The Fifteen

The revelatory true story of the long-forgotten POW camps for German soldiers erected in hundreds of small U.S. towns during World War II, and the secret Nazi killings that ensnared fifteen brave American POWs in a high-stakes showdown.

After the U.S. entered World War II, the American government placed nearly 400,000 German prisoners of war into hundreds of hastily built camps in the United States. Today, traces of those camps—which once dotted the landscape from Maine to California—have all but vanished.

All but forgotten, too, is the grisly series of killings that took place at those camps—Nazi power games playing out in America’s backyard.

Protected by the Geneva Convention, German POWs in the U.S. were well-fed and housed, with most even working jobs, including on American farms. Some were impressed by America’s vast land and bounty—a few would even marry farmers’ daughters. Ardent Nazis in the camps, however, took a dim view of fellow Germans who befriended their captors.

Soon, the killings began. In camp after camp, Nazis attacked fellow German prisoners. Fifteen were sentenced to death for murder by secret U.S. military tribunals. In response, German authorities condemned fifteen American POWs to the same fate. Nazi Germany proposed an audacious trade: fifteen German lives for fifteen American lives.

Drawing on extensive research, journalist and historian William Geroux shines a spotlight on the surprising saga of German POWs in America, a forgotten story of murder and high-stakes diplomacy, and the fifteen American lives that hung in the balance, including a fearless P-51 Mustang fighter pilot, two American intelligence agents, and a hot-tempered lieutenant colonel nicknamed “King Kong.”

Propulsive and vividly rendered, The Fifteen reminds us that what happens to soldiers after they exit the battlefield can be just as harrowing as what they experience on it.