“It Hurts When I Sit” — German Women POWs Shocked by How American Soldiers Treated Them

 

October 22, 1944. Normandy, France. The rain came down in cold, slanting sheets, tapping on twisted tin and broken rafters, seeping through cracks in the earth where blood and rainwater had already mixed. Nurse Lena Schmidt crouched in what was left of a cellar, her back pressed against a damp stone wall. She could hear the faint hiss of the storm outside and the deep, steady rumble of tanks moving closer—American tanks. The sound grew louder with every second, rattling loose bits of plaster from the ceiling, scattering dust across the floor.

Her uniform, once crisp gray, was stiff with dried blood. Not her own, but from the men she’d tried—and failed—to save. The air smelled of mud, gunpowder, and the faint copper tang of iron. The war had come to her doorstep, and there was nowhere left to run. In her shaking hands, she held a small glass syringe filled with morphine. She had hidden it in the lining of her coat, a secret she had promised herself she would only use if the enemy came.

The propaganda had been clear. The enemy—Americans—showed no mercy to captured Germans, especially to women. Their leaflets, speeches, and officers’ warnings painted the same image: brutality, torture, humiliation. Better to die on your own terms than to face what awaited outside. So when the cellar door above her groaned open and heavy boots clattered down the steps, Lena shut her eyes tight and drew a sharp breath, waiting for the gunshot that would end it.

Instead, she heard a voice. Not harsh or triumphant, but calm, almost kind.

“It’s over,” the voice said quietly, its words careful, deliberate. “You’re safe now.”

When she finally dared to open her eyes, a beam of light caught her face. Standing in front of her was not the monster she’d been told to fear, but an American medic. His helmet was spattered with mud, his uniform dark from the rain. He knelt beside her and held out not a weapon, but a canteen. “Drink,” he said simply. “You need it.”

For a moment, she didn’t move. She could barely comprehend the scene. The world she’d been raised in—the one that had taught her to see these men as beasts—was cracking apart before her eyes. That moment would be the first of many that would challenge everything she thought she knew about mercy, defeat, and enemies.

By the autumn of 1944, the war in Western Europe had reached its decisive phase. The Allies had pushed the Germans out of most of France and were advancing toward the borders of the Reich. In their wake came the wreckage of an empire—tens of thousands of prisoners, columns of wounded men, and among them, women in uniform. These women were not front-line soldiers, but nurses, radio operators, and clerks from the Wehrmacht’s auxiliary branches, the Helferinnen. They had served alongside the army, tended to its wounded, relayed its orders, and lived under its promises.

Now, those promises were dust. The Reich was collapsing, and its servants—men and women alike—were left to face whatever came next.

For years, Nazi propaganda had painted Allied captivity as a fate worse than death. Soldiers were warned that surrender meant starvation, mutilation, and disgrace. Women were told even darker things. Stories circulated of what the Soviets had done on the Eastern Front—mass executions, forced marches, assaults so brutal they became whispered legends. Many believed that if the Americans were different, it was only slightly so.

But the reality they encountered was not what the regime had promised.

The United States, bound by the 1929 Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war, had built a framework of discipline and procedure around its handling of captives. It wasn’t born purely of compassion—there was strategy in it. The Americans understood that how they treated the enemy said something about the kind of world they wanted to win. Cruelty might satisfy vengeance, but discipline projected power. Civilization, they believed, was its own kind of weapon.

When Lena and seven other captured nurses were loaded onto a transport truck that wet October morning, they had no way of knowing that. The rain soaked their hair and uniforms as they climbed into the open truck bed. They sat in silence, eyes down, the sound of the engine drowned by the hiss of the storm. They expected to be driven a few miles—to an interrogation site, perhaps even an execution field. Instead, the truck rolled for hours.

By the time they stopped, night had fallen. They were at a coastal holding area surrounded by barbed wire and floodlights. The guards were young, their uniforms new and unfrayed. One of them, a sergeant, handed Lena a blanket. She hesitated before taking it, expecting some trick. None came.

Days passed. Then weeks. When orders finally came, it was not for a transfer to another camp in France—but to America. The words made no sense to them. Why would the Americans ship prisoners halfway across the world? What awaited them there?

The journey began at dawn. They were marched to a dock where a massive gray ship loomed against the horizon. The sea smelled of oil and salt. Inside, the cargo holds had been converted into makeshift barracks. There were rows of bunks, thin but clean, and buckets of fresh water.

The voyage took three weeks. Each day, guards brought trays of food—canned meat, white bread, powdered milk. To women who had survived on rations and scavenged vegetables for months, it was unthinkable luxury. One morning, a sailor passed out oranges. When the first one was peeled, its bright scent filled the air. Greta, the youngest of them, burst into tears. She hadn’t seen fresh fruit in two years.

At night, they whispered in the dark. Some insisted it was all a trick. “They want us calm,” one said. “So we’ll talk more easily.” Another replied, “They’re fattening us up for something worse.” Lena said nothing. She watched. Listened. And every day, her certainty thinned a little more.

The guards weren’t cruel. They didn’t leer or shout. They addressed the women as “ma’am,” brought extra blankets when the Atlantic winds cut through the hull. When Greta fell ill from seasickness, a Navy doctor tended to her, returned twice daily to check her pulse. He even left behind a small tin of aspirin. The gesture, simple as it was, unsettled them more than any threat could have.

On the morning of November 9, 1944, the ship slowed. Through the narrow portholes, they saw a skyline unlike anything they’d imagined. New York City rose before them—tall, gleaming, untouched by war. The sun glinted off glass and steel towers that seemed to pierce the clouds. No ruins. No rubble. Just life continuing, indifferent to the chaos an ocean away.

A young American guard, noticing their stunned faces, grinned. “Welcome to America,” he said.

For a moment, none of them spoke. The irony cut deep. They had crossed an ocean as prisoners and arrived in a country more alive, more prosperous, than the empire they had once believed invincible.

From New York, they were loaded onto a train. The journey westward stretched across days. Through the windows, the landscape changed—from crowded cities to rolling farmland, endless plains, and small towns that glowed warm even in winter. Every farmhouse seemed lit. Every field looked fertile. Germany, rationed and scarred, felt like another world entirely. At one stop, children stood near the tracks waving small flags. When one little girl waved directly at their car, Greta waved back before she could stop herself. The guard chuckled quietly. No one reprimanded her.

Three days later, the train climbed into the mountains of Utah. The air turned cold again, crisp and dry. Snow dusted the peaks. When the train slowed, Lena saw rows of barracks surrounded by barbed wire—a prison camp, certainly, but orderly and calm. A wooden sign read: Fort Douglas, U.S. Army Installation.

They were escorted through the gates under the watchful eyes of sentries in tower posts. The camp was smaller than they’d imagined, almost self-contained—a few rows of wooden buildings, a mess hall, a medical hut, a recreation field where men in uniforms, also prisoners, played a slow game of soccer in the snow.

The smell of baking bread drifted through the cold air, startling in its normalcy.

Inside the processing building, a woman was waiting. An American nurse, blonde hair tucked neatly under her cap, uniform pressed and spotless. Through a translator, she greeted them with a smile. “I know you’re tired,” she said. “We’ll get you settled.”

Each prisoner was given a clean uniform stenciled with the letters PW across the back, a towel, soap, two blankets, and a bunk assignment. The barracks were warm, heated by a coal stove that crackled softly. The mattresses were thin but softer than anything Lena had slept on in months. For the first time in what felt like forever, she didn’t dream of explosions or screams—only the sound of wind against the windows.

That night, as they lay in the dark, one of the women whispered, “Is this real?” No one answered. They were all thinking the same thing.

At dawn, the sound of a bell carried across the camp. The women lined up outside for roll call, their breath rising in pale clouds. When they were marched toward the mess hall, none of them expected much—perhaps stale bread, cold coffee, the kind of rations they’d grown used to in Europe.

But when the doors opened, the sight before them stopped them cold.

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October 22nd, 1944. Normandy, France. The rain fell cold and relentless. Nurse Lena Schmidt crouched in the collapsed cellar of what had once been a field hospital, her hands, still stained with the blood of soldiers she could no longer save. Above her, the rumble of American tanks shook loose plaster from the ceiling.

 She pressed her back against the damp stone wall, clutching a morphine ceret she’d hidden in her coat. Not for a patient, but for herself. The propaganda had been clear. American soldiers showed no mercy to capture Germans, especially women. Better to die by your own hand than face what waited outside. When the cellar door wrenched open, and flashlight beams cut through the darkness, she closed her eyes and waited for the end.

 But what came instead was a voice. Calm, almost gentle. It’s over. You’re safe now. She opened her eyes to see an American medic kneeling beside her, offering not a weapon, but a canteen of water. Before we continue, like this video, subscribe, and comment where you’re watching from. Your support keeps these forgotten stories alive. What Lena faced next would shatter her beliefs about mercy, defeat, and enemies.

 This is the story of German women PSWs discovering the power of kindness. The autumn of 1944 marked a turning point in the war. By October, Allied forces had liberated France and pushed deep into German occupied territory. In their wake came not just victory, but hundreds of thousands of prisoners. Among them were women, nurses, communications clerks, members of the Vermacht Teleran auxiliary units who had served alongside German forces.

 These weren’t combat soldiers, but they wore the uniform. And to the collapsing Reich, they had been essential. For years, Nazi propaganda had painted a stark picture of what awaited anyone captured by the Allies. torture, starvation, humiliation. Soviet treatment of German PSWs on the Eastern Front seemed to confirm the worst fears.

Hundreds of thousands would die in captivity from exposure, disease, and deliberate neglect. But the Western Allies operated under different rules. On July 27th, 1929 in Geneva, Switzerland, 47 nations had signed a convention governing the treatment of prisoners of war. It mandated humane treatment, adequate food, medical care, and protection from violence.

The United States took these obligations seriously, not out of sentimentality, but out of calculated strategy and genuine conviction. They understood something the totalitarian regimes did not. How you treat your enemy reveals who you are. When Lena and seven other captured German nurses were loaded onto a transport truck that rainy October morning, they expected a short ride to interrogation, perhaps execution.

Instead, they traveled for hours, then days. First to a holding facility near the coast, then aboard a troop ship across the Atlantic. The voyage took 3 weeks. The women were housed in a converted cargo hold, cramped but clean. Twice daily, American guards brought meals, canned meat, bread, powdered milk, real food.

 Lena watched one of her fellow prisoners, a young radio operator named Greta, burst into tears at the sight of an orange. She hadn’t seen fresh fruit in 2 years. At night, the women whispered in the darkness. “It’s propaganda,” one said. “They feed us now to make us talk.” Another replied, “They’re fattening us for something worse.” Lena said nothing.

 She simply watched, trying to reconcile what she saw with what she’d been taught. The American guards didn’t sneer or shout. They called the women ma’am. When Greta fell ill with seasickness, a Navy doctor examined her, gave her medicine, and checked on her twice a day until she recovered. This wasn’t the behavior of monsters.

The ship docked in New York Harbor on November 9th, 1944. The women stood on deck, staring at the Manhattan skyline, rising impossibly high above the water. Buildings of steel and glass unmarked by bombs gleaming in the morning sun. One of the guards saw them staring and said, “Welcome to America.

” The irony was almost unbearable. They had crossed an ocean as prisoners and arrived in a country more prosperous than any they had ever known. From New York, they traveled by train. The American countryside rolled past the windows. Vast farmlands, towns with electric lights blazing, cars on every street.

 Germany had been dark for years, rationed and ruined. Here, even in wartime, abundance seemed to overflow. At one stop, children waved at the train. The prisoners waved back, uncertain, confused. 3 days later, the train reached Utah. Fort Douglas, nestled in the mountains east of Salt Lake City, would be their home for the duration of the war.

 When the women stepped off the train, the November air bit cold and clean. Snow dusted the peaks above them. The camp stretched before them, rows of wooden barracks behind wire fences, guard towers at each corner. It looked like a prison. But as they walked through the gates, the first shock came. The smell of baking bread drifted from the messaul.

 An American nurse, crisp in her uniform, met them at the processing building. She smiled. “I know you’re tired,” she said through a translator. “We’ll get you settled.” The women were given clean uniforms marked with PW on the back, issued blankets, soap, towels, and assigned to bunks in a women’s barracks. Each bed had a mattress, thin, but softer than anything Lena had slept on in months.

That first night, lying in the darkness, she heard one of the women whisper, “Is this real?” No one answered. They were all asking the same question. The next morning, a bell rang at 6. The women lined up for roll call, then marched to breakfast. Inside the messaul, the site stopped them cold.

 Metal trays piled with oatmeal, fried eggs, toast, and butter. Coffee. real coffee, not the acorn substitute they’ choked down in Germany. An American cook, a large man with flour on his apron, waved them forward. Come on, don’t be shy. Plenty for everyone. Lena took a tray with shaking hands. She sat at a long table and stared at the food.

 Greta, beside her, began to cry again. “My mother is starving,” she whispered. “And I’m eating eggs.” It was a guilt that would haunt them all. But the most profound shock came later that morning. During a medical inspection, Lena explained to the doctor, a calm woman in her 40s, that she had been injured weeks earlier when a building collapsed during a bombing raid.

 A deep bruise on her hip had never healed properly. Sitting for long periods caused sharp stabbing pain. The doctor examined her, ordered an X-ray, an X-ray for a prisoner, and diagnosed a hairline fracture. She prescribed rest, pain medication, and gave Lena a small cushion stuffed with canvas and straw. For when you sit, the doctor explained, “It’ll help.

” Lena held the cushion and felt something inside her crack. This wasn’t cruelty. This wasn’t indifference. This was care, and it terrified her. Because if the enemy could be kind, what did that make her side? Over the weeks that followed, Lena watched and learned. Fort Douglas operated under the strict guidelines of the 1929 Geneva Convention.

 Every prisoner received a ration equivalent to what American soldiers at base camps ate, approximately 3,600 calories per day. German soldiers on the Eastern front by contrast were subsisting on 1800. German civilians less. The prisoners were assigned work details, laundry, kitchen duty, maintenance, but paid for their labor.

80 cents per day in camp script, which could be spent at the canteen on cigarettes, toiletries, even small luxuries like chocolate. Every Sunday, no work. The prisoners were allowed to hold religious services, organize recreation, write letters home, mail that was inspected but delivered. The camp library held books in German and English.

 Educational classes were offered. By May 1944, the Reich Ministry of Education had even agreed to grant full credit for courses taken by German PSWs in American camps. Some prisoners studied English, mathematics, or vocational trades. Others simply read, novels, poetry, anything to fill the long, quiet hours. The routine was rigid but fair.

 Wake at 6, roll call, breakfast, work detail, lunch, afternoon work or recreation, dinner, lights out at 10:00. Guards enforce the rules, but without brutality. When one prisoner was caught smuggling extra bread from the mess hall, her punishment was loss of canteen privileges for a week. No beating, no humiliation, just a measured consequence.

 This fairness was perhaps the most disorienting aspect of captivity. Lena had grown up in a system where rules served power, not justice. Here, the rules protected everyone, guards and prisoners alike. When an American guard was found mistreating a P verbally, he was reprimanded and reassigned. The message was clear.

 Discipline applied to all, but kindness could not erase guilt. In December 1944, mail from home began arriving. Lena received a letter from her sister in Cologne. The handwriting was shaky, the paper thin. The city is gone. It read, “We live in the cellar. Food is scarce. Father died in the bombing.

 We eat potato skins and bread when we can get it. I pray you are alive. Lena read the letter three times, then sat in silence for an hour. That evening she could not eat. Around her, other women sat equally quiet, clutching their own letters. The camp that had seemed bearable now felt unbearable, not because of cruelty, but because of comfort.

 How could she sleep on a mattress while her family slept on stone? How could she eat eggs while her sister ate scraps? One night, unable to sleep, Lena walked to the edge of the barracks and stared through the wire fence at the mountains beyond. An American guard, a young man named Miller, approached. “You okay, ma’am?” Lena nodded, though she wasn’t.

“My family,” she said haltingly in broken English. Hungry, cold. Miller was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I’m sorry. I hope the war ends soon for all of us.” He walked away, leaving her standing there. It was such a small exchange, but it undid her because in his voice she heard not triumph, but weariness, not hatred, but shared humanity.

 The war in Europe ended on May 8th, 1945. In the camp, the announcement came over loudspeakers. Some prisoners cheered, others wept. Lena felt nothing but a hollow ache. Germany had surrendered. The Reich had fallen, and she was alive, well-fed, and safe in the arms of the enemy. Over the following months, the process of repatriation began, but it was slow.

 Thousands of PS needed to be processed, transported, resettled. Lena remained at Fort Douglas until September. In those final months, she volunteered in the camp infirmary, working alongside American nurses. She learned more English. She read books about democracy, about the American Constitution, about a system built on laws, not on the whims of leaders.

 And slowly, painfully, her understanding of the world shifted. When the day finally came to leave, Lena packed her few belongings, a worn Bible, a notebook filled with her thoughts, and the small cushion the doctor had given her months before. She had kept it, not because she still needed it, but because it had become a symbol, a reminder that mercy was not weakness, but strength.

The journey back to Europe was somber. The women traveled by train and ship, retracing the route they had taken a year earlier. But the world they returned to was unrecognizable. Germany lay in ruins. Entire cities reduced to rubble. Millions displaced, starving, broken. When Lena arrived in what remained of Cologne, she walked through streets she no longer knew.

 Her family’s house was gone. She found her sister living in a makeshift shelter built from bricks and scrap metal. They embraced, and her sister pulled back, staring at her. You look healthy, she said almost accusingly. Lena nodded. I was treated well. Her sister’s eyes filled with tears.

 How? Lena didn’t know how to answer. How could she explain that the enemy had fed her, healed her, treated her with dignity? How could she make sense of it when she still couldn’t herself? In the months that followed, Lena helped however she could. She worked with Allied relief organizations, translating, distributing food, rebuilding.

 She saw American soldiers again, this time not as captors, but as liberators. They brought food, medicine, supplies. They rebuilt schools, reopened hospitals, enforced order in the chaos. And Lena saw the same principle at work. Fairness, discipline, mercy. One day while working at a relief center, an American officer approached her.

 He recognized her from Fort Douglas. “How are you adjusting?” he asked. Lena thought for a long time. “I’m learning,” she said. “Learning that you were right all along.” He smiled sadly. “We weren’t right. We just tried to do things right. There’s a difference. That difference stayed with her for the rest of her life.

” Lena never forgot the camp in Utah. the nurses who cared for her, the guards who called her ma’am, the doctor who gave her a cushion for her pain. She never forgot the taste of fresh oranges, the warmth of clean blankets, the sound of laughter in the messaul. But most of all, she never forgot the lesson that how a nation treats its enemies reveals its true character.

 By the end of World War II, the United States had held more than 425,000 German prisoners of war in over 500 camps across the country. Mortality rates among these PS were remarkably low, less than 1% compared to over 50% mortality among German PS held by the Soviet Union. The difference was not accidental. It was the result of deliberate policy rooted in international law and in a belief that civilization survived through restraint.

Years later, when Lena was an old woman living in a rebuilt Germany, she was interviewed about her experiences. The interviewer asked if she had ever been angry about her captivity. Lena smiled faintly and shook her head. Angry? No. Ashamed? Yes. Ashamed that it took becoming a prisoner to learn what mercy looked like, she reached into a drawer and pulled out a small faded cushion, the canvas worn thin with age.

This, she said, taught me more about America than any book could. They treated my pain when they could have ignored it. They fed me when they could have starved me. They showed me humanity when I had been taught to expect monsters. She paused, her eyes distant. It still hurts sometimes. Not my hip. But the knowledge that kindness came from the ones we were told to hate.

 The story of German women PS in American camps is not widely known. It does not fit neatly into narratives of heroism or villain. It is instead a quiet testament to the power of principles over passion, of law over vengeance. The United States waged war with ferocity when necessary. But it also waged peace with discipline, feeding its enemies, healing their wounds, treating them not as animals, but as human beings who had fought for the wrong side.

 And perhaps that more than any battlefield victory defined what America truly was. Not a nation without flaws, but a nation that believed even in war, some things remained sacred. decency, fairness, mercy. These were not signs of weakness. They were the foundations of strength. The kind of strength that rebuilds nations, that transforms enemies into allies, that proves civilization can survive even the worst of wars.

 Lena Schmidt died in 1998 at the age of 82. She was buried in Cologne in a cemetery rebuilt after the war. At her funeral, her granddaughter read a passage from Lena’s wartime notebook written in November 1944, 2 weeks after arriving at Fort Douglas. I came here expecting cruelty. I found discipline. I expected hatred. I found fairness.

 I expected death. I found life. And now I understand. The strongest weapon is not the one that destroys, but the one that heals. They defeated us not with bombs, but with bread. not with violence, but with dignity. And in doing so, they taught me what it means to be truly free. The cushion Lena carried across an ocean and back still sits in a museum in Cologne today, beside her nurse’s uniform and a faded photograph of Fort Douglas.

 Visitors often ask what it represents. The museum placard offers a simple answer, a reminder that even in the darkest wars, humanity can endure if we choose it. That choice made by American guards, doctors, cooks, and officers in hundreds of camps across the United States changed lives. It changed Lena. It changed thousands like her.

 And it proved that the true measure of victory is not how thoroughly you destroy your enemy, but how humanely you treat them when they can no longer fight back. Because in the end, wars are won on battlefields. But peace is built in the quiet moments after, when a doctor hands a cushion to a wounded prisoner, when a cook serves eggs to a starving woman, when a guard says, “You’re safe now.” and means it.

 Those moments, small and easily forgotten, are the ones that determine what kind of world emerges from the ashes. And in 1944, in a camp surrounded by Utah mountains, German women discovered that their enemy had chosen to be something more than conquerors. They had chosen to be civilized. And that choice made all the