Camp Butner POW Correspondence Collection, WWII 102

[Item name or title], [Box and Folder Numbers], Camp Butner POW Correspondence Collection, WWII 102, WWII Papers, Military Collection, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, N.C.

The collection is composed of 23 letters and postcards written by four Italian and seven German prisoners-of-war (POWs) who were imprisoned at Camp Butner, N.C., from 1943 to 1945 during World War II. The correspondence is written in Italian and German, respectively, and is not yet translated. The bulk of the correspondence was written by Werner Trötschel and Friedrich Vodak of Germany. Trötschel's correspondence includes letters and postcards from when he was initially a POW at Fort Bragg, N.C., before he was assigned long-term to Camp Butner. The collection is one of the largest-known groups of Camp Butner POW correspondence in North Carolina.

The collection is arranged in two series by the country of origin of the prisoners, then alphabetical by last name of the prisoner. The series are as follows:

Series I: Italian POW Correspondence
Series II: German POW Correspondence

The U.S. Army installation of Camp Butner, composed of approximately 40,300 acres of agricultural land within southern Granville County, North Carolina, was purchased through eminent domain by the Federal Government from individual land owners and farmers. What was initially called "Camp Butner Reservation" was established on August 4, 1942. Camp Butner was established for the training of U.S. Army infantry divisions, and various artillery and engineer units within the Fourth Services Command, Army Ground Forces. Units of the 35th, 78th, and 89th Divisions were also trained there. During 1942 to 1945, Camp Butner's primary mission was to train combat troops for deployment and redeployment to the European and Pacific theaters. The Camp contained rifle ranges, artillery ranges, a prisoner of war compound for Italian and German prisoners of war, barracks, and support services for approximately 40,000 American troops.

Some of the first prisoners to arrive in the United States were Italians. By the end of 1943, nearly 50,000 Italian POWs were held in 27 camps in 23 states, including North Carolina. Camp Butner was one of the major barbed-wire-encircled camps, with about 3,000 Italian POWs. After the collapse of Mussolini's regime in September 1943, the new Italian government had allied itself with the United States. In March 1944, the U.S. Army created Italian Service Units (ISUs) of approximately 30,000 Italian POWs, who were willing to take an oath of allegiance to the new Italian government and serve as noncombatant auxiliaries to American forces.

German POWs would come to Camp Butner by the fall of 1943 after Rommel's defeat in North Africa created a large number of German war prisoners. Camp Butner's "nationalities" compound at one point held 332 Czechs, 150 Poles, 147 Dutchmen, 117 Frenchmen, 34 Austrians, 11 Luxembourgers, and 1 Lithuanian-men captured wearing German uniforms, but forced to fight by German oppressors. The POWs at Camp Butner built various structures, including a church, and had their own camp newsletter in German entitled Lager Fackel. Many of the POWs worked in small satellite camps throughout central North Carolina, being contracted out to farmers and other businesses for home front work.

[Some of the information for this historical note was taken from the article "Prisoners of War in North Carolina" by Dr. Robert D. Billinger Jr., reprinted from Tar Heel Junior Historian, Spring 2008, viewed on NCPedia.org].

The items in this collection were donated to the Military Collection of the State Archives of North Carolina from a private donor in multiple deposits from 2015 to 2018.