Having escaped a World War II POW camp, two dozen German sailors became fugitives in the Arizona desert.
As World War II raged in Europe and the Pacific, its horrific impact reverberated with Valley residents. They sent loved ones off to battle, rationed food and gas, grew Victory gardens and recycled metal – in some cases, with the enemy literally peering into their backyards.
“We lived on a farm in Lehi, and my mom was a pretty 24-year-old woman,” Arizona state historian Marshall Trimble says. “She’d go out to hang the clothes on the line, and the German POWs would stop cleaning the nearby canal and leer at her.”
These prisoners of war were on work detail from Camp Papago Park, which housed more than 3,000 captured German naval personnel. On the surface, it was a bucolic compound set amidst the red sandstone of Papago Buttes, where prisoners formed an orchestra, watched Hollywood movies, painted watercolors, and had rabbits, chickens, and an Irish setter as pets. But underneath this idyllic veneer, the concentration camp was dominated by a fervent Nazi U-boat commander who believed the war was far from over.
During World War II, Arizona had numerous POW camps stretching from Duncan to Yuma, packed with able-bodied men who provided essential farm labor. One reason the U.S. War Department favored Arizona as a location for prisoner camps: a national scarcity of heating oil. While the Geneva Conventions included strict mandates about prisoners of war living in heated buildings, it had no provisions about cooling them.
Camp Papago Park interned easygoing Italian prisoners when it opened outside Phoenix in September 1943. The peaceful coexistence with camp guards and locals continued even after German U-boat submariners, led by Captain Jürgen Wattenberg, were transferred there in January 1944. An ardent Nazi, Wattenberg held his men in check. “The Germans feared Wattenberg, who viewed any collaboration with Americans as a betrayal,” wrote the late Jane Eppinga in her 2017 book, Death at Papago Park POW Camp.
On March 12, 1944, U-boat crewman Werner Drechsler was transferred to the camp and boasted about his favorable treatment by the Americans. Fellow POWs soon discovered that Drechsler had passed on confidential information about German submarine technology and tactics to the Americans. They debated the traitor’s fate, with many wanting to simply ostracize Drechsler, thinking he’d be punished at home after Germany won the war.
However, by 10 p.m., seven hours after arriving at camp, Drechsler was dead, hanging from a noose in the shower room after being stabbed multiple times. During her research, Eppinga developed a theory that Wattenberg instigated the murder, but he ultimately went unpunished. Instead, U.S. Army officials charged seven lesser-ranking POWs, who were later found guilty at a trial and transferred to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where they were executed by hanging in the last mass execution in U.S. history.
Nine months after Drechsler’s murder, Arizonans were put on edge when news escaped that 25 German prisoners were on the loose, two days before Christmas in 1944. Wattenberg had masterminded the largest POW breakout in the U.S. during World War II. “They fled through what was called the faustball tunnel, since they created a volleyball court as a pretense to dispose of dirt,” Trimble says. “They put the excavated earth from the 178-foot-long subterranean passageway in their pockets and spread it on the court.”
The fugitive Germans – including Wattenberg – inspired “the greatest manhunt in Arizona history,” according to the Phoenix Gazette on December 28, 1944. The Germans split up, with three POWS having constructed a collapsible boat hoping to float down the Gila and Colorado rivers to Mexico. But the blue lines they had seen on a map turned out to be unnavigable. “They walked along the Gila River as far as Gila Bend, where they washed their underwear,” Trimble says. “Cowboys spotted it drying on a mesquite tree and took them into custody.”
Although Wattenberg was on the lam for more than a month, most of the fugitives were quickly recaptured, and none offered resistance when apprehended. They were eager to return to the comforts of the prison camp, viewing their getaway more as an escape from boredom.
“One German stepped on a cactus, and his foot was in bad shape,” Trimble says. “He and another POW headed to a farmhouse, where a kid was outside playing with a toy gun. The Germans saluted him, saying, ‘We are POWs, and we surrender.’ Before Army soldiers arrived, they waited inside with the boy’s mom, who called them ‘charming and handsome guests.’”
Wattenberg was the last escapee on the lam, hiding for a month in a cave near Piestewa Peak. To survive, he relied upon German POWs on work detail to leave him food and supplies in a nearby abandoned vehicle. However, living in the harsh desert took its toll on Wattenberg, and he eventually made his way to Downtown Phoenix. After enjoying a warm bowl of soup and a beer in a café, he fell asleep in the lobby of the Adams Hotel, where he was ultimately apprehended after departing.
After the war, the POWs were repatriated, and the camp was disbanded. It served briefly as a Veterans Administration hospital. Many associated with the POW camp – guards, civilian personnel and prisoners – had forged enduring bonds and later formed Camp Papago Trackers, seeking to renew in friendship the association that commenced in anguish. “Strange we have to kill each other before we become friends,” Wattenberg said.
Their reunion in 1985 illustrated the war’s unexpected humanity. Trimble says the group took a bus tour that included Lake Havasu. “When Captain Wattenberg saw the London Bridge, which still had bullet damage from German warplanes, he said, ‘I always wanted to put my boat [submarine] up the Thames River and under this bridge.’”
The bus later stopped for breakfast at the Monte Carlo Truck Stop on Route 66 near Ash Fork on its way to the Grand Canyon. Truckers stared at the unusual group conversing in German until they learned their background.
“One intimidating guy with naval tattoos came over and told them that he was in the Merchant Marine in the Mediterranean, and a German U-boat had torpedoed his ship during World War II,” Trimble says. “After a pregnant pause, he explained that as his cargo vessel sank, the U-boat had tossed ‘a raft, life jackets and supplies into the sea and told us which way to row to shore. If it weren’t for men like these, I wouldn’t be here today.’ Café patrons applauded the trucker’s speech, with Wattenberg thanking him in English.”
POW Camp Remnants
The U.S. Army deactivated Camp Papago Park in 1946, and its buildings were later sold as surplus or demolished. These four sites are among the best-preserved vestiges of the POW camp.
Camp Papago Park Guard Tower
The concrete foundations of one of the 19 guard towers at the POW camp are located northwest of the Papago Softball Complex.
Papago POW Escape Monument
A historical plaque east of the former POW camp along the Crosscut Canal denotes the end of the escape tunnel.
Scottsdale Community College
The school’s faculty office building is a relocated POW barracks that served as Marshall Trimble’s first classroom when he started teaching there in 1971.
Scottsdale Elks Lodge No. 2148
A ranch house was converted into the U.S. Army Officer’s Club at the POW camp and later repurposed as a lodge for this fraternal order.
