German POWs march into the mess hall at their small work camp on the Hellwig Brothers Farm on Gumbo Flats, the Missouri River bottomland now called Chesterfield Valley, in March 1945. About 100 POWs lived there and worked on area farms, replacing Americans who had gone to war. Post-Dispatch file photo
The main avenue at Camp Weingarten lined by small barracks buildings in June 1943. Four years later, the government offered the buildings at auction to relieve the post-war shortage of housing. Photo by Buel White of the Post-Dispatch
The chow line on a boat camp at St. Louis in 1945. Post-Dispatch file photo
A German POW on a boat camp in St. Louis relaxes and reads on his bunk. Post-Dispatch file photo
CHESTERFIELD • Cpl. Helmuth Levin and Private Rudolf Straussberg left notes of explanation on their bunks. They slipped past the guards at night and fled through the vegetable fields they tended.
“Returning to Germany would just be going from a Nazi dictatorship to a Russian dictatorship,” Levin wrote in German. Straussberg added an apology to his keepers for causing “the trouble of looking for us.”
Levin and Straussberg were among the 420,000 German and Italian prisoners of war who spent part of World War II under guard in the United States. About 15,000 of them were sent to 30 camps scattered across Missouri.
Most of the POWs went to large camps, including one covering 960 acres near Weingarten in Ste. Genevieve County. Others were confined in small outposts such as Hellwig Brothers Farm, near U.S. Highway 40 on the Missouri River bottomland then known as Gumbo Flats.
Thousands of Axis POWs worked in the fields, replacing American farm boys gone to war. Some fought floods with sandbags. A few Italian prisoners even worked in the St. Louis Ordnance Depot on North Broadway, handling nonexplosive freight after their country switched sides in the war.
Working POWs earned 80 cents per day, and sometimes could buy beer at prison canteens.
When Levin and Straussberg fled Hellwig farm on June 16, 1945, they were among roughly 100 German POWs who lived there. Five weeks after Germany’s surrender, American security had become a bit haphazard.
Earlier that evening, a English-speaking fellow prisoner heard an American radio broadcast suggesting that German POWs be dispatched to the uncertain care of the Soviet army. Levin, 31, and Straussberg, 23, resolved to skedaddle.
They made it 10 miles south to the Meramec River, but farmers saw them and called the Highway Patrol. Troopers nabbed Levin in an empty clubhouse. Straussberg fled into the woods, but he didn’t get far.
Italians went to Camp Weingarten, at the German-heritage village of 99 residents. The 3,600 prisoners planted tomatoes and took over cooking, attracting American guards with their spicy enhancements to GI fare. Prisoners wore rejected GI garb marked with “PW.”
Most Americans regarded them as curiosities, but there was conflict. Union leaders protested the use of POWs at a quarry near Pevely. Letters to newspapers complained of “coddling” prisoners with such things as swimming-pool time at Jefferson Barracks, where 400 Germans were housed.
In March 1945, national radio commentator Walter Winchell claimed that Germans on Hellwig farm could sneak across the Missouri River into the explosives plant at Weldon Spring and blow the place up. American commanders dismissed his report as hysterical.
Italy’s surrender in 1943 changed the status of the Italian POWs, who remained here but were granted more freedom, including occasional trips to the Hill neighborhood. The last German POWs didn’t head home until 1946.
A year later, the American government auctioned the buildings and fixtures, including 52 floodlights, at Camp Weingarten.
See the World War II POW camps near St. Louis
Camp Weingarten
Italian POWs at Camp Weingarten
POW "boat camp"
German POWs relax during free time
POW chow line
POWs at Hellwig Brothers Farm
German POWs watch film of Nazi atrocities
POW relaxes during free time
Guards at POW camp in Chesterfield
German POWs watch film of Nazi atrocities
Italian POWs
Barracks buildings at Camp Weingarten
~~ VERTICAL GALLERY: HIDE TITLES, ENLARGE TYPE ~~
Read more stories from Tim O'Neil's Look Back series.
On April 18, 1949, a St. Louis University a priest completed an exorcism after hearing a diabolical laugh that froze his blood.
German POWs march into the mess hall at their small work camp on the Hellwig Brothers Farm on Gumbo Flats, the Missouri River bottomland now called Chesterfield Valley, in March 1945. About 100 POWs lived there and worked on area farms, replacing Americans who had gone to war. Post-Dispatch file photo
The main avenue at Camp Weingarten lined by small barracks buildings in June 1943. Four years later, the government offered the buildings at auction to relieve the post-war shortage of housing. Photo by Buel White of the Post-Dispatch