The Fifteen: Murder, Retribution, and the Forgotten Story of Nazi POWs in America

After the Allies’ defeat of the Afrika Corp in May 1943, “there was nowhere else to put the Germans but in America,” writes journalist Geroux (The Ghost Ships of Archangel) in this exhilarating history. Over a hundred thousand Germans were interned in newly built American camps, but camp authorities didn’t attempt to separate Nazi from anti-Nazi soldiers, or to de-Nazify true believers (in fact, camp commanders were prone to rewarding the Nazi POWs over the anti-Nazi ones because they appreciated the Nazis’ obedience and efficiency). In addition, U.S. military officials underestimated Gestapo infiltration, which was so extensive that POWs’ expression of anti-Nazi views would lead to persecution of their families back home. Eventually, a string of murders of anti-Nazi POWs led the U.S. to take the threat seriously (including by instituting a de-Nazification program spearheaded by Eleanor Roosevelt). The murderers were caught, tried, and executed, prompting accusations of Geneva Convention violations from German diplomats (the accused had been taken on “wild, blindfolded rides” and made to wear “onion-filled gas masks,” Geroux writes). The State Department refused a prisoner exchange; in retribution, the Nazis sentenced 15 American POWs to death. Reversing course, the U.S. tried to negotiate an exchange after all, and Geroux’s already impressively multipronged narrative pivots with alacrity to describing the torture the condemned American POWs endured before their nick-of-time rescue by the Red Army. It’s a riveting, whirlwind look at a little-known episode of WWII. (Mar.)