Hot Springs NC: WWI German Internment Camp

May 3, 2018 4:36 PM

They built themselves a village. Of course, they weren't military; they were sailors and passengers who'd been trapped in the U.S. by the outbreak of war. About 2200 were hustled off to bucolic western NC, to a small town of about 650 people. And there they settled in.
posted by MovableBookLady (11 comments total)

That's a pretty convincing alligator.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:47 PM on May 3, 2018

An awful lot nicer than the WW2 camps in the desert ....
posted by mbo at 4:47 PM on May 3, 2018 [6 favorites]

Reading Hot Springs' wikipedia page gives me a smile:

1. None of this is there anymore, it all burned down. The town had burned before, and a couple of replacements for the WWI "hotel" have burned since. Hot Springs is hot in more ways than one!

2. It used to be called Warm Springs, but they found another spring with a higher temperature.
posted by rhizome at 5:04 PM on May 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

Hot Springs is a nice little town now and still has hot springs with tubs you can reserve and go loll in under the trees near the river. It's really nice. And the AT crosses there so lots of hikers coming through. And Asheville for "big city" vibes.
posted by MovableBookLady at 5:34 PM on May 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

Hot Springs, NC is where I hiked the entire (width of the) Appalachian Trail. Plus it's a nice li'l getaway. You should go there some time.
posted by NoMich at 5:34 PM on May 3, 2018 [7 favorites]

It's no myth about Germans being incredibly industrious, and outstanding craftsmen.

I'm from the Chicago area, came up on jobsites up there, so that is what I took for granted, I took it to be the norm. And then when I was 19 I moved to Florida, and stumbled onto jobsites there. I literally laughed out loud at the shoddiness of the construction -- ludicrous. Southern Building Code -- they actually say that with a straight face! What a howl!

If anything, Louisiana is even worse, and that continues into Texas, with Houston feeling pretty tacky, too, because it was tacky, and is tacky.

Keep coming west, though, and then a bit north -- pick up 71 off of I-10 and head toward Austin. And then, before you hit Austin, turn to the west again, and into some of the small towns out in the hill country. (I have to force myself to not capitalize The Hill Country, because that's how it sounds when it's said here, and so many pieces of Texas are capitalized ie East Texas, West Texas -- which is actually *not* west Texas at all but is in fact north central Texas; it's west of Dallas, is what it is -- South Texas, etc and etc.)

Anyways, get out into some of these bitty towns in the hill country and you'll begin to notice that all of the corners are built square. Notice that the houses are built sturdy. You can almost feel it. (I *do* feel it, and you might.) Lots of Germans settled thereabouts, and they brought their German ways with them.

If I get lucky, if there is a loving deity of some sort which truly cares about the needs of us mopes staggering around here, scratching ourselves, and if said deity is willing to help me, I'll once again find the church I found one summer Saturday afternoon. I was dating a woman who lived in Weimar, and we were just driving somewhat aimlessly, which I sure do love to do, and here is this church, it's small but it's inviting, it feels sortof right; I pulled up, and we walked in.

It was beautiful. Just gorgeous. I still almost wonder if it wasn't a dream. We're standing there, we're standing there in the silences of a late summer afternoon, I don't believe in a building being holy but I do know that beauty is, so here we stand in this holy place, we're quiet, we're at peace just being there.

That's what Germans do.
posted by dancestoblue at 7:07 PM on May 3, 2018 [12 favorites]

Weimar. I spent probably the worst year of my life in that little town. Things I know about Weimar (then): it had the country's largest egg-candling factory. Polka was king.
posted by MovableBookLady at 9:20 PM on May 3, 2018

My grandfather joined the British army on the eve of the war, spent most of it in the artillery but eventually wound up running a POW camp filled with Italians somewhere in northeast Africa. He said they all knew the war was winding down, so nobody wanted to escape. He also said it was an open secret that they were building an airport for British Airways. The POWs were given permission to build a chapel but the building materials were largely spoken for, so they filled empty jerry cans with sand and used them as building blocks. They stuccoed it and painted up the inside like a cathedral. My grandfather was REALLY impressed. The prisoners played football against the guards and my grandfather went to the beach regularly. He made it sound like summer csmp. Anyway, that's how he told it to me. If these details add up to anything, I'd love to know where that camp might have been. It might possibly have been in the middle East but the guards were from somewhere in Africa.
posted by bonobothegreat at 9:36 PM on May 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

There is a chapel built by Italian POWs in Orkney, which has been restored and preserved.
posted by Fuchsoid at 12:08 AM on May 4, 2018 [2 favorites]

That's what Germans do

Counterargument: a number of recent engineering projects in Germany, chief amongst them, Berlin-Brandenburg Airport.
posted by acb at 4:06 AM on May 4, 2018

All those pictures are fantastic, but I especially love the 'alligator attack' photo. What a fascinating bit of history.

It's no myth about Germans being incredibly industrious

Or is it?
posted by dazed_one at 6:56 PM on May 4, 2018