Italian POWs Were Told They'd Be Treated as Traitors. Then America Gave Them Uniforms and Paychecks.

They were told that if they ever went home, they would be shot as traitors. In the spring of 1944, in prison camps scattered across America, more than fifty thousand Italian soldiers waited to learn what the armistice had made of them — prisoners of a country they were no longer fighting, soldiers of a government that had collapsed, and "traitors" in the broadcasts of Mussolini's Salò republic and German radio. What America offered them instead was a pen. Sign, and an Italian prisoner could join an Italian Service Unit: issued a U.S. Army uniform with an "ITALY" shoulder patch, paid like a working soldier, eating in American messes, working at ports and depots from coast to coast. Some 34,000 of the roughly 51,000 Italian prisoners in the United States volunteered. The rest refused — and the camps split down the middle. This episode follows the whole arc: capture in Tunisia and Sicily, the shock of the armistice on 8 September 1943, the traitor fear, the signing, the uniform, the first real paycheck, the work, the dances and Sunday dinners in American towns — and the men who stayed behind the wire on principle, and what going home finally meant in 1945. Chapters: 00:00 They Called Them Traitors 00:58 North Africa and Sicily — 1943 01:52 The Camps in America 02:42 8 September 1943 03:31 The Traitor Fear 04:31 The Split Inside the Wire 05:26 The Offer — Spring 1944 06:26 The Signing 07:35 The Uniform 08:29 Payday 09:20 The Work 10:14 The Service Units Form 11:13 Dances and Sunday Dinners 12:08 The Men Who Refused 12:59 Going Home — 1945 13:55 The Verdict Sources: Office of the Provost Marshal General — Prisoner of War Operations Division records, 1943–46; U.S. War Department — Italian Service Unit program documentation, 1944–45; National Archives — Records of the Office of the Provost Marshal General (RG 389); published scholarship on Italian prisoners of war in the United States. #WWII #Italy #WorldWar2 #POW #ItalianHistory #HistoryDocumentary Keywords: italian pows in america, italian service units, italian prisoners of war usa, italy armistice 1943, italian pow camps america, cooperator pows, ww2 italy documentary, italian soldiers captured tunisia sicily Displaying desc12.txt.