Clarksville, TN – Dr. Antonio Thompson, professor of history at Austin Peay State University (APSU), has been studying Axis POWs’ impact on World War II for more than 20 years, traveling the globe to conduct interviews and explore national archives.
Thompson’s latest book, “Axis Prisoners of War in Tennessee: Coerced Labor and the Captive Enemy on the Home Front, 1941-1946,” draws on that research to tell the stories of those prisoners and how Tennessee shaped the war effort through its internment camps.
“The questions I’m trying to answer with this book are about the role Tennessee played with the U.S. fighting World War II,” he said. “What were our state’s contributions to manpower, industry and finances that led to the greater victory in the war? A significant part of that is the story of the prisoners who were held in Tennessee.”
Readers can also learn about POWs in neighboring Kentucky through Thompson’s next book, “Axis Prisoners of War in Kentucky: Behind Barbed Wire in the Bluegrass State, 1941-46,” which is expected to be published this spring and will mark his seventh publication.
“I’ve spoken with people on every side of this, including some of the former prisoners and former guards,” Thompson said. “And I’ve spoken with civilians because while the prisoners were in these different camps across various states, they were working civilian-type jobs. Here in Tennessee, it was agriculture, doing a lot of tobacco work … so I’ve talked with some of their employers over the years.”
Military documents, newspaper clippings and more supplement Thompson’s interviews, painting a detailed picture of what POWs experienced in locations from Camp Campbell to the Memphis Army Service Forces Depot.
“The book discusses in great detail the German and Italian POWs who were held in Tennessee, but it also talks about the internment of captive foreign civilians, who were called enemy aliens,” he said. “We held them at Camp Forrest, and they were Italian, German and Japanese civilians.”
Thompson said Tennessee and Kentucky each had approximately 13 camps used to hold POWs during World War II, but they impacted the war effort in distinct ways because they were part of separate military groupings.
“Something I talked about for a long time when I prepared these book projects is that they are not the same story at all,” he said. “Whereas Tennessee looks at the [military’s] 4th Service Command and the American South, Kentucky is in a group with Indiana, Illinois and West Virginia.”
Among other things, those differences meant there were different economic impacts from the camps in each state as they drove regional development.
“When you open a camp and bring in POWs, you’re bringing in guards,” Thompson said. “And when you bring guards, you’ve got to bring local business for those people. It expands jobs all across the region, expands the infrastructure and creates new roads. Everything has to accompany those bases, so it’s really big business.”
Thompson has also given multiple speaking engagements to discuss how POWs shaped the war effort, from an appearance on the Austin Peay Experience podcast to a conference presentation at the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in Arlington, Virginia.
“I really enjoy when I’m asked to come talk about my passion, and it’s to people who are interested and giving up their time,” he said. “Even from these talks, I’ve met people who have information that I didn’t know before. I’ve connected with people in that way and found out more things to use later.”
“Fifteen years on, I’ve got a lot more to say,” he said. “It’s a lifelong process, and just because I have a [new] book doesn’t mean I’m done studying this. It’s going to continue down the road, even if it takes a different avenue.”
