What 370,000 German POWs Saw When Their Trains Crossed America

371,683. That is how many German prisoners of war the United States held in May 1945, and most of them crossed America the same way: by train, looking out of a window. They had been told American cities were in ruins. In 1944, an Iowa newspaper headline said German prisoners believed New York was being bombed every day. This is the documented story of what they saw: the Liberty ships and the Queen Mary, the upholstered coaches at Norfolk and the porter with the coffee, the automobiles everywhere, the paper plates thrown from the windows, the crowds on the platforms who came "to see if we had horns," the hundred-hour ride to Colorado, and the Black American soldiers who were sent to eat in the kitchen while German prisoners were served at the tables. ⏱️ Chapters 0:00 The number 0:48 The crossing 1:38 The ports 2:18 The coaches 3:07 The rules 3:37 The window 4:34 Not every ride 5:05 The stations 5:39 The arrival 6:11 The other passengers 7:01 What the window changed 7:41 One window at a time 📚 Sources Reinhold Pabel, Enemies Are Human (1955) Arnold Krammer, Nazi Prisoners of War in America (1979), via uboat.net, "Journey to America" and "German POWs in North America" Lewis H. Carlson, We Were Each Other's Prisoners (1997); Ron Robin, The Barbed-Wire College (1995) Cynthia Mayer, "German POWs Recall Captivity in U.S. Camps," Knight-Ridder / The Seattle Times, November 29, 1992 Marie McCaffrey, "Former German POW Günter Gräwe Visits Fort Lewis 73 Years Later to Say Thanks," HistoryLink.org, 2017 Matthew Taub, "'Are We Not American Soldiers?'," TIME, July 28, 2020 TRACES, "Held in the Heartland" exhibit panels Iowa Heritage Digital Collections, 1944 newspaper headline 🎞️ Archive Film: Troop Train (Office of War Information, 1943); The Passenger Train (Erpi, 1940); A Great Railroad at Work (1942); This Is My Railroad (Southern Pacific, 1940); War Department Film Bulletin 164, Controlling German Prisoners of War (U.S. Army, 1944); Tunisian Campaign (U.S. Army Signal Corps, 1943). All public domain, via the National Archives, the Prelinger Archives and the Internet Archive. No film was made of the prisoner trains themselves; those scenes are stand-ins and are marked on screen. Photographs via Wikimedia Commons, public domain: U.S. Army Signal Corps (Tunisia, 1943), Imperial War Museum (Liberty ship convoy, 1943), U.S. Navy (Queen Mary, 1945), National Archives (John Hope Franklin). If someone in your family rode one of those trains, as a prisoner, a guard, or a passenger, tell us in the comments. WWII Frontlines: prisoner of war stories, documented. #WW2 #History #POW