The First American Thing a German POW Touched Was a Bar of Soap Nobody Counted
The Men of Company C
94,054 views
The first American thing Kurt Rehberg touched was a bar of soap in Norfolk, Virginia, summer 1943. He was a signals corporal from the Afrika Korps, just off a Liberty ship with a thousand other German prisoners. He'd been deloused, showered, handed clean clothing — and then an American corporal put a bar of white soap in his hand and didn't ask for it back. There was a whole crate of them.
For two years, Rehberg had been told what America was: unemployed men, closed factories, a population that wouldn't fight. Standing in that shower block holding soap nobody wanted back, he did the arithmetic every prisoner in that shipment did the same week. Somewhere behind that crate was a factory, and it was still running.
Kurt Rehberg spent three years and two months as a prisoner of war in the United States. He came off a ship expecting misery and found camps built to the Geneva Convention — wooden barracks identical to what American troops lived in, rations equal to a U.S. base depot soldier, hospitals, canteens, even camp theaters and football leagues. Around 400,000 German prisoners were held in over 500 camps across nearly every American state during World War II, and most Americans today have no idea the camps existed.
This is the story of what happened inside those fences. Why empty convoy ships brought an army of German prisoners to American soil. How the Geneva Convention shaped every meal, inspection, and complaint. What prisoners like Rehberg saw when they arrived expecting propaganda to be true and found white soap, hot showers, and a system that fed them better than their own army had in years. How a shipping problem became the largest POW operation on American soil, run not out of kindness but cold strategy — because American prisoners sat in German camps, and the treatment went both ways.
Rehberg went home to a Germany with no roof on it in 1946. He came back to the United States in 1955 on a visa, with a wife, and died in Ohio decades later. The first thing he touched was soap. The last thing he believed was what he'd been told.
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Arrival and Atlantic Crossing
5:04 Surrender and Capture in Tunisia
6:49 Camp Life Under Geneva Convention
16:14 Internal Nazi Control and Violence
26:56 Reeducation and Learning the Truth
30:37 Repatriation and Return to Germany
35:25 Postwar Life and American Citizenship
43:30 Memory and Historical Legacy
#ww2history #germanpows #prisonersofwar #wwii #forgottenhistory
20 Comments
758th Battalion. The first African American tanker unit. 💜 My Daddy. Rest in Honor. 💜
He fought for Germany...He still lives in Iowa USA
He didn't know how to read or write
,but a German
prisoner that he made friends with taught him how to spell his family's names in (English)
And taught him how to read (English)
After the WAR THE prisoner mailed him a Gold watch made in Germany ❤
We do need to know these stories, both good and bad rather than accept spoon fed narratives.
And they claimed we were degenerates....
The First American Thing a German POW Touched Was a Bar of Soap Nobody Counted
The Men of Company C
94,054 views
The first American thing Kurt Rehberg touched was a bar of soap in Norfolk, Virginia, summer 1943. He was a signals corporal from the Afrika Korps, just off a Liberty ship with a thousand other German prisoners. He'd been deloused, showered, handed clean clothing — and then an American corporal put a bar of white soap in his hand and didn't ask for it back. There was a whole crate of them.
For two years, Rehberg had been told what America was: unemployed men, closed factories, a population that wouldn't fight. Standing in that shower block holding soap nobody wanted back, he did the arithmetic every prisoner in that shipment did the same week. Somewhere behind that crate was a factory, and it was still running.
Kurt Rehberg spent three years and two months as a prisoner of war in the United States. He came off a ship expecting misery and found camps built to the Geneva Convention — wooden barracks identical to what American troops lived in, rations equal to a U.S. base depot soldier, hospitals, canteens, even camp theaters and football leagues. Around 400,000 German prisoners were held in over 500 camps across nearly every American state during World War II, and most Americans today have no idea the camps existed.
This is the story of what happened inside those fences. Why empty convoy ships brought an army of German prisoners to American soil. How the Geneva Convention shaped every meal, inspection, and complaint. What prisoners like Rehberg saw when they arrived expecting propaganda to be true and found white soap, hot showers, and a system that fed them better than their own army had in years. How a shipping problem became the largest POW operation on American soil, run not out of kindness but cold strategy — because American prisoners sat in German camps, and the treatment went both ways.
Rehberg went home to a Germany with no roof on it in 1946. He came back to the United States in 1955 on a visa, with a wife, and died in Ohio decades later. The first thing he touched was soap. The last thing he believed was what he'd been told.
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Arrival and Atlantic Crossing
5:04 Surrender and Capture in Tunisia
6:49 Camp Life Under Geneva Convention
16:14 Internal Nazi Control and Violence
26:56 Reeducation and Learning the Truth
30:37 Repatriation and Return to Germany
35:25 Postwar Life and American Citizenship
43:30 Memory and Historical Legacy
#ww2history #germanpows #prisonersofwar #wwii #forgottenhistory