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The first U.S. troops to enter WWII
came from the Upper Midwest; the 34th Division also served the longest stint
of active duty--611 days. In February 1943 some 1,800 mostly Iowa, but also
Minnesota and Dakota soldiers fell prisoner to Rommel's men; they were
marched to Tunis, flown to Naples, then shipped in box cars to Nazi Germany,
where they spent two years as "Hitler's uninvited guests." Those
who survived that living hell returned to America's Heartland forever
changed.
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By the end of
WWII some 380,000 German POWs found themselves imprisoned in the United
States, in more than 650 base and branch camps in almost all of the 48
states and even the territory of Alaska. On the open prairie of the Upper
Midwest and in the woods of Northern Minnesota, those at Camp Algona or its
35 branch camps eventually would experience a soul-searching confrontation
with their nation's destructive, doomed experiment with fascism and global
war.
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