Hitler's Generals in Mississippi. One Escaped Just to Mail a Letter.

On New Year's Day, 1946, a German general slipped out of a prisoner-of-war camp in Mississippi. He wasn't trying to get home. He was carrying letters: one to a United States senator, one to the director of the Office of Censorship in Washington, complaining about American propaganda in the camps and the loss of tobacco. His name was Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke, and he was one of dozens of German generals held at Camp Clinton, near Jackson. This is the documented story of how Hitler's generals ended up in Mississippi: the surrender in Tunisia, the secret microphones at Trent Park, the general who was ordered to leave Paris "a field of ruins", the defender of Brest, and the 200-acre model of the Mississippi River their soldiers dug with wheelbarrows and shovels. ⏱️ Chapters 0:00 New Year's Day, 1946 1:01 How Hitler's generals were captured 1:59 The crossing to Mississippi 2:53 Inside the generals' compound 3:43 The river they built 4:54 What the Americans wanted from them 5:53 The general who didn't burn Paris 6:29 "These are my credentials" 7:27 The escape and the letters 8:26 What happened to them 9:41 What's left 📚 Sources Derek R. Mallett, Hitler's Generals in America: Nazi POWs and Allied Military Intelligence (University Press of Kentucky, 2013) John Ray Skates Jr., "German Prisoners of War in Mississippi 1943–1946," Mississippi History Now, Mississippi Department of Archives and History (2001) "Camp Clinton," Jackson Clarion-Ledger (1996) U.S. Army Corps of Engineers records on the Mississippi River Basin Model Paul J. Springer, review of Mallett, Foreign Policy Research Institute (2016) 🎞️ Archive Film: U.S. Army Signal Corps, Surrender of Brest (1944), Tunisian Campaign (May 1943) and Paris (August 1944); The River (Farm Security Administration, 1938); The Passenger Train (1940). All public domain, via the National Archives and the Internet Archive. Photographs: U.S. Army Signal Corps, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Senate (public domain); Trent Park by Poliphilo (CC0); all via Wikimedia Commons. Insignia in archive photos are blurred. Some scenes stand in for places and moments that were never filmed; these are marked on screen. If your family has a story about Camp Clinton, or about the prisoners who worked in Mississippi, tell us in the comments. WWII Frontlines: prisoner of war stories, documented. #WW2 #History #POW