Скачать или смотреть German POWs Expected Brutality in America — They Were Shocked Instead

In 1943, thousands of German soldiers arrived in the United States as prisoners of war—expecting brutality, hunger, and humiliation.

What they witnessed instead shattered everything Nazi ideology had taught them.

From the docks of Norfolk Naval Base to the cotton fields of Texas, German POWs encountered a nation at war that refused to behave like one. They saw racial integration that contradicted propaganda, abundance that defied logic, freedom that seemed dangerous, and kindness that felt impossible.

They ate better as prisoners than their families did at home.
They were guarded by Black American soldiers they had been taught were inferior.
They watched women fly military aircraft.
They read newspapers criticizing their own government—during wartime.
They celebrated Christmas with gifts donated by American civilians whose sons were fighting Germans overseas.

This is not a story about American generosity alone.
It is the story of how reality destroyed ideology.

Using documented memoirs, Red Cross inspections, military archives, and firsthand accounts, this documentary reveals how 425,000 German POWs experienced something more powerful than defeat: transformation.

America did not just win the war on battlefields.
It won it in prison camps—by demonstration, not propaganda.

This forgotten chapter of World War II explains how former enemies returned home as future allies, helping lay the foundations of postwar Germany, NATO, and the Atlantic Alliance.

History rarely changes through force alone.
Sometimes, it changes when enemies are allowed to see the truth.