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When Kriegsgefangenenlager Aliceville first opened most of the POWs had served with Erwin Rommel’s Afrikakorps in North Africa, but later prisoners from the Battle of the Bulge arrived as well.

Many of the prisoners worked picking cotton and they were transported to and from the camp in open trucks. Security was not very tight. However, POW camp life and regulations changed as a result of news arriving from Europe. The execution of American POWs at Malmédy and the poor treatment of American POWs in Nazi prisoner camps altered the life of the German POWs in Alabama.

Communicating with and worries about family in Germany, interaction with black American soldiers, the death of FDR, and many other subjects are covered in Guests behind the Barbed Wire.

There are 16 glossy paper pages with pictures interspersed in the text that show German POWs in a comfortable Frisco passenger train car to Aliceville (described as “the Mercedes of trains” by one POW), prisoner barracks near completion in late 1942, POW roll call, the mess hall where POW prepared meals were eaten, the hospital barracks, mail from Germany with Nazi and US censor stamps, the green house tended by POWs, the POW band, POW sport events, the POW printing press (a December 1944 product printed on this press is shown left), prisoner drawings of the camp, etc.

Guests behind the Barbed Wire is a fascinating, very detailed English language book about German POWs in Aliceville in rural Alabama, the largest German POW camp in the USA.

The nearly 2 inch (!) thick book chronicles how residents of Aliceville helped to build, operate and supply the camp that would house 6000 German soldiers. It describes the daily lives of the POWs, their guards, interaction with the local population and the relationships that were formed.

There are also postwar photos of the reunions of former POWs and their guards organized by the local population of Aliceville, AL. The first one took place in October 1989.

This is a very nice, probably unread 5-¾ x 7-1/2 inch, 624-page hardcover example of Guests Behind the Barbed Wire: German POWs in America: A True Story of Hope and Friendship by Ruth Beaumont Cook with its original dust jacket.

If you are interested in the wartime world of Aliceville, Alabama and the life of German prisoners of war in the United States, don’t miss this well-researched book. This fine example has a tight spine and no odor.