In the spring of 1944, a German prisoner in a South Carolina work camp stopped on a path to listen to a radio playing on the guards' side of the fence. He did not hide it. In the days afterward he said plainly that he liked what he had heard, and that the Americans had treated him better than he had been told they would. The music he stopped for was banned in the country he had been fighting for.

SOURCES:

Books
Arnold Krammer, Nazi Prisoners of War in America (Stein and Day, 1979)
Michael R. Waters, Lone Star Stalag: German Prisoners of War at Camp Hearne (Texas A&M University Press, 2004)
Matthias Reiss, Controlling Sex in Captivity: POWs and Sexual Desire in the United States during the Second World War (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018)
Reinhold Pabel, Enemies Are Human (John C. Winston Co., 1953)
Betty Cowley, Stalag Wisconsin: Inside WWII Prisoner-of-War Camps (2002)
Lowell May and Mark Schock, Prisoners of War in Kansas 1943–1946
Michael H. Kater, Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany (Oxford University Press, 1992)

Archives — U.S. National Archives, RG 389 (Office of the Provost Marshal General)
Entry 440, Box 25 — "Classification of Reorientation Program," 31 May 1945
Entry 459A, Box 1628 — Annual Report, Special Projects Program, First Service Command, 26 Feb 1946
Entry 459A, Box 1629 — General 331.14, POW canteen restrictions, 8 May 1945
Entry 459A, Box 2675 — camp inspection reports, Camp Westover Field, 7–8 April 1945
Entry A1 435 — Subject Correspondence Files, 1943–1945
RG 111 — Signal Corps photographs

Other archives
Library of Congress, German P.O.W. Camp Newspapers, vols. 50–52, reel 14 (Die Brücke, first issue 15 April 1945)
Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell AFB — Camp Westover Field photographs
Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt), Berlin — Basic Personnel Records
Department of the Army Pamphlet 20-213 (Lewis & Mewha, 1955)

Articles and journals
John C. Bonafilia, "'Hospitality Is the Best Form of Propaganda': German Prisoners of War in Western Massachusetts, 1944–1946," Historical Journal of Massachusetts 44:1 (Winter 2016), pp. 44–83
Allen W. Paschal, "The Enemy in Colorado: German Prisoners of War, 1943–46," The Colorado Magazine (Summer 1979), via History Colorado
Christian McBurney and Brian Wallin, "The Top Secret World War II Prisoner-of-War Camp at Fort Kearney in Narragansett," Online Review of Rhode Island History (2015)
Mike Dash, "Hitler's Very Own Hot Jazz Band," Smithsonian (2013)
Teresa Bergen, "Preserving America's World War II POW Camps," Saturday Evening Post (May/June 2018)

Primary documents in translation
Joseph Goebbels, "Aus Gottes eigenem Land," Das Reich, 9 August 1942
"Parole 22: Amerikanisierung wäre das Ende Europas!", Sprechabenddienst, September/October 1944
Both translated by Randall Bytwerk, German Propaganda Archive, Calvin University

Newspapers and local records
Owosso Argus-Press, 22 July 1944 – 13 January 1945
Concordia Blade-Empire, "Conscripted Germans at POW Camp Concordia"
Winchester Star, "In love with the enemy"
Shiawassee District Library, "Owosso Prisoner of War Camp"
Nebraska State Historical Society, "German Prisoners of War in Grand Island"
WOOD-TV (2024), Owosso POW case

Reference and institutional
USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, "Women in the Third Reich"
The Holocaust Explained (Wiener Holocaust Library), "Employment" and "Everyday life"
Music and the Holocaust (ORT), "Art and music under the Third Reich"
Black Central Europe, "Degenerate music (1938)"
U.S. Women's Bureau, Handbook on Women Workers (1950 ed.)
The National WWII Museum, Manufacturing Victory
University of North Texas Oral History Program, OH 1318
Historical Marker Database, marker #36396
Capital Punishment UK, Hangmen at War, ch. 5

Visuals: archival photographs from the U.S. National Archives or other, animated maps, and original illustrations.