Resentment towards the German and Italian prisoners
Despite, and in some cases because of, the work performed by the prisoners in many communities, resentment against their presence was felt and expressed by many throughout the war. Most of this resentment was generated against the Germans and the Japanese, as the Italians found it easier to be welcomed after it was evident that Italy did not pose a significant threat to the Allies. One source of the resentment was that they removed many jobs from unskilled American laborers and union workers alike. Orchard owners, for example, found that they could harvest their fruit for about half the normal labor cost using prisoners.
The same was true for prisoners loading and offloading rail cars. The railroads experienced their last great boom during the Second World War and the ability to greatly reduce labor costs at a time of maximum freight and passenger traffic helped their profits despite government induced freezes on rates and ticket prices. Warehouse managers faced with increased wage demands had the option of selecting the compulsory prison labor, and thus demands for increased wages were held down. The labor arrangement allowed for the War Department to actually make a profit on the operation of some camps.
With prisoners working as dockworkers, meatpackers, carpenters, and in one instance on an assembly line for Jeeps (the government claimed that the vehicles would remain stateside and were thus not part of the war effort) numerous unions had grudges against the use of POW labor. Washington took steps circumvent both the unions and the Geneva Convention. Washington made it a requirement that an employer, through the government, certify that insufficient American labor was available before hiring POWs. Several unions petitioned the government to charge a token union dues fee to the prisoners, to be payable to the unions. That step the government denied.
By early 1944 the prison system had evolved into 155 main camps, with more than 500 satellite camps housing workers who intermingled with the civilian communities. As these workers and the Americans became more familiar with each other, word of the conditions in the camps, particularly the availability of strictly rationed items, spread. Letters to the editors of local newspapers and to congressmen condemning the treatment as unfair were soon commonplace. Word also began to spread of the prevalence of Nazi philosophy in the camps, fed by senior officers. The phrases “coddled camps” and “pampered prisoners” appeared.
By that time the Army had realized that allowing the German command hierarchy to essentially run the internal affairs of the prisoners – thus retaining a semblance of military order and discipline – had been a mistake. As the Normandy invasion loomed and the Army realized that they would soon be dealing with increased numbers of German prisoners, steps were taken to both assuage the resentment of many local communities and to denazify conditions in the camps. This called for the removal of professed unrepentant Nazis from the rest of the prisoners and steps to remove the Nazi philosophy and symbols from the camps. The Heil Hitler salute, allowed within the German ranks until that time, was banned and the Army restored books to the library shelves which had been removed by Nazis because they had been banned by Hitler.