The Enemy among Us: POWs in Missouri during World War II.

The Enemy among Us: POWs in Missouri during World War II. By David Fiedler. (Saint Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, c. 2003. Pp. xiv, 466. $29.95, ISBN 1-883982-49-9.)

The odyssey of the roughly 50,000 Italian and 378,000 German prisoners of war held in the United States during World War II has seldom been dealt with in the same book. In fact, except for Louis E. Keefer's Italian Prisoners of War in America, 1942-1946: Captives or Allies? (New York, 1992), the experiences of Italian POWs have found few researchers. On the other hand, since the major work on the subject by Arnold Krammer appeared in 1979, the experiences of German POWs in America have been increasingly well studied. German prisoners were housed in forty-five of the then forty-eight states, and one wonders how soon it will be before each of those states receives its own book. What is important about Fiedler's book, however, is that it goes into the particulars of the thirty POW camps in Missouri that housed both Italian and German POWs, though usually not at the same time. Fiedler also tells the stories of the American personnel who guarded the POWs, the reactions of local civilians to guards and prisoners, and the ultimate postwar fate of the individual camps. Fiedler has obviously done very loving and painstaking research in local archives and newspaper collections and has undertaken numerous interviews with local residents who have memories of the camps. His use of major historical monographs on the broader POW program and his visits to the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, give both author and reader the broader context.

Fiedler's journalistic attention to oral interviews with numerous former Missouri residents and his elaborate details concerning the civilian work contracts and experiences of guards in innumerable small towns in Missouri make this study worthy of publication by the Missouri Historical Society Press. An enthusiastic Missouri audience should be assured. However, the professional is frustrated by the lack of German-language monographs in the bibliography. More irritating is the vagueness in footnoting that lists National Archives record groups with little hint of the document entry location. Also, there are endnote citations of interviews and articles that this reader could not locate in the bibliography. An editor or prepublication reader could have helped correct these minor irritants for the avid researcher.

Despite these quibbles, The Enemy among Us is a very well researched and fascinating book, enriched by numerous photos and the generous and caring spirit of the author. Fiedler dedicates the book "To my family and to the soldiers of every army who came to Missouri, and the residents who treated those boys as their own" (p. v). Good show!

Wingate University

ROBERT D. BILLINGER JR.