RESOURCES
Justice Denied: an Historical Sojourn
Wendel, Joe. Bloomington, Indiana: Archway Publishing, 2017. Dr. Joe Wendel writes a wide-ranging history of German and German Americans, focused on providing insights into the two World Wars from the viewpoint of a German American who lived in Austria during WWII....
Enemies Among Us: the Relocation, Internment & Repatriation of German, Italian & Japanese Americans During the Second World War
Schmitz, John E. Enemies Among Us: the Relocation, Internment & Repatriation of German, Italian & Japanese Americans During the Second World War. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 2021. In Enemies among Us John E. Schmitz examines the causes,...
Port of No Return: Enemy Alien Internment in World War II New Orleans
Miller, Marilyn Grace. Port of No Return: Enemy Alien Internment in World War II New Orleans. LSU Press, Baton Rouge, LA, 2021. One of two principal ports through which enemy aliens might enter the United States, New Orleans saw the arrival of thousands of Latin...
The War Outside
The War Outside. Hesse, Monica. New York, Little, Brown and Co. 2018. New from Monica Hesse, the bestselling and award-winning author of Girl in the Blue Coat--an "important" (New York Times Book Review), "extraordinary" (Booklist, starred review) novel of conviction,...
In Our Midst
In Our Midst. Jensen, Nancy. Dzanc Books 2020. In Our Midst is Nancy Jensen’s powerful follow-up to The Sisters. Jensen’s debut novel was a Kirkus Best Fiction pick of 2011, an Indie Next #1 pick, and an ABA Bestseller for five weeks.Drawing upon a long-suppressed...
American Brush-Off, a young adult e-book, now available
American Brush-Off, a young adult e-book by Max Willi Fischer, is now available to readers. Loosely based on the experiences of Eb Fuhr, who was taken from his high school and interned with his family for over two years, "...seventeen-year-old Lud Mueller is an...
The Tango War: The Struggle for the Hearts, Minds, and Riches of Latin America during World War II
Mc Conahay, Mary Jo. The Tango War: The Struggle for the Hearts, Minds, and Riches of Latin America during World War II. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2018. The author is a reporter who has covered wars in Central America and economics in the Middle East. She details...
“World War II Internment of a German-American Couple in Hawaii”
Fiset, Louis; “World War II Internment of a German-American Couple in Hawaii” June 2012, American Philatelist, Journal of the American Philatelic Society. It is reproduced here by permission of the author.
Detained, Interned, Incarcerated: U.S. Enemy Noncombatant Mail in World War II
Fiset, Louis. Collectors Club of Chicago, 2010. This is a compilation of mail by noncombatant civilians, diplomats and Axis merchant seamen held by the U.S. government during World War II, while awaiting exchange for U.S. citizens held behind enemy lines.
The Diplomat’s Daughter
Tenabe, Karin. Washington Square Press, 2017. Set partially in the Crystal City, Texas Internment Camp, this novel follows the romance of Emi Kato, a Japanese diplomat's daughter, and Christian Lange, a young German from Wisconsin, during their internment and...
Schools Behind Barbed Wire: the Untold Story of Wartime Internment and the Children of Arrested Enemy Aliens
Riley, Karen L. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield. 2002. Often overlooked in the infamous history of U.S. internment during World War II is the plight of internee children. Drawn from personal interviews and multiple primary source materials, Schools behind Barbed...
Pilgrims of War: a Love Story
Veno, Carl A. Pilgrims of War: a Love Story. Fedeli Publishing Inc., 2011. (a novel) Beautiful Italian doctor Magdalena Russo is headed to a medical conference when the ship she’s on is seized at the Panama Canal. World War II is raging, and the passengers aboard the...
Las Posesiones
Alvarado Quesada, Carlos. Las Posesiones. San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Uruk, April 2012. (a novel) Las Posesiones takes place at a time following the entry of the United States in World War II, when governments of several Latin American countries, including Costa...
Costa Rica en la Segunda Guerra Mundial (1939-1945)
Calvo Gamboa, Carlos. Costa Rica en la Segunda Guerra Mundial (1939-1945). San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Universidad Estatal A Distancia, 1985. Find it online
Enemies: WW II Alien Internment
Christgau, John. Enemies: WW II Alien Internment. University of Nebraska Press, October 2009 (republication). Read a review. John Christgau's Website Buy Online
Where Clouds Meet the Water
Contag, Kimberly and James Grabowska. Where Clouds Meet the Water. Inkwater Press, 2004. Where the Clouds Meet the Water follows the historical journey of the German Ecuadorian widower, Ernst Contag, and his four young children from their home in the South American...
Una Storia Segreta: the Secret history of Italian American Evacuation and Internment during World War II
DiStasi, Lawrence, ed. Una Storia Segreta: the Secret history of Italian American Evacuation and Internment during World War II. Heyday Books, Berkeley, California, 2001. It is little known that Italian Americans had been interned, evacuated and otherwise restricted...
We Were Not the Enemy: Remembering the United States’ Latin-American Civilian Internment Program of World War II
Donald, Heidi Gurcke. We Were Not the Enemy: Remembering the United States’ Latin-American Civilian Internment Program of World War II. iUniverse.com, 2006. (a family memoir) Visit the Book's Website The United States clandestinely funds the operation of a huge prison...
The Japanese Thread: A Life in the U.S. Foreign Service
Emmerson, John K. The Japanese Thread: A Life in the U.S. Foreign Service. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978. (section on Peru and internment/deportation program-focus is Japanese, but Germans in Peru had similar experiences) Buy Online
Shattered Lives, Shattered Dreams: The Disrupted Lives of Families in America’s Internment Camps
Estlack, Russell. Shattered Lives, Shattered Dreams: The Disrupted Lives of Families in America's Internment Camps. Bonneville Books, Cedar Fort, Inc., Springville, Utah, 2011. Anti-communist paranoia during World War II led to the internment of thousands of...
Guerra Mundial: Lista Negra en Ecuador
Estrada, Jenny. II Guerra Mundial: Lista Negra en Ecuador. Poligráfica,Guayaquil, 2006. (Available through author: ) Guerra Mundial: Lista Negra en Ecuador, authored by the Guayaquil historian Jenny Estrada Ruiz, was translated into Dutch and...
Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America
Feldman, Jay. Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America. Pantheon Books, New York, 2011. (Chapters nine and ten deal with WWII internment/relocation programs.) In this wide-ranging history, Jay Feldman takes us from...
UnCivil Liberties: Italian Americans Under Siege during World War II
Fox, Stephen. UnCivil Liberties: Italian Americans Under Siege during World War II. Universal Publishers, 2000. (revised and updated edition of The Unknown Internment: An Oral History of the Relocation of Italian Americans during World War II. Twayne Publishers,...
America’s Invisible Gulag: A Biography of German American Internment & Exclusion in World War II: Memory & History
Fox, Stephen. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc, 2000. One of the least-known aspects of World War II is the internment of German "enemy aliens" in the United States. This narrative goes beyond other internment studies in its use of internee interviews and access...
Homeland Insecurity — Aliens, Citizens, and the Challenge to American Civil Liberties in World War II
Fox, Stephen. Homeland Insecurity -- Aliens, Citizens, and the Challenge to American Civil Liberties in World War II. iUniverse, 2009. Set in World War II, but with an eye to the present and future, Homeland Insecurity offers a unique, thematic commentary on the...
The Deportation of Latin American Germans, 1941-47: Fresh Legs for Mr. Monroe’s Doctrine
Fox, Steven. The Deportation of Latin American Germans, 1941-47: Fresh Legs for Mr. Monroe’s Doctrine, Yearbook of German-American Studies, vol. 32, 1997. Commencing with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the State Department aided a dozen Latin American republics...
Nazis and Good Neighbors: The US Campaign Against Germans in Latin America during World War II
Friedman, Max Paul. Nazis and Good Neighbors: The US Campaign Against Germans in Latin America during World War II. Cambridge University Press 2003. This book is an exposé of a secret American operation during World War II to seize 4,000 Germans from Latin America and...
Nazis y buenos vecinos: la campaña de los Estado Unidos contra los alemanes de América Latina durante la Segunda guerra Mundial
Freidman, Max Paul; Blasco, Jaime. Nazis y buenos vecinos: la campaña de los Estado Unidos contra los alemanes de América Latina durante la Segunda guerra Mundial. Boadilla del Monte: Antonio Machado Libros, 2008.
Specter of a Nazi Threat: United States-Columbian Relations, 1939-1945
Friedman, Max Paul. Specter of a Nazi Threat: United States-Columbian Relations, 1939-1945. The Americas (April 2000). On 11 September 1941, U..S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt took to the airwaves to warn his country that “Hitler's advance guards” were readying...
Private Memory, Public Record, and Contested Terrain: Weighing Oral Testimony in the Deportation of Germans from Latin America During World War II
Friedman, Max Paul. “Private Memory, Public Record, and Contested Terrain: Weighing Oral Testimony in the Deportation of Germans from Latin America During World War II,” Oral History Review 27/1 (Winter/Spring 2000). View/Download from SFU.ca View/Download from...
Pawns in a Triangle of Hate
Gardiner, C. Harvey. Pawns in a Triangle of Hate. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981. A factual account of the Peruvian Japanese interned in America during World War II View/Buy Online
The German Americans and WWII: An Ethnic Experience
Holian, Timothy J. The German Americans and WWII: An Ethnic Experience. Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 1998. The German-Americans and World War II: An Ethnic Experience is a unique study of America's largest ethnic group during one of its most difficult periods....
Sing to Me, Papa
Irvine, Patricia. Sing to Me, Papa. Xlibris Corporation, 2000. (historical fiction) Gretchen Mueller´s chronicle begins in the present in her Southern California garden with her granddaughter, Megan, and flashes back to Chicago in the late thirties. The Muellers are a...
The Prison Called Hohenasperg, An American Boy Betrayed by his Government during World War II
Jacobs, Arthur D. The Prison Called Hohenasperg, An American Boy Betrayed by his Government during World War II. uPublish.com, 1999. Unknown to most Americans, more than 10,000 Germans & German Americans were interned in the United States during WWII. This story...
Judgment without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II
Kashima, Tetsuden. Judgment without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. (German and Italian programs also mentioned) Judgment without Trial reveals that long before the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor,...
Undue Process, The Untold Story of America’s German Alien Internees
Krammer, Arnold. Undue Process, The Untold Story of America's German Alien Internees. Rowman & Littlefield, New York, 1997. "In the first book on this neglected topic, the shocking story of America's treatment of German aliens during World War II is revealed by...
From the Heart’s Closet–A Young Girl’s World War II Story
Krauter, Anneliese Wiegand. From the Heart’s Closet--A Young Girl’s World War II Story. Schatzi Press McCordsville, IN 2005. After fifty years of silence, Anneliese Krauter has finally told the true story of her family's experience as German-Americans in the US during...
VANISHED: German American Internment, 1941-48
Luick-Thrams. Michael and staff, VANISHED: German American Internment, 1941-48, (TRACES manual, issued to accompany St. Paul exhibit) TRACES. org 2005. "The U.S. Government interned some 15,000 German American civilians immediately following the bombing of Pearl...
An Ethnic at Large; A Memoir of America in the Thirties and Forties
Mangione, Jerre G. An Ethnic at Large; A Memoir of America in the Thirties and Forties. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1978. In this autobiography, Mangione (emeritus, English, U. of Pennsylvania) describes his experiences of growing up Sicilian in Rochester, his...
A Resilient Elite: German Costa Ricans and the Second World War.
Meissner, Carlos. A Resilient Elite: German Costa Ricans and the Second World War. Two volumes. PhD thesis, University of York, 2010. (Available as a PDF through the author at )
Interned: Internment of the SS Columbus crew at Fort Stanton, New Mexico 1941-1945
McBride, James J., 2003—The first residents of the Fort Stanton Internment Camp, New Mexico, were the German crew of the German luxury liner Columbus, who arrived in 1939, after scuttling their ship off the coast of Cuba.
Náufragos en tierra firme: bloqueo comercial, despojo y confinamiento de japoneses de Bolivia durante la Sequnda Guerra Mundial
Mitre, Antonio. Náufragos en tierra firme: bloqueo comercial, despojo y confinamiento de japoneses de Bolivia durante la Sequnda Guerra Mundial. Santa Cruz de la Sierra: Editorial El Pais, 2006.
Camp Letters: 1942—1945
Nightingale, Robert, author and editor. Camp Letters: 1942—1945. 2011. (A collection of letters between Bruno and Alice Stiller, the author's grandparents, during Bruno Stiller's internment.) Bruno Stiller was imprisoned shortly after the United States entered World...
The Misplaced American
Potter, Ursula Vogt. The Misplaced American. 1stbooks Library (now Authorhouse), 2003. (a family memoir) On December 9,1941, Karl Vogt, a German national residing in the United States, was abruptly taken from his home near Plaza, Washington by agents of the F.B.I. and...
The Shadow War: German Espionage and United States Counterespionage in Latin America during World War II
Rout, Jr., Leslie B. and John F. Bratzel. The Shadow War: German Espionage and United States Counterespionage in Latin America during World War II. (University Publications of America, Inc., Maryland, 1986), 28.) Buy Online
The Train to Crystal City: FDR’s Secret Exchange Program and America’s Only Family Internment Camp during WW II
Russell, Jan Jarboe. The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp during WW II. Scribner, 2015. The dramatic and never-before-told story of a secret FDR-approved American internment camp in Texas during World War...
Democracy Under Stress: The Internment of German-Americans in World War II
Schmitz, John Eric. Democracy Under Stress: The Internment of German-Americans in World War II, Master’s thesis, North Carolina State University, 1993. (John Eric Schmitz is the son of former internee, John Schmitz.) View/Buy Online
America’s Other Internment: World War II and the making of modern human rights
Seng-hua Mak, Stephen. America's other internment: World War II and the making of modern human rights, Ph.D. thesis, Northwestern University, 2009. INS internees developed their rights in an international human rights framework, in contrast to Japanese Americans, who...
Heartland; a Historical Drama about the Internment of German-Americans in the United States during World War II
Simon, Lojo and Anita Simons. Heartland; an Historical Drama about the Internment of German-Americans in the United States during World War II. Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, 2014. Buy Online
The Burden of Ethnicity: The German Question in Chicago, 1914-1941
Tischauser, Leslie V. The Burden of Ethnicity: The German Question in Chicago, 1914-1941. Garland Publishing, New York, 1990. (out of print) View/Buy Online
German-Americans in the World Wars
Tolzmann, Don H., ed. German-Americans in the World Wars. München: K.G. Saur. The World War Two Experience: The Internment of German-Americans, vol. 4, 1995. Representing one-fourth of the population, German-Americans constitute the largest ethnic element, according...
The Informers
Vásquez, Juan Gabriel. The Informers. Riverhead, 2009. (historical fiction) From the author of The Sound of Things Falling, a "brilliant new novel" (New York Times Book Review) and one of the most buzzed about books of the year! "One of the most original new voices of...
Los alemanes en Guatemala, 1828-1944
Wagner, Regina. Los alemanes en Guatemala, 1828-1944 (The Germans in Guatemala, 1828-1944), Guatemala 1996
Imprisoned in Paradise: Japanese Internee Road Workers at the World War II Kooskia Internment Camp
Wegars, Priscilla. Imprisoned in Paradise: Japanese Internee Road Workers at the World War II Kooskia Internment Camp. (Asian American Comparative Collection (AACC), University of Idaho, Moscow, 2010. Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for the University...
Loyalty on Trial: One American’s Battle With the F.B.I.
Wolter/Masters, Loyalty on Trial: One American’s Battle With the F.B.I., iUniverse 2004. Loyalty On Trial reveals that Arthur Wolter was accused of being the "power behind the throne" of an organization targeted by J. Edgar Hoover during WWII as subversive and...
“Innocent Enemies,” by Margret S. de Oliveira Castro
Margret S. de Oliveira Castro's book, Innocent Enemies, details the experiences of her father, Friedrich Walter Schlösser, who was jailed in El Salvador, interned in the USA, and deported to Germany during WWII. Arrested in 1941, he spent more than a year-and-a-half...