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Prisoners-of-war

British jailers murdered American prisoners several months after the end of the War of 1812 in the last act of hostility between the U.K. and the United States.

The final hours of the war were every bit as perilous as all the other ones for this American POW

World War II was ending with more of a whimper than a Waterloo for the Anglo-American forces in Europe. The Battle of Berlin was shaping up just 60 miles to the south of where I stood, but, by design, the American and British forces were to have no part in that carnage.

As the war was coming to an end, we asked the German guards if we could hold a ceremony in Roosevelt’s honor

The heavy cannonading in the east told the American POWs in Kommando 64/VI that the war was almost over. We had survived the brutally cold Baltic winter in this satellite labor camp of a German stalag and were now enjoying the first tenuous rays of the spring sun.

Charles Hopkins received the Congressional Medal of Honor for gallantry at the battle of Gaines’ Mill, but his toughest fight was trying to survive at the Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp. He left this never-before-published record.

While some American captives languished, others conducted a flourishing market—and a huge black sailor organized everything

Stark, mist-enshrouded Dartmoor prison has long held a fascination for those interested in British crime.

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