German POWs Expected a Bullet. Instead, America Paid Them 80 Cents a Day.

In 1944, a young German prisoner named Kurt Pechmann bent over a row of Illinois sweet corn and was paid for it: ten cents an hour, eighty cents a day, in canteen coupons. He had expected a country in ruins. Instead he found farmers who fed him at their own tables, a camp commander who paid up after a prisoners' strike, and a nation that paid its enemies for their work. This is the true story of the nearly 400,000 German prisoners who worked America's farms, canneries and forests during World War II: the 80-cent rule and where it came from, the public anger over "coddling" the enemy, the long road home through France and Britain, and the thousands who came back to live in America. CHAPTERS 0:00 Ten cents an hour 0:48 Kurt Pechmann 1:59 Why America needed them 3:25 The math of 80 cents 5:16 In the fields 7:42 A strike they learned in America 8:45 "Put them in Death Valley" 10:12 Not going home 11:05 The ones who came back