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Author: Robert D. Billinger Publisher: ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 280
Book Description
More than 10,000 German prisoners of war were interned in eighteen camps in North Carolina during World War II. Yet apart from the guards, civilian workers, and FBI and local police who tracked escapees, most people were--and remain--unaware of their presence. Utilizing interviews with former prisoners and their guards, Red Cross and U.S. military reports, German-language camp newspapers, local print media, letters, memoirs, and other archival sources, Robert Billinger is the first to chronicle in detail the German POW experience in North Carolina during WWII. Billinger captures the perceptions of sixty years ago, and demonstrates how the stereotype that all Germans were Nazis evolved over time. The book is dedicated to the insights gained by many POWs, guards, and civilians: that wartime enemies could become life-long friends.
Author: Robert D. Billinger Publisher: ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 280
Book Description
More than 10,000 German prisoners of war were interned in eighteen camps in North Carolina during World War II. Yet apart from the guards, civilian workers, and FBI and local police who tracked escapees, most people were--and remain--unaware of their presence. Utilizing interviews with former prisoners and their guards, Red Cross and U.S. military reports, German-language camp newspapers, local print media, letters, memoirs, and other archival sources, Robert Billinger is the first to chronicle in detail the German POW experience in North Carolina during WWII. Billinger captures the perceptions of sixty years ago, and demonstrates how the stereotype that all Germans were Nazis evolved over time. The book is dedicated to the insights gained by many POWs, guards, and civilians: that wartime enemies could become life-long friends.
Author: Robert D. Billinger Publisher: University Press of Florida ISBN: 0813072050 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 206
Book Description
"They were Uncle Sam's smiling workers and they looked like all-American boys. There were at least 10,000 of them, deployed in 25 Florida camps between 1942 and 1946. They were also members of the Wehrmacht, Hitler's armed forces."--Forum "Most Americans were unaware their government was housing Hitler's soldiers on its shores. . . . Billinger weaves interviews with former prisoners, American soldiers who worked in the camps, newspaper accounts, and government documents into a stunning historical narrative."--Kansas City Star "A tropical paradise that for some became a tropical hell."--Sarasota Herald-Tribune "First came crewmen of destroyed U-boats, then thousands of Afrika Korps veterans who swamped the system in 1943. Pro-Nazi, arrogant, and tough, they defied U.S. authorities, terrorized anti-Nazi inmates, and rioted."--Choice "Filled with colorful personal accounts, this historical book packs the punch of fiction."--St. Petersburg Times "Billinger's first-rate history of this little-known chapter in American history teaches us that, in spite of wartime propaganda, our enemies are human, too."--Atlantic City Press "Hard to put down."--Daytona Beach News-Journal In the first book-length treatment of the German prisoner of war experience in Florida during World War II, Robert D. Billinger, Jr., tells the story of the 10,000 men who were "guests" of Uncle Sam in a tropical paradise that for some became a tropical hell. Having been captured while serving on U-boats off the Carolinas, with the Afrika Korps in Tunisia, with the paratroops in Italy, or with labor battalions in France, the POWs were among the 378,000 Germans held as prisoners in 45 states. Except for the servicemen who guarded them, the civilian pulp-cutters, citrus growers, and sugarcane foremen who worked them, and the FBI and local police who tracked the escapees among them, most people were--and still are--unaware of the German POWs who inhabited the 27 camps that dotted the Sunshine State. Billinger describes the experiences of the Germans and their captors as both sides came to the realization that, while the Germans’ worst enemies were often their own comrades-in-arms, wartime enemies might also become life-long friends. Concentrating especially on the story of Camp Blanding in North Florida, Billinger based his research on both American and German archives. His account mixes rare photos with interviews with former prisoners; reports by the International Red Cross, the YMCA, and the U.S. military; and local newspaper articles. This book will be of great value to scholars and historians, as well as all readers with an interest in World War II. Those with an interest in Florida history will also find much to admire in this engaging account of a barely known wartime episode. A volume in The Florida History and Culture Series, edited by Raymond Arsenault and Gary R. Mormino.
Author: Derek R. Mallett Publisher: University Press of Kentucky ISBN: 0813142520 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 244
Book Description
The WWII historian offers “provocative analysis” of the US military’s evolving relationship with German officers held on American soil (Robert D. Billinger Jr., author of Nazi POWs in the Tar Heel State). In Hitler’s Generals in America, Derek R. Mallett examines the relationship between American officials and the Wehrmacht general officers they held as prisoners of war in the United States between 1943 and 1946. While the British pampered the German officers in their custody in order to obtain intelligence, Americans did not share the same sense of class privilege, and refused any special treatment to German prisoners of any rank. By the end of the war, however, the United States had begun to envision itself as a world power rather than one of several allies providing aid during wartime. Mallett demonstrates how a growing admiration for the German officers’ prowess and military traditions, coupled with postwar anxiety about Soviet intentions, drove Washington to collaborate with many Wehrmacht general officers. Drawing on newly available sources, this intriguing book shows how Americans undertook the complex process of reconceptualizing Germans—even Nazi generals—as allies against what they perceived as their new enemy, the Soviet Union.
Author: Paul N. Herbert Publisher: AuthorHouse ISBN: 1452016348 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 532
Book Description
People with only a slight interest in history will enjoy these fascinating, short and easy to understand stories. Serious history buffs will like these lesser-known episodes, not the stories weve heard a million times. For example: try to find anyone who knows about the attempted slave insurrection in Fairfax County, Virginia. With Mary Lincolns spending habits, who knew that Abraham Lincoln actually saved an enormous percentage of his presidential salary? A slave honored in Virginia with a monument; the history of Lee Highway which opened with great fanfare in 1923 as a 3,000 mile road from Washington, DC to San Diego; a story about the Little River Turnpike, the second oldest turnpike in America, built partly by slaves and captured Hessian soldiers. Youll read about two Civil War ships that collided in the Potomac River. Victims included wounded soldiers' wives and one soldiers six-year-old son. Youll read a great account of the massive Civil War corruption. Youll learn about the disastrous condition of the treasury (sound familiar?) during the Revolutionary War. The government tried everything, including a lottery to get the country afloat in a sea of red ink. But the most fascinating story may be about the Revolutionary War soldier who faked his own desertion to defect to the enemy with the highly secretive mission of going behind enemy lines to capture and return for trial the worst traitor in American history: Benedict Arnold. Bet you never heard of this story. There are many other stories in this eclectic, heavily-researched manuscript. Theres a story about the Christmas Truce in World War One, about long-forgotten holidays in Virginia, about the retrocession which sent an area of Washington back to Virginia in 1846, and about the impeachment of a Supreme Court justice (it happened only once). And more!
Author: Antonio S. Thompson Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 1476681686 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 227
Book Description
During World War II, Kentuckians rushed from farms to factories and battlefields, leaving agriculture throughout the state--particularly the lucrative tobacco industry--without sufficient labor. An influx of Axis prisoners of war made up the shortfall. Nearly 10,000 German and Italian POWs were housed in camps at Campbell, Breckinridge, Knox and other locations across the state. Under the Geneva Convention, they worked for their captors and helped save Kentucky's crops, while enjoying relative comfort as prisoners--playing sports, performing musicals and taking college classes. Yet, friction between Nazi and anti-Nazi inmates threatened the success of the program. This book chronicles the POW program in Kentucky and the vital contributions the Bluegrass State made to Allied victory.
Author: Paul N. Herbert Publisher: Arcadia Publishing ISBN: 1467135372 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 128
Book Description
Harvard honor gratuate Dale Maple had an obsession with Nazi Germany. After enlisting in the U.S. Army, he was assigned to a regiment for soldiers suspected of harboring German sympathies. This regiment was eventually relocated next to a POW camp at Camp Hale in Colorado. In 1944 he orchestrated the escape of 2 German POWs and the trio headed to Mexico where they were captured. Maple was tried for treason for his actions.
Author: Günter Bischof Publisher: StudienVerlag ISBN: 3706557274 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 450
Book Description
After the breakup of the Habsburg Monarchy, the Austrian-American relationship was characterized by a dwarf confronting a giant. America continued to be a heaven for a better life for many Austrian emigrants. For the growing American preponderant position in the world after World War I, the small Austrian Republic was insignificant. And yet there were times when Austria mattered geopolitically. During the post-World War II occupation of Austria, the U.S. helped reconstruct Austria economically and was the biggest champion of its independence. During the Cold War, the U.S. frequently used Austria as a mediator site of summit meetings. American mass production models, consumerism, and popular culture were adopted by Austrian youth. Americanization and American preponderance also produced anti-Americanism. With the end of the Cold War and Austria's accession to the European Union it once again lost significance for Washington's geopolitics.
Author: Antonio Thompson Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press ISBN: 1572337427 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 193
Book Description
Examining the largest prisoner-of-war handling operation in U.S. history, this book offers a meticulous account of the myriad history, this book offers a meticulous account of the myriad problems—as well as the impressive successes—that came with problems—as well as the impressive successes—that came with housing 371,000 German POWs on American soil during World War II. Antonio Thompson draws on extensive archival research to probe the various ways in which the U.S. government strove to comply with the Geneva Convention’s mandate that enemy prisoners be moved from the war zone and given food, shelter, and clothing equal to that provided for American soldiers. While the prisoners became a ready source of manpower for the labor- starved American home front and received small wages in return, their stay in the United States generated more than a few difficulties, which included not only daunting logistics but also violence within the camps. Such violence was often blamed on Nazi influence and control; however, as Thompson points out, only a few of the prisoners were actually Nazis. Because the Germans had cobbled together military forces that included convicts, their own POWs, volunteers from neutral nations, and conscripts from occupied countries, the bonds that held these soldiers together amid the pressures of combat dissolved once they were placed behind barbed wire. When these “men in German uniform,” who were not always Germans, donned POW garb, their former social, racial, religious, and ethnic tensions quickly reemerged. To counter such troubles, American authorities organized various activities—including sports, arts, education, and religion—within the POW camps; some prisoners even participated in an illegal denazification program created by the U.S. government. Despite the problems, Thompson argues, the POW-housing program proved largely successful, as Americans maintained their reputation for fairness and humane treatment during a time of widespread turmoil.
Author: Barbara Schmitter Heisler Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 1476602115 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 213
Book Description
Among the many German immigrants to the United States over the years, one group is unusual: former prisoners of war who had spent between one and three years on American soil and who returned voluntarily as immigrants after the war. Drawing on archival sources and in-depth interviews with 35 former prisoners who made the return, the book outlines the conditions that defined their unusual experiences and traces their journeys from captive enemies to American citizens. Although the respondents came from different backgrounds, and arrived in America at different times between 1943 and 1945, their experiences as prisoners of war not only left an indelible impression, they also provided them with opportunities and resources that helped them leave Germany behind and return to the place "where we had the good life."
Author: Robert D. Billinger
Author: Robert D. Billinger
Author: Jacqueline Burgin Painter
Author: Robert D. Billinger
Author: Derek R. Mallett
Author: Paul N. Herbert
Author: Antonio S. Thompson
Author: Paul N. Herbert 
Author: Günter Bischof
Author: Antonio Thompson
Author: Barbara Schmitter Heisler