Advertisements for Democracy: German and Italian POW Camps in Idaho - 1943-1946

During World War Two, Idaho was home to around 21 prisoner of war camps for German and Italian soldiers captured in Europe and North Africa. They came here to help the war effort by providing farm labor, but many came to love America for the humanity shown them as prisoners. The United States has never been perfect, but even while our government imprisoned its own citizens, it also did all it could to live up to the Geneva Conventions of 1929 while imprisoning German and Italian soldiers, a task our Axis Power foes and our Soviet allies hardly bothered with.