What German POWs in America Couldn't Write Home

372,000 German prisoners of war lived in America during World War II, and they could send home two letters and four postcards a month, every word checked by a censor. What did they write, and what did they leave out? From the first trainload into Texas to the Fritz Ritz, from Corporal Rupert Trimmingham eating in a lunchroom kitchen while German prisoners ate at the tables, to the kangaroo courts inside the wire, the fourteen hangings at Fort Leavenworth, the camp films of 1945, the letters sent back to an Arkansas farmer, and Georg Gaertner, the prisoner who never went home. Every claim is stamped DOCUMENTED, DISPUTED or LEGEND against the record. 0:00 The Kitchen and the Table 0:34 The Trains 2:00 The Fritz Ritz 3:26 Two Letters a Month 4:48 What the Letters Left Out 6:08 The Camp Inside the Camp 7:44 The Films 9:02 The Long Way Home 10:36 The Last Prisoner Did someone in your family work beside these prisoners? Tell us in the comments. Exhibits (Wikimedia Commons): Farragut POWs, US Navy / National Archives (public domain). POW postcard, Fort Devens Museum, Daderot (CC0). Werner Drechsler, US Navy (public domain). Der Ruf (public domain). FBI file of Georg Gaertner (public domain). Recreated documents are marked as recreations. Sources: - https://humanitiesTexas.org/node/3620 - https://daily.jstor.org/prisoners-like-us-german-pow-and-black-american-solidarity - https://www.appstate.edu/~hudnallac/pow.htm - https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/geneva02.asp - https://archive.archaeology.org/9705/newsbriefs/camphearne.html - https://camphearne.com/?p=960 - https://time.com/5872361/wwii-german-pows-civil-rights - https://home.nps.gov/features/malu/feat0002/wof/Lena_Horne.htm - https://www.army.mil/article/217981/fort_knox_general_club_director_host_black_entertainers_ease_tensions_in_pre_integrated_army - https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/fort-hunt-park-werner-drechsler.htm - https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=PR016 - https://www2.ljworld.com/news/2008/may/25/german_pows_buried_prison/ - https://www.mnhs.org/usdakotawar/background - https://www.historynet.com/the-secret-and-controversial-attempt-to-teach-german-pows-about-freedom/ #history #ww2 #pow #footnotefiles Music: "Anamalie" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1500007), CC BY 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Canon in D Major" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100301), CC BY 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Colorless Aura" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1400008), CC BY 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Crypto" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1600013), CC BY 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Dreamer" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1600043), CC BY 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Morning" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN2300003), CC BY 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Sound effects: "Wind, Realistic, A.wav" by InspectorJ (https://freesound.org/people/InspectorJ/sounds/405561), CC BY 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Moolah! Counting Out Bills.wav" by Coral_Island_Studios (https://freesound.org/people/Coral_Island_Studios/sounds/459546), CC BY 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Fire of the forge" by Work With Sounds / La Fonderie (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WWS_Fireoftheforge.ogg), CC BY 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "foghorn far 013 210303_0264.wav" by klankbeeld (https://freesound.org/people/klankbeeld/sounds/623931), CC BY 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/