The Germans of Camp Blanding Stockade No. 2

[urbanlibertarian]

From the TU: http://jacksonville.com/news/florida/2010-05-07/story/forgotten-germans-camp-blanding%E2%80%99s-stockade-no-2

The forgotten Germans of Camp Blanding’s Stockade No. 2

By Matt Soergel

CAMP BLANDING - There's little left of Stockade No. 2 now, just a few concrete foundation piers and a sturdy concrete coal bin poking out of the pine trees and palmetto scrub. Tromp a little deeper in the woods, though, and you can find decades-old chunks of coal and the crumbling foundation of a guard tower.

From that tower, in the first half of 1942, you could have looked down into the double-fenced compound, temporary home to a motley group of some 190 prisoners: German civilians snatched from their homes in Latin America and sent to Camp Blanding, then a U.S. Army training camp.

They were all men, mostly middle-aged, expatriates to Guatemala, Costa Rica and Panama. Their ranks held apolitical businessmen, farmers, a few Nazi party members and even - by a cruel irony - some Jews.

Werner Kappel was one of them. He and his father, Fred, fled Nazi Germany in 1938, fearing what was coming for them and their fellow Jews. They found refuge in Panama, but after the U.S. entered World War II they were arrested by Panamanian police and shipped to Camp Blanding.

Kappel, now 87 and retired near Tampa, still bristles at that.

"It's very unfair. You know, we escaped from the Nazis, and now we're supposed to be enemy aliens? Think about that."

Kappel and his father were some of the 4,058 German civilians arrested in Latin America after the shock of Pearl Harbor, then sent north - at the behest of the U.S. government - to be interned in camps across America.

The deportation program was never kept secret, but it remained largely overlooked for decades, overshadowed by the mass internment in the U.S. of people of Japanese descent.

Max Paul Friedman, author of "Nazis & Good Neighbors," the definitive book on the topic, said the deportations were clearly illegal - yet perhaps understandable.

"It's not that American officials had darkness in their heart," said Friedman. "They were in a state of near-panic trying to organize the Western hemisphere against a terrible threat. Excesses happen in wartime."

Supermen of the Third Reich?

The Roosevelt administration considered the German civilians a danger, a threat to the Panama Canal, even possible advance agents of a German invasion of South and Central America.

Hardly, thought Camp Blanding's commander, Col. Louis A. Kunzig; those under his watch were not supermen of the Third Reich, poised to topple the sun-drenched countries of Latin America.

And Kunzig didn't think much of a suggestion to dig a deeper fence around his Germans. What danger, he said, did these prisoners represent?

Some of the internees at Blanding wrote outraged letters, railing against the injustice of it all. What's happened to their businesses in Central America? What about their money, their property? What about their families?

After Jewish internees among them complained about living amid bullying Nazis, Kunzig agreed to put them in segregated tents. From there, though, they could still hear Nazis and German nationalists outside, practicing victory speeches and loudly singing "Germany Uber Alles."

Even so, the Camp Blanding internees had it pretty good.
Kunzig knew that. Stockade No. 2, he told the Germans, was not a concentration camp - it was a "country club."

In fact, Friedman quotes from one prisoner's letter about his time in Clay County: "We grew tan and swelled up like doughnuts from the good meals."

Overlooked, but no cover up

Camp Blanding wasn't meant to be a permanent camp for the German civilians - just a holding place until the government figured out what to do with them.
By mid-summer 1942, all the Germans were gone from Stockade No. 2.

Some were bound for camps in Oklahoma or Texas, where many would spend the rest of the war. Others would be sent back to wartime Germany in exchange for American citizens, but only after signing an oath not to take up arms (there's no evidence those oaths were broken, Friedman said).

Their prison in Camp Blanding was dismantled following the war. Trees and scrub grew over it, and Stockade No. 2 became just a footnote to history.

Much of the information about the civilian deportation program was classified for decades. But that was out of strategic concerns over American strategies in Latin America, Friedman said, not any attempt to cover up the deportation program.

"This was just a tiny little sideshow," he said. "They didn't cover it up because they didn't think there was anything wrong with it."

Greg Parsons, curator of the Camp Blanding museum, said everyone knows about the base's large POW camp, built later in the war to house German soldiers and sailors. There's a big display in the museum devoted to that compound.

But the German civilians in Stockade No. 2? He learned of them just a few years ago, and there's not yet any evidence of them in the museum.

"By the time you got to the end of the war," he said, "so much other stuff had gone on that it was all forgotten."

Goodbye to the good life

For teenager Werner Kappel, sunny Panama was paradise.
"I almost felt like a Panamanian. I was young, there were a lot of girls. Sex was very easy, let's put it that way. I was driving a little passenger bus - you collect from the passenger, we had a regular route, I rented the bus, paid my rent. I was doing pretty good at the time."

He was 16 when his father Fred took him from Germany. It wasn't safe for Jews, Fred Kappel knew, though he couldn't persuade his ex-wife and daughter to come with him (neither survived the war).

The Kappels' tropical idyll didn't last long. Someone somewhere must have fingered them as a potential threat, so they were rounded up and shipped to Camp Blanding, then eventually to a bigger camp in Texas.

Werner Kappel doesn't say much about his time in the camps: He was young, he says, and he could handle anything. "We weren't treated badly, but we were incarcerated," he said. "What are we going to do, overthrow the United States government, or what?"

Throughout their internment, Fred Kappel - born in privilege and educated in the United States - wrote numerous letters to authorities, pleading their case. It worked: They were paroled in late 1943. Free.

Then the government came calling again, and Werner Kappel was drafted into the U.S. Army.

He was badly wounded in the Philippines and awarded the Purple Heart. "Then after that, they made me a citizen. Only then," he said. "Isn't that ironic?"

He still bristles at the events of almost 70 years ago. His wife, Goldie, though, says there's another side to his story. "He said it's the best thing that ever happened to him, that he's in the United States and that he would never live in Germany again."

"Some sort of American"

Imprisoned behind rows of barbed wire inside Stockade No. 2, Joseph Leber could see the American soldiers, the new fighting men of a country barely one month into the war. At first they carried only fake wooden rifles. Soon though, they all had real rifles.

Thousands of soldiers. Thousands of rifles.

At Camp Blanding, Leber was halfway home. Born in Germany in 1889, he lived in Guatemala, where he owned a shoe factory and represented English and American exporters. On Jan. 6, 1942, he was arrested at a lawn tennis court near his house, then taken north to Florida.

Later that year, in exchange for an American civilian, he crossed the Atlantic toward his homeland, part of a voluntary repatriation program. Everything he owned, he put into a wooden box made at Camp Blanding.

Back in his native country, he was put to work as manager of an aluminum plant. It wasn't wise to say some things too loudly - not in Germany, not during wartime - but still he told some of his confidants what he'd seen under the Florida sun: Surely a country that could produce that many rifles in such a short time would be a mighty foe indeed.

For Germany, he said, this war was already lost.
Bernd Leber, his son, heard that story growing up. He was born in 1944, after his father, a longtime bachelor, married in Germany.

Over the phone from Germany, Bernd Leber said his father had trouble reintegrating into German life; many people there were suspicious of him for being "some sort of American."

Joseph Leber died in 1965, in his birth town of Tiengen. He never returned to Guatemala, where he'd lost everything he'd worked for, though he often told his son about his life in "the country of the eternal spring."

He remained bitter about never being compensated for his business losses in Central America, and bitter about being linked to the Nazis.

"He was a very unpolitical man," his son said. "He was just interested in his own life, his own business. He said, 'Why should I be punished for what the bloody Nazis did?' "

matt.soergel@jacksonville.com,

[RMHoward]

Here is a overhead pic of stockade 2 from 1943.  It is in the center of the picture. This would have been right after the German aliens were transferred out.  Note the railroad siding just south of the stockade where they dumped the coal for the camp which would have been distributed for heating and cooking. I have read where the German aliens complained of coal dust covering everything during their captivity.  Noting the proximity of the coal dump, i can see where this was very true.  Walking the area recently revealed lots of coal still on the ground, some really big chunks.
Rick

[Sportmotor]

Germans and any type of camp brings at least to me, a mental image of a camp I would rather not participate in to mind. 

[BridgeTroll]

Max Paul Friedman, author of "Nazis & Good Neighbors," the definitive book on the topic, said the deportations were clearly illegal - yet perhaps understandable.

"It's not that American officials had darkness in their heart," said Friedman. "They were in a state of near-panic trying to organize the Western hemisphere against a terrible threat. Excesses happen in wartime."

Hmmmm....

[urbanlibertarian]

That makes it understandable but not right.

[Ocklawaha]

The "Low Country's" fall.


Pearl Harbor... But Japan was not close to finished!


British surrender of Singapore

No but in prospective we were losing the war early on, England was hanging by a thread, the Royal Navy doing it's best just to keep the sea lanes open to the USA and Australia with much of it's Pacific Fleet at the bottom of the ocean. By 12-7-1941 the RAF was cut down to under 1,000 planes, having lost 1,029 in France alone. That same day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and sank or severely damaged 18 ships, including the 8 battleships, three light cruisers, and three destroyers. On the airfields the Japanese destroyed 161 American planes (Army 74, Navy 87) and seriously damaged 102 (Army 71, Navy 31)On 12-8-1941 (the next day) Japan invades British Colonial Siam (now Thailand) and launches attacks on Malaya and Singapore. By nightfall, 60 of the 110 British and Australian aircraft defending Malaya and Singapore had been destroyed. The Royal Navy could do little to halt the Japanese onslaught The battleship Prince of Wales and battlecruiser Repulse left Singapore on the 8Th to deliver "a devastating attack on Japan, but were sunk by Japanese Navy torpedo bombers almost as fast as they cleared the harbor. Singapore fell and the Royal Navy was driven from the waters of South East Asia.


Surrender of Corregidor, Philippines

So were we warned? Hardly, in the afternoon of the 8Th, hours and many urgent messages after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attacked the Philippines (which was a US Territory similar to Puerto Rico at that time). Japanese pilots of the 11th Air Fleet attacked Clark Field at 12:30 p.m., they caught two squadrons of B-17s dispersed on the ground and its squadron of P-40 interceptors just preparing to taxi. The first wave of twenty-seven Japanese twin-engine bombers achieved complete tactical surprise, striking the P-40s as they taxied. A second bomber attack was supported by Zero fighters strafing the field that destroyed 12 of the 17 American heavy bombers present and seriously damaged three others. Only three P-40s managed to take off. A simultaneous attack on the auxiliary field at Iba to the northwest was also successful: all but two of the 3rd Pursuit Squadron's P-40s, short on fuel, were destroyed in combat or from lack of gasoline when the attack caught them in their landing pattern. The Far East Air Force lost fully half its planes in the first attack, and was all but destroyed over the next few days. By the evening of December 8Th, Japan had landed it's first invasion troops on Batan Island, Philippines (not Bataan).


Jacksonville Beach learned to turn off their lights...

From this you might get some idea of the total panic that had swept the world. NO PLACE was safe, and fears over losing the Panama Canal were rampant with good reason. The Nazi's had been stopped only once and never defeated. The Italian's were rolling over Afrika, and Japan was apparently UNBEATABLE. By December 9 the free world and the Soviet Union had nearly nothing to fight with. We were hardly a world power either, the US Army being the 17Th largest at the time and it included the Air Force, the Marine Corps had no mission and was down to about 2 divisions, the Navy had been cut to the bone with the Naval Arms Treaty's. What we knew that the Axis didn't is that had Yamamoto decided to come right on in to San Francisco, and hop the next train for Washington, THERE WAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO STOP HIM!



The Tiger Tank, we couldn't dent it except in the ass... and good old Uncle Sam filled our tanks with GASOLINE!

60,000,000 Million people would die, and much of the world completely destroyed. Yes we made some mistakes, yes some innocents were jerked around, perhaps cheated, some even died, but the alternative would have been much, much, worse.  For God's sake boys and girls, the wonder is that we pulled it off with as few tragedies  as there were.


Camp Blanding Museum Memorial

Camp Blanding has a fantastic museum that covers about 2 acres with vehicles, aircraft and a huge museum building. It's a major attraction that we never even mention on par with some of the more famous museums of the world.


OCKLAWAHA

[RMHoward]

Strange.  It is very fashionable today for people to smugly second guess decisions made by our government during those dire times (and today as well).  These same folks believe it would have been far more appropriate for us to storm the beaches of mainland Japan with 3 million marines and soldiers rather than drop two atomic weapons.  They would loose no sleep over the 1 million plus casualties we would have suffered, oh no.  All their concern is directed at the poor enemy.  Today, the same people are quick to jump on the world bandwagon claiming America to be the Great Satan, evil, greedy, yea, yea, etc, while at the same time living here and enjoying all of our societies benefits.  They fight for the rights of terrorists to be marandized at time of capture in a cave in Afghanistan.  If President Bush had said "the sky is blue", these folks would go to their death bed claiming the sky was red, pink, black or any other color than blue.  Back to Camp Blanding.  Many of the German POWs saw how we Americans treated them during their captivity.  As a result, many returned to live here after the war and raise their families.  Why? None were tortured, starved, gased, beheaded, etc.  Because we are a good, decent, people.  Accept it people.  We make mistakes.  No other contry compares.  Dont think so?  Go live there.  Sorry, this boils my blood.  

P.S.  Someone remind me.  How many billions did we just send to Haiti, and before that Sunami relief, and before that........
Yea we are a pretty greedy country.

[BridgeTroll]

I agree 100% RM...

[urbanlibertarian]

I agree that it's not proper to judge the people who decided to use the A-bomb and inter people of German and Japanese descent in WWII.  However I think it's very proper to use hindsight to try and determine if the damage done by those actions made us safer or just made us feel safer.  What can we learn from it?

[urbanlibertarian]

BTW I believe the use of nuclear weapons was justified but the interments were not.

[RMHoward]

Only in Utopia will all things be justified, especially in war.   In the balance of  injustices.......I would say we (allies) were on the loosing end of that by about a ratio of maybe 1,000,000 to 1. 
But yea, lets shed some tears and highlight the few mistakes we made, now 70 years later. 

[urbanlibertarian]

Let's highlight the fact that we defeated Nazi, Japanese and Soviet aggression through the bravery and blood of Americans and our allies and also learn from the few mistakes we made.

[RMHoward]

I think you meant Nazi, Japanese, and Italians. The Soviets were on our side in that war.  By all means, highlight and learn from our mistakes.