For 40 years, Georg Gärtner had been hiding in plain sight across America, but in 1985, the last German prisoner of war still at large in the United States finally turned himself in. No one, not even his wife, knew his true identity until he confessed. His story offers a window into the remarkable fate of the roughly 371,000 German soldiers held on American soil during World War II. The flood of German prisoners began in 1943, when Allied victories in North Africa and Sicily delivered thousands of captured Wehrmacht soldiers into American custody.
By 1945, approximately 371,000 German POWs were detained across the country, one of the largest populations of enemy soldiers ever held in American territory. The War Department scattered them from Colorado’s Rocky Mountains to Arizona’s deserts, with more than 700 camps operating across 46 states. Camp Carson, Fort Robinson, and Camp Papago Park were among the largest installations. Only Nevada, North Dakota, and Vermont remained untouched.
Most camps were converted military bases or newly built compounds in remote areas, surrounded by double rows of barbed wire and guarded towers. Long wooden barracks, mess halls, and recreation buildings were arranged in orderly rows reflecting American military efficiency. Treatment followed Geneva Convention requirements, ensuring prisoners received adequate food, medical care, and housing. American officials took the conventions seriously, both out of genuine humanitarian concern and fear that mistreating German POWs would trigger reprisals against Allied prisoners held by Germany.
Prisoners received the same food rations as American soldiers, a diet far better than what most German civilians faced by 1944. Work was optional but encouraged. Those who chose to work earned 80 cents per day in canteen coupons, redeemable for small luxuries like cigarettes, candy, and beer. Many POWs labored on farms, in canneries, and in logging operations, filling critical labor shortages while American men fought overseas.
From California orchards to Maine potato fields, German prisoners harvested crops, built roads in Texas, processed food in Ohio factories, and worked in lumber mills across the Pacific Northwest. Cultural life flourished behind the wire. Prisoners organized theatrical productions, formed orchestras, and published camp newspapers in German. The most ambitious camps offered university-level courses taught by fellow prisoners who had been professors in civilian life.
America called it the “barbed-wire college,” and prisoners could earn credits later recognized by German universities. Despite the generally good conditions, some prisoners attempted to escape. Arizona’s Camp Papago Park recorded 25 attempts, more than any other facility. Most escapees were recaptured within days, often turning themselves in when they discovered how vast and empty the American landscape actually was.
Beneath the surface of camp routine, hardcore Nazi prisoners maintained their own system of justice. Self-appointed honor courts investigated fellow Germans suspected of collaboration with American authorities. The punishment for betraying the Reich was death, and the courts had willing executioners. On November 4, 1943, Johannes Kunze was beaten to death at Camp Tonkawa, Oklahoma.
The 39-year-old Afrika Korps veteran had been passing notes to the camp doctor during sick call, providing information about fellow prisoners. Around 200 German POWs participated in what they called a trial, and five men carried out the execution. His bloody uniform was found the next morning, and investigators quickly identified the perpetrators. At Camp Aiken, South Carolina, Horst Günther met the same fate on April 6, 1944.
The 23-year-old locksmith was strangled by two fellow prisoners who hung his body from a tree to make it look like suicide. American authorities were not fooled. Eric Gauss and Rudolf Straub were arrested within days. The most notorious case occurred at Camp Papago Park on March 12, 1944.
Werner Drechsler, a U-boat veteran who had been cooperating with American interrogators, was beaten and hanged by seven fellow submariners. His body was discovered the following morning, and all seven perpetrators were identified through confessions and witness testimony. The trials began immediately, but executions were delayed. President Franklin Roosevelt and military commanders feared that executing German POWs would trigger reprisals against Allied prisoners held in Germany.
The condemned men waited in military prisons as the war continued. Future Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski handled several of the prosecutions, securing convictions in every case. Escape attempts reminded officials that not all prisoners had accepted their fate. On December 23, 1944, 25 German naval officers tunneled 178 feet out of Camp Papago Park’s officers’ compound.
They had spent months digging through hard desert soil, hiding excavated dirt under a volleyball court. The breakout went undetected for hours, but the Arizona desert proved as effective as any guard. All 25 escapees were recaptured within three weeks, most turning themselves in after discovering the Salt and Gila Rivers were dry. The war in Europe ended on May 8, 1945.
Within weeks, the delayed executions resumed. Between July and August, 14 German prisoners were executed at Fort Leavenworth: five for Johannes Kunze’s death, two for killing Horst Günther, and seven submariners for Werner Drechsler’s murder. It was the largest execution in United States history during the 20th century. Their bodies were buried in the military prison cemetery.
The Reich had fallen three months earlier, but for hundreds of thousands of German prisoners in America, the war was not over. Repatriation proved far more complex than capture. Wartime agreements had already allocated these men as labor resources for war-damaged nations demanding compensation for years of occupation and destruction. The process began in February 1946, when the first ships departed East Coast ports.
Prisoners believed they were finally going home to Germany. Many had written letters to families they had not contacted in years, expecting joyful reunions in bomb-damaged but familiar towns. Instead, most discovered they were pawns in a larger geopolitical game. The first wave involved 130,000 German POWs designated as British-owned.
These allocations dated back to 1943 agreements when Britain had agreed to house prisoners captured in American operations. But the majority faced a different fate. Nearly 740,000 were transferred to French control and redesignated as disarmed enemy forces, a classification that stripped away Geneva Convention protections. France demanded the largest share of German labor.
The French government calculated that Germany owed four million man-years of work to compensate for French workers forcibly sent to German factories during occupation. French officials were uninterested in quick repatriation. They wanted reconstruction workers who would stay until the job was finished. In Britain, German prisoners performed agricultural labor and infrastructure repair until late 1947, with conditions generally matching American standards.
British families often developed personal relationships with German workers billeted on their farms. Some prisoners learned English, attended local churches, and were invited to family dinners. France offered a harsher reality. German prisoners arrived at camps lacking adequate shelter, medical care, or winter clothing.
They rebuilt destroyed railways, cleared minefields without proper equipment, and reconstructed bombed cities under minimal supervision and maximum danger. Mortality rates varied dramatically by location and assignment. The last German POWs remained in French custody until 1948, with some not released until 1949. The Soviet Union took a different approach entirely.
Moscow held German prisoners until 1956, using them for reconstruction work in territories devastated by the German invasion. The final prisoner train from Soviet captivity arrived in West Germany 11 years after the war ended. Of the 371,000 German prisoners held in America, 477 died in captivity from illness, accidents, and violence. They were buried in military cemeteries from Fort Bliss, Texas, to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Most graves remain unmarked. No German families ever traveled to claim their bodies. But thousands of others chose to return to America after the war. Approximately 5,000 former German POWs emigrated to the United States in the post-war years, drawn back by memories of their wartime treatment and opportunities unavailable in devastated Germany.
Some married American women they had met during captivity. Others simply preferred American life to the struggles of reconstruction at home. The most remarkable post-war story belonged to Georg Gärtner. On September 21, 1945, four months after Germany’s surrender, the 24-year-old former Africa Corps sergeant crawled under the barbed wire at Camp Deming, New Mexico, and hopped a freight train heading west.
His hometown of Schweidnitz in Lower Silesia had fallen under Soviet occupation. Rather than face repatriation to communist rule, he chose to disappear in America. For 40 years, Gärtner lived as Dennis F. Wiles.
He worked as a migrant laborer, dishwasher, and construction worker before settling into careers as a ski instructor and tennis pro in California and Colorado. He organized celebrity tennis tournaments, mingling with Hollywood stars who never suspected his background. The FBI searched for him periodically but never came close. He lived quietly, moved frequently, and avoided anything that might require documentation of his past.
In 1963, he married Jean Clark, an American woman who knew nothing of his true identity. For 21 years, she lived with a husband who refused to discuss his background, could not travel abroad, and became agitated whenever she pressed him about his past. In 1984, she packed her bags and called a taxi, threatening to leave unless he finally told her the truth. That night, Gärtner confessed everything.
With his wife’s encouragement, he contacted historian Arnold Krammer at Texas A&M University in September 1985. On September 11, 1985, exactly 40 years after his escape, he surrendered to federal authorities in San Pedro, California. The FBI announced it had no further interest in him. Immigration officials confirmed he would not be deported.
He was invited to become an American citizen. Gärtner co-authored his autobiography with Krammer and appeared on television talk shows as a curiosity from another era. In November 2009, at age 89, he was finally naturalized as a United States citizen. He died on January 30, 2013, in Colorado, having outlived the Reich by nearly 70 years.
Veterans of American POW camps continued returning to visit the small towns where they had spent the war, often bringing their families to see where their American experience began. The camps themselves were long gone, replaced by housing developments and shopping centers. But the men who had lived behind the wire never forgot the country that had treated them, even as enemies, with unexpected dignity.