POW Camps

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Some 480 German prisoners of war (POWs) worked in Outagamie County in 1945. Guards accompanied the prisoners to farms and canneries in Appleton, Hortonville, Shiocton, and Bear Creek. The prisoners helped harvest and process peas, sweet corn, beets, and tomatoes.

POWs came to Outagamie County from Fort Sheridan in Illinois. Local War Manpower officials requested that the prisoners fill jobs left by American men going to war. POWs lived in tent cities in Appleton and Hortonville surrounded by fences and guarded by military police.

» Learn more about POW branch camps in Wisconsin.

Fuhremann Canning Company on West Eighth Street
in Appleton, 1939
OCHS # P82-78-127-6

Fuhremanns contracted with the US government for POW labor. The Company paid the government $29,473 in wages for the 1945 season. One hundred and eighty POWs lived in a tent city called Camp Appleton on Fuhremann property. They worked at the Company's pea vine station on County Road JJ and at its canning facility in Appleton.

An Army guard poses in front of the Hortonville POW camp, summer 1945
Courtesy of JoAnn Buchman Schwarz

This guard protected the Hortonville community from POW escapes. Three hundred POWs lived in this tent city located east of Hortonville on Earl Buchman's farm on County Road MM. Hortonville POWs worked for canneries in Hortonville, Clintonville, Shiocton, Shawano, Seymour, Winneconne, Bear Creek, and Manawa.

German POWs work at a pea vine station on County Road JJ, summer 1945
OCHS #s 1995.140.3; 1995.140.2

These German POWs worked at Fuhremann Canning Company's pea vine station just north of Appleton. Military trucks sent their picked peas to the Company's canning facility at West Eighth Street in Appleton. Most of these laborers worked twelve hours a day and six days a week. They packed 300,000 cases of peas in the summer of 1945.