Indian Wars.
In an effort to help alleviate the strain on Great Britain, thousands of Axis prisoners of war streamed into the United States during World War II. (See Axis POW’s in America During WW2). When they began arriving in 1943, the war in Europe and the Pacific was far from over. But American POW camps were vastly superior to conditions on the front.
Many POW camps were located near military posts and Fort Robinson, Nebraska, was no exception. Nestled in the rolling, pine-covered hills and tall buttes in the northwestern corner of Nebraska, the fort had played a major role in the Indian Wars. During World War II, it served as a remount depot and a K-9 Dogs for Defense training center. But it was an ideal location for a prisoner of war camp. Far away from any metropolis, it had excellent railway connections and an endless supply of labor projects for the POWs.
Located a few miles south of the fort, the POW camp was built to house 3000 prisoners. The first prisoners to arrive at Fort Robinson came from Rommel’s Tenth Panzer Division in North Africa. Riding the train from Northampton, Virginia, the German POWs arrived on November 19, 1943.
All prisoners were given a physical examination and searched under an officer’s supervision. According to the Guard Regulations handbook, several items were considered contraband. These included money, cameras, flashlights, binoculars, weapons, and any paper items with pictures or maps of a military or naval nature. But perhaps the strangest item found at the Fort Robinson camp processing was a Chihuahua in a prisoner’s overcoat pocket.
The Geneva Convention dictated the regulations for the POW’s daily schedule. First call was at 6 a.m. with roll-call at 6:30 a.m. Breakfast was served at 6:45 a.m., lunch at noon, and dinner at 5:30 p.m. Only allowed thirty minutes to eat, the POWs were also ordered not to waste any food. The barracks were inspected every day at 10 a.m. Showers and shaves were required twice a week, and bedding was aired every Friday morning. Religious services, both Protestant and Catholic, were offered on Sunday morning.
While there were plenty of jobs available in the camp and at the fort, it was not mandatory that prisoners work. But after being confined behind the barbed wire for a few weeks or a month, many prisoners were eager to keep their minds and bodies busy. A small wage offered more incentive. The Geneva Convention guaranteed the POWs eighty cents an hour.
Since Fort Robinson was a thriving military base, prisoners found an assortment of jobs available at the fort itself. The remount depot and the K-9 dog training site created work for nearly 1000 prisoners. Other jobs included working at the dairy barn, helping in the veterinary section of the post, and the wood shop.
In the POW camp, prisoners worked in mess halls, the supply warehouse, and hauling coal and trash. They also built a baseball diamond, volleyball court, and horseshoe pits.
Even though there was a sharp agricultural labor shortage, prisoners from Fort Robinson did not work on area farms due to the demand of jobs at the fort and the camp. This differed greatly from Camp Scottsbluff, located approximately 80 miles south of Fort Robinson, where Italian and German POWs worked in the bean and sugar beet fields. Only after the war ended did fort-labor ease and POWs start working with area farmers.
When prisoners were not kept busy with work, recreation and education filled the empty hours. Prisoners had the opportunity to participate in a myriad of activities from sports to music to theater. Courses in English were also available and later, an entire program devoted to denazification became an integral part of the POW’s daily life.
Few prisoners who were interred at Fort Robinson complained of their circumstances. Most generally felt that their situation at Fort Robinson was much better than being in the German army. Wolfgang Dorschel, a German POW who became camp translator and later, camp spokesman, wrote in his diary on Sunday, December 10, 1944, “Everything is quite like a vacation compared to life in the barracks.”
