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7 Things German Prisoners Found Strange About America

WW2 Silent Revealed

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In the summer of 1943, hundreds of thousands of German soldiers captured in North Africa were shipped across the Atlantic — into a country their own propaganda had described as a weak, cultureless wasteland. Some were so certain the distances were fake that they decided the Americans must be driving the trains in circles. This is what they actually found.

SOURCES:
Books
Arnold Krammer, Nazi Prisoners of War in America (Stein & Day, 1979)
Arnold Krammer, "When the Afrika Korps Came to Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 80 (Jan. 1977)
Lewis H. Carlson, We Were Each Other's Prisoners: An Oral History of World War II American and German Prisoners of War (Basic Books, 1997)

Academic / primary analysis
Calvin N. Jones, "Views of America and Views of Germany in German POW Newspapers of WWII," Yearbook of German-American Studies
Matthias Reiss, scholarship on German POWs and Black Americans (summarized in JSTOR

Articles / archives
Smithsonian, "German POWs on the American Homefront" (J. Malcolm Garcia, 15 Sep. 2009)
Smithsonian, "'America Beats By Far Anything,' Said the Ex-POW" (Jack Fincher, June 1995)
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, "Comfortable Confinement" (12 May 2013)
Washington Post, "Enemies Among Us: German POWs in America" (10 Sep. 1997)
NCpedia, "World War II, Part 4: Prisoners of War"; Mississippi History Now; Humanities Texas; Texas State Historical Association Handbook; WyoHistory.org, "Nineteen Camps"; Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation.
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Disclosure:
Visuals: archival photographs from the U.S. National Archives, animated maps, and original illustrations.

20 Comments

@michaelmurphy2211 1 month ago

In WW2, Germany was about the size of Washington and Oregon combined. Those POWs had no idea how big the US was.

@stephenLarson-vs7fu 1 month ago

Friends of mine were farmers in Nebraska. They would pick up the prisoners in the morning, who would work on the farm all day. The only thing that they asked is that the farmer would take the hay wagon that they travelled on through the town on the way back to the camp, so they could look at the girls in town.

@WW2Legacy-u5p 2 months ago

May 1945 when Germany surrendered and former prisoners started writing letters back to their old guards and farm families asking for food - that detail hit harder than anything else in this story for me. Anyone else think the Nebraska farm boy's line "they were people like us" sums up the whole thing?

@SteelwingLedger 1 month ago

My Father-in-law was a former German POW. He always said how wonderful the Americans treated them. He came back to America in 1958 when he was 29 to become a citizen because of that treatment.

@ZeroHourHistory-g2i 2 months ago

It's fascinating how everyday things we take for granted can seem completely unusual to people from a different country. Perspective really changes everything.

@WWIIAftermath 2 months ago

The rumor that the Americans were running the trains in circles because the country couldn't possibly be that big says everything about how completely propaganda had shaped their expectations. Reality was harder to dismiss than any Allied leaflet ever could.

@baronstone6804 2 months ago

with an intense sense of humor I (native and still resident German) need to say that German POS were fed 3 times a day to become fat, and fat guys won't escape from camps coz they're way too slow to run

@ThePattonArchives 2 months ago

23:25 “People much like anyone else in town.” That simple realization shows how ordinary kindness can defeat years of propaganda. Which surprised you most—the abundant food, the trust, or the friendships that lasted after the war?

@pdt1625222 1 month ago

My Grandfather was in an engineering unit of the Army Air Corps. I saw some of his photos of him overseas. I as child notice there were some in German Uniform. I ask about it. He said they were prisoners of war working on different projects. I ask what where they like. He said they were people just like us, but their mind had been warped by a few evil people.
My Grandfather’s unit would be assigned to Patton. They built roads and bridges all the way across the Rhine.
I have his discharge papers, his assign bunk and ration card for his trip home. It did not say what ship he was on. His paper work follows where Payton’s army was.
He disembarked in NYC and had to find his own way home. He rode a train from NY to west Texas to here. I miss him.

@SpockvsMcCoy 1 month ago

At that time, a large number of Americans living in the Midwest had German lineage and some of them had a basic knowledge of the German language (often from church and grandparents).

@topogigio6490 1 month ago

My mother's best friend married an Italian POW. Sebastiano.(Yano) was a great guy. His kids are still my friends today.

@markbanash921 1 month ago (edited)

It's important to remember that there was limited long distance travel prior to the War. There were no Interstates, Autoroutes, Autostrada, Autobahns, or Motorways. Automobile ownership was also limited and no real air travel. There was rail, but it was slow. Many people really had no concept of distance.

@johnsdsl 1 month ago

They were given canteen credit instead of cash so they wouldn’t have escape or bribe money.

@donb7113 1 month ago

Germans would go to a cafe with a farmer, and sit together with the Americans from town. But not the blacks, they still had to sit in the back. This confounded the Germans.

@jmbilheimer 1 month ago

How did you buy a printing press with company scrip?

@peterkobs511 1 month ago (edited)

Thanks for the excellent documentary. ONE CORRECTION: In your map of the U.S. you have completely omitted the State of Michigan, where I live. Please update the line art!