Americans Behind the Barbed Wire: World War II: Inside a German POW Camp

"Americans Behind the Barbed Wire" is J. Frank Diggs' memoir of life in a German-run prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. A short author bio at the start of the book notes that after the war Diggs spent nearly 40 years as a writer, reporter, and editor with "U.S. News and World Report." Diggs recalls serving as an American military officer and being captured by the Germans. He winds up in a POW camp in Poland. The book vividly recalls the realities of life in camp: the cold, lack of sufficient food, and elaborate escape attempts. Most remarkable is the way Diggs and the other "kriegies" (that's a slang term they used for inmates) truly formed a community. They developed their own subculture that resisted the German captors in both blatant and subtle ways. Diggs offers fascinating details about the camp newspaper, the educational system the inmates developed in order to make constructive use of their time, and much more. Diggs creates affectionate portraits of fellow kriegies who used their talents to make imprisonment more bearable for their fellow Americans. He also discusses the important role played by Henry Soederberg, an international YMCA representative who was allowed to make humanitarian visits to the camp. The book also covers Diggs' odyssey after leaving the camp. The book includes an appendix with excerpts from the Geneva Convention. Indeed, Diggs' narrative is not just a fascinating personal narrative, but raises issues pertaining to POW treatment that remain relevant. As an intriguing companion text, I would recommend a narrative of Japanese-American internment during WW2, such as Yoshiko Uchida's "Desert Exile" or Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James Houston's "Farewell to Manzanar."

In Americans Behind The Barbed Wire, author Frank Diggs shares his unique view of World War II that he gained from the inside of Oflag 64, a German POW camp located in Schubin Poland. Diggs and his fellow "kriegies" (German guard slang for prisoners), demonstrates the resoluteness and sense of purpose shared by his fellow POWs. As kriegies they worked and plotted for more food, searched for more heat and warm clothes, worked to improve themselves and their condition, established a camp newspaper to help improve the flow of information and relieve the mind-numbing boredom. Above all, they never stopped striving for their freedom. Americans Behind The Barbed Wire catches a glimpse of history that never made the headlines, but was just as real a war-time condition as aerial bombing, submarine warfare, or amphibious lands. Americans Behind The Barbed Wire also includes a diary of the author's escape from the Germans and (along with many of his fellow prisoners) their involvement in the Russian/American repatriation crises at the end of the war, as well as their eventual return to the United States. Americans Behind The Barbed Wire is a superbly informative, engaging, invaluable contribution to the growing library of World War II personal histories.