25 German POWs Tunneled Out of an Arizona camp. The River on Their Map Didn't Exist

On the night of 23 December 1944, twenty-five German prisoners of war crawled out of a 178-foot tunnel under Camp Papago Park, Arizona. It was the largest POW escape on American soil. They had spent three months digging with coal shovels, hiding the spoil in a volleyball court they had asked permission to build. They carried forged papers, civilian clothes, and a collapsible boat they had assembled inside the camp. The boat was the problem. Their map showed the Salt River running from Phoenix to the Gila, the Gila to the Colorado, and the Colorado to the Gulf of California and neutral Mexico. The map was accurate about everything except the water. The Salt River had been dammed upstream years earlier. The men who carried a boat into the Arizona desert found a bed of dry cracked mud. Every one of the twenty-five was recaptured. Not a single shot was fired. The last man back, Captain Jürgen Wattenberg, stayed free for thirty-six days by hiding in a cave north of Phoenix and slipping back into the camp at night to eat — so the count always came out right. Chapters 0:00 Twenty-five men, one tunnel 0:41 What Camp Papago Park actually was 1:49 Captain Jürgen Wattenberg 2:20 The plan, and the map it depended on 3:31 Three months of digging 4:22 Forged papers and a folding boat 4:52 9 p.m., 23 December 1944 5:13 The greatest manhunt in Arizona history 5:48 The river that wasn't there 6:03 The desert does what the guards couldn't 6:36 Wattenberg's thirty-six days 7:25 Papago Park today SOURCES John Hammond Moore, The Faustball Tunnel: German POWs in America and Their Great Escape (1978). Arnold Krammer, Nazi Prisoners of War in America (1979). Phoenix Gazette, 28 December 1944 — "the greatest manhunt in Arizona history." National Park Service — Camp Papago Park and the 1944 escape. Arizona State University Library, Map of the Month, February 2023 — the escapees' route map. Phoenix Magazine, "Nazis in Papago," 1 November 2023. Arizona Military Museum, Papago Park POW camp collection. The Historical Marker Database, marker 87966 — Papago Park POW camp marker, erected 1984. New York Times, obituary of Jürgen Wattenberg, 1995. Sources & Archives U.S. National Archives Library of Congress (FSA/OWI Collection) Wikimedia Commons Internet Archive How This Episode Was Made Original research and script by [Z POWs Files]. Photographs, documents and other historical material from the U.S. National Archives, the Library of Congress and other public collections are re-edited to match the narration and combined with our own maps, document reconstructions and graphics. Where no photograph of a specific moment survives, the scene is illustrated with a reconstruction created for this episode. These reconstructions represent locations, events and environments described in the narration and are not photographs of the specific people named. Sources are listed above. #WW2 #WWII #GermanPOWs #POWCamp #Arizona #WW2Documentary #MilitaryHistory #WarHistory #HistoryDocumentary #PapagoPark #PrisonersOfWar #WW2Stories #SecondWorldWar #USHistory #GreatEscape