7 Things German Prisoners Found Strange About America

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