German prisoners of war arrived in the United States expecting to see the country they had been told was collapsing. Instead, many of them saw something much harder to explain away: ordinary American towns filled with automobiles.
In January 1944, German soldier Reinhold Pabel arrived in Virginia as a prisoner of war. As his train traveled west through Virginia and Kentucky, he looked out the window and noticed something that stayed with him for years — the sheer abundance of automobiles.
This episode follows that contrast through the experiences of German POWs, American farmers, contemporary statistics, propaganda publications, and the story of Reinhold Pabel.
Chapters
0:00 A German Prisoner Arrives in America
1:05 “America’s Economy Had Failed”
2:08 The Car Hitler Promised Germans
3:40 America Had Cars Everywhere
4:58 Cars in Wartime America
5:35 425,000 German Prisoners
6:20 German POWs on American Farms
7:45 Cars on Ordinary American Farms
8:06 What Nazi Propaganda Knew
8:53 Prisoners Who Refused to Believe
9:22 What Pabel Saw From the Train
10:06 The Car Germany Never Delivered
10:38 From Cars to War Production
11:02 What the Prisoners Actually Saw
Sources & Archives
SOURCES
Reinhold Pabel, Enemies Are Human (1955).
Office of the Provost Marshal General, Prisoners of War: European Theater (1945).
Arnold Krammer, Nazi Prisoners of War in America (1979).
Adolf Hitler, address to the Reichstag, 11 December 1941, in Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918-1945, Series D, Vol. XIII.
Joseph Goebbels, article on American unemployment, January 1939, in Der Angriff (or equivalent Nazi Party press), as summarized in secondary accounts of Nazi economic propaganda about the United States.
Bernhard Rieger, The People’s Car: A Global History of the Volkswagen Beetle (2013).
Hans Mommsen and Manfred Grieger, Das Volkswagenwerk und seine Arbeiter im Dritten Reich (1996).
U.S. Bureau of Public Roads, Motor Vehicle Registrations, by States, in Highway Statistics, Summary to 1965 (retrospective compilation).
Fritz Blaich, “Why Did the Pioneer Fall Behind? Motorisation in Germany Between the Wars,” in Theo Barker, ed., The Economic and Social Effects of the Spread of Motor Vehicles (1987).
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farm Production, Costs, and Returns (1948).
The Informer (column), American Press (Lake Charles, La.), interview with Rodney Bollich.
Research and archival material for this episode draw on the following collections and repositories:
https://www.archives.gov
https://archive.org
https://commons.wikimedia.org
Historical claims and figures discussed in the video are presented alongside archival documents, historical accounts, statistics, photographs, and period material from these and related collections.
Archival Footage
Archival footage and historical material used in this episode come from collections including the U.S. National Archives, Prelinger Archives, Ford Motor Company collection, and Die Deutsche Wochenschau. Some scenes use illustrative footage from the period and are not necessarily footage of the specific people or events discussed in the narration.
How This Episode Was Made
This episode was created through original research and scriptwriting by WWII Desk. Archival film, photographs, documents, maps, and other historical material are carefully re-edited and combined with original graphics, maps, document reconstructions, and visual elements to support the narration.
Archival material is used to provide historical context and, where appropriate, to illustrate the places, people, technology, and events discussed in the episode.
Sources and archival collections are listed above.
About WWII Desk
WWII Desk explores the lesser-known stories, documents, photographs, and personal experiences of the Second World War.
Each episode brings together archival sources, original research, historical statistics, maps, documents, and visual reconstructions to examine the details behind stories that are often reduced to a few lines in a history book.
If your family has a story about German prisoners of war who worked on an American farm, or a car or truck that was used to transport them, share it in the comments.
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