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Ok_Kaleidoscope1630 t1_ivbjccl wrote

Ironically, German POWs detained in England lived in pretty good conditions, and only one ever escaped. In some places, they were allowed out daily on the honor system to work in villages and on farms

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anon83479953 t1_ivbthp3 wrote

I listened to a whole podcast episode years ago about German POWs in the U.S., where they started being shipped when the U.K. started running out of space and resources for them. By most accounts, the POWs thought they had it pretty good. They were given paid work in factories and farms and often made friends with the locals. It seems like they were mostly just happy to be out of the war and well fed. They had camp bands, sports clubs and the like. I think most of them were just poor kids who had been conscripted; the actual Nazi ideologues were held in much more secure prisons.

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Y34rZer0 t1_ivclrb1 wrote

Also some were shipped to Canada where they were model prisoners and were allowed out to help on farms and they even obtained university degrees via correspondence. A lot emigrated to Canada and I remember once saying that being taken POW was the best thing that ever happened to him in his life.

What was funny though was that the Germans created their own stricter camp rules

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Cetun t1_ivcveuv wrote

>What was funny though was that the Germans created their own stricter camp rules

Your probably referring to the fact the Nazis in the camps attempted to maintain loyalty amongst the non-nazi members who rather enjoyed not being on the front lines anymore by harsh extrajudicial discipline.

However, rank is still maintained in POW camps, POWs must follow orders of superior officers and nominally they are under the command of their superior officers who are themselves obligated to follow the lawful commands of the camp commanders. So discipline was largely handled by the prisoners rather than the guards. At the same time enlisted guards had to show superior rank prisoner a certain amount of respect and enlisted prisoners had to show superior rank camp staff the same amount of respect they would their own superior rank officers. Being in a camp wasn't like being in a prison, it was like being in the army but instead of doing combat your being kept busy because you aren't allowed to move freely.

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bludgersquiz t1_ive866i wrote

And to Australia. There was a TV series made about it called The Dunera Boys.

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Y34rZer0 t1_ive8jey wrote

I’m in aus too. Did you know that during the war Japanese reconnaissance planes flew in land as far as Uluru/Ayers Rock, and it was suppressed from the papers to avoid public panic?

The reason I mentioned it is I can’t help but laugh because the pilots must have thought they were going crazy, there’s just miles and miles of absolutely nothing and even today Japanese people who visit are stunned by the scale of distance out there.

I’m in Adelaide and one morning in the city a Japanese couple in a Toyota Camry wagon stopped next to me and asked ‘ excuse me please which way is it to Ayers Rock?’. I swear on my life this is a true story.

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arran-reddit t1_ivebal5 wrote

Japanese troops also landed in WA but turned back before encountering anyone

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Y34rZer0 t1_ivebi99 wrote

oh yeah… Are you a fan of Mark felton’s channel?

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arran-reddit t1_ivedbry wrote

I’ve watched it a little bit, very informative but not a huge fan of his delivery style.

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116YearsWar t1_ivehjkc wrote

It's probably not as informative as you think it is. He is a proper historian, but his YouTube channel is just full of 'extraordinary' tales which have been rushed through with little proper research, which is why he can post so many of them. He's also been caught outright plagiarising other people's work and just reading verbatim from a WW2 enthusiast forum.

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charlie_do_562 t1_ivehbdw wrote

I’m not familiar with the geography of Australia, how far is Adelaide from Ayers Rock?

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Y34rZer0 t1_ivehskx wrote

Nearly 2000 km. They very probably could have got lost and died. Their vehicle was empty.
I told them not to attempted, and to ask about it at the tourism office.
I told my mother about this and she told me about her friend her in Japan whose child didn’t walk on grass until they were about 10.
She said it’s not standard like that but they would have expected a level of population density like Japan, with fuel stations and good roads all the way there. This was before smart phones as well.
I used to drive to roxby downs from Adelaide, which is much closer and it’s still scary to think of being lost out there and running out of fuel

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Painting_Agency t1_ivf7jm9 wrote

> I told my mother about this and she told me about her friend her in Japan whose child didn’t walk on grass until they were about 10.

That's very odd because I'm sure even Tokyo has parks. Not to doubt your mom or anything.

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Y34rZer0 t1_ivf81to wrote

It does. I imagine it’s a slight exaggeration or maybe that family just didn’t visit them. I do recall hearing most people living in the cities spend almost all their time within a very small area, something like a square kilometre. They live that close to where they work etc

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Painting_Agency t1_ivf95f7 wrote

> They live that close to where they work etc

Nice, but I'd get fat - I need the exercise of biking to work 😄

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Stegasaurus_Wrecks t1_ivgeffs wrote

Give directions like Brad Pitt in True Romance.

"well you go down that way and you keep driving and you keep driving and you keep driving and then you take a left."

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Termsandconditionsch t1_ivtsqtc wrote

Holup.. no they did not go to Uluru. Why would they? It’s out of range for them and nothing useful there anyway. Darwin, Sydney, Melbourne, Cairns and Broome, sure. Those flights happened. But there is zero reason for any Japanese plane to go to Uluru..

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Y34rZer0 t1_ivuzaml wrote

They weren’t going TO uluṟu, they were flying reconnaissance and got that far inland before turning around, I assume because they needed fuel

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Termsandconditionsch t1_ivv2pgx wrote

Umm but why would they waste fuel going that far inland even if they had the range? There’s nothing there. The one thing of military interest there, the Woomera range, wasn’t established until 1947. I can’t find a single source for this.

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TinyRandomLady t1_ivcjmfn wrote

Did it cover the murder of Corporal Kunze at Camp Tonkawa in Oklahoma? He had been passing information to the US through the camp doctor, and one day the guy he’s been working with wasn’t there, and he still passed a note to a doctor. That doctor didn’t speak much German and asked another POW what it said, and that gave away the game. Later that night, he was beaten to death by multiple men. Those men were then picked up on based on the fact that they had blood on their uniform no one ever spoke about what happened, and they had a trial and were found guilty and sent to Ft. Leavenworth, and then, as soon as the war was over all of them were hung.

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Sun_Devilish t1_ivelwa8 wrote

There was a similar case here in Arizona.

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TinyRandomLady t1_iver4kd wrote

Really? I thought there was only one other murder of a POW by POWs and that was in Georgia.

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XQJ-37_Agent t1_ivdsdrh wrote

“All of them were hung” hey man, I’m getting a very different mental image than what you intend

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phoebsmon t1_ivehcr5 wrote

I know the old saying is that pictures are hung, people are hanged. Suppose really we need a new version. They can be hung or hanged but they're having a drastically different weekend off being publicly hung.

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Hookton t1_ivemqm3 wrote

>"Hanged, Ami. Your father was not a tapestry."

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Confused_Idol t1_ivd0r2s wrote

My great uncle used to muse how the German pows had better treatment than he did as a black man.

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TinKicker t1_ivdvp3a wrote

FWIW, my dad guarded Herman Göring during the Nazi trials in Nuremberg. He had the same complaint.

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ooo-ooo-oooyea t1_iveto90 wrote

so who slipped him the suicide pills?

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TinKicker t1_iveu9ly wrote

He didn’t know. Wasn’t his watch. All he did was have a three minute egg timer. Every time the sand ran out, he had to open a little window to observe the general eating his catered meals, reading books from his library or writing letters. As long as he’s not dying, close the little door and flip the egg timer over. Such was the life of an E-2 in the Big Red 1…after the war.

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ooo-ooo-oooyea t1_ivewmku wrote

That had to be quite an experience. Despite being a huge monster, I bet he was very charismatic and tried to manipulate the guards for stuff.

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TestingHydra t1_ivf46vh wrote

From one historical thing I watched a while ago I think one of the guards of Göring said how he requested a container of hair gel that he previously possessed. The guard didn't think much of it, Göring had been pleasant and so the guard got it for him, unaware of the pills hidden inside.

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ColtS117 t1_iwrqjyt wrote

He concealed them in something stored in his rectum.

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redcrowknifeworks t1_ivfrm3f wrote

Yeah, everyones waxing poetic about treating these "poor kids who had been conscripted" with basically nobody questioning why all of these soldiers, even considering many of them were likely just doing what they had to do, were being welcomed with such open arms by the west and were assimilating so well.

Someone could even question if this went hand in hand with hitler getting some inspiration from the USA's segregation for the holocaust. or with allied powers essentially giving across-the-board pardons to axis scientists.

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KahuTheKiwi t1_iw4m580 wrote

I read a collection of Hitler's speaches. He was a huge fan of the US and emulated a number things; Monroe Doctrine was the source of his Sphere of Influence idea, Manifest Destiny and Living Space In the East, slavery and slavery.

Apparently the Nuremburg laws were copied from Alabama state laws. The laws on eugenics were provided by the New York based Eugenics Society.

Meanwhile concentration camps in German were inspired by the British concentration camps used during the Boer Wars

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Cetun t1_ivcubf4 wrote

One of my grandma's friends was British and was in Germany when the war broke out. Foreigners from enemy countries were usually rounded up and put into concentration camps (not death camps, that's just the name for them) so they got sent to one for British people. They would write each other through the red cross and there are pictures from the camp. They apparently had plays and carnivals and sports games. Not saying that not having freedom of movement wasnt bad but if I was a civilian prisoner of war it doesn't sound half bad. Near the end it obviously got bad, food and supplies became rationed, but they survived in good health before being repatriated.

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Zaphod1620 t1_ivd8f66 wrote

Yup. I remember one story where the town by one of these camps had a dance between the townspeople and Nazi prisoners.

Be aware, at this same time, American citizens of Japanese descent were being put in internment camps, and they sure as hell were not having dances.

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mursilissilisrum t1_ivexqld wrote

> I think most of them were just poor kids who had been conscripted; the actual Nazi ideologues were held in much more secure prisons.

Actual nazi idealogues were rare. Those atrocities were committed by Germans for the sake of Germany. Regular Germans were pretty happy with the nazis until they ran out of countries to rob and the people they'd tried to enslave started to come after them for revenge.

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LinkesAuge t1_ivf28i6 wrote

Let's also not pretend that the racism of Nazis would have been a problem in most cases in the US of the 40's. (not to mention that Nazi Germany was "inspired" by the US in regards to certain things...)

The same is true for Germans/Germany. While the NSDAP certainly fueled it but core elements of that ideology were common enough within the population, the NSDAP (and Hitler) simply managed to focus all the bad stuff.

The Nazis are sometimes made into these super villains and people are quick to say "x wasn't REALLY a Nazi" but the reality of the time was that it really didn't need much to be in line with Nazi ideology and that didn't require for you to constantly think about industrial scale genocide which is really the thing that sets apart the Nazis/NSDAP from the other reactionary/right wing groups of its time (and even that might have been down to a lack of ability/opportunity and especially scale, not like you can't find at least somewhat similar examples in the time period).

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redcrowknifeworks t1_ivfv1i0 wrote

yeah, its basically nazi propaganda that all the bad things were like, somehow happening nation-wide with disturbingly low civilian resistance while also being entirely unsupported by the nation.

The civilians might have been shocked by how brutal the reality of the camps were but im never gonna believe the narrative that somehow a small group was able to hoodwink the entire nation of germany into accidentally carrying out a genocide.

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NinjaBlake t1_ivehyks wrote

My wife is from Amarillo and a group of Germans ended up there. There’s a church they built you can still visit. It’s pretty cool. Everything your podcast said her older relatives echoed. These people, mainly men, lived in the Texas panhandle and worked. Pretty wild.

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Shadows802 t1_ivenlf1 wrote

My grandfather has stories from the family farm in Idaho where they had German POWs work. It wasn't a terrible system, there wasn't armed guards and barbed wire, just that these farms are the middle of nowhere and the closest decent sized city is over a hundred miles away.

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Painting_Agency t1_ivf71pr wrote

In the Wehrmacht: "No food today, only Benzedrine! Also you might die. But hey, Gott Mit Uns!"

In prison camp: "Soup's on. Then a day of farm work, then Fusball. Nobody's died yet."

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Sslayer777 t1_ivf4wnd wrote

I believe there was a radiolab episode on this, not sure if that's the one you're referring to or if you heard it elsewhere but it was quite good coverage of all this.

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Mister_Lister22 t1_ivf5ota wrote

Do you have the name of that podcast?

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anon83479953 t1_ivfesyj wrote

It was one of those NPR-ish podcasts. I was thinking This American Life, but someone else said there was a Radiolab episode about it, which I have also been listening to for a long time. Definitely not one of the conversational ones that are more popular now, something produced in a storytelling way.

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corporatemumbojumbo t1_ivbyyvd wrote

German POWs were treated better by the Americans than the African American soldiers.

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MortimerGraves t1_ivcb978 wrote

I can't remember which of Ambrose's books it's in, but an African American Soldier recounts how he was being shipped somewhere (to/from training probably) and stopped to get food. There were German POWs eating in the store but he and his fellow black soldiers were taken around the back and fed out the back door because of the color bar.

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arran-reddit t1_ivcipb9 wrote

You might dis/like this - though it's worth noting there was segregation on the USA bases in the UK and they requested that business impose segregation, though that request was generally met with negative response both from government and locals.

https://youtu.be/SyYSBBE1DFw?t=1518

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MortimerGraves t1_ivco1qf wrote

> it's worth noting there was segregation on the USA bases in the UK and they requested that business impose segregation

Yeah, that didn't go well in other countries where US forces were either. :)

"American servicemen... objected to Māori soldiers also using the Club, and on 3 April 1943 began stopping Māori soldiers from entering." Battle of Manners Street (Wellington, NZ).

(Edited: typo)

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DaddyCatALSO t1_ivd50i3 wrote

The tendency of Americans to interpret issues in other countries in American terms.

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MortimerGraves t1_ivdbwrd wrote

Partially, and partially simply expecting that things worked (or should work) the same in those other countries, I should think.

While not wanting to downplay or ignore racial issues outside of the US, by the time the Americans arrived on British shores the UK army was desegregated, and volunteers of all colours from all over the Empire had already been involved in fighting.

The New Zealand army was also desegregated, (and the Māori Battalion had an excellent reputation from service in Crete and North Africa) and while I've little doubt there were a fair number of racists and bigots among the white Kiwis, a colour bar in Wellington was a step too far. And while there were a number of scuffles and brawls, the NZ Government also put considerable effort into reducing tensions, arranging for US servicement to visit Marae and Māori cultural events.

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NopeNotTrue t1_ivexzb9 wrote

The Army was desegregated but they had a Maori battalion?

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MortimerGraves t1_ivgi4ky wrote

Yeah... it's complicated. :)

(As far as I know) there were no restrictions on anyone who was Māori or part-Māori (which would have been a fair few people) from serving in the NZ Army by 1939 (and there were certainly Māori veterans of WWI). Some Māori politicians and community leaders however wanted to raise the profile of Māori as subjects of the British Empire and pushed the NZ Government to create a dedicated Māori Battalion. (The 28th.) Initially many of the officers were European, (though the first 2ic of the 28th was a part-Māori WWI veteran), but these were replaced over time as Māori officers gained experience.

The 28th initially shipped out with the 2nd Echelon of the 2NZEF (the 5th Brigade) and was involved in anti-invasion duties in the UK, but once the brigade was reunited with the rest of the Division in Egypt the 28th became an additional battalion that could be moved between the Division's three brigades to provide extra infantry oomph where it was needed, and ended up fighting in Greece, Crete, North Africa, and Italy - receiving more individual bravery decorations than any of the other NZ battalions. (One private even won a US Silver Star.) :)

The difference (I guess) is that the unit wasn't there to keep "them" separate (and "in their place"), but rather at the insistence of Māori leaders to provide a opportunity to "prove the worth of Maoridom...and even secure the long-term goal of Maori autonomy". (NZ Historian Claudia Orange).

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mursilissilisrum t1_ivezq2l wrote

I think that had more to do with not wanting foreigners to tell them what to do. It wasn't a matter of domestic policy (in Britain anyway), but the Brits definitely imposed segregation for no other reason than they felt like it.

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DaddyCatALSO t1_ivd4ttl wrote

I mean, Britain had its own "colour bar" but that was nothing compared to Jim Crow. (I really only know of it because sports writer Reg Gutteridge mentioned d it in the Randolph Turpin chapter of his book *Masters Of Boxing.*)

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arran-reddit t1_ivda4ft wrote

There was definitely racism, though at that point in time, there wasn't any racism enshrined in law (though some laws did come about over a decade later regarding immigration from non-white parts of the commonwealth) however there was no protections from racism. Racism in Britain was very much on a case by case basis and while I don't want to diminish how it was in the early 40s, it was considerably worse come the 50s as a reaction to several large waves off immigration (which were also spread across more cities than previous waves) which also turned racism into a domestic political issue.

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Sun_Devilish t1_ivemkqj wrote

America is always and forever bad. The virtues of our forebears must never be highlighted. Only their sins and shortcomings should be pointed out.

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TheDJ955 t1_ivcmjme wrote

Yep, one of the POW’s was a guy named Bert Trautmann, detained in Belgium then transported to Essex, he was the equivalent of a sergeant in the Luftwaffe with the 35th infantry and received an Iron Cross, he later became a professional footballer for Manchester City, he even has a statue in the general area of the stadium.

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Mein_Bergkamp t1_ivdtz3i wrote

The reason he's got a statue is that he played during the era of no substitutions and so played through a broken neck while winning the FA Cup for City.

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VapoursAndSpleen t1_ivdhxrm wrote

My dad lived in Orange county during WWII and the family would be driving along through the orchards, following a pickup truck full of German POWs singing German folk songs en route to working in the orchards.

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BenMottram2016 t1_ivdu103 wrote

Different Axis PoWs were kept in different camps and whilst they all were scheduled to work on farms, they were kept separate and not allowed to mix...

Except, of course, when they did by mistake... Sauce - my dad got a bollocking for simultaneously accepting both German and Italian PoWs for work detail on his farm.

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SovereignNation t1_ivfgssu wrote

This kind of treatment was quite widespread probably. Atleast in Finland on the farm my grandfather lived on there was a Soviet POW of the Winter War who worked there. He mostly worked physical labour on the farm and also slept and lived there but it turned out he was a very skilled shoemaker. He carved lasts by hand from wood and made boots for pretty much everyone on the farm. When the war was over and he was sent back to Soviet Union my grandfather remembers that he cried and tried to beg the officials to let him stay on the farm and I think everyone on the farm wouldn't have had an issue with that. Alas, he was sent back and that's where his story ends from our point of view.

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wileyrielly t1_ivecxkm wrote

My dads family used to run a hotel and he told me a story of a long time resident thats pretty sad.

He was a pole who was pressed into the russian army after they hung his family, then captured and pressed into the german army. He was then captured by the english and sent to a Scottish POW camp who tortured him.

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FerryHarmer t1_ivfg2uq wrote

The Isle of Man mostly. Nice spot, still barbed wire patrolled by soldiers though.

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PsySam89 t1_ivfo29v wrote

I looked after a couple of German guys who were POW's in Perth shire and liked it so much here they didn't leave! They were conscripts and were just glad to survive

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L1A1 t1_ivfz795 wrote

My old street was cobbled, and they were laid by Italian POWs. One of the old dears on the street grew up there and remembered them .

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stevemillions t1_ivg1om1 wrote

One of them ended up playing in goal for Manchester City. He won the FA cup. With a broken neck. Bert Trautmann. Quite a story.

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[deleted] t1_ivbmkc7 wrote

[deleted]

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arran-reddit t1_ivbs222 wrote

What camp are you talking about? I don’t know of any that mixed POWs with non military internment

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