Guard Tower From a Nazi POW Camp

Concordia, Kansas

In Concordia, the Cloud County Historical Museum has an exhibit on the local incarceration of 5,000 German prisoners during World War II. We were in town a bit late for that, so we headed straight north to see what remained of the old camp.

Aside from a large concrete pillar in the distant cornfields -- the stalk of POW Camp Concordia's now-vanished wooden water tower -- there's only one thing to see. It's a restored guard tower. It's more squat than towering -- barely tall enough to rake machine gun fire at the heads of POWs escaping through the corn rows. But it is preferable to the diplomatically-worded plaques and monuments where other WWII prison and internment camps once stood.

The German POWs worked the fields, involuntarily helping to fill in during the wartime manpower shortage. Able-bodied Iowa men were off fighting in Pacific and Europe (and sending their captives here?).

The 160 acre POW Camp Concordia closed in 1945, after the war ended, and the temporary buildings and fences made way for more cornfields.

It wasn't a bad place, as prison camps went -- many of the prisoners got along well with the farmers.