German POWs in the U.S. during the War

and they stayed, married american women, and raised a bunch of racist nazis.

thanks, ooze.

R1 way to ruin an otherwise interesting thread. 🙄

When they first got to NY they were shocked to see the Manhattan skyline and busy American farms as they had been told that NYC had been leveled by German bombs and the American population reduced to starvation.

I grew up in a small town in the midwest.

One of the older men in town that everybody knew and liked was Conrad. He was a widower when I was a young kid, but had three grown children. He spoke with what I thought was a strange accent, but was liked by everyone and was always friendly and kind to me and my friends, and was a member of the community in good standing.

I later learned that he had been German soldier during WW II and had been sent to the U.S. as a P.O.W. He fell in love with a girl while working on a local farm. After the war he got married and stayed in town. He worked at a local hardware store.

R1 Actually they contributed a whole lot to the country, unlike you or any of your friends, I suspect.

Stories like this always make me think of America at it's best: treating (then) enemies with humanity and dignity to the point that they don't go back to their homeland & choose to make a life here. I don't think that America exists anymore.

They had a very similar story in Canada according to this excellent documentary:

Are kids still reading SUMMER OF MY GERMAN SOLDIER?

Oh, the America of Trump certainly existed then. Ask George Takei. In this case, the Geneva Convention’s protections were not supported by all Americans. The government received hundreds of letters a week urging them to kill all German POWs. Also, most Germans POWs did ultimately go back to Germany, though some emigrated to the US and most remembered their time well.

Actually R5, for every one who may or may not have "contributed", there were millions back in the Fatherland happily butchering Jews.

So like a reverse APT PUPIL?

Thanks, OP. Interesting thread! I'm a bit of a history buff and didn't know that we had German POWs here. I just thought we grabbed all the German rocket scientists.

There was a POW camp near where my father grew up. He was a kid during the war, so his memories are a bit limited, but he said most of the POWs were just happy to be out of the fighting. However, there was also a a small group of SS who were fanatics to the end - kept to themselves, boots always polished, everything you’d expect.

Interestingly, the same thing happened after the Revolutionary War. A lot of Hessians who were taken prisoner stayed on. They’d essentially been sold to the English by their landgraf and had no reason to return and nothing to go back to.

Here in coastal Georgia there are quite a few people who descended from former Nazi POWs who were interred at prison camps in the area during WWII. The man who owns the plumbing company who does work for me is one of them. His grandfather was a German POW who came back after the war and married a local girl.

[Quote] I don't think that America exists anymore.

Sad but I think true r6

Thanks for the thread OP. I didn't know about this. I rather think that German Americans were the dominant European ethnicity here must have helped assimilate these German POWs.

What parts of the US were they brought to? Sorry I haven't read your linked article.

Here is a list of facilities in the US where German POWs were kept. They were all over the country.

Where my family has a cabin in Pine Grove Furnace State Park in Pennsylvania there are ruins of a German Prisoner of War camp where they were interrogated. It is right next to the Appalachian Trail that cuts through the State Park. There are mainly foundations and walls, but also things like a fountain and filled in swimming pool. It was a perfectly secluded place to have a camp like this at that time.

In the Midwest where I grew up, they displaced migrant workers at zero cost and my mom thought they were hard workers. Yeah.

R19, the German workers had to be paid market rate, not zero cost.Perhaps someone’s memory is off.

R6 I love how America can import literal Nazis and allow them to integrate yet couldn’t be bothered to stop Jim Crow and racist policies after WWII. Like damn, Nazi’s ranked higher on their scale than black Americans.

I’m happy for these folks that they made a nice life for themselves. God knows their brothers in Russia had it terrible. I’m just sad to see all this knowing how much shit black American soldiers faced when they returned home. But the Nazi got to setup shop stateside. What the hell America?

P.S. I’m sure the women loved having these strapping German country bumpkins in their small towns.

Years ago I worked with a very dignified German Dr.Dr. who always explained that he spoke English with a southern accent because he'd been interned during the war as a POW in South Carolina. Never any bitterness over the experience.

How odd: a truly interesting thread that's filled with articulate personal anecdotes that are actually quite on target, informative and calm, with no shrieking, fighting, and name-calling..

What's happening to Datalounge?

R23 we are imagining camps of hot young German men. Hard to be catty when talking about nice uncut cocks with nothing but time and lots of testosterone. I may faint.

What an interesting thread! Thanks OP and contributors.

Some German POWs were barracked in my hometown during the war and sent out into the fields to help harvest crops. My grandfather, who was a simple man and mostly apolitical, would chat with them and found them all nice, normal, pleasant fellows (he was just a laborer like them, after all). My grandmother, who was always a firecracker, wouldn't speak to them.

You just know the boy on the left was getting some of our grandparents wet.

Adding more photos. The Americans look better in this photo.

Men by the bus load. I would have signed up to guard the showers.

So sporty.

r18 And American citizens were actually imprisoned in similar--probably worse--facilities. Right here at home.

German prisoners of war in an American camp, photographed as they’re forced to watch a film about the German concentration camps, 1945.

A part of me feels like some of this is propaganda. Of course most people don't actually give a fuck in war, they are just following the crowd. I'm sure the US didn't have real objections to Nazi's just didn't like Hitler getting into fights with our allies and the Pearl Harbor mess by the Japanese.

[quote]how much shit black American soldiers faced when they returned home. But the Nazi got to setup shop stateside.

Well, some people are white and some people are black, and even though the case, like this one, may be that the black ones are Americans fighting for our country, and the white ones are Nazis fighting for our enemies, we all know which one we accept with open arms and warm hearts.

When do we appropriate hundreds of $billions in reparations for what we did to the honest, hard-working white (albeit Nazi) soldiers during the war?

R31 Italians too IIRC.

r33 I'm not sure what you are trying to say. My point is that this story shows the "white is right" or the current slogan, "white privilege." Sounds like these POWs were treated fairly, compared to other POWs. That's how things should be, but I can't shake the thought that some of these Nazi's were able to come back or stay around to start families and live peaceful lives in the US. Meanwhile, black soldiers came back and still faced discrimination and in some cases lynchings for being "too proud" of their rank and service in WWII.

We didn't take care of our own unless they were white. We forced Asian Americans into internment camps and tried to maintain the pre-war social structures. It's just really sad that a literally enemy in war can build a happy healthy life in America due to their skin color, but a born and raise American of color that risked their life would still deal with the same bullshit as they did prior to the war.

Reminds me of the Jesse Owens story. He said that he was actually able to get a photo taken next to Hitler but it never saw the light of day. Meanwhile, when the Olympic hero returned home, FDR refused to see him. That disrespect is palpable as America tried to build up this image of a great and good nation.

Op, I do like this story form a romance perspective. I don't blame these men or the people they marry. When a war ends people should be able to get things back on track.

OK, what streaming platform is going to do a kooky comedy show set in a German Prisoner of War camp called “Schultz’s Heroes” with a ragtag group of eccentric POWs and the inept, but lovable, American guards and administrators?

R12 - I don't think you could call yourself a history buff and not know that we had German POWs in America.

But let's face it - if you had any knowledge of what happened to Germany, going back there wasn't exactly a great option.

Yes, American on the whole did treat them well. But post WW2 Germany was a fucking nightmare - anyone with a brain would do anything to avoid that.

I'm agreeing with you, R35/R21. It is sickening that we welcomed Nazis into our country, gave them a place to live, food to eat, and a nice, safe environment to work such that they "earned" the admiration of Americans. Meanwhile, the black men who joined our armed forces, risked their lives and indeed made the ultimate sacrifice, couldn't return home to even a basic "thanks" let alone the over-the-top fealty to white soldiers. Even today, when they hold the rare and growing even more rare celebrations of WWII soldiers, you hardly ever see a black soldier in this mix. You'd think there were no blacks in the military in WWII... unless you are a student of history and independently look at who fought and where they fought.

Given the way that the US has become enamoured with Nazis, particularly since 2016, it would not surprise me if the next Republicanazi Congress actually did appropriate $billions in reparations for Nazi POWs, and somehow shade black American soldiers in the process.

r37 did that nightmare include West Germany as well? It's almost Amazing that Germany was able to bounce back and become a world leader again. That Holy Roman Empire really set the stage from some power moves down the line. Even if it took hundreds of years for the concept of a Germany to come into fruition.

[quote]German POWs in the U.S. during the War

OP's video is of German POWs in Cisterna, Italy. They're not on US soil.

Only if it's made by Netflix or HBO, R36... so that we have what it actually should be, which is a nightly big gay orgy.

I wish I was in command of a POW camp that housed Germans and Italians, or better yet hot young Americans r40. What a dream. Prepare for nightly inspections.

r41 then you will want HBO Max to produce the show. HBO makes it a part of their contract for skin these days. I love it. They can just make a re-creation of OZ.

Here ya go!

R39 - yes, the bombs didn't discriminate.

It took a good 10-12 years to build West Germany's economy back. That's a looong time - particularly after their terrible economy in the 20's, depression of the 30's, war in 40's.

It wasn't until the late 50's did Germans see things become good again.

To think r45 if only they had avoided invading Poland or at the very least not advanced into Russia. They could have had it all. But those people ended up rolling in the deep. Hitler learned nothing from Napoleon. Leave Russia alone.

This is a great thread, I wish everyone could read it. It is absolutely mind-blowing to see (once again!) two systems, two totally different treatments of human beings in America. We must never accept anything less than equality for all — if one group is treated unjustly, then we need to fight for them, always always always.

Separate is never equal. Two systems is never equal. Learn history.

Not sure the US had anything as bad as something like Colonia Dignidad in Chile.

In 1960 as a 7 year old we visiting my great aunt & uncle in Huntsville, Ala. for the weekend. We had gone out to eat at a local restaurant and on the way back home as we were on their street there was a man walking his dog. My uncle said "oh there's Wernher" and stopped to say hello. The man spoke with an accent I was too young to recognize. At the time I didn't recognize the man's name when my uncle introduced him to my parents as Wernher von Braun. The von Brauns lived a few properties away from my relatives. I didn't realize he was anything out of the ordinary until my parents explained exactly who he was as we were on the way back home the following day.

r33/ r35/ r38, are you being deliberately obtuse by conflating all German POWs in WWII with Nazis, or just polemical? Because I assume you know that most of those soldiers were not in fact Nazis, either by pesonal conviction or actual party membership. They were 18-30 year old (and, near the end of the war, 16-year-old) draftees.

The only real Nazis the US took in after the war were the rocket scientists they wanted to use for their own program (and those had largely been Nazis of opportunity, not conviction).

When I was a child in the 80’s, our jr High had two really cool janitors who were young and hot, they were probably 30. One went by the name “A”. Found out years later his fucking German parents named him Adolf — he was very ashamed by this.

r48 so it was a torture sex camp. That's crazy.

I imagine the German POWs were treated so well because of two main reasons. They were white and their leader (Hitler) wanted to rid the world of all the Jews. Face it, in those days especially, antisemitism in the US was pretty much rampant. I wouldn't doubt that many of those farmers who employed those German soldiers and hosted them at Christmas admired what the Nazi Party stood for.

r50 the Nazi's controlled the government. The Nazi's recreated/reorganized the German military. Sure, they were German soldiers, but the fought for and under the Nazi's. In essence, they were a part of the Nazi regime. There really was no check on the Nazi's authority by the time the war got rolling. It was one party in power. This is why the Nazi flag flew all over the place instead of the old German flags.

r53 plus the number of Germans in America was already large enough to ensure that their brothers from back home received nice enough treatment while stateside.

[quote]Pine Grove Furnace State Park

Almost as weird a name as Gravesend Neck Road

[quote] Almost as weird a name as Gravesend Neck Road

Which is almost as weird as Beaver Ruin Road (suburban Atlanta).

Tangentially related, in the late 1960s I had a next-door neighbor who was a babysitter and she was a German war bride of a Marine. My mother was a teacher so I went over to her house to be cared for during the day. She spoke with a thick German accent. It was only after I became an adult I learned that she too had studied education as a young woman and had wanted to become a teacher. But to get a job it was required at that time to become a member of the Nazi Party and swear allegiance to them. She refused and was greatly ostracized even by her family and her credentials to be a teacher were withheld. Marrying a GI was one of the few ways she had to escape Germany with the stigma she had, but she was never able to become a teacher. There were people who objected to what was going on and they paid the price for it.

That's sad r58 but what an admirable woman to stick to her principles. I wonder if her accent, background, or more than likely children barred her from reaching her dream.

That's interesting, my mom's family was German and many still spoke German during the war, and they lived near a POW camp, and no one was happy about either the German immigrants OR the POWs. The POWs escaped one day and scared the hell out of everyone.

When I was a kid, mom took courses at Fort Leonard Wood and some of her teachers had worked with the POWs when they were stationed there, and they didn't have the greatest stories to tell about the POW's behavior. They didn't laugh at the films of Nazi atrocities, and in fact defended a lot of it. There's even a photo in this article of the Germans watching the film, they aren't laughing.

There was a famous U-boat captain, forget his name, who was finally captured and Interned, and was a bit of an escape artist. He knew he wasn’t actually going to get away, just considered it his duty to try to escape. I think he went on to become an important figure in NATO. Maybe one of the DL history buffs knows who he was.

The United States’ reckoning for its war crimes in every war it has ever fought in is coming and it is coming soon.

r62 what does that even mean and how do you see that happening? I mean if we want to bring up war crimes there are plenty to go around. I don't think any country really wants to deal with that. if your talking about the ME fat chance. The wealthy powers are satisfied and the poor are powerless. We are fine. This war crimes bullshit is so played out.

I’m not just talking about the Middle East, I am talking about literally every war in which the United States has fought going back all the way to the American “revolution.” Hell, I’m going to count the theft of indigenous lands by white Europeans as a war crime in another itself.

And yes, I am very much including about the Civil War and World War II. The US has plenty to answer for in both of those wars. In fact, the Civil War might just as well have been called the War Between the Racists.

R61, you [italic]might[/italic] be talking about the largest POW escape on U.S. soil. It happened in Phoenix in 1944. A German U-boat captain lead 25 escapees but, looking him up, he didn't go into anything else important after the war. So maybe there's another wily U-boat captain POW.

About the Phx escape: They had Army barracks turned into POW quarters 15 miles from from downtown Phx. 25 German POWs dug their way out and hoped to kayak the rivers to Mexico. But they were unaware that many of AZ rivers don't flow year round.

Part of the article: "The escapees were naval personnel led by U-boat commander Capt. Jürgen Wattenberg. Three men built a kayak and carried it through the tunnel in pieces. From a stolen filling-station map they could see the tantalizing blue line of the Gila River leading to the Colorado River. Their plan was to ride the rapids all the way to Mexico. But they arrived at the Gila to find only a few languid puddles."

“One thing all of the Germans told me was that it was more of a prank on their part,” Hoza said. “They had no real hopes of escaping. Most couldn’t speak English. You needed ration coupons to buy anything and they didn’t have them. They just felt like they had to cause trouble for the Americans and they wanted to be free for a bit.”

About their treatment, the article says this: "They were grateful they were treated so well here,” Hoza said. “German POWs in Russia had a death rate of 53 percent. In America, it was less than 1 percent.”

Amerikkkan terrorism:

Amerikkkan terrorism:

Amerikkkan terrorism:

[quote]And yes, I am very much including about the Civil War and World War II. The US has plenty to answer for in both of those wars. In fact, the Civil War might just as well have been called the War Between the Racists.

You just keep working hard on that "reckoning".

Pretty sure some of those "Nazi's" got a better grip on English grammar during their enforced stay than r54 has to this day.

That’s him, r65! Thank you! That was the crazy escape attempt I was thinking of. And yes, I’ve gotten him confused with another “wily U-boat commander” LOL.

There's convincing evidence that the postwar Civil Rights Movement was born in a Kansas POW camp. Black American servicemen were outraged that literal Nazis - the people Americans were fighting a war against - were allowed to eat in the canteen with American soldiers but the Black soldiers could not. When they protested, they were told, "But they're white!"

A common hand signal among committed Black soldiers and veterans was the "Double V." That is, victory over fascism abroad and victory over Jim Crow at home.

r34 Italian-Americans were not in internment camps. Nor were German-Americans. Just Japanese-Americans.

R73 Yes, both Italian Americans and Italians were interred in camp in the United States.

America is a nation of immigrants. It is a place for people fleeing oppression.

I hope we never forget that.

I grew up in a small town in western Ohio, an area that has predominantly German ancestry. In fact, in the Protestant (UCC) church in which I grew up, there are German inscriptions on stained-glass windows and services were conducted in German until the 1920s.

According to an oral-history book about Auglaize County, Ohio, approximately 300 German POWs were interned in a 4-H camp there in 1944. The prisoners worked in local canning factories and on farms to make up for the bulk of the young men in the area serving overseas. The farmers did not have to pay the prisoners. So many local people still spoke German, so communication wasn't too difficult, and occasionally the Germans and the Americans would discover they had common acquaintances.

The most interesting details about this, in my opinion, deal with 7 prisoners helping to harvest corn. The prisoners each only had a sandwich to eat for lunch. The farm family (with whom I eventually went to church as a kid in the 1980s and 1990s) fried 200 homemade doughnuts for the prisoners and gave them fresh milk. The grandmother in the family spoke fluent German with the prisoners. One of the prisoners, in his late 20s, said that he had two little kids at home and asked if he could touch the family's two toddlers. They nervously said yes. The prisoner picked up the 2-year-old boy and cried, missing his own children so much. "They were people just like us and they couldn't help it that they were in the army, just the same as our kids. They had to go too."

The attitude was that the prisoners wanted something to do and were hard workers. The U.S. army guards were very relaxed and trusting with them. A few were kept separated because they continued to be extremely pro-Nazi, but some wrote thank-you notes when they were back in Germany.

Another interesting detail is that the POWs were amazed that they were freely given coffee in the camp, as real coffee was prohibitively expensive in WW2 Germany.

In quite a few communities they were treated well and mingled even with the locals-- Germans are white, after all. There were far fewer Japanese POWs because in the Pacific there was an implicit "take no prisoners" policy.

R26, Why wasn't your grandfather fighting in the war?

WTH?! These anecdotes about "they were people just like us" and "they were hard workers" who "mingled"?

THEIR BRETHREN WERE KILLING OUR MEN!! AND SO WERE THESE POWS, WHICH IS HOW THEY WERE CAPTURED!

F.T.S.!

R79, there was a field next to South Holland Institute of Technology (SHIT) that housed migrant, then P.O.W. Workers in the Midwest.

The belief was they fed into the whole “they were just cannon fodder in a rich people’s war” philosophy.

It’s easier to forgive the enemy working class if they look like us. The war employed many desperate unemployed people and we threw many minorities under the bus as we scrabbled for survival.

[quote]THEIR BRETHREN WERE KILLING OUR MEN

Calm down darling. War is war. An artificial construct. Remember the football match played between German and English troops on Christmas Day in WWI? Then they got back to killing other. Battlefields are senseless, and trying to impose a morality on them, makes no sense.

My father fought in WWI in the south pacific., Does anyone remember history, here? Hitler won with roughly 30% of the vote. Most of their troops were drafted The Japanese on the other would kill you due to duty.

Has there been a German equivalent of Hogan's Heroes? You know, POW camp as a laff riot run by foolish Americans. Paul Ford as Camp Commander and Phil Silvers as The Sergeant, of course.

And speaking of Hogan's Heroes, German caricatures don't seem affected at all by Cancel Culture yet. But this could change, so goose step while you can.

The German POWs were treated way better than America's black soldiers. Better food, barracks and working conditions.

R72 You maybe interested in events surrounding the Port Chicago bombing.

[quote] THEIR BRETHREN WERE KILLING OUR MEN!!

AND OUR SOLDIERS WERE KILLING THEIR MEN!! Many of the German soldiers had no desire to be fighting in a war. They knew Hitler and the Nazis were crazy. But they had no choice. It was either join the military, and join (by force) the Nazi party, or be locked up (or executed).

r86 you just listed 2 choices so there appears to be a choice. They could have also fled. Yeah, group think is hard to overcome but there is always a choice. Your statement about our soldiers killing their men doesn't hold much weight when we consider that this topic is about Nazi POWs on American soil. Additionally, they did not keep Americans in similarly nice conditions or even attempts some form of comfort despite their country being bombed. But I don't think the issue here is the Germans, the real crime was via the Americans and their treatment of the black and brown service members. They'd treat these Nazis better than they own comrades. While some posters find Ops story to show the best of America, I think it spits on the faces of many black and brown service members.

R87 Everything always has to be about the "black and brown" bullshit, doesn't it? Funny how you don't bring up the injustices toward women during this time, isn't it? JOr American gays, or Jews? In fact, the justification for the humane treatment of these German solders was that it would hopefully keep American POWs in Germany in good conditions as well as re-program them to appreciate democracy. And I guess you didn't read the part about 90% of "these Nazis" not being actual Nazis.

[quote]Stories like this always make me think of America at it's best: treating (then) enemies with humanity and dignity to the point that they don't go back to their homeland & choose to make a life here. I don't think that America exists anymore.

Read up on the St Louis. Don't get too cozy about America in those times.

[quote] I don't think that America exists anymore.

I don't know. After 9-11, many American cities started taking in many refugees from majority muslim countries. Look at how many Somalians Minneapolis took in.

Japanese-Americans, by far, faced the most discrimination of the three ethnically-related Axis powers.

R82, Japan kept fighting after Germany surrendered. Japan had by that point gone to war with China and the Soviet Union and won. They were pretty hardcore.

True R75

R67, if Roosevelt had put some of those midwestern German-Americans into camps, it's possible they wouldn't feel nearly as entitled as they do.

BURN R94

[quote] [R23] we are imagining camps of hot young German men.

Think of Omaha, Nebraska, and that fantasy fades rather quickly.

[quote]Look at how many Somalians Minneapolis took in.

SOMALIS, not Somalians.

The janitor in my grammar school was a former German POW. He was from the same town as one of the nuns. He and Sister Wanda's families were related, we'd heard. Mr. Strauss was a nice guy. I'd only heard he was a former German POW from an uncle.