Treason in the Rockies

A look at one U.S. Army private’s attempt to free Nazi soldiers from a Colorado prisoner of war camp during World War II.

Harvard honor alumnus Dale Maple had a promising future, but his obsession with Nazi Germany led to his downfall. Classmates often accused him of pro-Nazi sentiments, and one campus organization even expelled him. After graduation, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, only to be relegated to a unit of soldiers suspected of harboring German sympathies. He helped two German POWs escape imprisonment at Camp Hale and flee to Mexico. The fugitives ran out of gas seventeen miles from the border and managed to cross it on foot, only to be arrested and returned to American authorities. Convicted and sentenced to death for treason, Maple awaited his fate until President Franklin Roosevelt commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. Ultimately, he was released in 1950. Paul N. Herbert narrates the engrossing details of this riveting story.

“A well-documented . . . account . . . of Maple’s escapade, set against a background of World War II’s treatment of POWs and German sympathizers.” —The Denver Post