Event Details

Every Tuesday 09.30 – 10.30, during term, we invite an academic to brief us on their research. The format is a 30 minute talk followed by discussion.

WWII Memory Writings: Considerations of US Detained Italian Prisoners of War

Professor Alan R. Perry, Gettysburg College



This talk examines research on memory writing (memoirs and diaries) undertaken by Italian prisoners of war (POWs) detained in the United States during World War II, 1943 – 1946.

More than 51,000 Italian POWs were dispersed in 140 base camps throughout the US. Their experiences differed dramatically since some had taken an oath to cooperate with the Allies in common cause against Nazi Germany, while others did not. Those that cooperated, about 36,500 in number, were considered “co-belligerents” and separated from the roughly 4,500 POWs who refused to collaborate. All the officers who were non-collaborators were held at Camp Hereford in Texas, and published memoirs about this Texas experience have dominated the Italian public conception of POW imprisonment in the US. But tales of those who chose to collaborate — mostly unpublished — complete the historical record and enhance its memory. Fortunately, several memoirs and diaries concerning detainment at the Letterkenny Army Depot in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where 1,200 collaborating POWs served time, have recently been recovered.

Contrasting experiences of imprisonment found in both collaborator and non-collaborator memory writings indicate particular expressions of social futures after repatriation at the end of the war.