The fatigue and weariness of living in captivity had penetrated the minds of many prisoners. The U.S. military monitored their morale throughout the war, either by intercepting mail or by recording interactions between prisoners and American officers, which revealed a growing consensus among U.S.-based POWs, especially during the final months, that Hitler was a madman who needed to be stopped. When FDR died on April 12, 1945, almost every POW at Camp Florence reportedly added his signature to a document to camp officials expressing condolences for the death of the U.S. president.2

Naturally there were prisoners who remained loyal to Hitler to the bitter end. One German POW, in captivity in an American camp in Europe, wrote in an intercepted letter, “The majority of us are confident that the Fuehrer will spare the Homeland from enemy intruders.”3 But that didn’t happen, of course. And most German prisoners in the United States were relieved when the war came to an end.

Their relief was matched with fear and anxiety, however. Though longing to be reunited with loved ones, deep down the prisoners knew it was highly unlikely that they’d be able to resume the same lives they had led in Germany before the war. Instead, thousands wanted to stay in the United States to build new memories in a place that had become familiar and ripe with possibilities for a fresh start.

Rumors started to spread that they would be used as slave labor by the Russians, British, or French. The level of distress among the prisoners became so acute that there were reports of several thousand POWs wanting to volunteer to join the American army to help fight the Japanese.4 They would learn, though, that under the Geneva Convention all prisoners had to be returned to their homelands.

POW camps began to close down as the facilities were converted for other purposes. Camp Florence would turn into a minimum-security prison and later a state hospital after it transferred out the POWs who had lived there.5 Thousands of POWs moved to different camps throughout the United States before they left America for good. Many went to Camp Rupert in Idaho to harvest potatoes; others went elsewhere around the country to harvest fruit.6