Margarete, Karl, and Charlotte were eventually notified by the International Red Cross that Frederick had been captured in Italy and taken as a prisoner of war by the Americans, but that was all the information they were given. In the meantime, Frederick had been put aboard a massive destroyer bound for the United States. Ships of this kind were known to have thousands of prisoners on board, confined mostly to spaces belowdecks, sleeping in five-tiered bunks or three-tiered hammocks.19 The amount of time the POWs were allowed to stay on deck varied depending on the temperament of the military police on guard. Some POWs were allowed only thirty minutes a day above deck for fresh air and a cigarette break, while others reported getting a few hours. The prisoners had no idea where they were headed, and none of the guards, armed with shotguns but surprisingly friendly, told them anything, except one, who answered “the desert” when asked, which the prisoners took to be a joke. In the barracks below, the POWs played out every scenario imagined, some actually relieved that the fighting was over for them. But many were uncertain of their fate. Would they be hanged? Imprisoned in inhumane conditions? Interrogated and beaten regularly if they didn’t divulge German military secrets? A great many of the soldiers had been conscripted into the Wehrmacht; they fought because they had to, not because they necessarily agreed with Hitler’s brutality. Soldiers regularly suffered from anxiety attacks, in addition to persistent nausea and the chronic intestinal viruses that plagued large numbers of men in combat. The quality of the food on the transatlantic voyage did mitigate some of their fears, however. They ate T-bone steaks, ice cream, and grapefruit.20 But it seemed too good to be true under the circumstances. Skeptical prisoners were convinced something bad was going to happen soon.

Finally arriving at shipping docks on the eastern seaboard in Boston and New York—though some destroyers docked in Virginia and Louisiana—Frederick and the other prisoners, as soon as they stepped off the ship, listened to an American interpreter explain their rights as captured military personnel in enemy hands—all the provisions established in the 1929 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.21 Before they boarded trains to their final destinations, the prisoners were deloused again, usually by black servicemen.

For many German POWs, their first interaction with African Americans took place during the war. The drivers of the trucks used to transport captured German soldiers to camps in Northern Africa and Europe were usually African American men, and that task also came with the responsibility of protecting the POWs from any mob attacks by angry civilians who tried to rush the vehicles and throw rocks. In fact, an unlikely bond between black American soldiers and German POWs sometimes developed because blacks knew from their own experiences in the United States what it felt like to be the target of civilian mob violence.