386: America's Nazi POW Murders w/ William Geroux

Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

Erik Rivenes

True Crime, History, Education

4.7 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 18 April 2025

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The American government was faced with an unprecedented challenge: where to house the nearly 400,000 German prisoners of war plucked from the battlefield and shipped across the Atlantic. On orders from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Department of War hastily built hundreds of POW camps in the United States. Today, traces of those camps—which once dotted the landscape from Maine to California—have all but vanished. Forgotten, too, is the grisly series of killings that took place within them: Nazi power games playing out in the heart of the United States. My guest today is William Geroux, a World War II expert and author of "The Fifteen: Murder, Retribution, and the Forgotten Story of Nazi POWs in America". He discusses the origins of the German prisoner-of-war camps, the daily lives of the men held there, and the deep divisions between hardline Nazis and less political prisoners—tensions that ultimately led to a series of murders and the prosecution of fifteen POWs. The author's publisher page: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/725017/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, this is Matt and McKinley from History Dispatches.
0:07.0	We are the father-son duo bringing you the weird, the wild, the wacky, and the craziest tales from across time.
0:13.0	From the Ice Bowl to the Great Heathen Army, and the head of Oliver Cromwell,
0:17.0	the same head they kept on a pike for three years?
0:20.0	Yep, all here on History Dispatches.
0:22.6	New episodes every weekday. Find out more at history dispatches.com or wherever you get your
0:28.1	podcast app.
0:30.0	The creators of the popular science show with millions of YouTube subscribers comes the Minute Earth
0:34.5	podcast. Every episode of the show dives deep into a science question you might not even know you had,
0:39.6	but once you hear the answer, you'll want to share it with everyone you know.
0:42.9	Why do rivers curve?
0:44.5	Why did the T-Rex have such tiny arms?
0:47.0	And why do so many more kids need glasses now than they used to?
0:50.7	Spoiler alert, it isn't screen time.
0:53.2	Our team of scientists digs into the research
0:55.3	and breaks it down into a short, entertaining explanation, jam-packed with science facts and
0:59.9	terrible puns. Subscribe to Minute Earth wherever you like to listen. Hello, everyone. This is Eric Rivenis, and welcome to another episode of the Most
1:33.0	Notorious podcast. I hope you are having a lovely spring. I am very pleased to introduce
1:39.3	William Jereau to the show today. He wrote for the Richmond Times Dispatch for 25 years. He is written for
1:48.1	the New York Times, the Associated Press, and he has written extensively about World War II.
1:54.3	Some of his prior books include the Ghost Ships of Archangel, the Arctic voyage that defied the Nazis, and the Matthews Men,
2:04.3	seven brothers, and the war against Hitler's U-boats.
	...

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