German POWs Were Shocked By Their First Sight of America

#wwii #ww2 #ww2history #worldwar2 #historydocumentary #militaryhistory In 1943, German soldiers captured in North Africa and across the European Theater by the Allied Powers crossed the Atlantic expected a broken America. What they found was an untouched continent, full factories, and farmers asking for POWs to work their fields. This World War 2 documentary follows roughly 380,000 German POWs from Tunisia and Europe to the American POW camps in Texas, Arizona, Kansas, Oklahoma, Mississipi and beyond. You'll learn why the United States took in so many German prisoners of war during WW2, what the Atlantic crossing was like with German U-boats still hunting Allied convoys, and how life inside the American POW camps really worked. We cover the food, the pay, the labor, the camps, the theater groups, and the “barbed wire colleges,” while also exploring how German POW labor contributed to the American WWII wartime economy - a largely overlooked aspect of the war that rarely receives the recognition it deserves. I also cover the most notable events and figures associated with many of these German POW camps in the United States during that period. -------------------------- This video is a historical documentary. It does not glorify WW2 Germany, its ideology or its military. Archival imagery and historical context are presented solely to document and analyze this specific chapter of World War 2 history. -------------------------- Chapters: 00:00 - Why America? - The Logic of the POW Pipeline 05:51 - The Atlantic Crossing 09:53 - First Sight of America 13:02 - America’s POW Camp Network 15:31 - Life Inside The Camps 21:24 - The Re-education Experiment and The Idea Factory 24:25 - The Dark Side - Nazis Who Terrorized Their Fellow Prisoners 26:32 - Escapes, Spies, and the Strange Stories of German POWs 31:18 - The End of the War and The Long Wait 33:47 - What German POWs Really Thought of America