Class Year
2020
Document Type
Student Research Paper
Date of Creation
Spring 2020
Department 1
History
Abstract
In war memory, the typical prisoner of war narrative is one of either passive survival or heroic resistance. However, captured service members did not necessarily lose their agency when they lost their freedom. This study of Americans held in Germany during the Second World War shows that prisoners generally grounded themselves in their personal and national identities, while compromising ideas of heroism, sometimes passing up opportunities for resistance in order to survive.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Greenman, Jessica N., ""I Am Not A Prisoner of War": Agency, Adaptability, and Fulfillment of Expectations Among American Prisoners of War Held in Nazi Germany" (2020). Student Publications. 786.
https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/student_scholarship/786
Comments
Written as a senior capstone for HIST 421: The Second World War.