This story is being published in partnership with the Missouri Historical Society.
In March 1945, Walter Winchell, popular US gossip journalist, warned the public about the potential danger of German prisoners of war being held in a camp near the Weldon Springs Ordnance Works, a facility that manufactured TNT for the US military.
“Some Nazi Prisoners of War are tepeeing [sic] at a Prisoner of War ‘vacation resort’ (Jefferson Barracks) where they are considered such good boys—the Army permits them to work on nearby farms without guards. . . . Five miles west of Nearby Gumboo [sic], Missouri there is a $65,000 war plant which manufactures TNT. . . . The person responsible for Nazi prisoners of war working without guards that close to a TNT plant wins this column’s first prize for stupidity.” —Walter Winchell.
Winchell’s claims were exaggerated and inaccurate in many ways, but there actually were German and Italian POWs in Missouri in 1945. While World War II raged in Europe, the Allies didn’t have the capacity to house all their enemy captives, so they shipped many of them to the US, specifically rural areas in need of manual laborers. From 1942 to 1945, almost half a million Axis prisoners stayed in US POW facilities. Camp Clark in Nevada, Camp Crowder in Neosho, Camp Weingarten in Ste. Genevieve County, and Fort Leonard Wood housed the majority of the 15,000 Axis prisoners that ended up in Missouri.
Although most prisoners were detained in large POW camps that housed thousands, some groups were sent to help farmers manage large fields. One of these satellite camps was the Hellwig Brothers Farm in St. Louis County, which housed about 100 German POWs from 1944 to 1945.
Located in Gumbo Flats (present-day Chesterfield Valley) the farm’s buildings included living quarters built for migrant farm hands that were repurposed to house the POWs. Guards and a 7-foot-tall wire fence around the property helped transform the land from farm to prison camp.
After Winchell’s accusations, the Army assured the public that the prisoners were kept under armed guard and appropriately supervised. St. Louis Globe-Democrat reporter Beulah Schacht and a photographer visited the Chesterfield prison camp to see the situation for themselves. The armed guard and his commanding officer didn’t allow the reporters to enter the camp or take photos, but they reported seeing a handful of POWs kicking a soccer ball and a man hanging up laundry. Schacht says their visit to the POW camp was about as “melodramatic as a trip to the Zoo.”
After they were denied entrance to Hellwig Brothers Farm, the reporters drove across the Missouri River to the Weldon Springs plant. Schacht describes this facility as very secure and nearly impossible to access without permission. The commanding officer of the Weldon Springs plant, Lt. Col. Stanley C. Shubard, explained that the stockpile of explosives was small because they were shipped out immediately upon production, but there were many challenges facing a Hellwig farm POW who might want to blow up the explosives at his facility:
“Should a prisoner manage to escape and cross the Missouri river, scale a climb-proof fence around the reservation, evade armed patrols, climb another climb-proof fence and reach the manufacturing area, he might succeed in blowing up a building or stopping one production line, but the buildings are so arranged that extensive damage would be impossible.”
Schacht also quoted another Chesterfield farm owner who had some experience with the POWs because they’d worked on her land, too. She declared the Germans were “good workers” and was impressed that they rejected an opportunity to decrease their daily work schedule, opting to work from “7 in the morning to 7 in the evening.” Working POWs earned 80 cents per day, and sometimes could buy beer at prison canteens. They were also guaranteed at least one ration of meat per day.
Winchell wasn’t entirely incorrect in his assessment of the security of the Hellwig Brothers Farm camp or its proximity to Weldon Springs. In June 1945, POWs Helmuth Levin and Rudolf Straussberg escaped. By that time, it had been over a month since Germany surrendered and security was relaxed in the POW camps.
However, the escapees’ goal wasn’t to blow up the Weldon Spring munition plant. The two left letters indicating their escape was to avoid returning to Germany, where they feared they might end up in Soviet hands. Some reports even add that they suggested the wages they saved be used to buy US War Bonds. They were found less than a week later near the Meramac River, far away from the munitions plant.
Today, the 7-foot-tall fences, munitions plant, and POWs are gone. There’s a public interpretive center on the site of the former Weldon Springs Ordnance Works, and the only guards on the site of the former Hellwig Brothers Farm are the mall cops that secure the area’s popular shopping district.
