May 1945, Germany in collapse. The Reich’s final auxiliaries, young women who had served as nurses, signal operators, typists, flack helpers, surrendered in droves. Thousands were rounded up, processed, and shipped to camps in France, then often to the United States. Nazi propaganda had drilled one truth into them.
Americans were decadent, but vengeful, eager to humiliate, starve, exploit. These women, many barely out of their teens, expected the worst. Forced labor in mines, public shaming, revenge for the bombs on London, or the horrors of the camps. They braced for betrayal by their own leaders lies, but never imagined betrayal from the very enemy who now held their fate.
Yet in American custody, something twisted occurred. The phrase that haunted them, “You are still nurses,” words spoken in calm English that felt like a knife. because the Americans following Geneva rules recognized their medical training and assigned them to care for German PSWs, their own wounded comrades. In US camps across Texas, Arizona, and the Midwest, these women found themselves back in white uniforms, tending to broken bodies from the same army that had sent them to war. The betrayal wasn’t cruelty.
It was irony so sharp it cut deeper than any guard’s baton. The Geneva Convention of 1929 required that qualified medical personnel among powdy be allowed to practice if they wished and be treated with respect to their profession. The US adhered strictly. Captured German nurses, Red Cross sisters, and auxiliaries with training were often asked to assist in camp hospitals.
Not forced at gunpoint, but invited with the logic, “You are still nurses. Your people need you.” Many agreed. out of duty, compassion, or fear of worse assignments like laundry or field labor. In camps like Florence, Arizona or Hearn, Texas, they found themselves changing dressings on men who had once commanded them, administering morphine to dying Africa corpse veterans, soothing fevers from infected wounds.
The horror wasn’t abuse. It was the surreal reversal. They had fled the collapsing front, expecting liberation from the regime’s madness. Instead, they were handed back the same role. Caregivers in a system they had helped sustain. Oral histories and declassified Red Cross reports from 1945. Four six reveal the emotional toll.
One former auxiliary nurse later recalled, “We thought America would punish us for what our men did. Instead, they made us heal them. Every bandage I tied felt like tying myself back to the Reich. The work was exhausting. Long shifts, limited supplies at first, the constant sight of suffering they knew too well.
Some women wept privately after shifts, overwhelmed by the irony. Enemies treating them with professional courtesy, allowing them to practice medicine on their own side, while American doctors oversaw without interference. The betrayal burned because it forced confrontation. The war wasn’t over for them.
Duty persisted, even in defeat. Propaganda had promised heroic martyrdom or cruel revenge. Reality delivered quiet clinical obligation. Yet amid the horror of this forced continuity, small mercies emerged. US doctors praised their skill. Shared cigarettes respected their expertise. Red Cross parcels arrived for them too.
Chocolate, soap, letters from home. Some women found solace in the work. Healing was healing regardless of uniform. Others felt trapped in a limbo, neither fully prisoner nor free professional. When repatriation came in 1946, four 7. Many carried dual scars, the physical marks of war, and the psychological weight of being still nurses in the enemy’s camp.
The betrayal wasn’t by America. It was by the war itself, refusing to release them from the roles it had forced upon them. In the end, you are still nurses wasn’t cruelty. It was a mirror showing that even in captivity, humanity’s demands, care, duty, mercy endured. The first shifts felt like a dream turned inside out.
These women trained in Berlin hospitals or field stations under the swastika now walked wards filled with their own countrymen. Shrapnel wounds from Normandy, frostbite from the Ardens, infections from months and foxholes. The Americans provided the supplies. Penicellin vials, still a miracle drug in 1945, plasma bottles, sulfa powder by the case, sterile gauze, and endless rolls.
No shortages like the ones they’d known in the last desperate months of the war. Yet every syringe drawn, every fever broken, every quiet donka from a bandaged soldier felt like a chain. “You are still nurses,” the camp doctor had said on their first day. calm, professional, almost kind. But the words echoed like an accusation.
They weren’t free. They weren’t civilians. They were prisoners, yet bound by the same oath they’d taken under Hitler. Care for the wounded, no matter the uniform. The betrayal wasn’t American cruelty. It was the war’s refusal. Oral histories from repatriated auxiliaries and Red Cross reports from camps like Opelica, Alabama or Glennon GeneralHospital in Oklahoma described the emotional grind.
Many women had joined as teenagers, volunteered or conscripted for communications, typing or medical support, never expecting frontline capture. In US custody, they were segregated, given clean uniforms marked PW, hot showers and meals that made them gain weight for the first time in years. Then came the assignment.
Assist in the camp hospital or nearby army facilities treating German PS. Some refused at first, exhausted, traumatized, wanting only to disappear into anonymity. But refusal meant harder labor, scrubbing floors, laundry in the heat, or field work under sun. Most chose the ward duty one. The irony cut deepest when they treated men who had once ordered them around, officers with shrapnel scars, privates with gang green scars, boys barely older than themselves.
One former nurse later recalled, “I bandaged a lieutenant who had screamed at me for slow typing 6 months earlier. Now he thanked me. The war had stripped us both to the same broken thing. American oversight was minimal. Doctors supervised rounds, but the women ran much of the daily care. They learned new techniques, blood plasma transfusions, early penicellin protocols, sterile wound irrigation that saved limbs they’d seen amputated in German field hospitals.
Some found grim purpose in the work. Others felt complicit, trapped in the same role that had defined their war. Friendships, even reluctant ones, formed across lines. American nurses, including black nurses reassigned to P wards after complaints of fraternization with white staff, shared shifts, taught English phrases, slipped extra rations.
A few German women later wrote of quiet conversations. They asked why we fought. We asked why they were kind. The betrayal wasn’t malice. It was the slow realization that the enemy treated them with more professionalism than their own regime had in the end. When repatriation ships sailed in 1946, 47, many carried dual burdens.
Gratitude for survival, guilt for continuing the care, and a shattered worldview. The phrase, “You are still nurses,” lingered long after the wire was cut. It wasn’t a command to punish. It was a reminder. War’s roles don’t end with surrender. They echo in quiet wards and scarred hands until the last patient heals or doesn’t.
As repatriation neared in late 1946, the wards grew quieter. Beds emptied one by one. Wounded men shipped home or released to general compounds. The women folded the last linens, cleaned the last trays, said quiet goodbyes to patients who once saluted them as superiors. The phrase, “You are still nurses,” lingered like an echo. No longer a burden, but a strange bridge between captor and captive.
American doctors shook their hands. professional, respectful, thanked them for their skill. Some women cried then, not from sorrow, but from the absurdity of it all. Enemies who had trusted them to heal their own. When the ship sailed, many carried small momentos, a Red Cross card, a photo of the ward, the memory of real coffee shared in breakrooms.
Back in shattered Germany, they faced hunger, rubble, division. But the irony stayed with them. In defeat, they had been allowed to keep their calling. Duty had outlasted the Reich.
