By the end of World War II the United States held about 425,000 enemy prisoners in 511 camps, and Texas had about twice as many camps as any other state. The Handbook of Texas gives two reasons. Texas had room. And the Geneva Convention of 1929 required that prisoners be held in a climate like the one where they were taken, and the army apparently judged Texas close enough to North Africa. After Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps surrendered in North Africa in 1943, more than 150,000 prisoners arrived, and two of the camps built to receive them stood on the High Plains.
McLean
Seven Texas camps were built especially for prisoners, and McLean, a Route 66 town in Gray County, had one. Work began in September 1942, and the first American staff and German prisoners came in July 1943. The camp had three large compounds for prisoners and 25 to 30 buildings for the Americans, from barracks and an officers' club to a theater, a laundry and a barbershop, with a small hospital shared by guards and prisoners. The first prisoners were Afrika Korps men captured in North Africa. By October 1944 McLean held more than its official capacity of 3,000. The camp closed in July 1945, and the Texas Historical Commission's marker for it records that many people in town formed lasting friendships with some of the prisoners.
Hereford
On 800 acres southeast of Hereford, the army built a maximum-security camp that became the only one in Texas holding Italians. One group of Germans was sent there by mistake and moved out quickly after a riot broke out between compounds. The counts of how many Italians passed through differ: the Handbook's entry on the camp gives about 5,000, its entry on German prisoners gives 2,580 at the end of the war, and a 1982 state marker gives about 7,000. The Italians' paintings, carvings and glass at the church in Umbarger and the small chapel they built at the camp are told on the state markers there and at the Deaf Smith County Historical Museum.
Work and the trip home
With farmhands gone to war, the government hired prisoners out. Texas farmers paid $1.50 a day for a prisoner's labor, and the prisoner got eighty cents of it in canteen coupons. Officers did not have to work, and few volunteered. In camp the day ran from reveille at 5:45 to lights out at ten, and prisoners taught each other English and engineering, played in orchestras, put on plays, printed newspapers and fielded soccer teams. Only twenty-one prisoners escaped from Texas camps, and every one was caught within three weeks. From November 1945 prisoners left the country at about 50,000 a month, most of them first put to work rebuilding France and Britain before they saw Germany again.