Escaped German War Prisoners
World War 1 Poster
10 German Prisoners of War Escaped from Ft. McPherson 10/23/1917
This is an original poster from 1917 issued by the Bureau of Investigation.
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Fort McPherson is a U.S. Army military base that is located in East Point, Georgia, on the southwest edge of the City of Atlanta,
GA. Named after Major General James Birdseye McPherson, this fort was founded by the U.S. Army in September 1885. However, this site, had been in use by military units since 1835, and it was used as a Confederate Army base during the American Civil War. During the Reconstruction Era, it was named the "McPherson Barracks", and it served as a post for the Federal troops who were occupying Atlanta. With the end of Reconstruction, the McPherson Barracks was closed and sold off in 1881, though the site continued to be occupied during the summers by U.S. troops stationed in Florida. In 1885, the land was again purchased by the Army at which to station ten army companies. During World War I, Fort McPherson was used as a camp for Imperial German Navy prisoners of war. Hostilities ended six months after the United States saw its first action in World War I and only a relatively small number of German prisoners of war (POWs) reached the U.S. Many prisoners were German sailors caught in port by U.S. forces far away from the European battlefield. The United States Department of War designated three locations as POW camps during the war: Forts McPherson and Oglethorpe in Georgia and Fort Douglas in Utah. The exact population of German POWs in World War I is difficult to ascertain because they were housed in the same facilities used to detain civilians of German heritage residing in the United States, but there were known to be 406 German POWs at Fort Douglas and 1,373 at Fort McPherson. One of the Prisoner's Ship: In April 1917, on US
entry into the war, Prinz Eitel Friedrich was seized by the US
Navy and put in hand for conversion as a troopship. She was commissioned
on 7 April 1917. as USS De Kalb and served for the remainder of
the war as a troopship on the trans Atlantic route. After the war she
was returned to civilian service, as Mount Clay, before being
scrapped and broken up in 1927.
This is a picture of Hans Berg taken during his internment in the US Government War Prison at Fort McPherson. Hans is pictured working in the metal shop. Perhaps he was making a shovel. The picture was obtained from NARA.
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