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In the final weeks of World War II, a young American intelligence officer is caught in a web of deceit that stretches from the Pentagon to the war-ravaged streets of Europe. Lieutenant Julius Orlinsky, a veteran of clandestine operations in Prague, is thrust back into the field when a seemingly routine assignment leadsto murder and attempted murder.
German Prisoners on American Soil
My novel Red Snow in Winter is set in the closing weeks of World War II, but, unlike many wartime books, the majority of the story takes place in the United States. The main character is Julius Orlinsky, an American intelligence officer pulled into a dangerous mission.
My novel’s action unfolds in two settings that are uncommon in World War II fiction: Washington, D.C. at the end of the war, and several prisoner of war camps for Germans in America. For this post I would like to share my research on the camps.
During World War II, America’s involvement often evokes images of GIs fighting overseas, but an entirely different operation existed within the continental United States. Starting in 1942, a massive, unprecedented operation began: the transport and internment of hundreds of thousands of Axis soldiers, primarily Germans, in U.S. prisoner of war (POW) camps.
By 1945, more than 425,000 German and Italian soldiers were held in the U.S. This was no local project; this "enemy within" was spread across approximately 700 camps in 46 states, from vast base camps to smaller labor satellite facilities. 

Nebraska POW Mugshot
The sheer scale and geography of this operation is perhaps the first and most surprising fact about the German POW experience in America. For many small-town Americans, the sight of enemy soldiers working outside the wire was a bizarre, immediate reality of a faraway war.An Operation that America Didn’t Want 
The United States tried to resist setting up these camps for so long that it became a serious source of conflict with its Allies. According to the book Nazi Prisoners of War in America, “Due to her early entrance into the world war, Britain had been receiving substantial numbers of German and Italian prisoners for more than a year, and the problem was approaching crisis proportions. 
From Washington’s point of view, the United States simply refused to enter into any agreement which might adversely affect its ability to act independently.” However, Britain’s ability to house enemy prisoners on the island was taxed to the breaking point. Finally, in August 1942, the US “begrudgingly” agreed to house prisoners on American soil.
Confusion Over Identities
At first, the vast majority of enemy soldiers were captured in North Africa. Things were happening so fast that some German and Italian prisoners were processed before the serial-number system for the soldiers was established. 
Once the bureaucratic system was in place, the remaining major challenge was a severe lack of interpreters and foreign language clerks and typists. As a result, prisoners were able to take advantage of the language barrier and “confuse the registration process.” 
Historians now believe that some prisoners with sufficient motivation and resourcefulness were able to take on new identities in the camps, and Americans never knew the true names—or war records—of some of the German pisoners held in the U.S.
A "Surprisingly Pleasant" Captivity
For soldiers accustomed to the brutal conditions of the European front, life in American POW camps was, by many accounts, comfortable. Online historical accounts and official records reveal that the United States largely adhered to the 1929 Geneva Convention, providing conditions that were often better than those of an average U.S. soldier stateside.

Nebraska POW Kitchen
POWs were provided with the same standard U.S. Army rations as their guards, meaning they often ate better than many Americans subject to wartime rationing. Beyond comfortable quarters, camp authorities allowed the men to organize their own activities. Camps were transformed into self-contained communities featuring:Theaters where prisoners staged plays and variety shows.Orchestras and bands that performed for their fellow inmates.Sports leagues that held regular soccer and basketball tournaments.
Michigan POW Soccer
Furthermore, they were paid small wages in camp scrip (POW money) for any work performed. In fact, some historians note that certain POWs returned to a devastated Germany after the war "wealthier than the families they left behind," having saved their earnings. The “Barbed-Wire College” and Re-educationOne of the most ambitious and least-known aspects of the American POW system was the "re-education" effort. Recognizing that many prisoners were young men indoctrinated by Nazism, American officials implemented programs to expose them to American democracy and culture.   
This project was nicknamed the "Barbed-Wire College." Academics and camp commandants established libraries and held courses taught by anti-Nazi prisoners or American personnel. The curriculum covered a wide range of subjects, including American history, civics, and political science. The explicit goal was to help them shed their Nazi ideology and become advocates for a democratic, post-war Germany.
The effort often created an internal ideological struggle. In one striking example, the German-language camp newspapers published by the POWs often split into two distinct factions: one ardently pro-Nazi and another, supported by American authorities, promoting anti-fascist and democratic ideals. This cultural engineering experiment yielded mixed results but remains a unique feature of the American handling of its prisoners. The Dark Side: Internal Violence and MurdersDespite the humane treatment from their American captors, the camps saw some violence. A sobering fact is that dedicated Nazi zealots—the "true believers"—often enforced their political will through intimidation, violence, and murder of fellow prisoners.
Within the wire, a shadow war took place between the pro- and anti-Nazis. Prisoners suspected of being sympathetic to the Allies, deemed "white mice" or "collaborators," were tortured and sometimes executed by their fanatical comrades. 
These killings, which occurred in camps across the country, were often disguised as suicides or accidents. When the murders were discovered, the ensuing trials and executions of the perpetrators were a reminder of the ideological struggle that had followed the soldiers across the Atlantic. An Unexpected Labor Force
Perhaps the most visible and often surprising aspect of the POW system for local Americans was the use of German labor. Due to severe wartime labor shortages, particularly in agriculture, the U.S. Army loaned out POWs to work on local farms, factories, and construction projects.
These German work details were crucial to supporting the American economy and war effort. In many agricultural regions, without the labor of the prisoners, entire harvests would have rotted in the fields. Some of the work locations were truly unexpected:In Georgia, a work detail of German POWs was responsible for tending the grounds of the Augusta National Golf Course, the home of the Masters Tournament.In various Eastern, Midwestern and Southern states, prisoners were sent to work on farms, sometimes "guarded" only by a single, bored, or elderly American soldier, highlighting the general security and good conduct of the majority of the prisoners.The Truth About Escapes
Some prisoners tried to escape. They were caught quickly or turned themselves in because of the language barrier and their disorientation in a vast America. In Texas, which held one of the largest POW populations, from a population of over 78,000 prisoners, only 21 POWs escaped from the major camps in the state, and every single one was caught within three weeks, most of them a lot sooner. 

Texas POW Entrance  There is one prisoner who successfully escaped: Georg Gärtner.  He escaped from a camp in New Mexico in September 1945, after the war had ended but while many POWs were still being processed for return. Some Germans did not want to return to a defeated country, impoverished and heavily bombed. Gärtner successfully went into hiding, living under an assumed identity for nearly 40 years before finally surrendering to U.S. authorities in 1985.
By the time the last German POWs were repatriated in 1946, they left behind a largely forgotten legacy. The American POW camps were more than just internment facilities; they were a massive, temporary social experiment that brought the enemy into the American backyard, shaping the lives of both the prisoners and the citizens who unexpectedly encountered them.

"This is a fast-moving, page-turning espionage thriller set just after the war. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to be kept up at night!" --Deborah Swift, author of The Shadow Network

Max Eastern
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About the Author
The stories his father told him about his time as an intelligence officer in World War II inspired Max Eastern to write Red Snow in Winter. He has written about history for several magazines and online publications, with subjects ranging from Ulysses Grant and Benedict Arnold to Attila the Hun. His modern noir novel The Gods Who Walk Among Us won the Kindle Scout competition and was published by Kindle Press in 2017. A lawyer specializing in publishing, he resides in New York State. Find out more ar Max Eastern's website and follow him on Twitter @MaxeasternNYC