THE FIFTEEN

When Germans were imprisoned in America.

Nearly 400,000 German POWs spent WWII in America. Journalist Geroux delivers an expert, unsettling story of this little-known aspect of the war. Author of The Mathews Men: Seven Brothers and the War Against Hitler’s U-boats, Geroux adds that the POWs were better fed and housed than their families in Germany; many yearned to remain in the U.S. after the war. Senior German officers set the tone in every camp. A minority were fanatic Nazis, certain that Germany would win the war, despising flabby, undisciplined Americans, and determined to enforce fierce loyalty to the Fuhrer. Most POWs went along, but there were always a few who expressed unflattering opinions on Hitler or made themselves obnoxious to their companions. Warnings or beatings were the usual response, but Geroux recounts several cases where guards found prisoners beaten to death or strangled in clumsy attempts to fake their suicides. Suspects underwent investigations and trials, and 15 of those convicted received the death penalty. Following the Geneva Convention, the Germans were informed of it. Geroux then describes conditions of over 70,000 American POWs in Axis camps, focusing on a group tried for trivial offenses such as disobeying guards and sentenced to death in an effort to force a prisoner exchange. Using Swiss diplomats as intermediaries, the Roosevelt administration began negotiations, but these extended into 1945, when the Nazi regime was crumbling and messages were delayed and sometimes lost. In the end, no American was executed; in July 1945, two months after Germany’s surrender, the U.S. hanged 14 of the condemned Germans. There is no lesson, but readers will have no doubt that America, despite its warts—many German defendants were badly roughed up, but on the other hand, the POWs were often treated better than Black American soldiers—deserved to win.

Good, unfamiliar World War II history.