German POWs Were Shocked When They Visited New York City Freely

Описание: In August 1944, Oberleutnant Ernst Bachmann arrived in America as a prisoner of war, expecting brutal treatment. Instead, he discovered something that would haunt him for the rest of his life: German POWs in the United States ate better than American civilians dealing with rationing, worked in Manhattan hospitals with minimal supervision, and lived in conditions that felt more like refuge than imprisonment.

This is the story of how German prisoners of war experienced America during World War II—eating Thanksgiving turkey while their families starved in bombed-out cities, walking freely through New York streets in POW uniforms, and slowly realizing that the war was already lost simply by seeing how untouched American cities remained.

While German civilians back home survived on 1,200 calories a day of sawdust bread, Ernst Bachmann gained twelve pounds eating the same rations as U.S. soldiers. While Hamburg was reduced to rubble, he rode Pullman train cars through intact American towns. While his father died in a bombing raid, he played chess with American guards who treated him with more respect than his own officers had.

The Geneva Convention required that POWs receive the same food as their captors' soldiers—but in America's case, that meant meals that exceeded what many German soldiers had eaten even before capture. It meant access to beer, cigarettes, recreation, and eventually, a secret re-education program designed to send Germans home as advocates for democracy.

This is the forgotten story of World War II's strangest contradiction: enemy soldiers living better than the citizens of the country holding them captive, and better than their own families back home.

SOURCES:

National World War II Museum Archives
Wikipedia - German POWs in the United States
MilitaryHistoryNow.com
Etamu Historical Records
The History Center
History Colorado Archives

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⚠️ Note: This narrative is based on historical events and archival sources. Some details have been dramatized for storytelling. For academic research, consult professional historical archives.

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