When Black POWs Spoke Fluent German To Guards – They Were Speechless
The Language of Survival
I. Stalag 9C, Bad Sulsa, Germany
December 1944
The searchlight swept across the frozen compound, illuminating the huddled figures of American prisoners pressed against the barracks wall. The bitter cold bit through every layer of clothing, and each breath fogged in the air like a ghost. From the guard tower, Hauptmann Werner Braun descended the stairs, boots crunching on snow, ready to bark orders at the Americans.
.
.
.
Then one of the prisoners looked up—a young black soldier. He spoke in flawless, unaccented German.
“Guten Abend, Hauptmann. Kalte Nacht, nicht wahr?”
Braun stopped mid-step. His understanding of race, hierarchy, and everything the Reich had taught him cracked like ice underfoot.
II. The Road to Captivity
The Ardennes Forest, Belgium. December 16, 1944. The German offensive known as the Battle of the Bulge tore through American lines like a knife through fabric. Panzer divisions smashed through weakly defended positions, surrounding entire units and capturing thousands of American soldiers in the first seventy-two hours.
Among those captured was Private First Class Johnny Stevens of the 106th Infantry Division, twenty-four years old, from Chicago’s South Side. The son of a Pullman porter and a schoolteacher, Stevens had grown up speaking English at home, but his mother insisted he learn German. In 1930s Chicago, German was the language of culture, music, and philosophy. His teachers encouraged it; his mother demanded it.
Drafted in 1943, Stevens trained at Camp Atterbury, Indiana, shipped to England in October 1944, and arrived in Belgium just in time for the German breakthrough. His unit, green and unprepared, was overwhelmed in hours. Stevens spent two days hiding in a frozen foxhole before surrendering, hands raised, rifle discarded, praying that surrender meant survival.
The Germans marched their prisoners west, away from the advancing Allied forces. Columns of exhausted, freezing Americans stumbled through snow. Guards shouted orders in German, assuming none of the prisoners understood. Stevens understood every word but kept his head down. Survival meant invisibility.
They passed through villages where civilians watched with expressions ranging from curiosity to contempt. The prisoners were loaded into boxcars—forty men per car, no heat, no sanitation, straw on the floor. The doors slammed shut. The train lurched forward. Stevens stood pressed against other prisoners, feeling the cold seep through his uniform, wondering if he would die in this boxcar or wherever they were headed.
Next to him stood another black soldier, Corporal Leon Washington from Pittsburgh. They hadn’t known each other before capture, but suffering forged quick bonds.
“You speak any German?” Washington asked, teeth chattering.
“Some,” Stevens replied. “Might come in handy.”
“Might get us killed,” Washington muttered.
The train traveled for three days. The boxcar became a hell of cold, hunger, and human waste. Two men died. The guards opened the doors once daily to remove corpses and throw in black bread and water. Stevens watched the German soldiers—mostly young men, teenagers with rifles and tired eyes. They weren’t monsters, just soldiers doing a job. That realization was more disturbing than hatred.
III. Arrival at Stalag 9C
On the fourth day, the train stopped. Blinding winter light flooded the car. Orders were shouted in German: “Raus! Schnell!” The prisoners stumbled onto a platform. Stevens saw the sign: Bad Sulsa, Thuringia, central Germany. They marched to the camp—Stalag 9C, a POW camp for Allied prisoners. Barbed wire, guard towers, wooden barracks.
The camp held British, French, Russian, and now American prisoners, each in separate compounds. The Americans were registered, searched, and assigned barracks. Stevens and Washington ended up in Barracks 14 with thirty other men, mostly white, a few black. The racial dynamics of the segregated American military followed them even into captivity. White prisoners claimed the bunks near the stove; black prisoners got the ones near the drafty walls. Some things, it seemed, transcended national boundaries.
The camp routine established itself quickly. Morning roll call at dawn. Watery soup for breakfast. Work details. More soup for lunch. Evening roll call. Bread and margarine for dinner. Lights out at nine. Days blurred together in cold, hunger, and boredom.
Stevens observed everything—the guards, their routines, their personalities. Some were cruel, some indifferent, a few almost apologetic. He listened to their conversations, absorbed information, learned the camp hierarchy. The commandant, Oberst Heinrich Müller, was a career officer who had fought in the First World War, lost an arm at Verdun, and ran the camp with bureaucratic efficiency. Not kind, but not unnecessarily brutal.
The guard commander, Hauptmann Werner Braun, was a former schoolteacher from Dresden, called up in 1943 because Germany was running out of younger men. He spoke some English, poorly, and relied on interpreters. The interpreter, Feldwebel Otto Klene, was a conscripted local who had lived in New York for eight years before returning to Germany. His English was fluent but accented, his demeanor exhausted.
IV. The Power of Language
Three weeks into captivity, Stevens was on a work detail shoveling snow. A guard gave instructions that Klene translated into broken English. The translation was wrong. Stevens, frustrated and cold, corrected Klene in German without thinking.
“No, that’s wrong. He said we should put the snow over there, not here.”
The guard stared. Klene stared. Stevens realized his mistake too late.
“You speak German?” Klene asked, surprised.
“Yes,” Stevens replied. “I studied it before the war.”
Klene studied him for a long moment, then smiled. “A black American who speaks proper German. The world is stranger than I thought.”
Word spread quickly. By evening, Braun summoned Stevens to the administration building. Stevens went, terrified—expecting interrogation, accusations of being a spy, a bullet in a snowy field. Instead, he found Braun sitting behind a desk, looking curious rather than hostile.
“You speak German?” Braun asked.
“Yes, Herr Hauptmann.”
“Where did you learn?”
“School. University. Chicago.”
Braun leaned back, processing this information. “Chicago,” he repeated. “I thought most American negroes did not attend university.”
Stevens felt anger rise but suppressed it. “Many do not. But some do.”
“And you studied German?”
“Yes. German literature, philosophy, music.”
Braun looked at him like he was a puzzle that didn’t fit. Nazi ideology had taught that black people were inferior, incapable of higher thought or culture. Yet here sat a black American soldier speaking German better than many of Braun’s own guards, discussing literature and philosophy. The cognitive dissonance was visible on Braun’s face. He dismissed Stevens without further questions.
But the encounter changed something. Stevens was no longer just another prisoner. He was an anomaly—a challenge to the racial hierarchy underpinning everything the Third Reich believed.
V. A Quiet Resistance
Stevens wasn’t the only black American POW who spoke German. As word spread, others revealed themselves. Corporal Washington had studied German at a black college in Pennsylvania. Private James Morrison from Harlem learned it from his grandmother, a German Jewish immigrant. Staff Sergeant Robert Coleman from Detroit worked at a German-American social club before the war.
They formed an informal group—five black soldiers who could navigate the camp in ways others couldn’t. They understood orders before translation, overheard guard conversations, learned which guards were sympathetic, which were dangerous, and which simply wanted the war to end.
This created a strange dynamic. In the segregated American military, these men had been treated as second-class soldiers, given the worst assignments, excluded from many combat roles, housed and fed separately, discriminated against systematically. Now, in a German POW camp, their language skills gave them an advantage their white fellow prisoners didn’t have.
Some white prisoners resented this. Private Bill Henderson from Alabama made his feelings clear one evening.
“Ain’t right, them speaking the enemy’s language. Makes you wonder whose side they’re on.”
Stevens debated whether to respond, but Washington shook his head. “Don’t engage. Not worth it.”
Sergeant Frank O’Brien from Boston, a white NCO respected for his fairness, spoke up.
“They’re on our side, Henderson. And right now, understanding what the guards are saying might keep us alive. So, shut your mouth.”
The racial tension simmered but didn’t boil over. Survival took priority.
VI. Unexpected Connections
The German guards’ reactions varied. Some were uncomfortable, disturbed by black prisoners who spoke their language. It challenged their assumptions. Others were curious, even intrigued. A few formed unexpected connections.
One guard, Gefreiter Klaus Hoffmann, twenty years old from Hamburg, had studied English literature before being drafted. He started having conversations with Stevens during guard duty—not interrogations, just conversations about books, music, life before the war.
“I read Langston Hughes,” Hoffmann said one evening. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers. It was beautiful.”
“You read Langston Hughes?” Stevens asked, amazed.
“In Germany, we are not all barbarians,” Hoffmann replied quietly. “Some of us read. Some of us think. Some of us hate what has been done in our name.”
“Why do you fight then?” Stevens asked.
“Because if I refuse, they shoot me. Because my family is in Hamburg, being bombed by your planes. Because I have no choice.” Hoffmann paused. “None of us have choices anymore. We just survive.”
The conversation stayed with Stevens. Hoffmann was the enemy, wore the uniform of a regime that had murdered millions. Yet, he was also a twenty-year-old who read poetry and wanted to survive. The clarity of hatred was easier than the complexity of humanity.
VII. The March West
Winter deepened. January 1945 brought colder temperatures and reduced rations. The German war effort was collapsing. Food became scarce, even for guards. Prisoners received less. Hunger became a constant companion.
But something unexpected happened. The German guards started treating the black American prisoners differently—not better, but with a strange curiosity, sometimes even grudging respect.
Braun called Stevens to his office in late January. This time he asked Stevens to help translate during an inspection by a higher-ranking officer. The Red Cross was visiting, documenting camp conditions. Braun needed someone who could speak both German and English fluently to ensure no misunderstandings.
Stevens agreed. During the inspection, he translated accurately, neither minimizing nor exaggerating conditions. The Red Cross representative seemed satisfied. After he left, Braun offered Stevens an extra ration of bread.
“Why?” Stevens asked.
“Because you were honest,” Braun said. “You could have lied, made us look worse. But you didn’t.”
“I told the truth. The conditions are bad, but not as bad as some camps. Why make it worse?”
Braun nodded slowly. “You are not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?” Stevens asked.
Braun was quiet. “I don’t know anymore. What we were taught about your people…” He trailed off, unable or unwilling to finish.
Stevens understood. Nazi racial theory had taught that black people were subhuman, unintelligent, incapable of civilization. Yet here he stood, speaking German fluently, demonstrating education and dignity, forcing Braun to confront the lie.
VIII. Liberation
By March 1945, the Eastern Front had collapsed. The Red Army was driving west. Rumors spread through the camp. The Russians were coming. The war was ending. Liberation was near. But liberation by the Soviets terrified the German guards—they knew what revenge might look like.
Discipline in the camp broke down. Oberst Müller called a meeting of all prisoners.
“The camp will be evacuated,” he announced. “You will march west, away from the Russian advance. Those who cannot walk will be left behind.”
The announcement caused panic. Where were they being marched? To another camp? To execution? The guards claimed it was for the prisoners’ safety, but no one believed that. Forced marches were often death marches.
Stevens and the other German-speaking prisoners overheard guards discussing the situation. The SS wanted to kill all prisoners before the Russians arrived. The Wehrmacht opposed this. There was conflict within the German command. Some guards planned to desert. Others remained loyal.
That night, Stevens gathered the other black German speakers.
“We need to make a plan,” he said. “If this march happens, we need to know what’s really going on.”
Washington agreed. “We listen. We translate for the others. We stay together.”
Morrison added, “And if it looks like they’re going to shoot us, we run.”
They spent the next days preparing, hoarding what little food they could, sharing information, watching the guards for signs of danger or sympathy.
The march began on March 28th. Two thousand prisoners formed into columns. The guards, nervous and exhausted, drove them west. The weather was cold, but spring was beginning.
On the second day, an SS officer arrived with orders: all prisoners too weak to continue would be shot. Braun refused. He and the SS officer argued loudly. Stevens, close enough to hear, translated quietly for nearby prisoners.
“The SS man says they have orders from Berlin. Braun says he answers to the Wehrmacht, not the SS. He says he won’t murder prisoners.”
The standoff lasted an hour. Finally, the SS officer left, threatening to return with reinforcements. Braun immediately ordered the march to continue faster. He wanted to reach American lines. He wanted to survive.
That evening, during a rest stop, Braun approached Stevens. He spoke quietly in German.
“When we meet the Americans, tell them we did not harm you. Tell them we followed the Geneva Convention. Tell them…” He paused. “Tell them we are not all monsters.”
Stevens looked at him—this man who had guarded him for months, raised in Nazi Germany, taught racial hatred, yet had shown moments of decency.
“I will tell them what happened,” Stevens said finally. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
Braun nodded. “That is all I ask.”
IX. Homecoming
On April 12th, American forces reached the marching column. Jeeps and tanks appeared on the road ahead. The guards threw down their weapons, raised their hands, surrendered without a fight. The prisoners erupted in cheers. Weak men found energy to shout, to embrace, to weep. Liberation—finally, after months of captivity.
American soldiers secured the German guards. A young captain from Pennsylvania spoke to the senior POW, a major who had been captured at the Bulge.
“How were you treated?” the captain asked.
“It varied,” the major said. “Could have been worse. Could have been better. Some guards were decent. Some weren’t.”
“Any atrocities? Anyone need to testify against specific guards?”
Stevens stepped forward. “Sir, may I speak?”
“Go ahead, soldier.”
“Private First Class Johnny Stevens, sir. I speak German. I overheard a lot during captivity. Most of these guards treated us according to the Geneva Convention. Some were cruel, but not systematically. One of them, Hauptmann Braun, refused SS orders to execute prisoners. He probably saved lives.”
The captain looked at Stevens with surprise. “You speak German?”
“Yes, sir. Studied it before the war.”
The captain turned to the German guards. “Which one is Braun?”
Stevens pointed him out. Braun stood with the other guards, hands raised, face resigned. The captain called an interpreter, then questioned Braun. Stevens listened, occasionally correcting the interpreter when translation was imprecise.
Gradually, a picture emerged. Braun had run a harsh but legal camp. He had protected prisoners from SS violence. He was not a war criminal.
“He’ll be processed through normal POW channels,” the captain decided. “No special charges.”
Braun looked at Stevens. “Danke,” he said quietly.
Stevens nodded but didn’t smile. He hadn’t done it for Braun. He had done it for truth, for complexity, for the understanding that war created impossible situations where good and evil blurred together.
X. Aftermath
The liberated prisoners were processed through military channels—medical exams, debriefings, paperwork. Stevens spent two weeks in a field hospital, recovering from malnutrition and frostbite. Then he was sent to a transit camp in France, waiting for transport home.
In the transit camp, the segregation of the American military reasserted itself. Black soldiers were housed separately, served in separate mess halls, given separate facilities. Stevens had survived German captivity only to return to American discrimination.
He met up with Washington, Morrison, and Coleman. They sat together one evening, drinking bad coffee, processing everything that had happened.
“You know what’s crazy?” Morrison said. “The German guards treated us better than our own officers sometimes.”
Stevens understood. Some German guards had shown curiosity, even respect, when they discovered the black prisoners spoke German. They shared books, recognized shared humanity. Meanwhile, white American officers often treated black soldiers as inferior, as problems, as barely tolerable necessities.
“But that doesn’t make the Germans the good guys,” Washington said firmly. “They were still Nazis, part of a regime that murdered millions. A few decent guards don’t erase that.”
Coleman agreed. “We got lucky. Ended up with guards who were tired and wanted to survive. Could have been much worse.”
Stevens thought about this. The moral complexity was overwhelming. The Germans were the aggressors, the architects of genocide, the perpetrators of horrific evil. Yet individual Germans were just people—some cruel, some kind, most just trying to survive. Meanwhile, America fought for freedom abroad while maintaining segregation at home. The contradictions were staggering.
“What do we do now?” Morrison asked.
“We go home,” Stevens said quietly. “Back to America where we’re still second-class citizens. Back to segregation. Back to discrimination. We fought for freedom, but we don’t have it ourselves.”
“We keep fighting,” Stevens added. “Different fight, same principles. We prove we’re human. We prove we deserve equality. We use every advantage we have—including our experiences, our education, our abilities.”
“And speaking German,” Washington added with a smile.
“And speaking German,” Stevens agreed.
XI. Legacy
They shipped out in May, a Liberty ship crossing the Atlantic. Seventeen days of gray water and uncertain futures. When the Statue of Liberty appeared through morning fog, the soldiers cheered. “Home. America. For better or worse.”
Stevens disembarked in New York on May 28, 1945. The war in Europe was over. The war in the Pacific would end three months later. He had survived, but survival was just the beginning.
Stevens returned to Chicago. His parents threw a party. Neighbors welcomed him home. Everyone wanted to hear war stories. He told edited versions—the capture, the camp, the liberation. He left out the complexity, the conversations with German guards, the literature discussions, the way speaking German had forced Germans to confront their own propaganda.
He went back to school on the GI Bill, finished his degree in German literature, became a teacher at a black high school, taught German to students who looked like him, who faced the same discrimination, who needed to understand that education and culture were weapons against prejudice.
He never forgot Klaus Hoffmann, the young guard who had shared books and conversations. Never knew what happened to him. He never forgot Hauptmann Braun, the conflicted officer whose worldview had cracked when confronted with educated black prisoners. Never knew if Braun learned from those cracks, if they widened into understanding, or if he rebuilt his prejudices after the war.
But Stevens knew what he had learned: that humanity existed even in enemies, that propaganda dissolved when confronted with reality, that speaking the language of your captor could be an act of resistance and assertion.
Washington became a college professor. Morrison opened a bookstore in Harlem that specialized in German literature. Coleman worked as a translator for the State Department. They stayed in touch—annual letters, occasional visits, shared understanding.
Years later, during the civil rights movement, Stevens marched in Chicago, protested segregation, fought for voting rights. When people asked why he was so committed, he would sometimes tell them about speaking German to Nazi guards, about proving humanity in the least likely circumstances, about refusing to be defined by others’ prejudices.
The younger activists didn’t always understand. To them, the war was history. The struggle was now. But Stevens knew they were connected. Every fight for dignity built on previous fights. Every assertion of humanity drew strength from past assertions.
XII. Memory and Meaning
In 1983, a German historian named Dr. Petra Schultz found records from Stalag 9C. She tracked down survivors. Stevens was seventy-three, retired, living in Chicago. She called, asked for an interview. They met at his home. She brought copies of documents—guard logs, inspection reports.
“Did it change you?” she asked. “Speaking German to your captors, having those conversations?”
Stevens thought for a long time. “Yes,” he said finally. “It taught me that prejudice dies when confronted with reality. The guards believed black people were inferior, incapable of culture or intelligence. Then they met us. We spoke their language. We discussed their literature. We demonstrated everything they believed was impossible. Some of them changed their minds. Not all, but some.”
He paused. “And it taught me that America’s fight for freedom abroad was incomplete without freedom at home. I fought Nazis while living under Jim Crow. I spoke German to prove my humanity to guards while my own country denied it. That contradiction drove me to teach, to fight for civil rights, to never accept prejudice as inevitable.”
Dr. Schultz published her research in 1985, documenting a forgotten story—black American soldiers using language skills to survive captivity and challenge Nazi racial ideology. A small story in the vast history of the war, but a meaningful one.
Stevens died in 1994, age seventy-four. His obituary mentioned his military service, his teaching career, his civil rights activism. It didn’t mention speaking German in a POW camp. That story remained buried in archives and fading memories.
But the truth remained. In the frozen compounds of Stalag 9C, black American prisoners spoke fluent German to their captors, and in doing so dismantled propaganda through the simple act of demonstrating their full humanity. Every conversation was an act of resistance. Every translation was an assertion of dignity. Every moment of mutual recognition was a victory against the ideologies that had created the war.
The guards who expected savages found educated men. The prisoners who expected only cruelty found occasional humanity. And in those moments of unexpected connection, both sides learned that the categories they had been taught were lies. Humanity was more complex, more surprising, more resilient than any ideology could contain.
In the frozen camp, a searchlight swept the compound. A guard descended the stairs. A prisoner looked up and spoke perfect German. In that moment, something changed—not everything, not enough, but something. And sometimes, in the machinery of war and hate, those small changes are the beginning of healing.
