Before it was a school for Army spies, Baltimore’s Fort Holabird housed German prisoners of war
Of the more than 425,000 Axis prisoners shipped to the United States during World War II — Germans, mostly, but some Italians and Japanese — about 13,000 came to Maryland. They were kept in 19 prisoner of war camps. The prisoners started arriving in large numbers in 1943, after the Allies defeated Hitler’s Afrika Corps. Holding facilities were scant in North Africa. And transferring POWs to Europe ran the risk that they might rejoin their units should they escape.
, Fort Washington, Smith Point, Flintstone, Pikesville, Frederick and Westminster. They lived in barracks or tents and were paid — 80 cents a day in scrip — to work for local farmers. Conditions were good. POWs were fed well, not including the extras that farm families often bestowed on them. In the camps, prisoners could indulge their hobbies and take classes. Fort Meade prisoners took extension courses from Johns Hopkins University, those at Holabird from St. John’s College.
At Holabird, second lieutenants such as Bob were given a general orientation on intelligence, including how to detect and counter Soviet agents. They were also taught how to maintain “discreet surveillance” in a European setting. In one exercise, three second lieutenants in civilian clothes were given a photo of a “target” who would pass through a specific intersection in Baltimore within a specified time window.
“Thence our little team was to follow this guy without him spotting us,” Bob wrote. “We would rotate which of the three was closest behind our target so he would not identify us, with the others keeping an eye on our colleague so we would shift. This was always in downtown Baltimore. I can’t imagine we would be hard to spot — three 22-year-olds with short hair and black plain-toed shoes in the hippy era.
“The target would be a specially-trained enlisted guy who was probably torn between boredom or the fun of making three lieutenants look incompetent,” Bob wrote. “Sometimes these expeditions deteriorated into quite a scene. I was told that the Baltimore police had more than a few calls from people who witnessed near wrestling matches by the frustrated lieutenants.”
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