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.
Robert D. Billinger Jr., Ruth Horton Davis Professor of History at Wingate University, is the author of Hitler’s Soldiers in the Sunshine State: German POWs in Florida.
