When Nazis Killed Nazis in the Middle of America

HISTORY This Week

The HISTORY® Channel

History, Education, Society & Culture

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

August 7, 1943. Off the coast of Venezuela, a Nazi U-boat is under siege. For nine days, it’s hunted by Allied aircraft across the Caribbean, until its engines fail and its commander gives the order: abandon ship. Forty-three German sailors plunge into shark-infested waters, and are pulled out by their enemy - the United States. The Germans think the worst is behind them. Instead, they’re headed for a POW camp in the American heartland, where life will actually be pretty comfortable. They play soccer, harvest corn, eat well… until things turn violent. How did Nazi prisoners of war end up murdering each other on U.S. soil? And what does American justice look like when applied to the enemy? Special thanks to William Geroux, author of The Fifteen: Murder, Retribution, and the Forgotten Story of Nazi POWs in America. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:30.1	The History Channel, original podcast.
0:34.7	History this week, August 7th, 1943.
0:38.3	I'm Alana Casanova Burgess.
0:42.3	Dawn is breaking over the Caribbean Sea, and it's finally quiet.
0:52.3	For the last week, an intense battle has been raging here between air and sea.
0:58.8	A Nazi U-boat, U-615, had been stalking allied tankers off the coast of Venezuela
1:04.8	when it torpedoed a Dutch ship carrying crude oil.
1:10.0	U-boats are submarines, and the Germans are particularly good at building and deploying them,
1:17.6	creating chaos on the high seas.
1:20.6	Winston Churchill called the U-boats the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war.
1:33.2	The attack on the Dutch ship catches the attention of Allied submarine hunters,
1:38.8	and now they're on a relentless search to destroy U-615.
1:49.0	All week, the Nazi submarine has been on the defensive, diving deep beneath the waves to evade its enemies. But eventually, its luck runs out.
1:52.0	The Allies hit just the right spot.
1:55.0	And U615 takes major damage.
1:58.0	Its motors, and part of its diving mechanism are destroyed.
2:03.6	It's trapped in plain sight, exposed above the Caribbean waves, a sitting duck,
	...

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