German prisoners help keep ag industry running

By Dave Olson
The Forum - 06/06/1999

It's a little-known fact, but during World War II soldiers of Hitler's Third Reich occupied a small corner of Moorhead, albeit against their will.

The "invasion" began in the spring of 1944, when 150 German prisoners of war arrived in Moorhead from a large POW camp in Algona, Iowa.

The first group of German POWs reached Moorhead on May 28, 1944, accompanied by guards and 2nd Lt. Richard M. Blair, commander of the Moorhead camp.

The Army originally wanted to house the prisoners in a barn near the Red River on 12th Avenue South in Moorhead. But residents in the area objected and the site was switched to an onion warehouse on 21st Street near Fourth Avenue North.

The building still exists today.

The Moorhead camp was one of several established in Minnesota and North Dakota towards the end of the war, when the United States was experiencing a severe labor shortage.

To assist industries, including agriculture, the federal government offered to supply POWs on a contract basis to civilian employers.

In Clay County, POWs went to work on vegetable farms owned by Henry Peterson and Paul Horn.

Every day but Sunday, trucks from the Peterson and Horn farms would travel to the prison camp and pick up the POWs.

Prisoners worked in the fields planting, hoeing and picking vegetables. Other duties included general farm maintenance.

Farmers paid the government 40 cents an hour per prisoner.

In turn, the government paid prisoners 10 cents per hour (80 cents a day) in coupons redeemable only at the camp canteen.

The remaining 30 cents went toward housing and feeding the POWs. Any profit went to the U.S. government.

An eight-foot wire fence surrounded the warehouse in Moorhead. A guard tower was planned but never built.

In most cases, the prisoners had been captured in Italy and Sicily, though a few were taken prisoner in North Africa.

Horn and Peterson, in a 1973 interview with the Northwest Minnesota Historical Center at Moorhead State University, described the POWs as friendly but not overly concerned about working hard.

Horn estimated "their output of work was, I suppose, about 65 percent compared to migrant labor from South Texas. They just couldn't keep up."

Florence Drury of Moorhead was a bookkeeper on the Peterson farm in 1944. In a 1991 interview with Mark Piehl of the Clay County Historical Society, Drury said most of the prisoners were "just ordinary kids," though she remembered three as being "real Nazi types."

According to Drury, the trio "would strut around with their chests out, like (they were) goose stepping almost."

No escapes from the camp were ever reported, due in part, perhaps, to the treatment the prisoners received.

After the war, some of the Germans wrote letters to the Horns and Petersons thanking them for their kindness.

Some asked for aid packages or help in returning to America. One recalled how Peterson sent flowers and fruit to sick prisoners at St. Ansgar Hospital. He also remembered two trips to a movie theater and being given "bier and cigarettes," the latter forbidden by Army regulations.

On Sundays, Blair would take the POWs swimming at Buffalo River State Park or the Benedict gravel pit seven miles southeast of Moorhead.

On one trip, a 23-year-old prisoner drowned while swimming at the gravel pit. He received a military burial in Algona.

For the most part, prisoners got along well with guards and employers, though a minor labor dispute did erupt.

According to a Sept. 17, 1944, article in The Forum, "14 internees found themselves at variance with Lt. Richard Blair in regard to the wage and hour provisions of international law."

"They attempted to enforce their interpretation by a sit-down strike. Lt. Blair, who hails from Kentucky, wasn't a bit impressed with that form of argument," the article stated. "After spending the night in the county jail, the recalcitrant group agreed with the lieutenant's point of view and all again is serene and peaceful in the camp."

Shortly after the camp was established, Blair went before the city council to ask for authority to close 21st Street to traffic when necessary.

He argued that hundreds of motorists were cruising past the camp, subjecting prisoners "to the public gaze" contrary to the Geneva accords.

In addition, Blair stated that "groups of young girls also created something of a problem."

Blair's request was granted.

In September 1944, Blair was replaced as commanding officer by Lt. B.C. Davis, whose first official act was to lift traffic restrictions on 21st Street.

Davis let it be known, however, that federal law would be invoked against anyone who violated rules against fraternization.

Fraternization, according to the posted regulations, included presenting or exchanging gifts such as "money, stamps, cigarettes, drinks, etc.

"These men are prisoners of war and are here for the purpose of working only," the rules read. "They are not 'heroes' and have nothing in common with good American citizens. Avoid any show of friendliness."

The first batch of POWs went back to Algona after harvest in November 1944.

A smaller group of prisoners arrived in Moorhead in July 1945, when about $1,100 worth of improvements were made to the warehouse and the wire fence was removed.

Roy Schultz of Adrian, Mich., was an army sergeant and second in command at Moorhead in 1945.

"The POWs weren't going anywhere," Schultz told an interviewer years after the war. "Those guys didn't know where the hell they were." Some prisoners were allowed to work without guards.

According to Schultz, the summer of 1945 was a quiet one at the camp.

"It was pretty boring duty, really. We just got them ready to go out to the fields in trucks with a few guards, then got ready for them when they returned at night. That's about it."

When the harvest came to an end in the fall of 1945, the prison camp was closed.

Most of the POWs who went back to Algona that fall went home to Germany the following year.