The German POW Newspaper Project
During the Second World War the United States interned some 385,000 German prisoners of war in over 500 camps scattered across the nation. A robust scholarship has documented the German POW experience in the United States from a variety of perspectives. Among the most common sources used by historians are archival records produced by military organizations and international aid agencies. However, one important source remains largely unexamined: the voices of prisoners themselves, as expressed in their camp newspapers.
This project uses camp newspapers to document the social history of the German POW experience. The project also documents the political re-education program implemented by the American military to facilitate an early denazification program following the discovery of the Holocaust. Employing digital humanities methods to display, explore, and facilitate the crowdsourced transcription of these newspapers, this project also explores methods for disseminating this unique historical source collection.
Project Leader: Daniel Hutchinson