They Told German POWs They Were Going Home. The Ship Went to England.

In June 1946, a German prisoner of war named Otto Hohns boarded a ship in America believing he was going home. The Americans had told him so. On July 4th, 1946, the ship docked in England. He was one of tens of thousands. At the end of May 1945, the United States held 371,683 German prisoners. This is what happened to them after the war: the year of work nobody expected, the ships to Liverpool and France, the last shipload out of Camp Shanks, and the handful of men who never got on a ship at all, including one who hid in America for forty years. 00:00 Sold to England 01:21 The war ends. The work does not. 04:21 What home had become 07:45 The ship to England 11:03 The last ship 14:03 The man from Schweidnitz 17:05 Forty years as Dennis Whiles 20:20 What became of them READ THE DOCUMENTS YOURSELF Otto Hohns and Wolfgang Johner, in "Hospitality Is the Best Form of Propaganda" (Historical Journal of Massachusetts, 2016): https://www.westfield.ma.edu/historic... Arnold Krammer, German Prisoners of War in the United States (1976): https://studythepast.com/5388_spring1... Geneva Convention of 1929, Article 75: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_cent... Camp Butner and Kurt Rossmeisl (North Carolina state archives): https://www.dncr.nc.gov/blog/2016/08/... Hitler's Last Soldier in America, Georg Gaertner and Arnold Krammer (1985), full scan: https://archive.org/details/hitlersla... The Rhode Island re-education schools: https://smallstatebighistory.com/the-... SOURCES John C. Bonafilia, Historical Journal of Massachusetts, vol. 44, no. 1 (2016) Arnold Krammer, Military Affairs, vol. 40, no. 2 (1976), and Nazi Prisoners of War in America Imperial War Museums (IWM), German and Italian prisoners of war in Britain UPI and Los Angeles Times reporting, September 11, 1985 Spidle, New Mexico Historical Review, vol. 49, no. 2 (1974) FOOTAGE AND PHOTO CREDITS Film, German prisoners at work in a US camp: United News newsreel 95 (1944), National Archives (NARA) Film, German prisoners arriving in New York, May 1945: Universal Newsreel, May 14, 1945, NARA Film, US Army school for German prisoners: United News newsreel 182, NARA Film, German prisoners boarding ships in North Africa: United News newsreel 33 (1943), NARA Film, Germany in the British zone, 1945: A Defeated People, Crown Film Unit (1946), NARA Film, American town life: The Town (1945) and The Cummington Story (1945), US Office of War Information (OWI) Film: Tunisian Victory (1944); Normandy Invasion, US Coast Guard (1944); War Comes to America, US Army (1945); Troop Train, OWI (1943); Your Job in Germany, War Department (1945); Henry Browne, Farmer, US Department of Agriculture (1942) FBI wanted notice for Georg Gaertner, 1947: Federal Bureau of Investigation, via Wikimedia Commons German prisoners of war debarking at Newport News, Virginia: US Army, via Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) (uniform insignia blurred by us) Camp Shanks, New York, April 16, 1945: OWI, NARA NAID 535929 Deming, New Mexico, 1943: Army Air Forces, NARA NAID 68144809 Prisoners picking corn near Hoopeston, Illinois, 1944: via DPLA Main entrance, Camp Swift, Texas, August 6, 1944: US Army Signal Corps Major prisoner of war camps in the United States, June 1944: US Army At mess, Camp Livingston, Louisiana: period postcard, via Wikimedia Commons German prisoners farming in Normandy, May 1945: US Army, via DPLA German prisoners in France, 1945 and 1946: Nationaal Archief (Anefo), 900-6004 and 901-5509 German prisoners of war in Britain, 1945: Ministry of Information, IWM D 26716, 26718, 26719, 26723, 26726, 26728, 26735, 26736 Princes Landing Stage, Liverpool, 1945: Ministry of Information, IWM D 25624 American troops arriving at Liverpool, April 1944: War Office, IWM H 37397 Maps of Germany and the occupation zones, 1944 to 1946: US Army and period sources, via Wikimedia Commons New Mexico, 1940: Farm Security Administration (FSA), Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons Chicago, 1940 to 1943: FSA and OWI (Jack Delano and others), Library of Congress Farm workers, Imperial Valley, California: Dorothea Lange, FSA, Library of Congress Geneva Convention of 1929, original: Swiss Federal Archives, via Wikimedia Commons All government archival material is in the public domain. Some atmospheric illustrations in this video are AI-generated. They never depict a real person or a specific real event. Found an error? Tell us in the comments. Corrections get pinned. The Muster Roll: military history from the primary record. Subscribe:    / @themusterroll