German POWs Were Told America Had Run Out of Fuel. Then They Saw the Parking Lots.

In 1943 trainloads of German prisoners captured in Tunisia crossed the United States. One of them, Horst von Oppenfeld, later remembered what German propaganda had told them: the Americans were so short of fuel they could no longer use their cars. Then the train ran past the factories, and the parking lots were full. This film follows that ride and the years after it. It covers why America really rationed gasoline (the answer was rubber), the prairie camps and the harvest work, the mess halls run under the Geneva Convention, the 80 cents a day, the camp newspapers and the letters home. It also covers the hard-line Nazis who held a secret court inside the wire, the U.S. Army's quiet program to show the prisoners how the country worked, and what the men found when they went home. A note on the evidence. The parking-lot story comes from one prisoner's memory, as told to The Washington Post Magazine in 2004. The fuel answer comes from the government's own Rubber Survey Committee in 1942. Where the camp record is darker, the film shows that too. Every picture and film clip is real archive material. Every quote is from the sources below. Chapters: 0:00 The train window, 1943 1:25 Out of Petrol 2:57 The Window 4:23 The Rubber 7:14 The Prairie 9:49 The Mess Hall 11:49 Eighty Cents 13:22 Letters Home 14:50 The Other Story 17:59 Going Home Sources: Lynn Ermann, "Learning Freedom in Captivity" (The Washington Post Magazine, 18 January 2004) U.S. Army Signal Corps film "POW School, Fort Getty" (1945), National Archives 111-ADC-9940 and 111-ADC-9941 Report of the Rubber Survey Committee (B. M. Baruch, J. B. Conant, K. T. Compton), 10 September 1942 Office of the Provost Marshal General, "World War II: A Brief History" (1946), chapter "Re-education of Enemy Prisoners of War" Mark P. Schock, "Bloodied Kansas: Nazi Retribution in a Kansas POW Camp" (Wichita State University) Calvin N. Jones, "Views of America and Views of Germany in German POW Newspapers of World War II" (1980) Lowell A. Bangerter, "German Prisoners of War in Wyoming" (Journal of German-American Studies, 1979) Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Geneva, 27 July 1929 HistoryNet, "German POWs: Coming Soon to a Town Near You" and "The Secret and Controversial Attempt to Teach German POWs About Freedom" The National WWII Museum, "Rationing" Film (public domain: U.S. government films at the National Archives, and pre-1964 films in the Prelinger Archives): "The Plow That Broke the Plains" (U.S. Resettlement Administration, 1936), National Archives; "A Great Railroad at Work" (Jam Handy Organization, 1942), Prelinger Archives; U.S. Navy film "Constructing Navy Blimps, Akron, Ohio" (1942), National Archives (428-NPC-16050); U.S. Army Signal Corps film, National Archives (111-ADC-140), 1943; U.S. Army Signal Corps film, National Archives (111-ADC-9890), 1943; U.S. Army Signal Corps film "Firestone Synthetic Rubber Plant, Akron, Ohio" (1944), National Archives (111-ADC-2537); U.S. Office of War Information film "Steel Town" (1944), National Archives (306.163); U.S. War Department film "Controlling German Prisoners of War" (FB-164, 1944), National Archives; U.S. Army Signal Corps film 'POW School', Fort Getty, R.I., 1945, National Archives (111-ADC-9940); U.S. Army Signal Corps film 'POW School, Fort Getty', 1945, National Archives (111-ADC-9941); "Post-War Germany: 28 Months After V-E Day" (George T. Fonda, 1947), Prelinger Archives. Photographs: U.S. Army Signal Corps, U.S. Coast Guard and Office of War Information (National Archives); Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information (Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons); Bundesarchiv. Thumbnails: German prisoners of war debarking in the United States (National Archives) and the Goodyear Airdock, Akron, Ohio, December 1941, by Alfred T. Palmer (Office of War Information, public domain). Photo credits (CC BY / CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons): Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-B0527-0001-753, photo: Röhnert (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE); Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-2005-0819-506, photo: Erich O. Krueger (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE); Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-J31347, photographer unknown (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE); Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-0822-520, photo: Erich O. Krueger (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE); Deutsche Fotothek, photo: Abraham Pisarek (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE) Narration: AI voice. Real voices: a German prisoner of war and a U.S. Army officer at the Fort Getty, Rhode Island, prisoner school, December 1945 (U.S. Army Signal Corps film, National Archives 111-ADC-9940 and 9941). Every other quote in the film is read by the narrator from the sources above. Independent and educational. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. Department of Defense or any armed force.