American Reeducation of German POWs, 1943-1946.

The United States held almost 500,000 enemy combatants within her borders during World War II. Out of those 500,000 men, 380,000 were from Nazi Germany. Nazi POWs were confined to camps built near small rural towns in almost every state. It was not something that was well known to the American public. Even less known was the American Military\u27s effort, through reeducation, to introduce Hitler\u27s soldiers to a new political ideology-democracy. This thesis will explore how the reeducation program was formed; examine the people, both German and American, who participated in it, and make a determination on whether or not it was successful. While Special Projects did not completely win over the majority of the German POWs, it was my finding that for the Americans to have done nothing when faced with such a situation would have been foolish